Category: fear

courage, failure, fear, future, strengths

Leap: Rise Up

Christa Avampato

Oriah Mountain Dreamer is one of my favorite poets. I used to keep a poem of hers by my desk that asks the poignant question, “Do you like the company you keep in the empty moments?” She insightfully kind, a rare combination.

We have an incredible ability to endure, to persevere, to heal, and then to learn from that healing. No matter how the world bears down on us, no matter what obstacles encumber our path, we have everything we need at our core to rise to the occasion.

We are so much braver and so much stronger than we have ever give ourselves credit for being. And that strength and bravery is available to us at every moment. All we have to do is believe that it is there and it will appear.

change, fear, time

Leap: The 3 Year Anniversary of My Apartment Building Fire

Christa Avampato
My friend Blair sent this to me and said “thought of you………. you ARE fire!” How right she is.

3 years ago today, I scrambled down 3 flights of stairs through blinding black smoke after a fire in my apartment building burned through 3 floors and was on its way into my kitchen. I was one person when I ran from the wreckage and another person when I emerged on the street. In an instant, my life and perspective was forever changed. I didn’t know that at the time but with the gift of 3 years of hindsight, I see how critical that fire was on my path.

It was the turning point. It was a new birthday. It gave me the courage to eventually make the Leap into a life of my own design.

When I quit my corporate job 2 months ago to craft my own career through Chasing Down the Muse, I really quit being afraid. In that instant, I became the person that fire made me become. Heat is a tool of transformation, and in a very visceral way, that fire was a spiritual kiln for my soul. It left an indelible mark on me and I am grateful for it.

In the past 2 months, many people have asked me how they could do the same thing. Here’s my 1 simple piece of advice to everyone who wants to take a Leap of any kind: dig down, way down deep to your core, and ask yourself what happens if everything falls away tomorrow. Is where you are where you hoped to be once this game was all over. If tomorrow the book of your life has the two words “The End”, has it been a ride you’re happy with?

I faced this very grim possibility 3 years ago and my answer was a resounding “No”. I knew something had to change; I knew a lot of somethings had to change and that it would take time. I had to get going. I needed to create a new direction.

I thought I was scrambling down 3 flights of stairs but what I was really doing was crawling through the window of possibility toward my very best self. In that moment, my Leap was set in motion. To quote Sondheim, “that’s where I began being what I can.”

commitment, courage, determination, fear, meditation

Leap: Meditation Teaches Us About Fear and Perseverance

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“It’s okay to have emotions. Just make sure they don’t have you.” ~ Sarah Platt-Finger, ISHTA Yoga Senior Teacher

So, it happened. Over the past month since I gave notice at my corporate job and took the leap into working for myself, I have been amazed by how little fear has risen to the surface. Actually, it hasn’t risen up at all. Yesterday while in my meditation in my training class, it surprised me as it rose up and expressed itself with a sound akin to “Ah!”And then it passed away just as quickly, and as surprisingly, as it rose up.

The moment and its lessons were not lost on me. In that one second, I learned a lot about fear and perseverance:

1.) Fear is like an air bubble. It wants to be recognized and have a chance to express itself. The more we resist it and deny it, the larger that bubble becomes. If we can get ourselves into a neutral state (I recommend meditation to help with this), then the bubble can rise up to the surface and dissipate. Let fear come, but then let it go.

2.) Fear is like quicksand. If we begin to flail around in quicksand, it will swallow us whole. Remain still and we float to shore. The same is true for fear. When it comes upon us, we may feel the need “to do.” And by that I mean we may feel the need to do anything because we feel that doing anything is much better than doing nothing. It’s hard to be afraid and stay still, but that’s exactly what is needed if we want to find our way to the other side of fear, which is freedom.

3.) We have all the tools we need to banish fear. This is the most amazing insight that came from my panic moment. My meditation allowed the fear to surface and ask me, “Hey, are you sure you know what you’re doing?” In the stillness that the meditation induced in my mind and body, the answer clearly and quickly rose up – “Yes.” And in an instant the fear faded. It got the answer it needed.

This is the brilliance of meditation: it lets us face our fears but also gives us the tools to effectively and efficiently release them. We let go of fear (and every other thing that no longer serves us) because we ourselves let go. For a few moments every day, we stop doing and in those moments we feel the deep strength and wisdom that we always carry within us. Tap into that, and we find that we already have every answer to every challenge we will ever face. Go in and we find that it is this inner strength that allows us to rise.

dreams, fear

Leap: Fight Fear With Dreams

Christa Avampato

Have you noticed how much energy you expend on fear? Now think about how much energy you put toward your dreams.

No one can tell you to stop being afraid. But there is a lot to be gained from evening out the equation between fear and dreams. Dreams will make you bolder, stronger, and more creative. They’ll light you up in a way that the whole world can see, drawing good fortune in your direction.

And here’s the real magic trick: the more you dream, the less you fear because dreams teach you what’s possible.

creativity, fear, priorities

Leap: Stop Planning and Start Doing

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

Planning to leap, peering over the edge of the cliff into my dreams, was scary. Leaping was not.

When I walked out my corporate office yesterday and into a freelance life, I knew I was making just the right change at just the right time. All these months, I went through every fear in the book. I teased them out, one by one, and then I stacked a plan against each until the fear was manageable. I kept waiting to have no fear at all, and then realized that day isn’t coming. And it shouldn’t.

Used in the correct way, with the correct perspective, a bit of fear can be a wonderful motivator to act more and act often. Once I saw it as a tool and not a roadblock, a funny thing happened: the fear actually did subside. It reminded me of that saying, “Once I accept who I am, then I can change.” We have to get out of our own way in order to act.

There’s a lot of power in action. I’m a huge fan of planning but only to the extent that it’s used as a gateway to action, and the sooner that gateway opens the better.

change, choices, faith, fear

Leap: Learn to Float

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest member http://pinterest.com/jhtan/

“In my 61 years of life, I have begun to think that man makes his own stress. When he his stress-free, he goes out and finds some. It is often difficult to live in the moment. There is no stress in being; no tug, no pull, no forward, no back. Floating is so much harder than swimming.” ~ my friend, Adela

Adela is a friend whom I met through another lovely blogging friend, Sharni, and since then she has been an incredibly supportive reader of this blog. A few days ago she posted the comment above on this blog in response to my post on why man’s ability to make himself sick is so confusing to the Dalai Lama. It was pure poetry to me and I had to bring it to everyone’s attention.

What are we so afraid of? Why can’t we let go? Why does gripping at control feel safer than letting life carry us, even though we have so much evidence to the contrary? Why does it take so much confidence and conviction to trust? Why are we so committed to doing rather than be being?

Why? Because we worry that we are not enough. That we aren’t smart enough, kind enough, thoughtful enough, tough enough, ambitious enough, popular enough, attractive enough, successful enough, loved enough. In all our education, we’ve forgotten the most fundamental lesson of all: we, just as we are, right now, in this moment, are magnificent, magical creatures. We are not enough – we are more than enough.

Floating takes practice, but it’s worth it. Trust and reap the rewards.

change, fear

Leap: Don’t Look Down

Christa Avampato

This past week, I started to ask for more practical advice on making my leap – different financial planning tools (personal and professional), health insurance, etc. These items and the options they present take a good deal of planning and preparation and I wanted to start to collect as much data as I can from people whom I deeply respect and admire for the leaps they’ve taken in their own lives.

One of the very best pearls of wisdom I got had nothing to do with the practical nuts and bolts I am investigating, and yet it affects every decision I make in my leap. My friend, Tre, said, “Don’t look down.” It stopped me in my tracks because all of a sudden I realized that all I’ve been doing the last few weeks is looking down, and my fear is getting the best of me in the process.

When we’re about to do something scary, it’s natural that our focus directs to the fearful outcome. And then we begin to lose our confidence, doubt our convictions, shrink from opportunity. The cost seems too great to go after what we really want and what we’re afraid we can’t have.

Pick up your head and look forward. It’s the only thing that’s going to help us balance our fear with a sense of possibility. And that possibility is the only thing that makes the fear worthwhile.

business, career, dreams, fear, feelings, wishes

Leap: Outrunning Fear

Christa Avampato

“What saves a man is to take a step. Then another step. It is always the same step, but you have to take it.” ~ Antoine de Saint-Exupéry via Daily Good

Beginning is the hard part, and every project, idea, wish, relationship begins the same way: setting an intention. That is the hard part. Loudly and proudly saying, “World, this is what I want and come hell or high water I’m going to make it happen.” Getting up the energy and gumption to make that commitment is the very hardest part. It’s not that there won’t be challenges and obstacles to making it happen. Implementation is tough stuff, but just getting the courage to try is the very hardest part.

Why? Why is it so hard for us to give our wildest dream a try? Sadly, we don’t live in a world of unending encouragement. There will always be people, sometimes people very close to you, who for one reason or another will tell you that your dream is too big. We don’t take a first step because we worry that it’s the only step we’ll take, proving all those naysayers right. Our dream was too big. We couldn’t do what we set out to do, and so we’ll have to slunk back to where we came from to take our seat next to the naysayers who never tried to make their dreams come true either.

That’s the fear talking and the only way to get over it is to get it out. Write it all down. Every last fear you have about your biggest, wildest dream belongs on a piece of paper so it can be torn up into pieces and burned into ashes. That very first step requires only one thing – the ability to silence fear. Maybe not permanently, but at least long enough to give us the confidence to take a second step, and then another and another and another.

And pretty soon, before we know it, we’re running. One foot in front of the other, again and again. So fast and so strong, that the fear won’t even have a chance to catch us.

art, courage, fear, inspiration, theatre

Beginning: My Night at the Theatre with Martin Luther King and Aretha Franklin

Christa Avampato
Samuel L. Jackson and Angela Bassett in The Mountaintop

“Well, I don’t know what will happen now. We’ve got some difficult days ahead. But it really doesn’t matter with me now, because I’ve been to the mountaintop.

And I don’t mind.

Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I’m not concerned about that now. I just want to do God’s will. And He’s allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I’ve looked over. And I’ve seen the Promised Land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land!” ~ Dr. Martin Luther King

My friend, Pam, insisted that I see The Mountaintop, a play that chronicles the fictional last night of Dr. Martin Luther King’s life, which he spends speaking with a maid at the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee. Angela Bassett is stunning in her immersion into her character, exhibiting a wide-reaching array of emotions from one moment to the next. (She’ll be getting a Tony nod, no doubt.) Samuel L. Jackson played Samuel L. Jackson, and I really wanted him to play Martin Luther King. Surely, he is capable of it, right? Why was he directed to be so, well, normal? Where was Martin Luther King, the most inspiring speaker in recent history?

I mulled this over from the moment he stepped on stage. And then Aretha Franklin sat down next to me, a few minutes after the lights went down. She is the closest we have to royalty in the this country. And she is regal. Elegant. And reserved. When the lights came up after the bows, I stood up, smiled wide and wished her a good evening. She smiled wide and nodded. People all around us noticed her – there is no way to mistake her for anyone else – and she quickly sat back down. She is after all, just a woman watching a show that her friends are performing.

It struck me how ironic it would be that I would be watching the story of one legend while seated next to another. We expect a lot of public figures. We do expect them to be perfect at every turn, to inspire us, impress us, and all the while maintain constant composure. We hold them to impossible standards, standards we never meet, standards we never even attempt.

In The Mountaintop, Dr. King talks about how death doesn’t look or feel the way he thought it would. It wasn’t what he expected. And death responds, “You’re not what I expected, Preacher King.” And then I realized what Samuel L. Jackson was doing in addition to playing Samuel L. Jackson. He was showing us the fear and the humanity of a man who we have canonized when in truth he was just a man. A dedicated, passionate, empowered man, with flaws and doubts and inconsistencies.

Dr. King has inspired generations of people around the world, and he did what all of us can do and few of us actually do. He picked up the baton and ran with it, passing it off when his time had come. How many of us will have the courage to do the same?

fear, learning, yoga

Beginning: Richard Nixon, My Dad, and Making Friends With Fear

Christa Avampato

We pack up fear; we push it away. We focus our efforts on beating fear, and when we can’t beat it we try our best to ignore it. What if we could embrace it? What if we could make it our mission to do exactly the thing that scares us most?

I’ve been thinking a lot about fear and how to hold it close. Compass Yoga scares me on a daily basis, not because I’m worried that we can’t live up to the mission but because what we’re taking on is such an enormous, gangly, unwieldy mess.

We want to greatly alter the healthcare system. We want yoga and meditation to stop being “alternative therapies” and fully integrate them into traditional treatment plans. As accepting as society may be of yoga and meditation for the well, it’s still quite new to think that yoga teachers could and should be on par with medical doctors and therapists when it comes to assessment and treatment of those who have serious health challenges. And yet, in spite of the fear, I know this is the right direction for our healthcare system from a moral, scientific, and financial perspective. This thinking is new, and scary.  

Fear is not remarkable. Everyone, every day has fears of varying degrees. It always interests me to know what keeps others going, especially when they’re petrified of what they’re doing. I used to think that we could move ahead once we got rid of fear, and so I set about looking for ways to banish it from my system. I have always met a bit of frustration in this area because my fears never seem to fully dissipate. They stick with me – sometimes as just a little nagging voice in the back of my mind and sometimes as the star on center stage with a big ass microphone. Fear and I hang out on a very regular basis.

There are two people who keep me moving forward: my dad and his story and the too-soon ending of his life, and Richard Nixon. When I saw the play Frost/Nixon, I began to understand how disappointment can take someone down, how enough shame and embarrassment about our circumstances and choices can fundamentally warp our view of the world and the people around us. In that moment, I also began to forgive my dad. The play contains a very dark scene where Richard Nixon, played brilliantly by Frank Langella, calls David Frost and explains a part of his back story that helps us to understand how pride, when taken too far, can move us into a dangerous state of unsupported arrogance that consumes us.

I hate to say this, but I actually felt a great deal of sympathy for Richard Nixon as a result of that scene. Me, a liberal through and through, felt badly for Richard Nixon. I understand now that the sympathy I felt for Richard Nixon in that moment is the same sympathy that has allowed me to understand my dad.

Like Richard Nixon, my dad was an incredibly insecure, embarrassed, and disappointed man. He lived most of his life that way and he died that way His fear of never living a worthwhile life eventually consumed him. Beneath that thin veil of arrogance, there was a man who feared his life would never amount to wait he wanted it to be. And he couldn’t take in that fear. Eventually it overwhelmed him.  

The irony in the midst of this sad and unfortunate story is that my dad’s example has saved my life, and continues to save it every day. I keep moving forward with Compass Yoga, my writing, and my teaching because I have seen what becomes of someone who can’t embrace fear, who looks in the mirror and sees too much time gone by without doing what he really wanted to do with his life. When I look in the mirror, I see him in my eyes staring back at me. We are not so different; all that separates us are our choices about fear: to keep moving or become paralyzed.  

We could all be my dad. We could all be Richard Nixon. Every day, we all come to a fork in the road, “two roads diverged in a yellow wood“. And at each junction, there’s one common underlying choice: do we embrace fear or do we vow to wait it out? If we embrace it, live the very thing that frightens us, then we can keep moving. Choose to wait it out and the world will eventually pass us by.

Which way would you rather go?