Category: relationships

friendship, Life, love, relationships, stress, work, youth

Beautiful: How to Survive a Quarter Life Crisis

Christa Avampato

I am a trendsetter – I was having a quarter life crisis long before it was in fashion. 25 year olds, I hear you. I know exactly how it feels to be sitting at your desk that you busted your ass to get by working hard in school and plunging yourself deep into student loan debt, and be haunted by the thought, “Is this it?” (For the record, there are plenty of people of all ages in companies large and small who are thinking the exact same thing and they don’t have any answers wiser than yours.)

Now that you’re 3 years out of college, you may have officially established a fair amount of distance from a friend circle that is literally next door. People get busy. They change. And sometimes we don’t change with them. This is an awful truth about aging of any degree. Times change us.

Maybe you’re in a great relationship, a bad relationship, or no relationship at all. Unfortunately, we’re bombarded in our society by images of happy couples that have no problems and are eternally in love, expect of course in all of the tabloids that we can’t get away from that show love is miserable for everyone. Either way, we’re getting really ugly messages about love and they’re causing us to have unrealistic and harmful expectations, both good and bad, of ourselves and others. In 37 years, this is what I’ve learned about love: we can only expect to get what we give freely.

Add all of this up – the job, the friends, the relationship – and who wouldn’t have a quarter life crisis?

I’ve got one magic bullet for you and you’re not going to like it but it got me through my quarter life crisis (and my 1/3 life crisis, for that matter) and I hope it helps you, too. Stop everything. Put aside your work, friends, relationships, family, bills, responsibilities, worries, disappointments, and fears for 5 minutes every day. Close your eyes, one hand on the heart, one hand on the belly. Breathe so loud in and out through your nose that you drown out the noise of your brain. Get lost in your breath and the absolute f’ing miracle that is you.  

Your parents, friends, teachers, the media, and even our President have told you can do anything you want to do. They told you that you can be anything you want to be. And you can, but here’s the part they didn’t tell you – no one is going to make it happen for you. You have to make it happen for you. Don’t bet on someone else to help you get the life you want. Betting on yourself is a much better bet. You can create it with your own two hands. And that process begins by slowing down.

I know this is not the answer you wanted. It’s certainly not the answer I wanted because it was going to take too long, be too hard, and no one seemed to be willing to guarantee results for me. But I tried everything else, and I mean EVERYTHING else, and it didn’t work. Peace is a daily process; we must constantly tend to it and the only thing that makes that possible is to go in, slow down, and listen to our breath and the beat of our hearts. It’s still the only thing that works for me even today, many years post quarter life.

From one quarter life crisis survivor to another, just try it. Try it for a week. See how it feels. And if you’ve got questions, contact me. Seriously. I want to hear from you and I want to help.

change, friendship, home, moving, relationships, social media, social network

Leap: Social Media Provides Us With Room To Move

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

As I think more about my potential move to a new city in the coming year, I realize how much freedom social media provides. I’m able to connect with friends and friends of friends to ask questions about potential new homes. And when I do make a decision of where to move, I don’t need to feel like I’m leaving behind my friends in NYC. I won’t see them as often in person but we will still be close with the lines of social networks drawn between us. I also remember that a number of people whom I consider good friends are people I know through this blog and other channels. I talk to many of them daily in one way or another.

This ability to make and keep connections over long distances makes moving easier than it’s ever been before. Moving to a new city doesn’t need to feel isolating or lonely, even while we are in the process of reestablishing our physical social lives. These reflections make a move from New York a less scary proposition, an exciting new possibility, and they open the way for options that I never would have considered before. As the world gets smaller, individual opportunities expand.

business, entrepreneurship, relationships, yoga

Leap: Business Lessons from an Adaptive Yoga Program for People with Cerebral Palsy

Christa Avampato

Yesterday a lovely and important email showed up in my inbox out of the blue. The United Cerebral Palsy of New York City chapter found the Compass Yoga website through our work with the New York Public Library and on Monday I am meeting with them to discuss the possibility of creating an adaptive yoga program for their constituents. I am passionate about serving differently-abled people and have been talking about this passion with all of you for years.

I tell you this new little tidbit for a variety of reasons that have absolutely nothing to do with this exciting and wonderful opportunity and everything to do with you as you build your own brand and business. Within this story are a number of incredibly valuable lessons for all of us.

1.) Figure out who you want to serve. I cannot stress this enough – you cannot and should not be all things to all people. There is a well-reasoned tendency for you to try. You don’t to miss an opportunity, particularly if it is for a worthy cause. People ask for your help. You’re good and kind person, and you have a whole lot of wonderful gifts to give. Now put all of that aside. Decide what you want your specific contribution to humanity to be. It’s not written in stone. You can change your mind down the road if you need to / want to. What you can’t do is run in every direction. Choose and go for it!

2.) With your direction chosen, put it out into the world. Write about it. Talk about it. Take pictures and shoot video about it. Tweet, FB, Pin it, Google+ it. Whatever it takes. You made choices and you’re ready to get out there and give the world your best version of you. Tell all of us that you’ve arrived – we want to know. And keep telling your story, over and over again to anyone and everyone.

3.) Straddle the line between impatient and patient. Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither is your reputation. However, you can’t rest on those lovely laurels of yours either. You’re reputation is a series of actions over a long period of time. You are literally swimming in opportunity. Pick up the bits and pieces that interest you, roll up your sleeves, and give them a whirl. You’ll see your small steps turn into big leaps if you stay focused and consistent.

Okay – stop reading and start doing. The people you are meant to serve are out there waiting for you. Go meet them.

dating, friendship, relationships

Leap: We Matter in the Lives of Others

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“We don’t set out to save the world; we set out to wonder how other people are doing and to reflect on how our actions affect other people’s hearts.” ~ Pema Chodron

Some people have an incredible ability to be one person and pretend to be another.

In an unusual twist for me this weekend, I learned this lesson the hard way and a relationship that has been a part of my life in a variety of forms for many years crumbled away in a matter of minutes. It’s hard to get me down but these kinds of turns really set me spinning. I always expect people to be who they are, and it still surprises me when they aren’t. I let myself have a day to feel that sadness and loss for what it is – terrible.

I woke up this morning with a vivid realization – we have an enormous responsibility to one another because our actions have such a profound effect on the lives of those around us. Kindness is such an under-rated quality and yet, in the end, it’s the one that really matters because it can change the course of someone’s life.

Let’s be good to each other. Let’s be exactly who are because other people are counting on us.

choices, decision-making, relationships

Beginning: What We Have, Hold, and Share

Christa Avampato

I recently had a conversation with a mentor who wanted to give me some food for thought. As someone who often wears my heart on my sleeve and my feelings on my face, she told me about some advice that her mother gave her a long time ago: “No one ever said you had to show all 52 cards.” This stunned me.

For the past couple of years I’ve been doing a lot of work on getting to my true nature and at every turn letting my authenticity have the reigns. In this time, I’d never realized that I could still be authentic and not give away the farm. Subconsciously, I’d equated the two.

Putting on my writer’s hat, this idea makes a lot of sense. It would be possible in one paragraph to tell a reader the entire plot of a book though if we gave away the ending up front, the reader would miss all of those wonderful nuggets that are embedded in the middle of the story. They’d know the final destination, but they wouldn’t have the benefit of the lessons learned along the way.

Similarly, if someone sat us down the moment we were born and said, “Look kid, this is how it’s going to play out for you,” we’d miss out on the act of living and all of the guess-work and experimentation that it involves. When we meet a new person, part of the fun of getting to know him is learning about his life one story, one moment, at a time. The mystery is fun.

There is so much joy in not knowing, wondering, hypothesizing, guessing, rethinking, and tinkering. If we just throw everything out on the table all at once, we lose the power of context, surprise, and delight. When you’re starting new, it’s worthwhile to consider letting your authenticity seep out a bit a time. Let that new fact about you, your history, and your abilities be fully appreciated morsel by morsel. A bit of suspense and intrigue has made many a work of art all the more interesting to experience. And remember, you’re a work of art, too.

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.”

family, forgiveness, relationships

Beginning: A Lesson From My Dad – The Only Advice You Can Really Take Is Your Own

Christa Avampato

In the last few months, I’ve been thinking about my father a lot. I had a very poor relationship with him and he passed away in a very unfortunate manner before I ever had the chance to build a better one with him. That was 19 years ago.

All this time later, I am still trying to make sense of it all – his own path and how it has influenced mine. The pieces are starting to come together as I make my way forward with Compass Yoga, but we have a long way to go and because he’s no longer here, I am left to figure it out on my own. Someday when it makes sense in my own mind I’ll tell you about it – why our short and sad story unfolded the way that it did and all the good that came from the hard lessons I learned along the way. Until then, I have just one lesson he taught me that plays over and over again in my mind: the only advice you can really take is your own.

People are opinionated by nature, some of us voice our opinions louder and more clearly than others. We all have the ability to judge, and we exercise that ability often. Whenever you tell someone about an idea you have or the plans you’re making, there is bound to be someone who tells you that it just isn’t possible to do what you want. And to that, my father would certainly answer those skeptics with, “I know better than you because I’m the one who’s living my life.” For a long time, I thought this was a very pompous point-of-view. Now as an adult it makes so much sense to me. Our greatest wisdom comes from within and so we are our own best coach.

Certainly we can and should listen to the advice of others, whether we want it or not, if for no other reason than the voices of the skeptics will actually help us to refine our own opinions. What my father would caution us against is allowing someone’s opinion about our choices to become our truths. The only truth you can live authentically is your own. It comes from your heart and your gut. It is prajna, that knowing beyond knowing. It can’t be articulated or justified through logic, only felt. It is calm, collected, and without end. In Sanskrit we pay tribute to it with the mantra Om Tat Sat – all that is the truth. We access it by getting quiet, and allowing it to have its wise and thoughtful say.

So on this Father’s Day, I’m not missing my father but rather working on feeling grateful for what he had to teach me for the short time I knew him. All these years later, we are still a work in progress, he and I, and slowly I am beginning to find the great value that lies hidden even within our toughest experiences. I’m working on making them mean something, and not just for me, but for the world, too.

art, change, charity, nonprofit, photographs, poverty, relationships, social change, society

Beginning: Hear the Hungry Benefit with Featured Artist J.T. Liss Raises Funds to Provide A Supportive Community for New York City’s Homeless

Christa Avampato

On Monday night I attended a fundraiser at Webster Hall for a start-up nonprofit called Hear the Hungry. The group’s mission is to bring “food, companionship, and other basic necessities to the homeless in New York and L.A.” I am especially moved by their holistic mission because of a recent experience I had with the homeless in my own neighborhood while I was taking a walk with my pup, Phineas. Yes, we need food, but we also need a compassionate ear to hear us and a generous heart to sit with us for a while. Hear the Hungry is providing this unique and badly needed service in our city, for a population that is largely stepped over, ignored, or just plain invisible to too many of us.

Events like this are powerful reminders of how much of an impact we can have at every turn if only we recognize our own power in every exchange we have. The day after the event I walked through my usual activities much more conscious of my interactions with others, particularly those who I didn’t know. It made me think about how important it is to be present with others, to give them our full attention, and to recognize their unique value.

Two Ways You Can Help:

Hear the Hungry
In its one year, Hear the Hungry has changed the lives of the homeless through compassion, trust, and the firm belief that all people deserve the opportunity to belong to a supportive and loving community. If you’d like to learn more about them and get involved in their mission, find them on Twitter, Facebook, and at their blog.

Photography For Social Change
Through his initiative Photography for Social Change, photographer J.T. Liss creates stunning, poignant images with the goals of “inspiring advocacy, helping others in need, and allowing art to spread positivity.” 25% of the proceeds from all photos sold will go to unique nonprofit organizations that are striving to help others in need. Current partner organizations include Hear The Hungry (NYC), Hug It Forward (CA), and Saint Joseph Music Program (NYC).

For more information on J.T. and Photography for Social Change, please visit and “Like” his Facebook Page.

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.

care, community, relationships, religion

Beginning: Why and How to Start Understanding the Muslim World

Christa Avampato

From http://truereligiondebate.wordpress.com
Last week I had the great good fortune to see the documentary Koran by Heart at the Tribeca Film Festival. The film tracks the lives of several young people who are contestants in “the world’s preeminent Koran recitation competition in Cairo, where Muslim children come from across the globe to perform in front of a panel of prominent judges. Contestants as young as 7 years old are ranked against kids more than twice their age for both their comprehensive memorization of the 600-page text as well as their improvised melodies.” It is a stunning feat to witness. There is one more screening today at the festival – details here.

The film got me thinking about how little I know about the Muslim world, despite my efforts to consume news until my brain can’t hold any more information. It’s so complex with so many layers. Even classifying it as “the Muslim World” is a disservice. The diversity among Muslims is so vast and spans across so many cultures, languages, nations, and factions. I was reminded of Dr. Lu’s saying that “you can’t understand the Eastern world with a Western mind.” The same is true of understanding Islam. It requires us to shrug off our biases and prejudices, and see the religion and its believers in their own light.

Why? Can’t we pretend that our heads of state will take care of this issue? Can’t we go on just living our U.S. focused lives without delving in to this other complicated part of the world that seems incomprehensible to us at first blush? Sure. You could absolutely pretend it’s not there. However, the world of Islam is increasingly becoming tied to our own national security, indeed our global security as a whole. There are as many as 7 million Muslims living in the U.S., and the number is growing – particularly in urban areas. 1.2 billion people around the world practice Islam. That’s a big, big number.

They are a voice in our society and that voice deserves recognition and understanding, just like yours and just like mine. Additionally, the religion at its core is a beautiful way of living. Too often we associate it with extremism and terrorism. It’s so unfortunate. At its heart, it prescribes a peaceful, harmonious existence and has much to teach us whether we follow its belief or not. Understanding the perspective of another always, always helps create a better world, and isn’t that what we’re all after?

But how? How does a well-intentioned, curious, Western mind begin to understand Islam and its place in the world? I wondered, too, and put this list of resources together in the hopes that it may begin to tear down the wall that for too long has existed between us. I hope you find these resources helpful.

4 Resources to Begin Learning About Islam
1.) Leap of Faith by Queen Noor of Jordan

2.) A 5 minute video that introduces Islam to non-Muslims

3.) Website dedicated to introducing the beliefs of Islam to non-Muslims

4.) The book Introduction to Islam by Frederick Mathewson Denny