Category: learning

community, dreams, faith, grateful, gratitude, learning, love

My Year of Hopefulness – Ancient Wisdom

Christa Avampato

“The interdependency of Humankind, the relevance of relationship, the sacredness of creation is ancient, ancient wisdom.” ~ Rebecca Adamson

On the 17th floor of my apartment building, I feel a little closer to what’s miraculous and sacred in our world. In the past few weeks I have felt some energy driving me toward something new; I’ve felt my life taking on a different kind of meaning. Last night as I was getting my apartment ready for the movers to arrive, I had my music on, washing my new kitchen supplies and watching the sun sink down behind those lovely water towers. In one moment I felt intensely overcome with gratitude, as if my heart had opened up in a way that it never has before. There seemed to be so many opportunities laid out before me and all I had to do was select one, like taking a book from a shelf.

I began to tick through my personal relationships and all of the strength and hope and inspiration that I find in each of them. I started to recall kindnesses and favors and support that I’ve been offered, not just in the past few weeks but as far back as I can remember. I wanted to give the whole world a great big hug, followed by a great big thank you, for everything.

I wonder if this feeling, this sense of belonging has been available to me along and I just didn’t see it or didn’t know how to tap into it. I’m intrigued by the difference between looking and seeing, by how often we run around desperately seeking that which inevitably ends up being right in front of us. What if we just stopped, for a brief moment, and saw with a new kind of clarity the many blessings we have, recognized are tremendous capacity for change, for goodness, for creation.

We can construct a richer, happier, more meaningful existence, for ourselves and others, by tapping into the wisdom that is all around us, by recognizing that we are all always in this together. All of a sudden when we realize we aren’t alone, when we recognize that there are ancient, fundamental learnings that connect us across generations, across the globe, across time continuums, our feelings of loneliness and isolation are replaced by community and love. The impossible becomes not only possible, but imminent.

family, friendship, learning, love, relationships

My Year of Hopefulness – Super-powers

Christa Avampato

“It’s no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.” ~ Tom Stoppard, The Real Thing
Our capacity to love is so much bigger than we can imagine. So big that it’s something I was afraid of for a long time. My ability to let someone into my life in a loving, intimate way is the one thing I feel I do exceptionally well. Tonight I was reminded of a boyfriend from a long time ago, someone whom I loved very much for a long time, and in many ways continue to love albeit in a much different way than before. Of all the gifts he gave me over the course of our relationship, the one I treasure most is that he showed me what an enormous capacity for love I have.
Over this past week I have felt so loved and protected and cared for. So many people from so many areas of my life stepped up to help me carry the burden of this building fire. I lost my home. I lost a lot of my belongings. It is an almost unbearable thing to imagine. And I’m getting through it, smiling, shining, rising, because of the amazing people in my life. Without them, I’d be lost. And I learned that Tom Stoppard’s quote isn’t just a clever line in a play – it is an absolute truism. Anyone can smile and love and laugh through the good times; it takes something altogether different to love someone and be there for them when they are down and out. I’m truly blessed to have so many people who’ve loved me, and continue to love me, through this tough time.
Some of my clothes might be salvageable. Today the specialty dry cleaners came in to get every item of clothing I own so that it can be cleaned properly, if possible. That sent me out to do a bit of shopping. I hate clothes shopping. One of my least favorite things to do. I wound up with some underwear, two shirts, a pair of pajamas, and a pair of shoes. One of the t-shirts says in big bold letters “Give Love”. After this week, I had to buy it. For all the love I’ve been given, especially as of late, I wanted a reminder that I must continue to give love back, even more so than I have before.
I was thinking about super-powers tonight. When I was little, I wanted to be able to run at the speed of light. I guess I thought that if I could run that fast, I could outrun any bad times. Then earlier on tonight, I thought the power of a never-fail immune system would be the ultimate super-power. With that, I could live forever. And there is so much I want to do that this super-power seemed like a very good idea. Now though, as I write from the lobby of my new apartment building (I don’t yet have internet in my apartment), I know exactly what super-power I want. I want to be able to keep loving, no matter what. I want a heart so big that it is impossible to discourage it. I want to be able to keep loving, come what may. And the best thing is that this super-power isn’t just something I can only wish for. It’s something I can have, that we all can have, starting now.

change, dreams, learning

My Year of Hopefulness – To the Extreme

Christa Avampato

This morning I set out two big goals get my new apartment organized: get the kitchen and bathroom into livable condition. As I was straightening out my bathroom, I noticed that the contractors had only put one light bulb into the ceiling fixture. It was a little dim and as I used the mirror over the sink I wondered if adding another light bulb would really help since there is a half wall that separates the vanity from the bathtub. To solve this question I considered the extreme: if the sun magically appeared as my light fixture, would that make the whole bathroom brighter, half wall or not? Of course it would. Question answered. I just had to make sure I had a light bulb that was bright enough to make a difference.

This little trick of extremes is one I learned in my economics classes while at Darden. For example, let’s take supply and demand. What happens to price as supply increases? Well, what would happen if there was so much of a product that everyone could have 1,000,000 units? The product likely wouldn’t be worth much. Price would be very low. So we can conclude that as supply increases, price drops (unless of course demand is so high that it could never be satisfied. But I digress…)
This method can be used for any circumstance in our lives from changing a light bulb to developing a new product. When I was writing the paper to develop a pilot of my education program, I went to extremes. What if I only needed 10 eager students, a room in any public classroom, and I was willing to fund the entire thing myself so that the school and the kids wouldn’t have to pay a dime? Could I convince one public school in New York City to participate? Probably.
We can also use this method for more abstract ideas, and this perhaps the most powerful use for this technique. What are all the circumstances we would need to be completely happy? What are all the things we would need to accomplish in order to live a fulfilling life? What would we be willing to do (or give up) in order to make our wildest dream a reality? What if we only had a very short time remaining in this lifetime – what would we do right now?
The photo above can be found here.
education, learning, passion, science

My Year of Hopefulness – The Laws of (Minimizing) Distraction

Christa Avampato

Distraction is everywhere. I’ve recently learned about a company that does brain imaging using neurofeedback to help people get “in the zone”. Athletes, artists, politicians, CEOs, writers. Fascinating stuff. And before you know it I was off and running researching psychology programs to see if I should get another Masters degree.

There’s a key difference between new knowledge that informs our current work, or the work we’d really like to be doing, and developing a brand new passion. A brand new passion takes a lot of dedication, time, and very often, money. After business school, I wanted to really understand and participate in social media, and I really wanted to focus on the craft of writing. It’s taken me thousands of hours over the course of two years to get a handle on those things. Well worth the time and effort because those are passions of mine. They define me in a very significant way.

There are a million interesting things in this world to learn so it’s no wonder that there seem to be no end to distractions. Given my propensity for distraction, I’ve recently done two things that have been helpful ways to keep my focus:

1.) Take on only 1 or 2 goals, not 5 or 6, in any one area of life.
2.) Write those 1 or 2 goals down and post them up in place you will see regularly. I’ve found that the inside of the front door is a good one so that way I read it every time I come into and leave my apartment.

Limiting distraction and maintaining focus is difficult work. It requires constant vigilance. But it’s critical to happiness and meaningful accomplishment in our lives. I have a friend who is forever getting involved in more research projects, prolonging his doctoral studies. Another friend of mine has been collecting degrees of a wide variety and in the process making her feel more unhappy and lost. There’s a balance we have to strike between expanding our horizons and keeping our eye on the ball. In general, I find the golden rule is to expand my horizons only to the point that my interests are reinforcing and supporting one another. So far, so good.

change, fear, growth, learning, money

My Year of Hopefulness – The Lessons of Fear

Christa Avampato

Fear preoccupies us, consumes us. We can’t get it out of our minds. It follows us around, a shadow that’s always just a step or two behind. It impacts our actions. It’s distracts us from our responsibilities and keeps us from our dreams.

It’s amazing what happens when we let fear dissipate. A weight lifts from our shoulders. The world is a little brighter. There’s a little more hope in our hearts. Best of all, we are able to be more ourselves without fear. We can see all the possibilities in front of us.

So how do we let go of fear? Like most other ailments, an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. So here are some ideas on how to banish fear and also how to keep it at bay, along with an example of a fear I’ve worked through.

1.) Identify the fear. Give it a name.
I always thought I had a real fear of not having money. But then as my earning power increased, I found I was still afraid. It took me a while to realize that my real fear was not being able to provide for myself.

2.) With the true fear identified, consider what would happen if we had to handle the fear head-on tomorrow.
Once I realized that I was afraid of not being able to provide for myself, I thought about what I would do if I suddenly found myself living my fear. I made a list of friends and family who might be able to help me. As I worked through my list, I realized what an amazing support group I have.

And then I considered all the times in my life when I had been very close to living my fear. I thought about how I’d previously gotten myself out of tight budget situations. In college, I was always on the verge of being completely broke. I would get an extra job or pick up a few hours at my current jobs. I even participated in psychology experiments run by grad students at my university to get an extra $25 or $50. I was very good at cutting my expenses down to nearly $0 if need be. I got used to super-cheap food, and I went without every possible frill imaginable.

3.) Talk to others about the fear. Articulated fears are much less scary than those that swim around in our minds.
This one was hard for me. For the majority of my life I was really embarrassed about my financial situation. And then I met a bunch of people in college who also had a hard time making ends meet. They were more at ease about it than I was and they always had some odd job leads that were very helpful.

4.) Set-up a plan to keep the fear at bay, and remember that a fear can be a wonderful motivator to promote good habits.
Because I was worried about not being able to provide for myself, I made an action plan of how to get myself into a situation that made my fear irrelevant. I put myself onto an aggressive savings plan so that I’d have a cushion to fall back on if something went wrong. I also became an expert negotiator for my salary and for variable priced purchases like cars and rental apartments.

My fear about not being able to provide for myself also made me very empathic toward those who truly can’t provide for themselves. I knew that fear and sadness and embarrassment they felt. I’d felt it, too. And spending time with those people made me realize how extra ordinarily lucky I am, even at times when I didn’t have much at all.

I also realized that I wanted to have more control over my earnings. The roots of my entrepreneurial spirit were started in my desire to provide for myself, to take my future into my own hands. And while I wish that I hadn’t allowed fear to plague me for so long, in the end I learned to make the most of it while it was here. I lived through my fear many times over and the sky didn’t fall down. Maybe what I was afraid of was fear itself.

education, learning, psychology

My Year of Hopefulness – Potted Plants

Christa Avampato

There’s a lot to learn by listening. How many times have you gone to a meeting and people are talking over one another, jockeying for the spotlight, playing them game of “the loudest voice in the room wins”? In every one of those situations, there’s always at least one person who’s quietly observing, taking in the different streams of opinions, beliefs, and facts – being a ‘potted plant’ has its advantages.

I wish I could take credit for the idea of being a potted plant, but I can’t. I heard it a while back during an executive speaker series. A woman was talking about how she advanced through her company from being an admin to a director. She said whenever she had an opportunity to learn, even if it meant to learn something that had nothing to do with her current job, she made the time and just observed. Taking notes, taking in the facts, figures, and nuances of the conversation.
When you’re a potted plant in a meeting, you don’t have an angle and you aren’t trying to persuade someone to something. All you have to do is listen. No participation necessary. You don’t have to form a point-of-view. Just be present and consider the situation at hand from the point of view-of-all others.
This is also a great lesson in patience, empathy, and psychology. Watch for the interactions between the people in the room. What persuasion tactics work? What caused someone to lose interest or become more engaged? Did the structure of the meeting work? How did people present themselves and their beliefs, and were they effective.
The ability to be quiet and open-minded is an under-rated skill in today’s work place, yet it’s the people with that skill that will likely advanced faster within their organizations, or pick up on something that others miss and that becomes the seed for a new business idea. Information and insight is all around us, but it’s tough to recognize if we’re always pushing our own opinions out to the world. It takes patience, perseverance, and the ability to remain calm at the table, paying attention .

fame, learning, loss

My Year of Hopefulness – Lessons of Icons

Christa Avampato


Today the world lost two titans of our time, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Cultural icons, Fawcett and Jackson were young, 62 and 50 respectively. As I get older, I pay more attention to someone’s age when they pass away. This exercise forces me to consider how much time I may have left. This might sound morbid. I find it motivational.

Fawcett and Jackson were originals, risk takers, at once controversial and enormously intriguing. We couldn’t take our eyes off of them. While Michael Jackson has become a recluse after his 2005 controversy, Fawcett became more public in the last years of her life. Jackson was in the midst of planning a hopeful comeback. Fawcett had made her comeback; her documentary on her experience fighting cancer aired recently to wide acclaim and extensive viewership. There is even talk of a posthumous Emmy.

Fawcett and Jackson stand in stark contrast when we consider the last days of their lives. Michael Jackson was interested in claiming what was – he wanted to get back to his fame and the reputation he had before his 2005 fall from grace. Fawcett took a different road. While the pin up pictures and her world famous smile and hair might be the first images that spring to mind when we hear her name, she wanted to make sure that people saw other, less glamorous images of her. She wanted people to see, up close and personal, what it was like to fight cancer with every weapon possible. She was living in the now, and she wanted us to live it with her.

What they shared in a very deep, emotional way was their desire to live as full as life as possible. They went after everything that this world has to offer. Fearless, unflinching. And that’s a lesson we can all learn from.

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.
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.

career, curiosity, education, job, learning

Attaining breadth and depth

Christa Avampato

The conversation of breadth versus depth has always confused me. I have a hard time understanding why the two seem to be mutually exclusive of one another. Is it not possible to know a lot about a lot of things? A similar debate rages on about being a generalist versus a specialist. Again, why can’t we be both? 


There is a widely-held, and incorrect, assumption that we as people do not have the time nor the capacity to be very good at many things. I constantly hear statements like “if you want to hone your craft, you really need to make that your singular focus.” Nonsense. If we are curious and passionate learners, open to new experiences, and diligent in our studies (even long after our formal education is over), then it is entirely possible to be very good in many different areas. 

The paradigm is shifting. In the work world we are being asked to do more with less. And if that is to be expected and accepted, then we must also give up these debates of generalist versus specialist, breadth versus depth. We will have to develop high level skills in a number of areas in order to perform well in the new economy that will emerge after this current downturn. The idea of the “T” is no longer valid (knowing a little about a lot, and a lot about a little.) We will have to get to work on building a rectangle (knowing a lot about a lot, period.) 

Look at historical figures like Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson and Albert Einstein. They were considered “Renaissance characters” of their times. They had a variety of interests and far-ranging expertise. Really, they were just life-long students who didn’t accept the adage that they could only excel in a single field. They had the drive to let their curiosity be their guide, and we would do well to follow their lead – now more than ever.