Category: friendship

film, friendship, human rights, justice, movie

My Year of Hopefulness – Human Rights Watch Film Festival

Christa Avampato

“My favorite place is my imagination.” ~ Jackie Pagan, featured narrator in Youth Producing Change

My friend, Linda, invited me to the Human Rights Watch film festival here in New York at Lincoln Center’s Walter Reade Theatre. We went to see Youth Producing Change, a documentary created from the stories of 10 young film makers on issues ranging from youth homelessness to HIV / AID to water conservation. The stories are deeply moving, and all the more remarkable because they were made by film makers under 18 years old, many from impoverished countries who belong to marginalized populations.

How often do we catch ourselves saying, “how can I make a difference?” or “what change can I really achieve in this complicated world?” We had the great privilege to have a question and answer session with the film makers after Youth Producing Change had its screening. The producers don’t ask themselves these questions. They have gone confidently in the direction of their dreams, believing now only that they can have an impact, but rather that it is their obligation and their duty to create change.

Most times, young people are told to respect their elders, to follow the lead of adults, to learn from their mentors. Sitting in the Walter Reade Theatre today, I found that these young adults have much more to teach us than we have to teach them. They have seen, heard, and experienced life in a way that is very difficult for most of us to even imagine; the vivid images and language of the documentary give us a frame of reference that is critical to build our empathy and compassion for the human experience. Thankfully, their stories are the stuff of movies now, and we should do our best to nurture, support, and encourage their drive, ambition, and courage to tell their stories.

Youth Producing Change will be screened in high schools across the U.S. and was shown at the festivals in Chicago, Toronto, San Francisco, and London. The Human Rights Watch film festival continues in New York through June 25th.

Examiner, family, friendship, relationships, Tim Russert, volunteer, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – Tim Russert, revisited

Christa Avampato

This weekend it’s been one year since we lost Tim Russert. It’s only fitting that I’d happen to be in DC this weekend with friends who are celebrating some very big events in their lives – weddings, new jobs, and a general sense of hope despite a tough economy. When Tim passed away one year ago, what stood out to me what the comment that he lived every day as if he had just won the lottery. I wanted to live my life that way, too, so I set about doing that.

I thought about every area of my life and put some ideas into action to improve each. One year later, I’m doing pretty well. It’s not the lottery feeling just yet, though there are many, many things that I am grateful for:

I have certainly expanded my writing: blogging daily with an eye toward publishing a selection of posts at year-end as a free e-book and blogging about entrepreneurship for my Examiner.com column.

With my friends and family, I have put forward a significant amount of effort to spend quality, individual time. I used to run around as much as possible to try to fit time in with everyone all the time. The trouble with that method is that I ended up short-changing each, and short-changing myself. The quality time method is working much better.

In my volunteering, I wanted to extend more effort in areas that really interested me. Along with a colleague at work, I am beginning to put together a social media plan for a theatre company I admire. I took my social media interest and knowledge, my background in theatre, and roll-ed it up to do some pro-bono work that will help me build up a portfolio in this area. Using a little creativity, I created a win-win situation for all.

The work side of my life is always a work in progress. With the economy in tough shape, it’s the area of my life where I’ve had to make some compromises. I am learning a lot every day – about product development, what to do and what not to do (I’ve found the later to be just as important as the former), and I’ve learned what kind of work is best suited for me going forward. I’ve really developed the insight that I am passionate about small business (thanks in large part to my Examiner.com column); whether that means working for a small business or working for a large company that helps small businesses, I’m not sure. At the very least, it feels good to finally have that direction in my career and it keeps me looking forward.

Winning the lottery in life is a process – every day, we have to make choices and renew our commitment to living the best life we can. It takes courage to get up and follow our hearts in each area of our lives. And no matter how much work it is, there is no more worthwhile pursuit. I hope Tim would agree.

friendship, learning, movie, Seth Godin, technology, website

My Year of Hopefulness – Commitment to be more than I’ve Been

Christa Avampato

“Quit. Don’t quit. Make noodles. Don’t make noodles. You are too concerned with what was and what will be. Yesterday is history. Tomorrow is a mystery. Today is a gift; that is why it is called the present…..You must believe.” ~ Master Oogway to Po and Master Shifu in Kung Fu Panda

My friend, Lon, really inspired me yesterday. He has made it his personal goal to work on his presentation skills. He has read several books and visits a blog every day that is written by a presentation training expert. He just decided that he was going to get good at this skill no matter what and he has done a marvelous job through hard work and commitment.

I finally saw Kung Fu Panda – a movie that has beautiful, simple anecdotes that relate to every day life. Under the sacred peach tree, Po, the lovable Panda at the center of the adventure is unsure that he belongs at the Emerald Palace to learn kung fu. The other characters don’t feel he’s worthy and should just go back to his former life of noodle making. They tell him he is not meant to study kung fu, even though he loves it. Since he doesn’t know kung fu already, he thinks he should just give up.
Master Oogway finds Po under the peach tree feeling sorry for himself, stuck in the past, not appreciating the present, and unable to move forward into the future. Oogway believes that Po is the only one getting in his way and that he cannot allow the opinions of others, any others, to define who he is and who he will become. Only we can make those choices. It will take hard work to learn new skills – and we must make the commitment to do so.
I thought of this movie in relation to my friend, Lon. He felt that he wasn’t good at presentations, and rather than slunk back to his desk and feel hopeless, he did something about it. He put aside his insecurities and fears, and dove into improving this skill. We should all have such determination to take up something that’s difficult, something we think we can’t do though very much want to be able to do. It is a risk. It’s much easier to just do what we do well already. Lon and Po took a braver, more courageous path.
Lon inspired me with his story. For a long time, I have been thinking about businesses I’d like to start and it all comes back to e-commerce. Trouble is that I don’t know how to write code, not a single spec of it. I’ve been afraid to learn because I am a person who does have a natural gift for understanding the intricacies of how technology works. I failed as an engineer (actually I got all C-‘s in my college engineering classes, which to me was the same as getting an F.) I couldn’t bear to fail and I gave up too soon, majoring in History and Economics, subjects I was already good at. Rather than digging in to my engineering classes, I threw in the towel. I gave up on me. I’ve been carrying that failure around with me ever since, shying away from any technical fields. Failure is a heavy load to carry and I’m tired. Taking a cue from my friend, Lon, I’m doing something about it.
I have to face the hard truth that every company is becoming a technology company. There’s no way around it any more. So I thought of my friend Lon. I thought of Oogway’s wise words to Po. We must believe we can do anything that we truly want to do. And I’d like to learn how to write code so that I can build something on-line on my own. Seth Godin wrote a post this week on coding languages that are useful now and will be useful going forward as our lives move more and more on-line. I’m taking his advice.
I took myself and my engineering failure to Barnes & Noble and leafed through books on HTML, Flash, Java, SQL, and PHP. (I don’t even know what some of those languages do, though Seth Godin thinks they’re important, and frankly, that’s good enough for me.) I visited Amazon.com and read tons of reviews on coding books and settled on the Missing Manual Series. I trust Tim O’Reilly and David Pogue. If they dedicated a moment of their time toward developing a series to teach people like me to write code, then I’m going to take advantage of their knowledge. So here I go. Putting my love of building things to use in a field I know nothing about, a field I have long been interested in and scared of, a field I should have learned a long time ago. We’ll see what I can make of myself. Better late than never.
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.

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.

business, economy, friendship, harmony, leadership, stress, work

My Year of Hopefulness – Harmonious Work Environments

Christa Avampato

I love to talk and on occasion someone says something to me that’s so striking that I cannot let it pass without writing about it. A friend of mine recently had her supervisor tell her that she creates a work environment that is too harmonious. I was so stunned by this comment that all I could do was laugh. And once that laughter subsided, I found the very core of this comment to be highly disturbing.

The American workplace right now, particularly in large corporations, is a tough place to be every day. Layoff rounds seem never ending and are referred to with a dizzying array of synonyms: “right-sizing”, “restructuring”, “displacement”, “down-scaling”, and the list goes on. At the end of the day a lot of very talented, bright, dedicated high performers are losing their jobs. Morale is low and bad behaviors abound as a result of fear, angst, and disappointment.

Layer all of these bad sentiments into my friend’s situation. Despite the fact that morale is very low at her company and the environment there is like a pressure cooker these days, she has found a way to bring some sense of harmony to her team and her projects. And the feedback to her is she creates too much harmony?! If she were ineffective at her job and unable to get anything done, I could possibly understand the feedback though that is not at all the case. She’s one of the highest performers in her department, due in large part to her ability to create winning strategies that are widely supported by others.

By saying please and thank you, and recognizing the hard work of her team she is being criticized by her boss who is unable to create any kind of good will due to his bad attitude and propensity for bullying. With all the anxiety in the world, we should welcome the contributions of people who can restore a sense of order and calm, particularly in the workplace. In the case of harmony, there can’t be too much of a good thing.

business, entrepreneurship, fear, friendship, ideation, intellectual property

My Year of Hopefulness – Fear #4 of Entrepreneurship

Christa Avampato

“Someone will steal my idea.”

Last night I went out with my friend, Steve, who is one of the greatest inspirations in my life. He’s one of the hardest working, most courageous business people I know. He’s my go-to guy when I have a new business idea and need advice. For a long time, he’s been encouraging me to start my own business. I was telling him about my business idea and asked him how he decided to communicate his business plan while also protecting his idea.

“Chances are, Christa, no one is going to think your idea is worth quitting their own job over. The idea that starts a business is 10% of the work and executing it is the other 90%. It’s very hard, if not impossible, to do that 90% alone.”

With that kind of perspective, the fear of someone stealing my idea seems completely irrational. In addition, consider that Apple was not the first MP3 maker, Zappo’ not the first on-line e-tailer to sell shoes, Google not the first search or email service. These companies redefined their playing field, largely by banking on delightful execution and maniacal focus on customers and employees. Their ideas were around long before they were ever created. They brought their own special mark to an idea; that special mark brought them success and is something that cannot be stolen.

entrepreneurship, friendship, New York City

My Year of Hopefulness – When Good Ideas Surface

Christa Avampato

Yesterday I had coffee at Grounded with my friend, Dave. We’re both aspiring entrepreneurs who are figuring out when is the right time to make the leap, and considering what ventures would be best to start first. We talked about building a life that’s filled with a lot of different, small ideas and whether or not that’s better than getting all of our income from one single source. We considered how many of our extremely talented and motivated friends are looking for work due to the layoffs caused by the current recession. And then we hit upon an idea that could make use of many incredible people are out there looking for a job. Silence.

“Yeah. Maybe we should think about that. Maybe we could do something like that,” we said.

As we finished up our coffee and walked to the subway, we decided to write down some thoughts and send them back and forth to see if we could get our idea to work. What surprised me is that the idea seemed so good and so timely that we were both sort of stunned into silence. Is this the way with all good business ideas? Does it seem so obvious, so practical that we have to sit with it for a while and make sure it’s real? Could we be dreaming that we just got this idea in a coffee shop in Greenwich Village? Maybe it’s all too cliche. But then again, we’ll never know unless we try.