Category: family

creativity, family, friendship, innovation

My Year of Hopefulness – Eye on the Prize

Christa Avampato

Over the weekend I was working on a new product idea – testing it out by telling friends, making a simple prototype in my apartment, and pulling together a business case for why this product fills an unmet market need. And in all my excitement and positive feedback, I got scared. Very scared. That little tiny voice of doubt was pumping up the volume.

We have to let this little voice in just enough to inform and strengthen our ideas, though not so much that it dampens our enthusiasm and creativity. This is a fine line and I don’t always do a great job of navigating it. I can get stressed by my doubt and nerves. And then I take a step back. I remember why a specific idea was so exciting to me to begin with. I’m also very lucky to have great friends and family members who always encourage me.

In these times, it is easy to let doubt get the better of us, to distract us and steal our energy. We have to keep our eyes focused firmly on the horizon ahead of us while being mindful of the experience we’ve lived through. This is no time for losing heart, and no time to let doubt undermine our potential.

celebration, choices, family, friendship, relationships, Seth Godin, travel

My Year of Hopefulness – Boundaries

Christa Avampato

Seth Godin wrote a great post this morning about boundaries. It reminded me of the boxes that one of my leadership professors at Darden, Alec Horniman, talked about: the boxes we put other people into, the boxes we put ourselves into, and the boxes we allow others to put us into. We do this with our careers, relationships, friendships, hobbies, interests. We take on roles and keep them, and it’s tough to break the behavior patterns we develop in those roles. And we have a real knack for giving people roles in our lives, whether or not those are the roles they want.

To make sense of our lives and keep us from going crazy, boundaries might be necessary. The key is to make them flexible and adaptable. Seth puts it in perspective of a brand, and explains that the brand can be our own personal one or that of a company. He stresses that brand loyalists are much more forgiving than the holders of a brand give them credit for. We have to give ourselves permission to try new things that truly interest us. If we are authentic and sincere in our pursuit of something new, the people who loves us will help us get there.

I’ve never been one for being put into a category. I’ve always felt free to explore different careers and interests, and have made a concerted effort to bring a diverse group of people into my life. From the outside it might seem that I just can’t make up my mind about where to focus my time and effort. A recruiter once said to me, “seems like you’ve spent your whole life exploring.” This sounded like a positive thing to me — apparently he didn’t mean it to be positive!

In actuality I have made a very specific decision to follow my interests wherever they may lead. I’m not exploring because I’m lost; I’m exploring because I’m interested in making the most of my life. I want to be someone with a broad perspective, someone who loves traveling, and new experiences, and meeting new people. I want to make sure that when my time comes, I’ve lived as much life as I possibly could.

My close friends, family, and supporters have been very accepting of this choice. They’ve celebrated my patchwork life with me. With every new experience, they are there, cheering me on and sometimes my life has even inspired them to do something different that they previously didn’t think they do. It’s a personal passion to extend my boundaries and grow my comfort zone, and I’d like to help others do the same.

business, career, family, finance, friendship, nonprofit, Seth Godin

My Year of Hopefulness – A Matter of Compromise

Christa Avampato

Seth Godin wrote a great post this morning about compromise. In his usual style he started with the caveat, “If you sell crack to kindergarten students, no need to read this. Same thing if you donate all your belongings and income to the poorest and sickest in the slums and ghettos. The rest of us have compromised. We’re not profit-maximizing sociopaths, nor are we saints. We’re somewhere in between.”

The trouble is that the great majority of us are somewhere in between, though we haven’t thought much about where exactly our in between is, how we got there, and whether or not our in between is the right in between for us. To assess where we are and how we got there, we need to consider what our priorities are. That step will best inform our trade-off decisions, and those trade-off decisions set the stage for our optimal place in between.

My priorities:
1.) Time and energy for my friends and family
2.) Enough free time to write and have hobbies
3.) Financial independence that allows me to contribute to my savings, pay off my school loans, start a small side business, and live a good quality life in New York City

These priorities lead me to the following trade-offs:
1.) There are certain companies and careers that are all-consuming. Those are not the best places for me at this time in my life. I have to work at a place that appreciates balance.
2.) Because I have chosen to live in an expensive city and have a considerable amount of school loans, I have a certain minimum salary that I need to make. This salary requirements excludes certain careers and requires that I work full-time while I get my small side business started.

Where is my in between?
1.) When I first went to business school, I had the idea that I would immediately return to the nonprofit sector after graduation. As my school loans piled up and it became clear that I wanted to move to New York City for personal reasons, a return to the nonprofit sector grew very unlikely.
2.) Because I want to be part of a mission-based organization, I’ve found other ways to have a positive impact on my community: I volunteer regularly, went through a United Way training for future nonprofit board members, and donate to nonprofit organizations.

For my in between, I have certainly made trade-offs. While it might be my preference to work for a nonprofit full-time, there are a lot of benefits I’ve received in the for-profit sector that would not be possible at my level within a nonprofit. I have good balance between my personal and professional time. I have a generous vacation allowance, am getting good professional training, and great benefits. I’m also well-compensated which allows me to enjoy my life and help my family, two things that are very important to me.

One thing I didn’t count on while in graduate school is that many people are interested in doing well by doing good. The field of social entrepreneurship that combines the best of both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors has grown by leaps and bounds. So many people have made the trade-offs I’ve made, and a whole industry is springing up as a direct result of our common in between.

Considering these trade-offs that I’ve made brought a happy, unexpected consequence: it made me appreciate the choices I’ve made and it made me feel more empowered. In a time when we feel like so many facets of our lives are out of our control, this exercise can bring a sense of calm and purpose. The best part is that it can be done with a holistic approach to our lives, or we can focus on one specific area like career or relationships.

If we find that we aren’t happy with the result, it gives us a basis for an action plan to begin making some changes. While Seth Godin may have meant this exercise to be about compromise, it is also about happiness and accomplishment.

children, creativity, entrepreneurship, family, innovation

My Year of Hopefulness – Better is good enough

Christa Avampato

My friend, Lon, sent me an email today that made me consider the value and under-appreciation of incremental improvement.

“The future of America is not in the hands of GM, the government, or the military. It is in the hands of our innovative entrepreneurs. Most of them do “it” just a little bit different than what is out there now. They are not the Apple’s of the world. They are those that look for incremental improvement. Those incremental improvements have built America and will save it now from itself. I’m thinking … for the first time in my life, I am developing the resolve to make it happen.”

Consider how often people seek to be the next big thing rather than the next better thing. We give up on good in our quest for perfect, personally and professionally. We look for people to save us, to make things easier for us, to be our inspiration. It is time for all of us to realize that our greatest hope for improvements lie in slow, steady change for the better and the best source of that change stares at us every morning in the mirror.

Think about how much we could do if we recognized and nurtured the belief that we were empowered to improve every part of our lives, even if that improvement is small. Children don’t know the phrase “that’s just the way it is.” This dreaded idea is something that is drilled into us by other adults. Instead, children look at suboptimal situations and say, “why don’t we do this instead?”. They are natural-born innovators and change-makers. They always seek constant improvement.

Children are not perfectionists. That perfectionist streak is something we learn as adults. Children seek to make things better, whether by a little or a lot. They play and explore and iterate. They’re flexible and adaptable. They believe in the concepts of better and original and good effort. They’re kind to themselves and to others. Their first thoughts upon encountering a difficult situation are “why?” and then “why not?”

Lon is getting back to these beliefs, and we all need to follow his lead. Thinking like children may be the very thing that saves us from ourselves.

family, health, healthcare

My Year of Hopefulness – Total Knee Replacement

Christa Avampato

Today my mom got a new knee. She’s been struggling with intense pain for about a year. She finally couldn’t stand it anymore, we found a great surgeon, and she signed up for a total knee replacement. My step-father, brother, sister-in-law, and I were there to see her off to surgery. I turned back after we said our good-byes and watched as the very capable nursing staff wheeled her down the hall. There was something frightening about seeing my mom head through those double doors. I wanted to watch the surgery, like I’ve seen so many times on Grey’s Anatomy, but there was no gallery. So I was out in the waiting room with my family, just waiting.

There’s something disconcerting about watching our parents get older, something so hard about watching how we begin to take care of them and worry about them the way that they cared for and worried about us for so long. I couldn’t sleep much last night. I know that total knee replacement is a standard surgery. Over 400,000 Americans have them every year. But this one of the 400,000 was my mom and I only have 1 of her. And I was worried.

As it turns out the surgeon, Dr. Thompson, and the exceptional staff at Saint Francis Hospital took amazing care of her and she came through the surgery just fine. Better than fine. She woke up from the anesthesia smiling and asked the surgeon, “so how did it go?” That’s my mom – optimistic almost to the point of delusion. And in this instance, that optimism was the very best thing she could have.

I hung around with my mom until she got her dinner and I was sure she was settled. We were watching the evening news in her hospital room as Katie Couric described the details of GM’s bankruptcy filing. The government, meaning the tax payers, now own 70% of GM. Mom turned to me, smiling from ear to ear. “Christa, how great a day is this?! I got a new knee and I own General Motors.”

I laughed out loud. “That’s right, Mom. Today was a good day.”

family, friendship, happiness, learning, New York City, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Small moments

Christa Avampato
Lately, I’ve been trying a trick on the subway to make my commute to and from work more enjoyable. Trains are packed during rush hour and invariably I end up next to someone with some annoying habit. This morning, it was this woman who was obsessively turning the pages of the newspaper and folding it over, covering the pages of the book I was reading. I normally would have gotten very irritated with this woman. Instead, I looked at this as an opportunity for character study.

I stopped reading my book and just studied this woman. What was she wearing? How is her hair done? What part of that paper is she actually reading? Then when I got to work, I wrote down everything I could remember about her, along with some ideas for a backstory of who that woman is, what she does, and where she’s going. Eventually, she’ll turn up in some piece of writing I do. This trick is honing my observation skills, and reminds me of how much I love being a writer – every moment and inertaction, good, bad, or indifferent, has potential to be material.

I’m learning that life isn’t about the big moments, it’s about the many small ones that comprise every one of our days. My life is about my subway ride to work, my lunch time walks with my friend, Jamie. It’s about seeing my friends for dinners and movies. It’s about being on skype with my niece, Lorelei, and having her recognize my face. It’s about the books and blogs I read, the person I give directions to as they pass by me on the street. It’s about buying my groceries, and calling my mom, and getting a coffee as I walk around my neighborhood. It’s about laughing with my sister, Weez, and enjoying the warmth of sun on my face on a Sunday afternoon.

And this ‘little moment philosphophy’ is true of writing as much as it is true of life. I’ve often longed for a time when I am writing as if some great voice from beyond is speaking to me, and every word I write shows up on the page as if it were meant to be there. The truth is writing, for me, is a daily grind. I sit down and look at a very blank page every day. I sometimes sit down and have no idea what to write about or how to phrase my thoughts coherently. What matters is that I show up and keep trying. Every day, my only goal in my writing and in my life is to get just a little bit better than I was yesterday. Somedays I do a brilliant job of this and other days I fall short. On average I’m making small amounts of progress.

I’m learning that small, steady progress is much better that huge leaps forward and backwards. There’s a lot to be learned and explored during small moments. They’re my favorite parts of relationships and friendships; they’re always the things in my life that I treasure most.

Sometimes people ask me “what’s your greatest accomplishment” or “what’s your greatest failure”. I don’t have any greatest anythings. I have a lot of small things I love and cherish, I’ve had a lifetime of moments that taught me something, and when you add up all of those small things, their collective power is extraordinary. And I wouldn’t trade those thousands of small moments for a handful of aha’s, no matter how great those aha’s are. Small moments, and lots of them, suit me just fine.

choices, decision-making, environment, family, future, garden, nature, time

My Year of Hopefulness – Stay on Path

Christa Avampato

At the Brooklyn Botanic Garden yesterday, Mom and I kept seeing these small wooden signs that said simply “Please Stay on Path”. As we talked about my life and career, we considered what my path might be and how I can shape it to encompass all of my interests and passions. We thought about all the different ways that we get distracted, what causes us to lose focus, and how we can regain our bearings.

Staying on path at the garden is much easier than it is in life. It’s easy to lose direction, to veer off our course, some times without even realizing exactly how it happened. Some opportunity seemed like something we wanted to follow or we had an experience that made us consider a different way forward. Sometimes these side trips are life changing for the better and sometimes our interest in these new pursuit fades as quickly as it appeared.

And then there’s the question of flexibility. We get new information all of the time and we want to make sure that we have enough flexibility to incorporate the relevant info into our plans. Think of it like our bones. We want our bodies to be flexible, though the strength of our bone structure makes all of our activities possible. Without the rigidity of our bones, we’d never go anywhere! A life road map provides the same kind support.

I’ve found very often that I make much better life choices when I am running toward something and not away from something. It’s the difference between looking forward and looking back, and making choices depending upon which of these actions has more say in our decisions. I like a good balance of both. I want to be informed by my past and not ruled by it. I want to be hopeful and excited about my future without sacrificing the wonderful things about the present.

There’s nothing that says a path has to be a straight shot. Mom and I wound through the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, explored the different routes, and trusted in a healthy dose of meandering. Our map helped to make sure that we didn’t miss things we really wanted to see and that we headed only down roads that interested us. We had our priorities of what we wanted to see, things that would be fun if we had time, and things that we’d prefer to skip. And we took time to smell the flowers along the way. We enjoyed being surprised by things around the bend. We let our senses guide us on some adventures to things we had missed on the map. It’s a beautiful metaphor for how to live life.

family, garden, health, holiday, mother, nature, New York City

My Year of Hopefulness – Mother’s Day

Christa Avampato

I took Mom to brunch and to the Brooklyn Botanic Gardens today for Mothers’ Day. It’s easy for her to hop on a train, I pick her up at Grand Central, and away we go. Though I love my family get-togethers it’s also fun to have my mom all to myself once in a while – something we had precious little of when I was younger.

All day I considered how Mom has shaped my life, how much I’ve learned from her, and how much comfort she’s given me over the years. We drive each other crazy from time to time also, though I think that’s more just the nature of mother-daughter relationships. I wouldn’t swap lives with my mom – she had a tough go of it for many, many years. She came of age in a time when women were starting to be treated with equality, though she endured many unfair circumstances that had nothing to do with her ability and everything to do with her gender. I know she lives vicariously through my accomplishments and I try to live up to that honor every day.

After dropping Mom at Grand Central so she could catch her train home, I hopped onto Facebook to see a note from my friend, Heidi, that she was spending the day celebrating the great lady who now watches over her from above. I reflected back on my day with Mom, thinking about how excited she was to smell the full scent of wisteria and see the azaleas in bloom at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. I’m so grateful for this time we have together – it’s one of the biggest reasons I came back to NYC. After my Mom’s cancer in 2006, I realized with a sad and painful awareness that she wouldn’t be with me forever, that someday I’d have to celebrate Mother’s Day the same way my friend, Heidi, did today.

For now though, Mom’s alive and kicking (or at least she will be kicking once she gets her new knee on June 1st) and time is of the essence. As we went up the escalator from the subway, my mom gave me a hug and thanked me so much for the day.

“You spent a lot of money, today, Christa.”

“That’s fine, Mom. I’m happy to be able to do it. It’s only money.”

And I meant it – it is only money, and I can always make more of it. I won’t always be able to get more time with Mom so we need to savor it while we can. Happy Mother’s Day to all!

change, death, family, friendship, legacy, time

My Year of Hopefulness – Our after-effect

Christa Avampato

Whenever I think about Penn, I imagine it to look like it did when I was there as a student. And every time I go back, I am always surprised to see how much it has changed. The place I imagine in my mind isn’t in the world anymore. Change happened without me.

My friend, Jamie, and I took a stroll along Battery Park at lunch time this week and a woman stopped us. She looked a little lost. “When does this park end?” she asked us. “I haven’t been in this neighborhood for 20 years and it looks completely different. This park wasn’t even here then!”

When we leave a place, we have a tendency to fix it in our minds. Even though we change and grow, we expect places we’ve been and people we’ve known to stay the same. It’s too much for us to imagine that life goes on without us.

Today I went to the funeral services for my Aunt Lorraine. She was a lovely lady that never forgot a birthday, an anniversary, or any other important occasion that involved her family members and friends. She lived a happy, long life, and I’m so glad that we had the opportunity to have her with us for so long.

On my drive home from the funeral, I kept looking at the clock, registering in my mind that all these minutes were unraveling, that I was traveling mile after mile, and my Aunt Rain wasn’t here with us anymore. Time went on, and we’ll all go on to make new memories even though she won’t be with us. And she’s going on without us, too.

I shed tears over the injustice of it all, of having to let go of people we love as a natural course of life. Change and time cannot be stopped. One day will fold into the next, whether or not we’re around. What changes because of our existence and the interaction we have in specific places with specific people is the how. How will one day become the next for me because I had my Aunt Lorraine as a role model? How does she live on in all of us even if she can’t be with us? And how do we want the world to go once our time has come and gone? This is really the only work that needs our attention.

The above images is from http://clock-desktop.com/screens/shiny_clock/palms-clock.jpg

family, feelings, friendship, happiness, mood, personality, technology

My Year of Hopefulness – Get Out of a Rut

Christa Avampato

As I trudged to the subway this morning under the gray, dense skies, I considered my mood over the last week. I’ve been a little down lately. Could be the rainy weather, losing my aunt recently, worry about my mom’s total knee replacement, the state of the economy and our nation’s safety. It’s likely a mixture of all of this. And I’m wondering what I’m really doing with my life every day – am I making a difference, or at least as big a difference as I could make?

Some of my friends and family members have recently expressed the same concern about their own lives. On my subway ride to work, I thought of ideas that might help me and help others out of this little rut. Here are some I came up with. Would love to hear what’s worked for you when you need a little pick-me-up!

1.) Ice cream. There’s something really special to me about getting an ice cream cone and strolling around my neighborhood. It reminds me of being a kid and being a kid inspires me to be a little more wistful and hopeful.

2.) Send someone a present. My friend, Brooke, recently moved from New York City and I’ve had her going away present / new house warming present sitting on my table for about a month. I put it into a padded envelope and sent it off to her today. It helped my mood considerably to be sending her a surprise. Same goes for sending someone a card or doing something nice for someone.

3.) Yoga and running. Both get me moving and remind me of how lucky I am to be in good health. While exercising, I think about building strong bones and muscles, increasing my lung capacity, and solutions to tough situations I’m having at the moment.

4.) Clean my apartment. For me, cleaning is therapy. I don’t like doing it but I love the end result. And my world looks a little brighter from the vantage point of a sparkling apartment.

5.) Communicate with others. Call a friend, send an email, get brunch with someone, click around on Twitter and see what people are talking about today. Breaking out of our self-imposed isolation is a mood lifter in and of itself.

6.) Find someplace to get lost. For me those places are Central Park, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the American Museum of Natural History. Placing myself in the middle overwhelming beauty gives me a new perspective and make me feel connected to something much bigger than myself.

7.) Dive into a book. I’m always amazed at the way literature connects us to people across the world and across time. This reminder of common human experiences makes me feel less alone.

8.) Write. Yesterday I sat down to write a short story about a situation I witnessed on the street a few days ago. I put myself back in that exact situation, saw it all unfolding in my mind, and wrote it all out. When looking back at the story and reading work I was doing a few years ago, I realized how much progress I’ve made in my story telling by practicing every day. It was really gratifying to see myself improving a skill that I enjoy.

9.) Think about my ideal day and consider how I could live at least a little piece of that ideal day every day. Maybe it’s volunteering, thinking about what business I’d like to start, whipping up a really delicious meal with friends, or spending time with someone I love. Even on the worst days we have the ability to incorporate glimmers of happiness.

10.) Spend some time with an animal. Could be your own pup or kitten, a friend’s pet, or taking puppies at the local shelter on a walk. Animals have a natural inclination toward happiness and they take us right along with them.

There are countless ways to get ourselves into a healthier and happier frame of mind. All we need is intention, attention, and commitment to living a better day every day.