Category: imagination

choices, decision-making, imagination, intelligence

Step 218: Thinking and Doing Are Two Different Things

Christa Avampato

“Thinking is easy, acting is difficult, and to put one’s thoughts into action is the most difficult thing in the world. Knowing is not enough; we must apply. Willing it not enough; we must do.” ~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, German Philosopher

“Well done is better than well said.” ~ Ben Franklin

This morning Chris Brogan wrote an interesting post about setting a course that made me think of these Goethe and Franklin quotes.

I had a friend who really wanted to find a job. He’s a smart guy though I have to admit that he’s lazy. He expects his intelligence to carry him through life. He would routinely say that he’s tired of proving himself and potential employers should really recognize his intelligence. He would talk about all these grand plans he had for his career and then spent the bulk of his time playing video games and cleaning his apartment obsessively. He made a lot of plans and articulated a beautiful vision for his career, but he never followed through on anything. Intelligence really doesn’t matter if the ability to execute is lacking.

Every day this same friend would give me (unsolicited) advice on my career, my writing, dating, and myriad of other aspects of my life. If I had taken his advice, I am convinced I would now be angry and miserable. I ignored his advice, and eventually that choice ended up bringing our friendship to an abrupt halt. He wanted someone to be miserable with and when I decided not to play that role, we ended up not having much to talk about.

My friend was one of these “idea guys” who wants to surround himself with people who can bring his vision to life. And that’s an interesting idea but I don’t know anyone who wants to sign up for that gig. Everyone has ideas; the ones that see the light of the day and make a difference are the ones that move from the mind into the real world.

By all means, make plans. Change them, switch them up, talk to people to get their perspective. But eventually we have to stop planning and starting doing. There isn’t any other way forward. Actions, not plans, define who we are and ultimately what we’ll be remembered for.

childhood, dreams, imagination

Step 216: Dreaming Impossible

Christa Avampato

“When we are dreaming alone it is only a dream. When we are dreaming with others, it is the beginning of reality.” ~ DH Camara (as quoted by Bridget Ayers on Twitter)

As kids, we dream. Somewhere along the way someone told us to do things like “grow up”, “take responsibility”, and “get a REAL job.” Those people make me mad. I have a hard time understanding why dream must be mutually exclusive from growing up (whatever that means), taking responsibility, and having a real job. Who decided that dreams are by their very nature immature, reckless, and fake?

Reading several books about Pixar and one about bring games into everyday life strengthened my resolve to dream and bring others into my dreams. These books also strengthened my conviction that a company and a career can attain wild success and have fun as a core ingredient. I might even go so far as to say that to have a company, career, and life that attains wild success, fun must be the main ingredient. Today I decided that every day going forward I must play more, no matter where I am or who I’m with.

I don’t mean that I intend to goof off as much as possible in the hope that money falls from the sky and into my bank account. I want to roll up my sleeves and get to work building, creating, and playing. Walt Disney built Disneyland in a year, from empty blueprints to people walking into his first park. People told him countless times it couldn’t be done, until of course it was done. “It’s fun to do the impossible,” he famously said. I agree.

Pictured above: a young Walt Disney and his most prized creation. Ironically, when Walt first arrived in Hollywood he thought he was late to the animation party because Felix the Cat had gained so much fame. Little did he know that he wasn’t poised to develop characters as famous at Felix, but to set the new standards for the entire entertainment industry.

creativity, dreams, friendship, imagination

My Year of Hopefulness – Imagination as reality

Christa Avampato

“Reality leaves a lot to the imagination.” ~ John Lennon

I read this quote from John Lennon on my friend, Col’s, blog. She’s in the midst of some tough circumstances in her life, and her beautiful, honest writing about it is courageous to say the least. I highly recommend it for a daily dose of inspiration.

Reality sometimes gets a bad rap. “You’ve got to be realistic.” “Come back down to reality.” “Wait until reality sets in.” Awful. Any time someone tells me I have to do something, that I need to go back down somewhere, or something is going to invade and set in, I shutter. Why can’t our lives be like we imagine them to be? Who decided my reality for me, without my consultation?

Without imagination, we get a reality we don’t want. We could take Lennon’s sentiment one step further and say our reality is actually defined by our imagination. What kind of job do we really want to go to everyday? What kind of relationships and friendships do we want? Where do we want to live, what do we want to do, and who do we want to be? It’s all possible.

I’ve been having so many conversations with friends recently about the shape they’d like their lives to take. The one common question that is the root for them all is “do you really think I can do this? Can I really make this happen?” And my response is always the same. A) of course you can and B) no one else is going to make your life happen the way you want it to happen. It’s a personal commitment to go out there and get everything in life you want. Our imagination is the only limitation.

change, dreams, imagination, social change

My Year of Hopefulness – The World We Live In

Christa Avampato

“Every aspect of our lives is, in a sense, a vote for the kind of world we want to live in.” ~ Frances Moore Lappe

This is one of the best quotes I’ve read in a long time. Think about the hundreds, even thousands of small choices we make every day. Where to shop, how to commute to work, where to live, work, and play, how to treat strangers and co-workers and family members and friends, where and how we spend our time and with whom. Every one of those choices has an impact on the world, and therefore shapes it.

It’s easy to feel that we’re so small and that the problems in our world are so large that we couldn’t possibly make a difference with our daily choices. The truth is we make a difference with every step without even knowing it. We have so much ability to change our existence and the existence of those around us. We do it every day; we’re already impacting the world right now, so why not recognize that and make the choices that lead us toward making the world the kind of place we want to be?

creativity, education, failure, imagination, work

JK Rowling’s Commencement speech – The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination

Christa Avampato

I read JK Rowling’s commencement speech she gave at Harvard last month. She talks about one thing that new graduates are abundant with – imagination. And she talks about one thing that terrifies them – failure. 


What struck me most about her speech was her unfailing sense to be brutally honest. She grew up without money, and admits that while it is a scary proposition to live that way as an adult, growing up poor makes you fearless in a way that frees you to follow your imagination. She articulately put into words the way I have been living since I graduated from college 10 years ago. When you’ve gone to bed hungry, you’ve hit bottom. And you begin to build upward – there’s simply nothing else you can do. 

imagination, vision

We Need More Than Eyes to See

Christa Avampato

“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision.” –Helen Keller

Today my boss was telling me about someone he knows who is so color blind that the man’s wife needs to help him get dressed in the monring. His world is one of varying shades of gray, and nothing else. And I wonder that must be like to never live in color, to never even be able to understand it. I feel the same way about a lack of imagination, or an inability to see possibility alongside reality. There is something so spectacular completely missing from that picure, too. A lack of imagination is just another form of gray.

The amount of opportunity that exists in this world is staggering – the possibilities to shape our lives, our business, our physical environment, our relationships are endless. The sheer number of options is so great that it seems impossible that we would ever feel boundaries. And yet, boundaries are inescapable. We live in boxes: those we put ourselves in, those we put others in, those others put us in, and those other people put themselves in. We make our world small rather than opening it up. We concede to the level road of gray rather than making the climb in color.

Our vision and imagination are assets, and to not make full use of them is to waste the resources we are God-given. In a time when we have so much latitude to invent an original life, we owe it ourselves to live the greatest life we can envision.

The above photo can be found at http://inexorablyloved.files.wordpress.com/2007/03/sunny-eyes-012b.jpg