Category: success

dreams, environment, nonprofit, success

My Year of Hopefulness – Freedom to Think Bigger

Christa Avampato

“If your life’s work can be accomplished in your lifetime, then you aren’t thinking big enough.”
~ Wes Jackson

My errands today took longer to accomplish than I had planned. By the time I finished them all, without having had coffee, breakfast, or lunch, I was ready to eat just about anything edible that came into my line of vision. I popped in to Chipotle, wolfed down my burrito bowl, and saw on my drink cup that the restaurant is running a multi-part series entitled “People We’re Pleased to Know”. Part 5 features Wes Jackson, the founder and President of The Land Institute and a leader in the sustainable agriculture movement.

Wes’s quote above lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. I’ve been thinking a lot about accomplishment lately. In my writing, at work, with my multiple side projects that I’ve been working on. Secretly I’ve been a little frustrated with myself – why are these things taking so long? Why am I not checking them off the list in rapid succession? His quote reminded me that ideas with passion and heart take time to develop and even more time to execute. The bigger the dream, the longer the time horizon.

This isn’t to say that there aren’t smaller dreams embedded into the larger vision we have for our lives. There are triumphs, and inevitably defeats, along the way that contribute to a lifetime of work. His life’s work was not to start The Land Institute. The Land Institute is a vehicle to help him realize a vision of our world developing a robust, healthy system to feed itself in perpetuity without destroying our planet.

Think of how Wes’s perspective frees up our creative energy and encourages us to include others in the process of building our dreams. He is shaping his vision and bringing it to life alongside many others who share his same aspirations, and those aspirations take constant care, concern, and commitment. His vision is bigger than the span of his own lifetime – it actually continues on indefinitely. Failure and success are taken out of the equation with a mission that big – all it requires is that we contribute to steady, forward progress.

change, choices, decision-making, failure, fate, success, time

My Year of Hopefulness – Stepping up and out

Christa Avampato

This week I got approval and funding for a project that I’ve been pitching for a year. A solid year of effort, and beating a drum that most had no interest in hearing. For the past year, I’ve felt alternately foolish and hopeful. One minute I thought I just didn’t get it, couldn’t see past my own stubbornness. The next minute I’d think, no, it’s everyone else who doesn’t get it.

I now realize that it wasn’t a matter of people getting it; it was entirely a matter of timing and circumstances. I wanted an idea to flourish ahead of its time. Had I gotten approval a year ago for it, the idea would have crashed and burned, no doubt about it. And then I would not have only felt foolish – I would have looked foolish, too.

The universe tries to protect us from ourselves. It throws down roadblocks to test our passion and perseverance, and also to give the rest of the world time to catch up with us. At the time that I first developed the idea, I didn’t see it that way. I was so willing to toot my own horn, thinking that I knew something others around me didn’t. In reality, the universe was saving me from me. It’s a difficult, necessary lesson to learn; when the path is cluttered with resistance, it really is best to wait it out with quiet strength.

This is not to say that we should all zip it and go stand in line waiting for our turn. I still maintain that it takes the ability to step up and out for an idea we believe in that really creates progress. However, the next time a project is not going exactly according to plan, I’ll have more patience with myself and with those around me. If the idea’s a good one, it’s time will come. Perhaps not on the schedule I’d like, though at the time when it has the greatest chance to not only survive but thrive.

books, career, malcolm gladwell, passion, success, work, work ethic

10,000 hours

Christa Avampato

Malcolm Gladwell just released a new book, Outliers. He takes a look at the lives, circumstances, and personality traits of remarkably successful, productive people who make a significant impact in the world. One point that I found particularly interesting is his views on intelligence and diligence.

A certain level of intelligence and education gets an individual to a certain degree of success. However, to get any further, it’s actually diligence that carries them. Specifically 10,000 hours of diligence in our chosen field is absolutely necessary if we wish to make a significant impact there. Now, just putting in the hours toiling away in a cube is not a sure-fire plan. You still need that degree of intelligence, and 10,000 hours in the minimum investment necessary.

This particular stat caught my interest because I, like many in my generation, am a job hopper. I have been blessed to have discovered one good opportunity after another in very quick succession. I see a greener pasture and I go for it. That’s not to say that every move was a marvelous idea. Most were, though there were some duds to. What is true is that they have all been critical component of a very interesting path that I built for myself.

Now I have a job in a field that utilizes all of the skills I amassed through a variety of different jobs. All the time I put in at my other positions provided the experience to get me to this place, but my accumulation of those 10,000 hours began only recently. Perhaps without knowing it, Malcolm Gladwell made a very profound statement directly to my generation. “Hop around to find your passion. That’s fine. But once you find that passion it takes staying power to make it to the top of the heap.” Wise counsel, intended or not, and I’m very grateful to him for it.

business, career, corporation, education, success

How to Be Smarter

Christa Avampato

The definition of intelligence, its measurement, and the belief that it relies more heavily on nature or nurture are all up for debate. In discussions on intelligence, there does seem to be general agreement that there are steps any person can take to make the most of the intelligence they have. 

The New York Times ran an article this week detailing some of the methods of maximizing intelligence: exercise, a pursuit of lifelong learning, sufficient sleep, and challenging ourselves with riddles, puzzles, and mind-bending games. Though my favorite piece of the article involves its reference to the list Conde Nast released of the 73 top brains in business. And you’d think that list would be chocked full of Ivy-educated, fabulously wealthy finance types. And there are some of the those, though their number is surprisingly, and pleasantly, few.

The majority of Conde Nast’s list is dominated by people who go out of their way to think different, be individuals, people who recognize that differentiation, not assimilation, is the way forward in the world of business. The list includes a collection of people who don’t make headline news, but quietly, in their own way are simultaneously changing the world and building wildly successful companies. 

This list gives us some profound food for thought: our education focuses on test achievement, elite school acceptances, and hitting numerical thresholds. Do we need to have a metric in place in our education system that captures a sense of confidence, an ability to look at challenges with new eyes, and have the courage to forge ahead against adversity, naysayers, and others who wish we’d just “be like everyone else”? Current business successes would suggest that the idea is worthy of consideration. 

innovation, invention, success, willy wonka

What candy and a confectioner can teach us

Christa Avampato

“Invention, my dear friends, is 93% perspiration, 6% electricity, 4% evaporation, and 2% butterscotch ripple” ~ Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka.

I giggled when I read this quote in a magazine recently. We always read about people like Jack Welch or Michael Porter commenting on what elements go into success, or growth, or innovation. It’s refreshing to read what a fictional character thinks about these things while poking a bit of fun at all of us.

There isn’t one element or personal characteristic that helps achieve something. Success comes when we fuse a number of things together – maybe some luck, some support from people who care about us, hard work, a dash of experience, a string of failures we learn from, etc. We all have some special recipe that contributes to how we got to where we are.

The other thing I love about this quote is that the percentages add up to 105%. At first I thought that maybe this was meant as a joke. Maybe Gene Wilder was trying to say that there’s no way to know exactly what contributes to invention. Is it a mystery? Is it something that truly cannot be quantified?

Or maybe it means that even if we have all of our ducks in a row, if we line up all the cosmos perfectly, there still must be that little something extra that sparks invention, the creation of something new and uniquely ours. Is Gene Wilder trying to say that the most important thing we ever do is find our own butterscotch ripple?

The photo above can be found at: http://i.imdb.com/Photos/Mptv/1372/21729_0002.jpg