Category: fear

career, failure, fear

Beginning: Facing Up to Fear, Failure, and Monsters

Christa Avampato
Scene from Monsters Inc. by Pixar

Earlier this week I mentioned the tough conversation that Brian and I had about my fear of just jumping into my own business full-time. Admittedly, I was in his office whining and trying to decision tree my way out of fear. His sentiments about my fear have echoed throughout my week in a variety of other experiences and reading. One week later, the key piece of advice from him that I keep coming back to is that taking a leap like this is always scary. There will never be a time when the fear subsides.

Fear is a part of the process
This same idea was framed up by Sean Duffy in his Talent Zoo post entitled “Seven Tips for Aspiring Entrepreneurs”. Though the title seems a bit dull and run-of-the-mill, I read it anyway and I’m glad I did. The article is loaded with sobering advice for anyone considering a jump like mine like this: “The dictionary says that an entrepreneur is someone who starts and manages a business or other enterprise with considerable initiative and risk.” The risk, and the fear associated with it, cannot be extricated from the work of heading off on our own. Fear and risk are bound up in the very nature of the work itself. In other words, get used to it! 

Sobering failure stat
But what if I fail? What if I hold my head up, look fear dead in the eye, and I don’t make it? Duffy lays out some statistics that first made me ill and then gave me hope:

A company’s chances of surviving its first five years in business = 20%
A product’s chances of surviving past launch = 5%
A company’s chances of ever reaching its long-term financial goals = 5% survival

This may be enough to cause us to throw in the towel before we even start. After all, the odds are steeply stacked against us, but there is some deeper meaning hidden in those numbers. These statistics actually helped me to set aside some of my fear. The great likelihood is that I will fail. It’s practically a given so there’s no sense in worrying about it. Whew – it’s kind of a relief to know this, isn’t it? If I do fail then I will be in good company. And still, I want to give it a whirl on the slight chance that maybe I’m stronger than the odds.

A one-sentence mission helps to release fear
I had coffee last weekend with my friend, Sara, who was in my yoga teacher training. She was also not having it with my decision tree abilities that are delaying my decisions about how to move forward in my career. “Didn’t you go to college and get all of these business skills to have something to fall back on?” I nodded. “Okay, then,” she said. “So try to do what you want. Talk yourself up!” I couldn’t refute that statement. She’s right.

I am a master planner but what I’ve done is plan my way right into plan B without even giving plan A a shot. With Sara’s prompting, I crystallized exactly what I want plan A to be in one sentence: “I want to buy into a holistic medical practice where I work with doctors and therapists to treat the whole patient.” From there, the fear started to dissipate not because I had successfully walled it off so I could walk peacefully around it, but because I just stood up and walked straight through it with my words. And in the process, it made my next steps clearer and more meaningful. Now, I have a concrete goal. (More on those steps in a later post.)

Fear takes a new form
I had been envisioning fear as this big, obnoxious monster whom I thought could be wrestled to the ground and contained. I imagined myself lassoing a big rope around its neck and tethering it to a tree so it couldn’t get to me. Fear is more slippery than that. There isn’t a way to keep it at a safe distance. It’s going to get us, and what really matters is how we face up to it when it is on our doorstep.

In my mind’s eye, I’m trying to put my fear in the form of Sully from Monsters, Inc., someone who looks very scary on the outside but on the inside isn’t so scary at all. I think of myself grabbing the furry hand of this fear monster and leading him along as we chart our course forward up over a grassy hill and on toward a brighter future, together. We can’t shake fear so we might as well befriend it and learn what it has to teach us.

choices, decision-making, fear, Life

Beginning: Somewhere Between Fear and Boredom

Christa Avampato

On Friday I was having a conversation with someone about his varied career practicing law. Though he’s been a lawyer for several decades, his bath is rather unorthodox as he’d practiced in a number of different specialties and now serves as the vice chairman of a large firm. As someone who has had a varied career, I’m always interested in hearing what makes people change course and what has served as their catalyst for change. This lawyer had a very simple answer:

“I chart my career. On the vertical access I’ve got fear and on the horizontal access I’ve got boredom. Every time I started in a new field I’d be all the way in the top left – high fear, no boredom. Over time, I move down the curve of fear and closer to boredom. Once those two cross, I know it’s time to do something else.”

That way of thinking resonates with me, too. I actually enjoy biting off more than I can chew; I get a rush from the doubt of wondering if I can really do what I’ve set out to do. It gives me drive and stokes my determination. It took a long time to get there.

When I worked in company management on Broadway shows and national tours, I had the great privilege of working with Petula Clark on Sunset Boulevard. I always got her meal so she could eat in her dressing room between the two shows on Saturday and Sunday. Sometimes she’d feel chatty so I’d stay and keep her company during dinner. She once asked me if I ever acted. I’d done some college productions and some work in summer stock, though never wanted to pursue the field professionally.

“Why not?” she asked me.

“I have terrible stage fright. I throw up every time before I go on stage,” I said, more than a little embarrassed.

“We’re all a little stage fright, dear,” she said. “The good ones never lose that fear. Keeps us on our toes.”

I liked that idea. I still didn’t want to be an actress and I wasn’t quite sure I believed Petula. She was famously supportive and kind, particularly to young people in the company. I thought she was just saying that to make me feel better. Years later I realized she was absolutely serious. I learned to use my stage fright productively – to help me stay prepared and on point at every turn.

If Petula Clark and this attorney had a conversation about career, I have a feeling they’d see eye-to-eye. The fear we have in starting a new adventure is really quite a gift. It gives us the chance to really feel alive, to feel like we’re taking on something so much bigger than ourselves. We’re going out along our edge to see just how far we can reach. It’s always thrilling to find that the ground out there at the edge is so much more stable that we imagine it to be, and not by happenstance, but because our determination and hard work makes it so.

fate, fear, frustration, future, goals, growth

Beginning: There is a Message in There. Keep Looking.

Christa Avampato

“A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.”
Winston Churchill

I had gotten an unwieldy situation under control. I was feeling good about the progress and the step-wise solution that was in place, and then it all came apart in 48 hours. Like pulling a loose thread in a sweater, every piece unraveled. All the forward movement had been erased and then some. I showed up at Brian’s office a little worn out. Depleted. How and more importantly, why, did this happen?

Brian sensed my frustration the moment I walked into his office. “You’re living on a ledge. What kind of existence is that?” he counseled me. “What the universe, what your yoga, is trying to tell you is that you can be more. You can do more. What you’re doing now is just watching the time pass, and that’s no way to live. I’m a little worried that you’re too adaptable, that you’re too good at coping. Go where you can be well and inspire wellness in others.”

He’s right of course. Sometimes I try to prove him wrong. I discount his counsel, and I waste my time in doing so. So here’s to leaving the ledge, to picking up one foot and then the other, and not looking back. There’s the message I was looking for…

dreams, fear, strengths

Beginning: Surviving the Uh-oh Moment So We Can Have the Lives We Want

Christa Avampato

“Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the judgment that something else is more important than fear.” ~ Ambrose Redmoon

“Courage is being afraid but going on anyhow.” ~ Dan Rather

Why is it that just when we are on the doorstep of doing exactly what we want to do, there is often a moment of hesitation and fear, a moment when we wonder, “Can I really do this?” I had this feeling yesterday around 5:00pm. I had just gotten onto the subway to head downtown to Integral Yoga Institute for my first session of Therapeutic Yoga Teacher Training with Cheri Clampett and Arturo Peal. I have been planning to take this training for a number of months and it’s the first training step I’m taking to transition my career full-time to work on Compass Yoga. And though I know this is the right path, that this is what the world needs and what I need, I had a very brief “uh-oh, what have I done?” moment.

This isn’t the first time this moment has crept up on me. As an actor and musician in college, I always had this exact same moment right before a show. I would literally be in the wings, on the verge of being sick, wishing I could just run for the exit. It happens to me when I speak publicly, whether I’m presenting or just asking a question in front of a large group of people. I often feel this moment just as I’m wrapping up a blog post and my finger is hovering over the “publish” button. Is what I’ve written too personal, too candid, or on a topic that is much too sensitive? There is something inherently scary about whole-heartedly putting ourselves out into the world, in front of others, and saying, “This is who I am.” How can we get comfortable with being uncomfortable? How do we remain equal parts vulnerable and strong?

Now that I’ve dealt with stage fright in all it’s forms for many years, I’ve got a few methods that I use that have never failed me:

1.) Remember that what you’re feeling is not unique and it’s okay to be afraid. I’ll even go one step further and say that if you aren’t afraid to do something new, it may not even be worth doing. Fear is a very human response and a sign that you care so much about what you’re about to do, that you want to honor its importance as much as you possibly can. The best way to honor your action’s importance is to keep going right through the fear!

2.) Remember your intention. For me, this path of Compass Yoga is the work of my lifetime; it is my contribution to humanity. On the doorstep of Integral Yoga Institute last night, I reminded myself of all of the people who will be helped by my work in therapeutic yoga, people who right now at this moment need that help and aren’t receiving it. I walked through that door for them.

3.) Remember what’s on the other side of your fear. There’s so much anxiety that resides in anticipation. Once I get to where I’m going, I’m fine. What I fear is the lead up to that uh-oh moment, not the action I’m taking in and of itself. Last week at the Urban Zen event I went to, Lauren Zander made a powerful comment about fear: on the other side of your fears are your life’s greatest accomplishments. So don’t run from fear, but run toward your future accomplishments, recognizing that fear is just a tiny bump on the road to great happiness.

4.) Carry an inspiration with you. When I’m really frightened, I remind myself of two very inspiring passages about moving through fear. The ideas behind them always help me walk through my uh-oh moments:

Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond imagination. It is our light more than our darkness which scares us. We ask ourselves – who are we to be brilliant, beautiful, talented, and fabulous. But honestly, who are you to not be so? ~ Marianne Williamson

Many of us have lived desert lives: very small on the surface, and enormous underground. Because of this, so often we feel we live in an empty space where there is just one cactus with one brilliant red flower on it, and then in every direction, 500 miles of nothing. But for those of us who will go 501 miles, there is something more. Don’t be a fool. Go back and stand under that one red flower and walk straight ahead for that last hard mile. Crawl through the window of your dream. ~ Clarissa Pinkola Estes

All this to say that I want you to keep going along whatever path you want to be on. You will have moments of fear, hesitation, and doubt. You may feel like a fraud, and on the surface this feeling may seem insurmountable. I assure you it is not; it is just part of the journey. Fear is an obstacle placed in your way only so that you can realize how much strength and conviction you really have. You have every right to have exactly the life you want, to do the work you really want to do, to help the people you want to help with your own gifts and talents. Push through.

fear, free, health, meditation, yoga

Beginning: Meditate on Breath

Christa Avampato

“We all die on the exhale.” ~ Robert Chodo Campbell, HHC

On Sunday I wrote a post the opening meditation session of the Integrative Healthcare Symposium that was run by Robert Chodo Campbell and Koshin Paley Ellison, two Buddhist monks who co-founded and co run the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. I learned so much in their hour presentation and am looking forward to taking some classes at the center and learning from them. (Rest assured that I’ll be sharing all of that on this blog!)

Our closing breath practice was very simple, similar to the opening. Chodo asked us to close our eyes and breathe. On the inhale, he asked us to send love to every person around the world who was drawing their very first breathe of life at that very moment. On the exhale, he asked us to send compassion and love to every person letting go of their very last breath. “We all die on the exhale,” he said. And it wasn’t the least bit morbid; it was just a fact. It is one of the things that binds all of us together. The exhale is every life’s very last act.

This caused to wonder what it means then for us to master the exhale. If we gain that mastery, then can we also master the great transition that we’ll all make in our own time. When we learn to master the exhale, have we also learned how to release? And if we can truly release, can we finally free ourselves from any fear?

courage, fear

Doing the Impossible

Christa Avampato

This post is available as a free podcast on Cinch and iTunes.

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you stop to look fear in the face. … You must do the thing you think you cannot do.” ~ Eleanor Roosevelt

“Are your projects as “Mad” as the Mad Times demand?” ~ Tom Peters

I went to interview for a freelance project a few weeks ago. When I dug a little deeper, the project being sold was not a project I wanted though just going through the process of applying gave me an interesting insight. For a moment at the beginning of the conversation, I began to wonder if I could really do the project I applied for. Maybe I didn’t have quite enough experience yet. Maybe I needed to gain just a bit more knowledge than I already have.

I do this a lot. I go to my edge and then get frightened that I’m in way over my head. But it’s those moment when I was way under water that I learned the most about my capabilities and where I gained the most confidence. The mad ideas, the ones that really out there are the ones that made a difference; they’re the ones that gave me the most joy because they were the most fun. They also appeal to my internal rebel.

To really live, to be in this world for the sheer experience of being alive, requires a certain fearlessness in the face of everything we should be afraid of. We live in wild and crazy times, and we need wild and crazy ideas to make any headway. Living at the edge and pushing the boundaries is the only way to grow. We aren’t born with a slip in hand that tells us what our potential is. We won’t know our potential until we really test ourselves and begin the very projects that we think we cannot do, the ones that we think are much too big.

What are the dreams that you think are too mad, too far out there, too difficult to accomplish? Put your energy there.

The image above can be found here.

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

change, determination, failure, fear

Beginning: Confidence in Your Ability to Navigate the Tides

Christa Avampato

This post is also available as a podcast on Cinch and iTunes.

“You must know that you can swim through every change of tide.” ~ Yogi Tea

This post follows on the heels of my posts encouraging you to focus, do worthy work, and take a risk. I didn’t learn to swim until I was 30, so I know how scary literal tide shifts can be. The tides of change – they’re even scarier. I will turn situations over and over in my mind, imagining every possible bad scenario that will be wrought by some change. In the past year, Brian and I have worked on my confidence, and that confidence building has largely come into play when the ground is shifting and the tides are churning. I’m so worried about getting swallowed up whole by change that I’m not giving enough credit to my ability to swim.

When a wave comes at us in the ocean, the worst thing to do is keep our heads up and fight it. Instead, diving in, and through, is the best thing to do. Waves of change are like this, too. Maybe the fear of change, particularly if you see it coming down the road at you, has you worried. It’s a change in a relationship, a job, where you live, or what makes you feel alive. Take comfort in the fact that you can swim through that change. It doesn’t have to barrel over you. You can go along and be taken to a place you never even dreamed of because you never knew of its possibility.

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

art, change, choices, faith, fear, politics, relationships, religion, theatre

Step 287: Review of the Off-Broadway Show, Freud’s Last Session

Christa Avampato

In 1998, I saw the play Picasso at the Lapin Agile in San Francisco. I remember being completely riveted watching the fictional meeting of two of the most inspiring characters of all time, Einstein and Picasso. This construct for a play appealed to me so much that I still routinely think about that show 12 years later. It was at times touching and sad, joyful and hopeful. Full of lively, passionate debate and intense discussion about timeless social issues, I always felt it would be hard for a play to match Steve Martin’s brilliance.

Lucky for us Mark St. Germain has succeeded in building a script that’s even more powerful and thought-provoking than Martin’s – Freud’s Last Session, now playing off-Broadway at The Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater at the West Side YMCA. Freud’s Last Session showcases the possibly factual meeting between a young C.S. Lewis, a devout Christian and the gifted author who would go on to write The Chronicles of Narnia and The Screwtape Letters, and Sigmund Freud, a life-long atheist, consummate intellectual, and founding figure of psychoanalysis, who is at the very end of his life and career, dying of oral cancer. Set in London on September 3, 1939, the invasion of Poland by the Nazis serves as the political backdrop of their meeting.

The piece made me laugh out loud one moment, and tug at my deepest convictions the next. The dialogue is so sharp and the acting by Martin Rayner (Freud) and Mark H. Dold (Lewis) so penetrating that the 75-minute show flew by, too quickly in my opinion. I wanted more of the debate and the history. I found myself rooting for their relationship, and wanting it to go on, in spite of knowing that 20 days later Freud would engage his long-time friend and physician to end his battle with cancer.

The show touches upon an incredibly diverse set of themes: religion first and foremost, war, death, sexuality, fear, faith, love, memory, humor, and change. While this list of topics seems overwhelming, they are in the very capable hands and words of St. Germain, who expertly weaves them together in such a seamless way that I found myself completely wrapped up in the story as if it were my own. The language he uses is so vivid and the mannerisms of the actors are so authentic that I truly felt I was peering into a window on history. This play is the most rare form of theatrical work – a perfect script. Every single word precisely and beautifully chosen. The set and lighting designs are so realistic that I felt transported across space and time to Freud’s London study to witness this single, emotional meeting.

This show has a special, very personal meaning for me because my father was a Freudian psychologist. He passed away when I was a teenager, long before I ever had the opportunity to have a conversation with him as Lewis may have had with Freud. I didn’t get the opportunity to understand his contradictions and complexities, though that may have been for the best. At the end of his life, he was in a great deal of pain physically and emotionally, as Freud was. Through the dialogue of Freud’s Last Session, I was able to put together some more pieces about my father’s personality, as if I had actually been placed there in that seat for a very specific reason – to help me get a little bit closer to understanding my childhood. My thanks to Mark St. Germain for this amazing gift; he has inspired me to dig deeper and learn more about Freud and Lewis. I’m confident that there are more answers there, waiting for me to discover them. And that is perhaps the greatest lesson of the show – that self-discovery is a journey that never ends and yet must be pursued. As he so adeptly has Lewis say, “The real struggle is to keep trying.”

Freud’s Last Session runs through November 28th at The Marjorie S. Deane Little Theater. Don’t miss it.

Image above depicts Mark H. Dold and Martin Rayner as Lewis and Freud, respectively.

courage, fear, yoga

Step 122: Facing Fears

Christa Avampato

Since my fire in September, I haven’t been able to walk down the street where it occurred. I’ve taken a few steps, and then I quickly cross the street, averting my gaze and avoiding any chance of looking through that door. To look at the building now, you’d never know that a fire happened there. It’s been reconstructed with new brick, repainted, doors and windows replaced. Everything covered over. For me, that street has a smoky covering, an eerie, uncomfortable feeling. Yesterday, I finally needed to stare it in the face.

I got out of the subway and made the turn I’ve been avoiding for almost 8 months. Since it was the Beltane yesterday, a day that celebrates life in all its glory, it felt like an appropriate time to face fear. It wasn’t as hard as I thought it would be. I didn’t cry. I didn’t really feel anything until I got right up to the building, and saw to my right a giant statue of Ganesha above a psychic reading place. Ganesha is the Hindu deity who removes obstacles to our spiritual development. On occasion, he will place obstacles in our path for us to deal with so that we grow and evolve. He gives us what we need, even when we don’t know exactly what we need at the time.

In that moment, seeing Ganesha juxtaposed to that building where the fire happened, I realized how much I needed that fire. In the three years that I’ve lived in this neighborhood, I’ve passed that statue many times. I just didn’t know who he was until my yoga teacher training. Now, it has a special significance to me. Now, I understand what I’d been seeing all along. I guess life is like that: we look and we look and we look, and then one day, the clarity that has been staring at us all along finally comes in to focus. I wish it didn’t take us so long to really understand what’s in our line of our vision, but then again, if we understood everything on Day 1, what would we have to look forward to? Here’s to seeing more clearly and facing more fears in the days ahead.

The photo above is of the Ganesha statue next to my old apartment building.

adventure, business, entrepreneurship, fear, feelings, yoga

Step 113: F.E.A.R.

Christa Avampato

“F.E.A.R. – false evidence appearing real.” ~ Tracy, my yoga teacher

Whenever I have class with my yoga teacher, Tracy, I keep my pen close by. She always has pearls of wisdom that she carefully places before us as an offering, wisdom that has been passed down to her from her own practice and meditation and her teachers. Last night she laid the quote above before us and asked us to consider why we would hold any fear at all give this acronym. I couldn’t think of any good reasons.

It’s all too easy to fall into the trap of letting our thoughts get the best of us. Certainly they should make us considerate of our actions, though we can’t allow them to prevent us from finding our true way. Lately I’ve been feeling my way toward my path with a little more spring in my step than usual. I’m growing increasingly aware that my life’s work, that elusive things I’ve been rummaging around for, is just around the corner, and so every day I wake up with the feeling that today might be the day when all these pieces that seem to be heading toward one another finally coalesce so beautifully that I wonder why I didn’t see their connection all along.

Every once in a while I catch myself believing in my false evidence appearing positive: “There are lots of yoga teachers in this city, all over the world. What will you do that’s so different?” or “There are people who are professionally trained industrial designers who develop products. How can you produce something as elegant as their work?” During my 18 minutes of meditation a day, my mind’s eye recognizes these F.E.A.R.s, acknowledges them, and then politely moves on. This doesn’t mean they go away completely; I certainly have moments of self-doubt. Can I really make a go of my own business? Can I really offer up something special and unique? And the answer I keep hearing, “well what else are you going to do with your time here if not create something special and unique.” Prana has a sense of humor. And it’s blunt. It’s got no time for messing around.

So I’ve started cranking along, planting lots and lots of seeds in all of this rich soil in my life. Every once in a while an early shoot sprouts up, I go over and water it, and despite my best efforts it just doesn’t root down properly. That’s okay. I thank it for making an appearance, showing me a way, knowing that its possibility put me one step closer to finding my way.

False evidence is all around us, and its a very good actor. But if we take the time to really sift through, to really match up the opportunities we find with what we truly want, it’s easy to detect which options are distractions and which ones we really need to cultivate. The next little adventure I’ll be cultivating is a trip to Santorini, Greece for a yoga retreat and teacher training with Shiva Rea. I have been looking for a retreat for some time now that really offer a nice combo of downtime and practice, in a place I’ve never been, with a teacher I really respect and admire. It just happened to work out that the week Shiva’s going is the perfect time for me to take a vacation, the price is perfect, and the theme “radical relaxation” is just what my curious soul needs. Synchronicity: a sure sign that I’m going exactly where I need to be. F.E.A.R.s be gone…

The image above is not my own. It depicts the sunset in Santorini, Greece, hopefully similar to the ones I’ll be seeing very soon. It can be found here.