Category: choices

change, choices, clarity, inspiration, invention, writing

Beginning: How to Recognize an Ending

Christa Avampato

My year of writing about new beginnings is winding down. A few more days and my new writing adventure for 2012 will take shape. I’ll reveal more details about this shortly. For the moment, I’m thinking about endings. The end of 2011. The end of spending too much time on things that aren’t adding to the world or fulfilling my own personal purpose. Beginnings are easy to spot; endings are a bit fuzzier.

I thought my apartment building fire was an ending. Instead, it was just the start of a more authentic life. It changed everything.

I thought my father passing away was an ending. Instead, it was just the start of a healing path that would weave through my life and then be used to weave through the lives of others.

I thought the end of this year would signal a steep drop off in my pursuit of beginnings. Instead, it is just the start of the very beginning that my entire life has been preparing for. It’s not okay yet but someday, a long time from now, it will be. And I will be a part of making it so.

choices, health

Beginning: Your Health Is Up to You

Christa Avampato

“Every human being is the author of his own health or disease.” ~ Buddha

Which will you choose?

(Quote courtesy of Yoga Freedom and Jeffrey Davis)

books, business, choices, entrepreneurship, happiness, job

Beginning: Joy is the First Ingredient of a New Start-up

Christa Avampato

“Intelligence and capability are not enough.There must be the joy of doing something beautiful.” ~ Dr. Govindappa Venkataswamy (Dr. V) – via Daily Good

As the year is winding down, I’m winding my way through Escape from Cubicle Nation: From Corporate Prisoner to Thriving Entrepreneur by Pam Slim. It’s addressing a lot of the concerns (some valid, some not) that I’ve had about Compass Yoga and my desire to work for myself full-time. It’s also been able to help me put together a plan of how to make this transition with unflappable grace and the best possible chance of success.

Work needs to equal joy
If you’re on the journey of entrepreneurship, too, and you don’t know where to start. Take Dr. V’s advice in the quote above (and then buy Pam’s book for everything else that follows!) There has got to be a great element of joy in the actual work you want to do. And while that’s true whether you work for yourself or someone else, it’s absolutely vital if you’re on your own.

When someone else is paying you a steady salary and benefits, you begin to weigh that against whether or not you really love the work. It’s easy for a lot of people to justify not loving the work when they have a lot of other benefits. On your own, the income may be unsteady (especially in the start-up phase) and the fringe benefits could be a step down from what you’re used to. In those moments, the joy of the work has to be a large part of the comfort you receive. Without it, the whole plan fall to pieces. The joy is the linchpin.

Why I’m glad I didn’t try to be a full-time freelance writer
For the past few years, I had been thinking about transitioning into being a freelance writer full-time. This would have been a very bad idea for a lot of reasons, and the main reason is that I actually don’t find joy in just the act of writing. My joy is found in writing exactly what I want to write, when, where, and how I want to write it. That is not always the choice of a freelance writer, and certainly not of one who is just starting out.

I took a fairly lucrative freelance writing job about legal topics for a newsletter that is sent to lawyers. I wrote a total of 3 articles and hated every single minute of it. If I had been a full-time freelance writer, I might have needed to continue in the contract to support myself. As a side job, I dropped it and learned a valuable lesson in the process.

Get going with joy
There are a lot of business ideas out there and a lot of unmet consumer needs that are ripe for entrepreneurs to take up. Find the ones that generate so much joy that you can’t wait to dig into the work. And be clear about exactly the work you love to do – there’s no such thing as too much detail in their definition. Then work like heck to put a structure around that joy so that you can afford to live a lifestyle in line with your values.

Now get cracking!

adventure, art, choices, courage, creativity, justice

Beginning: Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera and What Gandhi Teaches Us About Being a Beginner

Christa Avampato
Scene from Satyagraha at the Metropolitan Opera

Upon the very strong advice of my friend and mentor, Richard, I bought a ticket to see the Metropolitan Opera’s final performance of Satyagraha (“truth force” in Sanskrit), an opera by Philip Glass that tells the story of Gandhi’s life in South Africa through the ancient Hindu text of the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita is also one of the primary teaching tools in yoga classes and in yoga teacher trainings. Yogis live by its lessons.

The visual representation and innovative use of puppetry in Satyagraha was stunning. The lighting and sound of Sanskrit (rarely heard today in this country, save for the occasional phrase in a yoga studio) set to music lit up all of my senses while also giving me a true sense of peace and resolve. I was in a very meditative state during the entire production. In the program, I learned that it took over 10 years of tireless effort by Philip Glass and his collaborators to complete.

The Gandhi we know who changed the world with his campaigns of nonviolent resistance against social injustice  spent over 2 decades testing and refining his methods in South Africa after facing fierce personal discrimination. His movement began on an incredibly small-scale and remained small for years. It was his persistence and absolute confidence in his mission that brought him to prominence and influence.

Satyagraha was a particularly personal performance for me on a number of levels:

Yoga
I went on December 1st, the 19th anniversary of my father’s passing. The circumstances of his life and death have fueled my own yoga journey and the healing found along that journey spurred my desire to teach and to form Compass Yoga.

South Africa
While I was a graduate student at the Darden School, I went to South Africa as part of a cultural exchange class. For many years, I dreamed of going to Africa. As an elementary school student, I was fascinated by learning about the cultures there and somehow felt as though I oddly belonged in Africa even though I was very young and had never even left the East Coast of the US, much less traveled to Africa. For me, South Africa was a dream and I hope to return someday. Perhaps to even live there for some time.

India
In May, my friend, Rob, and I will be traveling to India on another long-overdue trip of a lifetime. India is the seat of so much philosophical history and the root of yoga. I expect it to be one of those places that changes me forever, how I see the world and how I see myself in this world.

Gandhi’s Lesson: Do or Don’t
Choosing to begin and undertake an auspicious project – whether it is a mission of social justice or an opera that chronicles the life of a towering historical figure through an ancient text in a language that few people understand – takes courage and faith. There are moments of grave doubt, fear, and anxiety for all people who choose to live a life of meaning and service to the greater good. What separates those from those who do and those who don’t is that those who do see something that bothers them, really bothers them, and decide that they have within themselves the ability, endurance, and dedication to generate great change.

It really is that simple – either we do or we don’t. We get the lives that we have the guts to begin and create. 

change, choices, commitment, creativity, faith

Beginning: Taking a Chance Leads to More Chances

Christa Avampato
From missrosemariewoods.buzznet.com

“Chances multiply if you grab them.” ~ Yogi tea bag

We too often think that this is our one big chance to try something new, to do something we’ve always dreamed of. We fear that if we don’t take this leap now, the opportunity will pass us by and if we leap and fail, then we’ll head back to our existence prior to the leap with the comfort that at least we tried. No one really talks about the second chance, the one that happens precisely because we took that first chance.

Our existence in this moment, exactly as it is, is one-of-a-kind. We will never pass this way again. Robert Frost so beautifully described this sentiment of choices and the magic that they create in his poem The Road Not Taken: “Oh, I kept the first for another day! Yet knowing how way leads on to way, I doubted if I should ever come back.” Once we make a leap, it begets another leap. The chances we take lead to other chances, not back to the place we started.

Perhaps this is the reason why leaping is so frightening in the first place. If we knew we could always just go back to our jumping off point, then we’d leap all the time without even considering the consequences. There would be no risk. And probably no fun, either.

Consider a time you made a real leap of faith that didn’t work out as you planned. When I went to business school, I intended to return to the nonprofit world as a fundraiser. It didn’t really happen as I planned. The chances that appeared after I took that chance to go to school multiplied exponentially, expanding my view of the world and my place in it. In the nearly 5 years since I graduated, I realized that I hadn’t gone to school to return an established nonprofit. I went to school to figure out how to create my own nonprofit. While a student, I didn’t know that but somehow the Universe had a far greater intelligence on that front than I did. Way got on to way, as it were, despite my efforts to steer my path otherwise.

It’s what Goethe meant when he talked about the magic in commitment. Part of that magic comes from taking chances, knowing that more chances lie ahead that will be able to trace a direct line back to that first chance we had the courage to take. I don’t believe that on every side of a chance there will be a net to catch us, but I do believe that opportunity taken leads to more opportunities available. And that is as good a reason as any to leap.

blogging, change, choices, creativity, time, writing

Beginning: Strike That Content Plan and Reverse It

Christa Avampato

A few weeks ago, I tried a new beginning that I haven’t been happy with. I thought I was going to turn this blog’s attention to business issues in a more traditional sense. I also thought I was going to stop posting on weekends and that my layout and tag line “Curating a Creative Life” would change substantially.

Forget what I said.

How I see business:
Business to me has a much broader sense than many other business sites. How you make a living has to fit with how you make a life. In the great words of Pam Slim, author of Escape from Cubicle Nation, “If you don’t consider your life as a key part of your business model, you may find yourself outwardly successful and inwardly miserable.” Turn on our work persona in the office and our social persona once we head home and pretty soon we have absolutely no idea who we are. I look at business through the lenses of yoga, service, art, books, technology, and finance. They all fit together for me, and denying any one piece leaves an incomplete picture. I need all of them at my disposal.

Posting every day:
My friend, Monica, recently coined a phrase on her blog that I really appreciate: “I’m not traveling to find myself. I’m traveling to be myself.” I feel the same way about my writing. Over these past few weekends when I haven’t posted, I thought about posting. After posting every day for almost 5 years, it’s become an integral part of my life. I love writing on this blog every single day. My friend, Kristin, has a very cool posting format going on at Writerhead. Some days she posts a very bold, simple quote to inspire writers. I’d like to experiment with that fantastic idea. Regardless of the format, I’m back with you daily.

Curating a creative life:
If ever I had to string a few words together to explain my life’s purpose, this tag line would be it. It’s really too good to give up – in writing or in practice – so I’m sticking with it.

I’ve learned so much about the art of beginning this year. Above all, learning to begin is a practice, a muscle. What I love most about keeping this blog is that even though times flies by so quickly, this writing helps me to remember, appreciate, and celebrate all that’s happened in that blur called time. It gives me the courage to keeping beginning every day. A new beginning doesn’t always mean change – sometimes it just means deliberately choosing to do the things we’ve been doing, not out of habit, but because they are the best way forward for us. 

choices, decision-making, money, time

Beginning: How to Make a Living While Making a Life

Christa Avampato

For a long time I’ve defined that I make a living as a product developer and I make a life by writing and teaching yoga. My dual-life can get exhausting, and more than that, I think it’s wasteful. And I hate waste of any kind. But this dual-life, in the short-term, is the safe road. It helps me to hedge my bets without really make any bets at all. I’m having a tough time letting go.

As we begin to turn our attention toward the end of the year, I begin considering resolutions as a means of focusing my efforts for the turning of the calendar page. In 2012, my big ask of myself is that I figure out a way to bridge my worlds, turning how I make a living and how I make a life into one and the same.

One of the very happy side effects of meditation is how the mind becomes capable of time travel. Even now at the age of 35, I can imagine myself as a very old woman. And in that older me state, I can play out scenarios. If I don’t jump into Compass Yoga with both feet in 2012, I will regret not giving it my all. If I just play it safe, keep my head down, and find a way in the short term to be content with this dual-life, I’ll look back at 35 year old me and ask, “What were you so afraid of? Now time has passed you by. It’s too late. The window has closed.”

For over a year now, I’ve weighed the choice that scares me against the one that feels safer. Maybe I’ve been looking at this all wrong. The Hero’s Journey is about choosing between two options that are equals, not between one good choice and one bad choice.

Perhaps these lofty life decisions are decisions in which we choose the fear we can live with over the fear we can’t live with. Faced with the choice of fearing the leap and fearing that my life’s purpose has passed me by, I’ll leap. Now the trick lies in helping my younger self understand that this is the reality of the career choice I’m wrestling with.

Time is often equated with money, but the two have relatively little in common. Money is replaceable – we can find a way to earn money through all sorts of avenues. We cannot buy time. We have no way of making up for it; we have no way of re-earning it. Once spent, it is spent for good.

In the coming months, I will make it a point to remember that how we spend our time is the greatest choice we make because time is the most precious resource we have. It is irreplaceable.

change, choices, experience, learning

Beginning: How to Get to the Other Side

Christa Avampato

“We seek not rest, but transformation. We are dancing through each other as doorways.” ~Marge Piercy

A funny thing happens to me around 5pm every day. I can have a very tough day around the office, so tough that I feel like just curling up in a ball and hiding until tomorrow. And then I take the elevator down to the ground floor, push open the door, and suddenly the lightness returns, the fatigue lifts, and I’m ready for hours of working on my personal projects, seeing friends, and being out and about in this wild city. I don’t need rest after a tough day in cube-ville. I need a change of scene that inspires a transformation of self.

You might be looking at the screen right now and considering a pity party on my behalf. “Poor Christa. She really needs to quit her job and just work for herself.” Yes, eventually I will have to work for myself and those wheels are greased and in motion. These things take time and planning, particularly in this tricky economy. Every day I am taking one more step toward that big new beginning. I have a feeling it’s going to happen far sooner than my long-term plan suggests, though I am learning great lessons along the journey that I know will be invaluable down the line.

The people we meet, the places we go, and the experiences we have are doorways to something new – sometimes a whole new beginning, sometimes just a slight realization that causes us to take in the world with a different perspective. We do not immediately know the impact of these learnings. We wonder why we have to be put through firestorms and discomfort, why we have to wrestle with uncertainty and dissatisfaction and disappointment. And here’s why: it is the learning we need now.

It can all be valuable if we take the time to assign the value. And yes, we assign the value to our trials. We are responsible for our own learning; we are responsible for our own transformation.  

adventure, choices, creativity, imagination

Beginning: Wander With a Purpose

Christa Avampato
Image by Pam Hough

“Not all who wander are lost.” ~J. R. R. Tolkien

Yesterday I wrote about the need to begin over and over again, to never give up, to take our punches and then try again. It’s also important to understand that it’s okay to try a lot of different avenues. You don’t need to beat your head against the wall trying the same idea over and over again until you get it to work. Give your idea a fair shake, but if it feels like the battle of your life and the fun’s drifted out of it, there’s nothing wrong with cutting your losses and going in another direction.

A friend recently told me that some members of her family don’t think highly of her because she’s not focused enough, because she’s taken her life in so many different directions. But they’ve been purposeful. She’s taken up new ideas with enthusiasm and the desire to learn something new. It takes courage to have curiosity, and it makes for a rewarding life. She wouldn’t have it any other way, and neither would I!

There’s no universal rule that says we need to be one-dimensional, that says if we get this degree or have that job then this has to be our sole purpose. I always love to meet people who mix it up – dancers who are passionate about zoology, physicists who love to cook, corporate attorneys who design clothing. It’s a healthy thing to follow our interests wherever they lead. It’s important to explore and grow. That’s what this life is all about – taking in all the wonder that the world has to offer and then finding a way to give it meaning in the pursuit of a worthwhile way to spend our time.

So you go right ahead and wander. Travel with conviction, and make it valuable for you and for others. Keep your head up, your eyes open, and your ears attuned to your surroundings. You’ll be amazed by all you find on your journey.

choices, passion

Beginning: A Time and A Place for Reason (Always In the Backseat)

Christa Avampato

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” ~ David Hume, Scottish philosopher, economist and historian

Somewhere along the way, “reasonable” got a good connotation and “unreasonable” got a bad connotation in modern society. Comprise, consensus, and contentment hopped aboard the reasonable train. Renegade, fringe, and non-conformity jumped to defend the ground of “unreasonable.” And we all lost in the process. At least until now.

It’s not sustainable. It’s not good for us or for our communities. Reasonable thoughts and behaviors, when left to their own devices, lead us around in circles. They put blinders on us because the preoccupation of a circular path is the center, the indecisive middle ground that stands for nothing except appeasement, which honestly no one wants. Reason needs to be checked.

Think of all the people you admire, products you love, missions of organizations that make you see the world differently, and works of art (broadly defined) that inspire you. Do they define “reasonable” to you? I highly doubt it. I bet they go against the grain.

The trouble is that it’s only when someone achieves the heights of someone like Steve Jobs, my hero of unreasonableness, that we encourage this MO. If someone is “out of line”, meaning that they do something that many others don’t, they get a sideways glance and wide berth as we circumvent their presence, as if we’re afraid of being sucked into their circle of unreasonableness. It shouldn’t be that way. The next Steve Jobs isn’t going to look, act, or sound like Steve Jobs at all. He or she is going to do things his or her own way because that’s what Steve did.

When the phrase “why can’t we all just along?” entered the American lexicon, it was not meant  to be translated into “can’t we all just stand for nothing and never stray from the cookie cutter?” We should be accepting of all people to walk to their own beat. And more than that, we must encourage and reward new ways of being and thinking in schools, in communities, in our families, in business, and in our government.

I’m in David Hume’s camp. Reason, and everything that goes along with it, shouldn’t be vilified but it needs to be contained. For us to progress, reason must be tempered with passion. Not the other way around. And it’s not too late for us – we can turn this around.