A Jedi in training doesn’t say, “You know I think I’ll do my best to try to become a Jedi.” He (or she!) says, “I’m doing this. I’m committed to this path.”
I’ve got Star Wars on the brain this week because I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of commitment and its vital role in our happiness. And if ever there was an example of serious commitment to a way of life, it’s the Jedi.
That muddy middle of indecision is like a tractor beam and we have to fight our way free. Progress doesn’t live in the middle, and neither does success. When it comes to our future, we have to take a stand and decide to decide how it’s going to go. We have to be the Jedi knights of our own lives. It’s not an easy path, but it’s the only one I know that leads to a well-lived life.
About 10 years ago, my sister, Weez, had a difficult health issue. (Don’t worry – she is completely healed, healthy, and sassy now.) In those scary days, her doctor said something that has always struck me as quite possibly the best thing that any doctor has ever said to anyone facing an illness. “I don’t fish. I don’t play golf. I am a doctor. This is my hobby. It’s all I do.” For all the talk about balance between work and life, this doctor’s maniacal focus on his work was exactly what my sister needed to hear.
Rather than building careers that we need a break from, that wear us out and deplete us to the point that a vacation is the only remedy, what if we find a way to build careers that build us up and give us energy? What if we all had careers that mattered so much to us that a separation between work and life was unnecessary, unwanted?
I know this may sound like la-la land to some people. It certainly did to me a few years ago, though now this is exactly the career I have. I wake up every day and write. What I used to do as a hobby on the side is now my focus. I write early in the morning and late into the night. I shut it down when my eyes grow tired or when Phineas lets me know it’s time for his late evening walk before he puts himself to bed, whichever comes first. I work a lot of hours, every day, and I don’t mind at all because I work at the craft that helped me build a life I love, no balancing act required.
I want you to know it’s possible. Even if you have a lot of difficulties, even if all you’ve known is difficulties, it can happen. The only reason I can say this with such confidence is because I came from very tough circumstances. Every step on this journey was tough and took a great deal of effort, and that’s okay. I wanted this enough to work hard for it. It takes planning, patience, time, and passion. I have to commit every day to this path, and it’s still not easy. It is always worth it. Every day, I wrap it up and say thank you because I know just how amazing it is to finally be right here, in this place, doing exactly what I love. I’m a writer, a working writer, exactly what I always wanted to be.
A few weeks ago, I watched an interview with Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad fame. When he first started out, he met a lot of people who said they were giving their creative dream a shot for a year. If they didn’t have any success in a year, then they would pack up and go home. “That was amazing to me,” he said. “It takes so much longer than a year to realize a dream.”
This is exactly the reason I’m working on a new book, Your Second Step. You’ve taken your first step – you’ve identified your dream and you’ve started working on it – maybe part-time, maybe full-time. Maybe you haven’t seen the success you’d hoped for in the timeline you planned. So should you pack it in? Should you start to work on something else and come back to it later? In other words, should you hedge your bets?
Put aside any disappointment. Go back to the dream itself. Does it still matter to you? If the answer is yes, then don’t hedge and don’t give up. Commit. Double down. Invest more time and more energy, not less. Be Yoda. Don’t try. Do. And keep doing. Don’t back down now. You’re closer to your dream than you think.
I’m doing a lot of thinking about Compass Yoga‘s direction these days. I’m proud of what we’ve built. I’m overjoyed that we help over 200 people every week thanks to a band of dedicated and loving teachers. However, I’m never satisfied. I always want to do more. I want to reach more people, provide more healing, and expand our capabilities.
I am deeply affected by the aftermath of the natural disasters our nation has faced in the past few years. I’ve daydreamed about a way for Compass Yoga to help. I’ve toyed with yoga fundraisers and donation-based classes to benefit victims, though that impact seems miniscule compared to the need that these disasters create. Additionally, there are so many other ways to give that are more efficient and have wider reach. The innovation to text a donation via our cell phones is brilliant, and I use it often.
When President Obama gave his remarks just after the Oklahoma tornado last week, a lightbulb went off. He said, “So the people of Moore should know that their country will remain on the ground, there for them, beside them as long as it takes. For there are homes and schools to rebuild, businesses and hospitals to reopen, there are parents to console, first responders to comfort, and, of course, frightened children who will need our continued love and attention.”
His words reignited an idea I had when a deadly tornado hit Joplin, Missouri in 2011. I didn’t want to provide yoga to people in Joplin. That’s not what they immediately needed. They needed the love, care, compassion, and concern that shines in the heart of every yogi everywhere. What we need is a way to harness that love, distill it, and provide it as comfort for people who have lost so much in these disasters. I know that feeling and it is terrifying and isolating.
We have a lot of wonderful organizations that provide basic needs – food, shelter, healthcare. In addition to that work, they also need to be the emotional support for the people they help. This latter responsibility could use assistance from other groups, providing the compassion for these people, giving them someone to talk to, someone whose sole role is to stand with them until they can stand on their own again. Who could do that work? Who could own that mission?
And there it was in President Obama’s quote. We need to do it, to provide comfort to first responders, love, attention, and consolation to those who are frightened. With technology, Compass Yoga could do it. We could live up to our name and guide people along their personal paths to recovery. Yogis are everywhere, in every community. They want to help. Let’s give them a way to put their hearts where the need is. Let’s solve this.
We study others to learn the secrets of their success – how they rose to the top of their fields, created a product or service we love, or created an admirable impact in the world. While we have much to learn from others, when it comes to crafting and breathing life into our own dreams we’d do well to be our own heroes, teachers, and advocates. When we believe in our vision, stand by our convictions with passion and grace, it becomes much easier for others to believe in it, too.
Once we decide to be our own heroes, others will be inspired to do the same. And when that happens, people not only meet their potential but exceed it. It’s that achievement that has the power to change the world. To experience real change, we all need to show up in the world as the very best version of ourselves, roll up our sleeves, and strengthen our communities from the ground up. With all the challenges we face, we need everyone at the top of their game and the only one who make that happen is you.
“To be fully alive, fully human, and completely awake is to be continually thrown out of the nest.” ~ Pema Chodron
Comfort feels so good that we never want to leave. The trouble is that if we never set out for higher ground, if we never throw ourselves out of our comfort zone and into unfamiliar territory, we don’t grow. We don’t learn just how strong we are. We only build resilience, determination, and grit by remaining focused in the face of discomfort. Life is a continual adaptation to change.
Sometimes, I wish this weren’t the case. I wish we didn’t need a burning platform to truly change our ways. I wish we could learn how to be calm in the face of discomfort without ever having to actually be uncomfortable.
It doesn’t work that way. Life is a full contact sport. We actually have to live it – all its ups and downs and the ride in-between – in order to understand what it’s all about.
For this reason, I don’t get frustrated or angry when the going gets tough. I may briefly feel sad or unhappy that something I wanted didn’t go my way. As a general rule, I give myself about 10 minutes to feel as terrible as I want to feel without passing any kind of judgement. I can sit in the dust of disappointment, shake my fists at the sky, and ask “why, why, why?” as loudly as possible. And then I need to pick myself up, shake off the dust, and get on with my day, grateful for the tough times upon me that help me to wake up and feel truly alive.
So often we hope that the clouds hanging above our heads will magically part but what I’ve found is that the clouds part through our own volition. We decide that it is time to clear them away. We climb up and with our own two hands, we brush them out-of-the-way to let the light in. We are happy, free, empowered, and awake by choice, not chance. We restore comfort in our lives by creating it in every circumstance of our living.
My baked brie and apples in pastry dough – made from scratch!
Baking is an act of pure belief and stubborn patience. We sift together dry ingredients, add wet ingredients, form a dough of some sort that (we hope) looks nothing like the final product, and send it off to the oven to be transformed into something edible. We are not certain of our success until some brave soul takes a forkful.
With cooking, we can taste as we go. We can sample and adjust. We see the process as it happens and can pivot if and when needed to save the meal. Before anyone attempts to taste it, we already know the quality because we’ve tasted it all along.
By contrast, a sampling of dough is a terrible idea for many reasons. One, it (God willing) won’t taste the same as when it’s baked. Two, raw ingredients like eggs aren’t safe. Three, it makes no difference if you taste it along the way or not because it cannot be adjusted. Still, we press on fully aware that there is no saving a bad baking job. If it’s bad, all we can do is chuck it, chalk it up to experience, and begin again. Or not.
For these reasons, I have long lived in awe and loathing of the act of baking. (Please see my post from about this time last year regarding a failed attempt at baking a pumpkin pie that I continue to lovingly refer to as “the oven incident”.) Or at least I did until a few weeks ago. I was shopping in my local Whole Foods and navigated my wheel-y basket to the sandwich bread. $4 / loaf. Sounds like an awful lot of money for a loaf of relatively boring bread.
“I could bake bread,” I thought to myself, “for a heck of a lot less than $4 / loaf.”
“You can’t bake,” said a tiny voice that popped out unexpectedly from behind a corner of my mind.
“Oh, shut up,” I replied (thankfully using my inside voice as I was still in Whole Foods surrounded by other people.) “I could bake if I really wanted to.”
For the next week every time I opened up my kitchen cabinet where I keep my dry goods, I saw a barely used bag of flour just staring at me. I bought it when I fancied myself a pumpkin pie baker. This did not go well. I tossed the dough, sealed up the bag of flour, hid it in the back of the cabinet, and decided that I do not bake.
Nothing will get me to grow a new skill set faster than my thriftiness. $4 for a loaf of plain, commercially baked bread just seems ridiculous. So I set about learning to bake. Or at least learning about learning how to bake.
The other day my sister, Weez, posted a Pinterest picture of a gorgeous loaf of fresh-baked bread in a powder blue Le Creuset Dutch oven. I gasped out loud (I was home so no inside voice necessary. Phineas is quite used to my constant audible stream of consciousness.) It was gorgeous. I clicked through and found a remarkably easy recipe for making homemade bread. It actually seemed foolproof, which is exactly what I need.
In the meantime, Thanksgiving arrived. I spent it with friends. My lovely friend, Crystal, was kind enough to have my dear friend, Amy, and me over to her home. Crystal’s a top-notch chef who owned a restaurant prior to business school. I was in charge of the cheese plate and decided I wanted to bring a few of my favorite types along with Brie and apples baked in pastry dough. I took myself to the grocery store and they were all out of pastry dough. I thought about possible alternatives like biscuit or pizza dough and decided against them.
“I could make pastry dough,” I thought to myself. “I actually already have all of the ingredients at home.”
Tiny Voice returned. “Pastry dough is tough to make! Tougher than pumpkin pie and you remember how that went!”
“Oh, shut up,” I replied. (Are you sensing a pattern here?)
I went home and googled “pastry dough recipe.” This one popped up on allrecipes.com. Seemed foolproof. (Another pattern.)
So I set about sifting together flour and salt, adding water, rolling out butter to refrigerate, and then incorporating the butter into the dough – over the course of 2 hours. Yes, 2 hours. You have to roll in the butter, turn, refrigerate, roll in the butter, turn, refrigerate, roll in the butter, turn, refrigerate. My first turn (that’s a technical term in the world of us pastry dough makers) was in a word, awful. The butter broke through the dough, got all over my rolling pin and the counter. The dough was sticking to everything. The recipe predicted this may happen and it instructed to add more flour. I was skeptical but followed along. I added more flour, and more flour again, until it turned into some kind of unruly balled mess.
“I told you this was hard,” said Tiny Voice in that lilting know-it-all tone that all Tiny Voices use.
Not easily deterred, I turned down the volume on Tiny Voice, wrapped up my messy dough ball, and refrigerated it again as the recipe instructed. “I could save this,” I kept thinking. This thought was followed closely by, “I wonder if using pizza dough as a substitute really was such a bad idea.”
The timer went off. I marched over to the fridge to retrieve the dough ball and put it through its paces of roll, turn, refrigerate. To my shock and delight, it was actually much improved. It improved even further on the third turn. I could even see what would become the flaky layers once baked! My fridge is a magician! Following directions and having patience actually works in the world of baking. Every accomplished baker in the world was right and I was wrong. Go figure!
Buoyed by my dough success, I went to my kitchen cabinet to see what other food staples I might consider making rather than buying. The dried pasta stared back at me with a similar gaze as that recently re-employed bag of flour. In business school, friends of mine and I made gnocchi by-hand. That also looked destined for failure until somehow the dough came together as if by magic pixie dust. I always assumed it was the divine intervention of my Italian ancestors, but maybe it was baking patience at play.
I toddled over to the computer and found this recipe for fresh pasta dough. Again, allrecipes.com to the rescue. Again, seemingly fool-proof. I’m beginning to like this pattern. And what’s become of Tiny Voice? Well, it’s been silenced for the time being. I intend to keep it that way by stuffing it with homemade goodness.
Folks, against all odds, I may actually learn to bake.
I know this is true: because I have no fear of rejection, I have been able to do a lot more with my life than I would have done otherwise.
I’ve been rejected so many times, I’ve lost count. And you know what? None of those rejections killed me. Some of them hurt, badly, but none of them kept me down.
Rejection, that nasty, endless tape of “You can’t…”, “You aren’t good enough to…”, “Who are you to…” is worthless. It runs its mouth and there is no pleasing it. You can’t compromise with it. You can’t reason with it. You can’t take something good from it. It is rotten to the core. All you can do is shut it down.
Here’s the best outcome: you will do something you really want to do, gain confidence, be happy, and then work on your next dream. Awesome.
Here’s another possible outcome: you will pitch yourself into something and it will not work. You will fall down, you’ll perhaps sustain some bumps and bruises, and then you’ll get up. Big deal. You’re strong. You’ll become more resilient with each fall and rise. You’ll live to fight another day.
Here’s the worst possible outcome: you will let the spokesperson for the fear of rejection keep you from trying to do something you really want to do. And you’ll never do it. That’s just sad.
“Our life is composed greatly from dreams from the unconscious, and they must be brought into connection with action. They must be woven together.” ~ Anais Nin
I believe in shouting dreams. If you really want to do something, need something, or have something to give, I’m a fan of telling everyone you know about it. I’ve found it is the single best way to accomplish goals. We’re all here to help one another along this wild, twisted path of life. And we can’t help each other if we don’t know our own dreams, and the dreams of those around us.
Take a moment to be still. Close your eyes. Let your mind grow soft and your jaw go slack. Take 10 deep, slow breaths. Let any and every thought rise up into your consciousness. You’re not evaluating these thoughts. You’re not passing judgement. You’re scanning them. You’re looking for dreams. You’re looking for wishes that you are literally making with your heart.
Let those dreams rest in your mind’s eye and let everything else fall away. Consider how you might let people know about them, even how others may become a part of them, and how you might act upon them. Once you tell others about your dreams, you’ll find that others will share their dreams with you. Once they see you actually working on your dreams, you’ll find that many of them will work alongside you to bring those dreams to life.
The Universe will do its part, too. Once it sees that you are taking a chance on yourself, it will take a chance on you, too. Commitment and hard work are an incredibly magical combination. All of a sudden the dream that was living way deep down inside you, so far down that you didn’t even know it existed, not only comes into your consciousness, but it manifests out in the world.
Accomplishments are just dreams that you act upon. Nothing more, and nothing less.
“Happiness is a skill. It requires effort and time.”~ Andrew Weil
There is no place on a map called Happy. It is a slippery state of being. It requires commitment and dedication. And not the kind of commitment that we make to go to a class for a semester or to eat more vegetables this month. It’s more on par with raising a child who never intends to be independent; it requires near-constant care and tending.
I used to have a friend who constantly complained that she could never catch a break. The irony for me was that she had so much privilege, and as far as I know always had, and she just couldn’t see it, nor appreciate it. She stared at the closed doors for so long that she never turned around to see all of the opportunity waiting for her. And no amount of encouragement could ever help her get out of her own way.
Happiness doesn’t just decide where to land by blind chance. It is drawn to those who pursue it, who want to bring it into their lives in a profound way. It favors the hard-working and the ones who accept that happiness is a personal choice we make in every moment. Happiness takes up residence with those who are willing to prepare a home for it.
We study others to learn the secrets of their success – how they rose to the top of their fields, created a product or service we love, or created an admirable impact in the world. While we have much to learn from others, when it comes to crafting and breathing life into our own dreams we’d do well to be our own heroes, teachers, and advocates. When we believe in our vision, stand by our convictions with passion and grace, it becomes much easier for others to believe in it, too.
Christa Avampato 