Category: love

business, dreams, love

Leap: How to Love Your Business Well

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

“Love doesn’t just sit there, like a stone, it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new.” ~ Ursula K. Le Guin, The Lathe of Heaven

It’s true for affairs of the heart and it’s true for how you build a business, which is just another form of an affair of the heart: love matters.

Love counts as much as any amount of financial planning, marketing, and content. If we don’t love it, care about how it all goes, and hold the people we help through our business in the highest regard, everything else falls flat.

And loving the initial idea, the burst of newness, is one thing. It’s easy. Everyone is capable of it. But can we love our business, our mission, in the long run? Through the tough times? Through the dark nights, and occasionally darker days? Can we dig deep, remake, reshape, renew, and fall in love again with our business every single day?

The answer has to be yes to every one of these questions if our ideas are to be sustainable and valuable, for us and the world. Otherwise, we’re just wasting our time, and time is not a resource we can afford to waste. All we get is today. Love it and make it count!

This post is also available as a podcast here.

courage, creativity, love

Beginning: We Need Imperfections

Christa Avampato

“There is a crack in everything. That’s how the light gets in.” ~ Leonard Cohen, poet, novelist, and singer-songwriter

We don’t start a business because our plan isn’t perfect. We don’t invite people over to our homes because our decorating isn’t quite done. We shelter our writing, canvas, or song because it isn’t just right. An addiction to perfection is what keeps us from sharing and asks that we hold ourselves to an impossible standard. We will never be perfect and nothing we make or do or witness will ever be perfect. Perfection is unnatural.

Whenever I feel the little monster of perfection hopping up on my shoulder, tugging at my hear, and whispering counterproductive, sour nothings into my ear, I remind myself of Leonard Cohen’s beautiful sentiment. We needs these cracks and flaws much more than we realize.

So start that business on the side, have people over to your home, and share your art with others at every step of the way in its creation. We are all in the process of becoming – it’s a very human thing to do. In becoming, there is always something just a bit out-of-place and we must learn to love each other, and ourselves, for those glaring, exquisite imperfections.

dogs, love

Beginning: Happy 2nd Birthday to My Pup, Phineas

Christa Avampato
The birthday boy lounging on a lazy weekend morning

Today is Phineas’s designated 2nd birthday (he was roughly a year when I got him) and our anniversary. As this day approached, it was hard to believe that a year has gone by since I adopted Phineas from the Humane Society and then I reflected on all that’s happened in the past year. Last Fall, I spent a lot of time getting him used to my schedule and his new city neighborhood; he was found abandoned in the woods so city sights and sounds were all new for him. We wrestled through separation anxiety; Click here for that collection of posts and the remedies we came up with thanks to our incredible trainer and friend, Gregg. And I got used to rejiggering my schedule and budget to take care of my new furry pal.

I thought about developing some variation of a top 10 list of the things Phin has taught me this year though that idea seemed overdone and truly there is just one huge lesson that Phineas has taught me that makes all of the countless others pale in comparison – Love Heals.

I’ve often heard it said that time heals all wounds, but I actually think love is a more complete and efficient healer than time. Time is a finite gift; the amount of love we can take in and give away is infinite. The only limit love knows is our desire to give and receive. Phineas can never get enough and can never give enough. He’s a wonderful role model of courage and bravery, for believing that life can always get better no matter how far down in the doldrums we are. Love is what helps us make that journey.

A year ago, he was starving and lonely, abandoned in the woods. Today, he sleeps in a warm, down-filled bed in a (cozy) penthouse apartment on the upper west side of Manhattan, has a bottomless bowl of organic food, and laps up buckets of overflowing love that are showered on him every day. He let go of his past and moved on so that he could appreciate all the love available to him in his new life.

We should all be as appreciative as he is of the gift of another day. And we can be. All we have to do is give love, receive love, and revel in the exchange. Happy birthday, Phin!

happiness, loss, love, relationships, yoga

Beginning: Healing By Chance – A Story of Feeling and Transcending Anger

Christa Avampato

“Forgiveness does not change the past, but it does enlarge the future.” ~ Paul Boese

I had an odd encounter on Friday that I wasn’t expecting, not at that moment, not ever. I was sitting on the steps of the main New York Post Office at 31st Street reading a magazine as I waited for my friend Jeff’s improv show to start that was playing around the corner. It was a nice night outside and I had just a few minutes to spend before heading over to the theatre.

A stranger I knew
A man stopped down on the sidewalk and stared at me. It was the guy I was dating when my apartment building fire happened almost two years ago. He was a gem in the immediate aftermath of the incident and showed is terribly ugly true colors not long after. His behavior and words were really hurtful; he kicked me when I was already down and out. We stopped seeing each other shortly after the fire, and I chose to completely cut off any contact with him. I was really, really angry with him and I had bigger issues to contend with. The last thing I needed in my life was someone like him, in any capacity.

He climbed the steps and asked if he could sit next to me, and then made a wise crack inquiring about whether or not my current apartment had caught fire, too. A very insensitive, cruel comment, especially given all of the trauma that unraveled in the months immediately following the fire. Sadly, I wasn’t surprised. Then he began his barrage of personal questions about my life, some I answered and some I left intentionally vague. I actually didn’t ask him a single question about his life because I didn’t really care what the answers were. I wasn’t happy to see him and I wasn’t unhappy to see him. I didn’t feel numb; I just didn’t feel anything. Not about him and not about us. All that anger was gone. I was shocked at how calm I felt. The conversation was only a few minutes long because I had to leave to go see Jeff’s show. We said good-bye – he went his way and I went mine – and I never looked back.

Automatic healing
Just prior to this chance encounter, I was talking to Brian about what I hoped to be able to give veterans and their families who I work with through Compass Yoga. Brian mentioned that I may want to focus on helping them heal to the point that they don’t even have to put themselves through the motions of yoga. The calm they gain through the practice with me would be with them always so that the stress response never even kicks in unless they truly need it to get themselves out of true danger. I wasn’t sure how this would work. though I told Brian I’d think about that idea.

After my brief encounter on the post office steps, I completely understood what Brian was talking about with the veterans and their families. If I had this encounter a year ago, it’s likely that I would have felt nervous, that I would have felt the need to meet his snarky comment about my fire with a snarky retort. Instead, I just told him a few details of my life in response to his questions. I was polite and detached, with no feeling about ever hearing from him or seeing him again. I was so angry with him for a long time, and I realized in this instant that I had found my way to the other side of anger as a much better person. A friend of mine once said, “You really know it’s over when you have nothing left to say.” True statement. I had moved on, completely.

The sweetness of healing found
As I walked toward the theatre to watch Jeff’s show, I thought about our immense capacity for healing every wound, no matter how deep, no matter how long it’s been with us. I found a way to feel anger and then transcend it in a powerful way. In the past year I’ve spent so much time caring for myself and building a life I truly love. It happened so gradually and with so much hard work that I’ve never taken the time to really reflect on just how much healing I’ve done, just how different I am. “You’ve come a long way, baby,” I thought to myself. “A long way. And it feels so good.”

creative process, creativity, inspiration, love, New York City, nostalgia

Beginning: Building a Space from Love – Heidi’s House by the Side of the Road

Christa Avampato

Front view of Heidi's
“Here are your waters and your watering place. Drink and be whole again beyond confusion.” ~ Robert Frost, seen on the chalk board over the bar at Heidi’s House by the Side of the Road

I went to Heidi’s House by the Side of the Road last week with a small group of friends. It’s not an actual house but an adorable niche that serves tremendous wine and some of the most delicious food I’ve had in a long time. Every nook and cranny of Heidi’s in jam-packed with love, care, and concern. The attention to detail is extraordinary. Heidi herself made sure of it.

Even the name has a heart-felt meaning. In the bathroom there is a needle point that states, “Let me live in my house by the side of the road and be a friend to a man.” It’s a quote by Sam Walter Foss. I asked Heidi why that quote means so much to her that she’d name her business after it. She told me, “It’s the quote on my father’s grave stone.” Gulp. I got goosebumps.

It got me thinking about how important it is to put love into our endeavors, how much of a difference that makes to the people who get to share in your creation. We taste love in food, we hear it in music, and we see it in art. It has this unmistakable and yet unexplainable quality that is universal.

Take a spin over to Heidi’s and see what I mean. Then get cracking on your own creation of love, and let others share in it the way Heidi does.

gratitude, love, mother

Beginning: Honoring My Mom Through The American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life

Christa Avampato

I made a donation to Reay for Life in honor of my mom this Mother's Day
Happy Mother’s Day to all the moms of the world, those tireless champions of ours who believe we can and will do anything we set our hearts and minds to. This Mother’s Day instead of sending my mom flowers and gifts, I donated to her favorite charity on her behalf. She asked me to donate to the American Cancer Society’s Relay for Life. For the past several years she has done the Survivor’s Lap on her friend, Leslie’s, team. Now that she has retired and moved away, she’ll be missing the event.

My donation gave Mom a way to stay connected and support the cause. She is a cancer survivor and a number of our family members and family friends have battled the disease. It’s become so common in our society now that all of us know someone touched by it. Relay for Life gives us a way to collectively fight back – a powerful lesson my mom has taught me repeated throughout my life. There is strength in mothers, strength in being part of a movement.

Yesterday The Nate Berkus Show featured a number of stories about viewer’s moms. While the gifts and surprises that the featured moms received were incredibly generous, the most touching part of the show involved the the children of these moms explaining why their moms were so important to them. It reminded me of how much words can mean when backed by heart and soul.

This Mother’s Day I hope you’ll pick up the phone or take pen to paper and let your Mom know how much her care and support means. Love and gratitude can never be over-communicated.

love, relationships

Beginning: How I Got Over a Fear of Loving

Christa Avampato

“Your relationship needs to be a source of joy. Don’t forget that.” ~ Brian

At 35, I finally feel ready to begin a lifelong relationship. This was a long road – about a decade longer than I imagined it would be. For a while I thought that I might just date forever because it seemed like it would be much more fun than all the ways that a bigger commitment could go wrong. I’ve seen too many friends and family members have their hearts ripped apart my a romantic commitment gone wrong. It was hard enough to watch these relationships end as an outsider to the situation. I wasn’t sure I could handle it on my own. Despite my sometimes-too-tough exterior, there’s a fairly intense fear of heartbreak and disappointment locked up inside me.

I talked to Brian about this last week about my recent dating experiences. I’ve gotten quite good at figuring out very quickly if there’s real potential with a guy I’m dating. Brian had me make up a list of my nonnegotiables in an effort to build up my perception skills in dating. That’s been working well, but I just can’t believe how many frogs there are! And then he said something I had forgotten in all the hustle and bustle of dating. Meeting the right person and being with him is a source of joy. I was so focused on my list that I forgot to visualize what it will be like to be with that right guy. Focusing on the work of dating, I lost the picture of what it’s like to be with the right person.

With the idea of joy, something strange happened. The fear I felt about falling in love again just melted. The possibility of heartbreak and disappointment didn’t seem so scary anymore when I concentrated on making the choices in my life that bring more joy. Sometimes that means moving toward something or someone and sometimes that means moving away. It’s all just a pursuit of what creates the most joy. And yes sometimes those choices are tough and are cause for compromise or change, but in the end they all serve the same purpose. We’re just trying to make our days as meaningful as they can be.

animals, dogs, love

Beginning: What Animals Teach Us About Love

Christa Avampato

Phineas with the cherry blossoms in Central Park
“It’s no trick loving somebody at their best. Love is loving them at their worst.” ~ Tom Stoppard

Phineas and I had our first fight. Last week he had one day when he didn’t want to go outside, didn’t want to go back inside once we finally got to our walk, didn’t want to go back into our apartment, and then didn’t want me to leave for work. He howled and howled when I left. And not his “I’m sad; don’t leave me” cry” but his “I am so mad at you for leaving me” cry. This was completely unlike Phin. He’s never done that before. the few days prior he did seem to be having some nightmares, and would whimper a little bit in the middle of the night. I should also mention that this same morning both the elevators in my building were clogged due to a movie filming in our building (we live on the 17th floor!), and Phin could hear every single clang of the movie equipment from our apartment. (If they’re going to inconvenience us, the least the producers could do is put us in the movie.) Oy! What a Monday!

I tried everything I could to calm Phin down and nothing, absolutely nothing worked, so I ended up just having to leave with him angry at me. And I was mad at him, too. A grown 35 year old woman angry at a 15 pound, 18 month old dachshund. Now looking back on it, my anger was pretty hilarious. How was Phineas supposed to understand that a movie was filming and he would just have to contend with the noise? At the time it was awful.

In my mind I know Phin was just fine. He had his food and water, his treats, his nice warm bed as well as my nice warm bed if he wanted it. The TV was on and his dog walker was scheduled to take him out later in the afternoon. Still, my heart was sick at work. So sick that I asked the dog walker to send me a text after their walk to let me know if he seemed okay. Chalk it up to still being a beginning full-time dog owner. How do parents manage to their crying children at daycare? A howling dachshund is about all I can manage.

I hate to say this but a small part of my dreaded going home that night. What if Phineas gave me the silent treatment? Maybe I’m a terrible dog parent. What if he didn’t have just a bad morning but this was a turning point in his personality?

Phineas’s walk with the dog walker went well and when I got home he was overjoyed to see me, just like always. We went for a walk, had some dinner, and then he snuggled up next to me on the couch and promptly put himself to bed early. He was just fine. We were just fine. It was just an off morning and nothing more.

Phineas and I learned a valuable thing about love and co-habitation. Eventually, we have to go home and sort out our differences with the beings whom we love. We have to keep showing up. The love and companionship trump any difficulties that may surface along the way. When you love someone, you love regardless of their mood. And yes you’ll get mad and they’ll get mad, but it can and should be forgiven. Tom Stoppard was right – real love means loving them just as they are, Monday morning or not.

love

Beginning: A Day of Many Valentines and 5 Ways to Find More Romantic Love in 2011

Christa Avampato

“To love and be loved is to feel the sun from both sides.” ~ David Viscott, How to Live with Another Person, 1974

If you have a valentine to snuggle up to today then it’s possible that you see February 14th as a day of great excitement. Maybe a romantic dinner, flowers, chocolates, cards. Being in love is one of the very best things that our human existence has to offer.

If you don’t have a valentine in the traditional sense of the word then February 14th may be a day when you curl up on your couch to watch Sleepless in Seattle and hope that next year will be different, chocolates in hand. You might make a promise to yourself that in the next year you will get out there and mingle some more, increasing your likelihood of meeting the right one by next Valentine’s Day.

Or maybe you’re someone who doesn’t even equate February 14th with cupid’s arrow. You’re someone who sees every day as a day when love should be valued. And isn’t this a holiday that Hallmark invented to sell more cards? Your friends, family members, and your pet are your valentines, today and every day.

I fall somewhere in between those latter two groups – someone who would love to be in a committed relationship (after a long time of thinking that a lifetime of first dates and new loves was more fun) and someone who really sees February 14th as a reminder that love is all around us, in a multitude of forms that all deserve to be celebrated. (And for the record, I love Sleepless in Seattle and chocolates.)

But let’s assume that you’re reading this post because you do want to find more romantic love in 2011. How is an adventure-loving single in New York City to meet an equally adventurous single who’s looking for the same? Here are my 4 top ideas for more romantic love in 2011:

1.) If you like the idea of online dating but hate the trolling through profiles a la Match.com and eHarmony, check out Howaboutwe.com. Howaboutwe is a dating site that introduces you to profiles of singles based upon the types of dates they want to go on. You get a feel for the person’s personality as well as their interests, perhaps a better indicator of whether or not they’re a match for you rather than simply using the standard issue headshot and “witty” descriptions of themselves.

2.) Get out there and live. And I don’t just mean taking up residence at your local pub. To find someone who has similar interests and passions, chance are you have a better chance of meeting that person if you are out there participating in those interests. Meetup.com, classes, sports team, speakers, conferences, book readings, art exhibits. In New York City there is no excuse for boredom. At every moment there is something cool happening. Pick your interests, open up your Google search window, and away you go!

3.) Is speed dating your thing? A few years ago this was a very popular trend. I think it’s died down as of late but there is a company, SpeedNY, that I recently found thanks to Bloomspot.com that takes a British twist on speed dating. Fun, classy, and with free makeovers to boot, it’s worth a go just to get yourself out there and practice your flirting.

4.) Tell everyone you know that you’re looking. It’s true for a job search and it’s true for a mate search, too. You never know where an introduction may lead, and if someone else matches you, they have some seal of approval by someone who knows you well. Sometimes it helps to hand our romantic fate to someone else, and just take up the adventure of a blind date.

5.) Don’t give up, unless you really want to. I have a lot of friends who are so frustrated with dating that they’ve just thrown in the towel. If you really are happy alone, then all the power to you. I think that’s awesome that you are clear on that and have shrugged off the pressure to be coupled off. Some of the happiest people I know are in fact people who consciously decided that a romantic partner is not something that’s very high on their priority list. But here’s the thing – that was a willful decision. They didn’t stop looking because they were annoyed or depressed by the search. They gave up because they didn’t want the end goal of a romantic partner. If you really want a romantic partner, then keep looking. There will times of discouragement. All journeys have that, no matter where they’re heading. Life’s a treasure hunt, and so is the quest for love. It’s a game so enjoy yourself.

What are your top suggestions for how to find more love in 2011? And if you do have a valentine, just how did you meet? Share the love story!

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

animals, dogs, love

Beginning: Loving an Animal

Christa Avampato

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” ~ Anatole France

I’m a new dog owner. I adopted Phin almost 4 months ago and he is the first pup I’ve had whom I’m solely responsible for. By some great good fortune, I have a team of dog whisperers. My brother-in-law, Kyle, my friends Trish, Janet, Amanda, Col, Courtney, Kerry, Blair, and Ashley (who thankfully have talked me down off the ledge several times as I puzzle my way through how to best care for my favorite furry friend.) And my newest animal-loving friend – Gregg.

I met Gregg and his lovely wife, Linda, at the semi-annual dachshund festival held each Fall and Spring at Washington Square Park. Gregg was easy to pick out because he proudly wore a Godfather themed t-shirt that very simply said, “The Dogfather”, and that he is. He and Linda are the owners of two amazing full-sized dachshunds, both therapy dogs. Gregg is a professional dog trainer and has provided me with an enormous amount of advice and counsel, and has cheered Phin and I on as we helped transition Phin from a rescue to part of the pack. I highly, highly recommend Gregg if you need a trainer.

Right around Christmas Gregg sent me an incredible slide show with a simple note that said “This is why I thank God that I’m able to do what I do…” It’s a collection of fantastic dog photos that show just how much humor and love is wrapped up in these remarkable beings. And it makes me burst with happiness to know that one of those lovely souls found his way to my home.

Click here to view the slide show.

I snapped the photo of Phin above over the Christmas holiday. Deep in thought perched high on the couch.

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