Category: creativity

choices, creativity, love, work

Beautiful: Get Back to What You Love

Christa Avampato
Maybe the best piece of career advice you could get…

“Forgetting about what you love to do can be a form of self-sabotage – get back to what you love.” ~ Madisyn Taylor for DailyOm

In yoga, the principle of ahimsa (do no harm) is a cornerstone of the practice on and off the mat. Many forms of harm are obvious. Some forms of harm are much more subtle, and I’ve found that those forms are the ones we really need to consciously keep in check. Moving away from what we love is one of those.

I completely understand that we may need to take a job that we don’t love because we need to pay the rent and put food on the table. I’ve been there. Some days, I’m still there. In the past year, I have made a very clear and conscious effort to bring more work I love into my life, work I love so much that it feels strange to even call it work. Now I write, teach, and do more to support good works through my consulting practice than I did a year ago.

This shift of getting back to what I love by starting my own business has improved my mental and physical health in ways I never imagined. I was so bogged down when I was solely working for a check on projects that I didn’t care about. It was scary to leap off that cliff but I knew I needed to do it for my own well-being.

Magical things happened once I committed to a path paved with more of the things I love. Doors opened and they let the light in. It didn’t happen overnight and didn’t happen in any ways I expected, but that doesn’t matter. It all worked out much better than I had planned.

The root of this good fortune lies in a conscious and unrelenting choice to be in love with my life. It took me a long time to learn that truth, a long time to trust it. Do yourself a favor – don’t let another day go by without getting back to what you love.

creativity, happiness, work, yoga, youth

Beautiful: Interesting Work is the Fountain of Youth

Christa Avampato

“Find something you‘re passionate about and keep tremendously interested in it.“ ~ Julia Child

There is no better feeling than being fully engaged. Energy zings right through your veins. Your heart, mind, and spirit are perfectly aligned in your pursuit. It keeps us young, active, and curious.

That’s exactly how I felt as I started working on designs for a personal and home fashion line that will benefit Compass Yoga. The first campaign will begin at the end of June. As I was working on the designs this weekend, I felt all of my skills snyc together in pursuit of this larger goal to build a self-sustaining organization that gets more yoga to more people in more places.

I’m with you, Julia. This is all it takes to generate a joyful life – do work you love that holds your interest and then find a way to do this work as often as possible.

books, business, creativity, work

Book Review – Lean Analytics: Use Data to Build a Better Startup Faster

Christa Avampato

What gets measured gets done. I think about this idea every day as I run my business. Authors Alistair Kroll and Ben Yoskovitz wrote Lean Analytics to help entrepreneurs and intrapreneurs from companies and organizations of all shapes, sizes, and persuasions to answer the following questions:

1.) What data is important to my work?
2.) Why is it important?
3.) How do I measure it?
4.) What do I do with the results?

In addition to this straight-shooting advice, it’s also chock-full of case studies and interviews, as well as thought-provoking graphics that will have us digging deep into the questions of life, happiness, and the meaning of worthwhile work. It provides readers with a set of exercises to help you ask the right questions of yourself and your team and get to the answers as quickly as possible. My favorite exercise is a one page business plan template that takes 20 minutes. It’s turnkey resources like this that make this book priceless for everyone who desires to build anything of value. It’s useful on a holistic basis, and also for individual projects and teams.

Throughout the book, you’ll find key takeaways clearly highlighted and embedded within the relevant text. Lean Analytics packs a powerful punch of information. These key takeaways keep readers focused and on-track so that the information is highly relevant and immediately useful rather than overwhelming.

Another key feature that so few books have is a section that helps readers figure out the stage of their business or project. Then it goes further by giving us litmus tests to make sure we’ve assessed the situation fairly, are working on the right problems, and measuring our progress accurately. If your business builds a product or service, this book is priceless – it takes you through the discovery, development, build, and testing processes in an approachable, step-by-step manner.

Owning a copy of Lean Analytics is like having a management consultant / cheerleader / truth sayer right by your side every step of the way. Get it and use it well.

change, community service, creativity, time

Beautiful: Progress is a Daily Process. Take Your Time.

Christa Avampato

“Ours is not the task of fixing the entire world at once, but of stretching out to mend the part of the world that is within our reach.” ~ Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes

We want to make an impact in every moment. Everywhere. For everyone. We are a society of immediacy, a nation of broadcasters. We’re about scale, leverage, and reach. Bigger, faster, cheaper, now.

What I’ve found is that there is a lot of beauty and meaning in the small. Compass Yoga, my nonprofit, began with one small class for a handful of people in my sliver of a neighborhood over two years ago. Now we serve over 200 people per week in a dozen classes. We are a slow growth organization and that’s just fine by me because what we are building is deliberate and sustainable over time. We have phenomenal teachers, passionate students, and dedicated partners. I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Do what you can do right now, right where you are. The future will find us. It always does. The opportunities will present themselves as long as we put real heart into our work. Help will arrive when we need it as long as we remain authentic and true to who we are.

Every journey of change is built one tiny purposeful step at a time.

beauty, creativity, grateful, learning, teaching

Beautiful: The Road to Wholeness

Christa Avampato

“Nothing in life is trivial. Life is whole wherever and whenever we touch it, and one moment or event is not less sacred than another. it. You’ve got to really look after it and nurture it.” ~ Vimala Thakar

It all matters. The simple and the complex. The difficult and the easy. The joyful and the heartbreaking. Each moment comes to our door to teach us something – about ourselves, about others, and about the world and our place in it.

I’ve been wrestling with this idea a bit this week, trying to make sense of why things go haywire, why they fall apart, and what we do with the pieces that remain. As best I can tell, we pick them up one at a time and help others do the same. They don’t fit together neatly as they did before. But what they create is stronger, more unique, and reflects what we learned in the process of putting it all back together.

Difficult circumstances are hard to live. They’re hard to examine. They’re hard to release. But the process of getting through them, reflecting on what they taught us, and figuring out a way to move forward is an act of sacred healing in and of itself. We can be whole again.

creativity, education, science

Today I am at the White House Science Fair

Christa Avampato

20130421-230213.jpgToday it is my extreme pleasure and honor to attend the White House Science Fair. I currently consult at the Joan Ganz Cooney Center at the Sesame Workshop. At the Cooney Center, I manage a program called the National STEM Video Game Challenge. Students in grades 5-12 submit video games that utilize STEM skills. Several of our winners from last year’s Challenge have been invited to exhibit and attend. I am thrilled beyond words by their accomplishments!

There are a few ways to follow the event from anywhere in the world:

Watch the live feed: http://www.whitehouse.gov/blog/2013/04/20/watch-live-2013-white-house-science-fair

Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/STEMChallenge and the hashtag #WHSciencefair

Follow us on Facebook: http://Facebook.com/STEMChallenge

I hope you’ll join in the fun and celebrate the ingenuity and creativity of these students. They are our greatest hope for a brighter future!

creativity, inspiration, play, politics, theatre, women

Beautiful: Ann Richards Has Her Day on Broadway Thanks to Holland Taylor

Christa Avampato

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Buenas noches, mis amigos! I am delighted to be here with you this evening because after listening to George Bush all these years, I figured you needed to know what a real Texas accent sounds like. Twelve years ago, Barbara Jordan, another Texas woman, made the keynote address to this convention – and two women in 160 years is about par for the course. But, if you give us a chance, we can perform. After all, Ginger Rogers did everything that Fred Astaire did. She just did it backwards and in high heels.” ~ Ann Richards, then-Governor of Texas, at the 1988 Democratic National Convention

The play Ann, now at Lincoln Center through September 1st, opens with this quote delivered via archival video footage of the late great Ann Richards. And though this about sums up her vibrant, spit-fire, take-no-prisoners, gutsy, straight-shooting, truth-in-comedy personality, it is nothing short of an absolute delight to see the brilliant Holland Taylor portray her on stage for two hours in one of the finest one-person shows I’ve ever seen. I was enthralled from beginning to end. Taylor also conceived of the idea and wrote the play, which I find even more remarkable than her stunning performance.

Within two hours, I learned so much about her life and legacy. I laughed. And laughed and laughed. A lot. And then I cried a little when I realized how wonderful she was, how rare she was, in politics and in the public eye in general, and how I will never get the chance to meet her in person. This play made me believe that I did know her, and that’s how everyone felt about Ann. She was exactly who she was, all the time, in front of everyone. From humble house wife to Governor of Texas, she was someone to be reckoned with and yet everyone had to find her charming, regardless of whether or not they disagreed with her. I wanted to have her over for dinner and I definitely wanted her in my corner.

She was a stronger advocate for women, all women everywhere, than anyone else in the public sphere has ever been. And though I’ll never have the chance to know her, I did take away one great comfort. Madeleine Albright once said that there is a special place in hell for women who don’t help other women. I believe that the converse must also be true. There is a special place in heaven for women who do help other women. Therefore, I’m certain that Ann Richards is looking down on all of us, cheering us on, bolstering us up, and encouraging us to fly higher than even our own dreams dare imagine. Even death can’t stop that kind of indomitable spirit. And for that I am both grateful and inspired.

Go see Ann. Two hours in her company, and Taylor’s, and you’ll walk out of the theatre and into the world a little taller, a little prouder, and a whole lot more determined to do something extraordinary. (If you’d like to read Ann’s convention speech in its entirety, click here.)

childhood, creativity, education, New York City, play

Beautiful: The Virtues of a Life Lived in the Mud

Christa Avampato

I grew up in the dirt, literally. There was (and still is) a tractor crossing sign across the street from the house where I grew up. My rural hometown fostered a childhood that involved climbing trees and making mud pies. When I was little, I was convinced that there was a dinosaur skeleton hiding under the ground in my backyard. I enlisted my sister, Weez, to help me dig and dig and dig. All we found was a small mouse skeleton, but I thought it was clearly a prehistoric mouse! Other kids wanted to be doctors, firefighters, or teachers. I wanted to be a paleontologist. I still do.

My childhood was far from idyllic, but there were some very positive things about growing up in the sticks. I got my hands dirty in the process of making things. I ate organic food because that’s really all there was, not because it was trendy. Animals were my friends and companions, as much as people. Maybe even more than people. I learned to appreciate the Earth, her majesty and her power. Weather was a way of life, and I still watch it with fascination and wonder.

An article in the New York Times last weekend talked about a movement in this fine and fair city I now call home to bring more nature into the lives of city kids not by taking them out of the city, but by bringing nature to them. Brooklyn Forest, a husband and wife startup, “takes toddlers into Prospect Park to promote learning through creative play like building teepees out of branches.” 7 students were in their first class. Now there are over 200. More people are eager to get into mud these days; I was a pioneer.

There’s something to be said for the slow life, the life we build rather than the life we buy shrink-wrapped and delivered right to our doorstep. Creation builds confidence and bolsters the imagination. It makes us self-sufficient. I’m all for it, for our children and for us. There’s a lot of beauty down there in the mud.

career, creative, creativity, imagination, innovation, job, work

Beautiful: Forget Job Searching. Instead, Create the Job of Your Dreams.

Christa Avampato

eb20a4bca686ede0d04a1cc9628f3e6bImagine if college wasn’t about preparing you for the job search. Instead, imagine that it was a 4-year haven for you to grow the skills that most interest you and for you to craft your own business that utilizes those skills. Over 3 million people graduate from 4-year colleges every year in the U.S. That’s potentially 3 million startups created every single year.

Imagine what that would mean for our economy, for our communities, and for education. Tom Friedman did just that in his New York Times column last week. Soon, we won’t have to imagine. This is the reality for our children today, and for their children, and so on. They will be job creators, not job seekers. Our society and our economy are changing rapidly. The paradigm of work and income is shifting, and there will be no turning back. This is a transformation in the economy that is moving full-steam ahead.

Rather than asking our kids what they want to be when they grow up, we need to help them figure out what they intend to build. And then we need to set that example for them in our own careers.

beauty, creativity, imagination, inspiration, Life, nature, Spring

Beautiful: The Beauty of Spring

Christa Avampato

I love this photo. It makes me want to crawl inside this scene and take Phin for a long, winding walk under a canopy of pink petals. Beauty matters. It wakes up our senses. It increases our awareness. It inspires our imagination.

Spring is slowly making its way toward us, bringing with it warmth, color, and new beginnings. Life is about to manifest in a big way in the world around us. And so it goes within us, too. After a long, cold, dark winter, we’re ready to shrug off that blanket in search of the new, untested, and yes, beautiful. Spring is a time of action, movement, and growth. It’s a time to start again, unencumbered by the past.

Wherever your winding road takes you this Spring, I hope it’s a place where you can explore and experiment, a place that is as magnificent as you.