Category: work

choices, creativity, dreams, meditation, work

Leap: Keep Chipping Away

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Many of life’s failures are people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.” ~ Thomas Edison, American inventor

Are you a few months into a new project and thinking, “Hmm…so what do I do now?” Is it not going the way you thought it would? Is your initial idea not the silver bullet you thought it would be? Welcome to starting up – it has happened to everyone I know who attempted to do something wild, crazy, and wonderful.

I recently had some of these thoughts myself, and decided to let the back of my mind whirl away on them while I continued to focus my conscious mind on working my tail off. “An answer will come,” I told myself. It always does. And it did, and as it often does, it rose up in my daily meditation.

While in meditation, I found myself in a dimly lit room. I was seated across from someone, a man, though I couldn’t really discern his features and for some reason had no interest in those details. What was clear to me was his voice, and his simple actions.

“Which way do I go?” I asked him.

“Follow me,” he said.

He stood up and went over to the wall behind him. I followed. He pulled back a heavy, dark curtain and revealed an enormous brightly lit tower. It was so tall I couldn’t even see the top of it. It had all kinds of decorations and colors on it. At first I thought it was a cohesive structure and then I began to see that it was constructed from so many things that have meaning to me – photographs, quotes, and images of my life artfully pieced together. It was a collage of my varied interests and passions.

“Start anywhere,” he said. “Just pick any place and begin to chip away at it.”

“But I can’t choose. I don’t know where to start.”

He shook his head, laughing. “It doesn’t matter. Just choose any area. They are all connected so what you do to work on one will affect all of the others. All that counts is that you try.” 

And then my eyes popped open. I got up and started my day without fear. I gave myself permission to concentrate my efforts anywhere. It will all come together if I just keep going. It’s amazing what our unconscious mind will cook up if we just give it the space to do its work.

creativity, entrepreneurship, nature, work

Leap: The Seeds and Harvests of a Gardener and an Entrepreneur

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Don’t judge each day by the harvest you reap but by the seeds that you plant.” ~ Robert Louis Stevenson

A gardener’s work falls into 3 main buckets: planning, planting and maintenance, and harvesting the crops. To build Chasing Down the Muse into a viable business, I use a 3 X 3 X 3 system to measure my productivity and plan my to-do list for the week. Each week, I focus on 3 tasks that maintain what I’ve built (writing, reaching out to existing business contacts, growing my skill sets), 3 tasks that plant seeds for possible new business (preparing business pitches, interviewing), and 3 tasks that investigate possible new seeds that I may want to plant (research, exploratory conversations).

It’s a blast to secure new clients, read a piece of my writing that’s been published, and see the cash from my work arrive in my bank account, but I don’t base my success on those things in these early days of my business. I judge my current success based upon the possibilities I plant and nurture. Harvest season will roll around when the time is right. It always does in nature, so why should it be any different in our own lives?

change, decision-making, opportunity, work

Leap: Make Room for New Opportunities

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“How beautiful can life be? We hardly dare imagine it.” ~ Charles Eisenstein

On a rainy Saturday morning, I made my way to this blog as Phineas was snoozing long past his usual morning walk time. A recent incident was weighing on me. Though I know I made the right decision in distancing myself from the situation, I still felt confused about why it came about at this time.

I have long-believed in the idea of space clearing. Sometimes life can get too full. Like an over-stuffed garden, our lives also need tending and weeding so that the plants we want to grow have the freedom and room to do so. I used to think this was just a chore that happened once in a while, but as I get a bit older I realize that this process is continuous. We must be diligent in keeping up with it, especially given the pace at which life and change moves in our world. Otherwise, the task becomes overwhelming.

That’s not to say this chore is easy. Every change and every ending is difficult, no matter how much it’s needed, wanted, and warranted. Think of how much energy and effort it takes to pull weeds from the garden. Sometimes their roots are sunken way down and we must dig deep to fully excavate them. But the work is worth it. In the end, there is a freedom there and with that freedom we get the opportunity to plant something new, something beautiful, something we have yet to imagine.

career, creative process, creativity, product, product development, work, writer, writing

Leap: Prehype, a Product Innovation Boutique, Helps Corporate Employees Turn Their Day Jobs Into Their Dream Jobs

Christa Avampato
Prehype’s Steven Dean works through the product development process with clients.

I had the extreme pleasure to interview the talented partners at Prehype for a piece I wrote for PBS MediaShift – Collaboration Central. The piece is live and available for your reading inspiration. Hop over and have a look by clicking here. My thanks to the keen editorial mind and eyes of the site’s editor, Amanda Hirsch.

career, entrepreneurship, SXSW, work

Leap: The SXSW Panel Picker is Live and I’d Love Your Support

Christa Avampato

SXSW proposal time has arrived! I submitted my idea several weeks ago and its now live for your viewing (and voting!) pleasure. Anyone can vote. You will need to do a quick account set up if you’ve never voted before, and then all you need to do is hit that little thumbs up icon next to the any ideas you like.

Just click here to see my 1 minute video as well as a description of my presentation proposal “How SXSW Made Me Quit My Job to Work for Myself”. And then if you’re so inclined, click that thumbs up icon to the left of my presentation description to turn it green. I would love your support and thanks for your consideration!

change, commitment, determination, work, yoga

Leap: There is Always a Path of Less Resistance

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

Have you ever felt like you’re drowning in tiny tasks that somehow grew out-of-control overnight?

That’s how I recently felt with Compass Yoga teacher scheduling. Almost a year ago, I started to get requests from more library branches that wanted a regular yoga class in their programming. They had heard about the wonderful classes at the Bloomingdale Branch and once the word spread to one branch, many others piled on.

Of course, I was thrilled by the requests and wanted to fill them all. At the time, I thought the best idea was to find a lot of teachers who would be willing to teach these free classes to get experience. In New York City, there is no shortage of new teachers who need and want experience. So that people wouldn’t feel too overwhelmed by a regular weekly class, I decided to put together rotating rosters of teachers who would share the load at each branch. I also thought this would give the students a variety of teaching styles to keep them engaged in the practice.

These are really nice ideas and they kind of worked, but I completely underestimated the challenges. First, I did a very good job of driving myself crazy as I coordinated the schedules of 17 (!) teachers and then often hunted for last-minute subs. Second, teachers wanted to feel more connected with the students on a regular basis and having a regular weekly class helped them schedule their own lives more efficiently. Third, students wanted to get to know a teacher better rather than seeing 3 or 4 different teachers per month.

I was well aware of the first challenge but didn’t know about the other two. As a result, I began to wonder if we’d have to scale back the library program altogether in an effort to restore my sanity. I wrestled with this idea for weeks, changing my mind every other day. Then a really interesting idea surfaced once I found out about the second and third challenges described above: each branch of the library could have a lead teacher. That teacher may not be able to teach every week and may need to sub out occasionally, but the relative consistency would help me tremendously and would be more helpful to the teachers and students.

In the end, we didn’t need to scale back the library program. We just needed to find a smarter way to manage it. And now with this simpler teacher scheduling structure, we can grow to more branches to help more people. Every challenge has a solution and many times it’s far simpler than we realize. Once we have the will to make something happen (or change), the way opens.

adventure, change, community, determination, work

Leap: Rise Up to Meet Difficulties and Change Them Into Opportunities

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest.com

“There are two ways of meeting difficulties: you alter the difficulties or you alter the way you meet them.” ~ Phyllis Bottome

Challenges and difficulties abound in our lives and in the world. We can run from them for a while, but they’re patient. They will wait us out with dogged determination. They never get tired. They never give up. They are relentless.

Eventually, we have no choice but to get moving, to chip away at them bit by bit until they reach a manageable size. This work of whittling is incredibly important. Do not underestimate it.You may think you aren’t doing enough; you make think that you are one person fighting to turn a much larger tide. Don’t give up. Something amazing is about to happen.

You have to start somewhere and the miraculous thing is that once you start to work on a challenge, you will find that there are other people in the world working on the same difficulty. You can then join forces and the whittling begins to move faster. Many hands make light the load. And there’s no shortage of loads in this world that need more hands, and hearts. Find the one that draws you in and just do your part. I promise you that it is enough.

business, creativity, entrepreneurship, work

Leap: Today is the 1 Month Anniversary of My New Life

Christa Avampato

A month ago, I began living a life of my own design. I bid a fond farewell to my corporate job in favor of working for myself. I had planned the leap for over a year and once the final puzzle piece fell into place, I fell in line right along with it.

On the first day of my freelance life, I launched my new creative consulting firm, Chasing Down the Muse, which allows me to focus my energy on the three pieces of my career that I love most – product development, freelance writing, and teaching yoga and meditation to creative professionals.

It’s been an incredible gift to wake up every morning to do work that I love. Everywhere I go, I go with my whole heart. I work many more hours now than I did when I worked for someone else. The income is not as stable (yet) and there have been moments of great elation and some moments of disappointment. And still the feeling I get from calling my own shots and relying on my own sense of judgement to move forward on different leads and opportunities is well worth all of the challenges.

I’ve had a few twinges of “Oh God, can I really do this?” but they pass in a few breaths, which is as big a surprise to me as it is to anyone else. There used to be a small voice inside of me that can only be described as the biggest worrier on Earth. That valid voice has been soothed and replaced with a quiet strength, a calm and resonant voice that now says, “Keep going. Don’t worry. Everything will be amazing.” I like this new voice much better.

creativity, dreams, inspiration, work

Leap: You’ve Waited Long Enough

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

We wait for signs. We keep our eyes peeled, hoping for a clear and directive sign from the Heavens to tell us what to do.

Here’s the sign: the Heavens have already weighed in.

They gave you all of the gifts you need to make your own opportunities. Pull your dreams down out of the sky and plant them firmly under your own two feet. Don’t let anyone or anything deter you. Stay the course set by your heart, roll up your sleeves, and get to work.

No one else is ever going to live your life as well as you can live it, so don’t let them even try. Everything you’ve ever done has been to prepare you for this moment – it’s yours for the taking.

Let’s move some mountains!

career, entrepreneurship, time, work

Leap: Working for Yourself Doesn’t Equal Leisure

Christa Avampato

People are funny.

Yesterday someone asked me how I was enjoying my life of leisure. Someone else asked me how it feels to have all this free time now that I am unemployed. I was equally confused by both of them and set them straight (quickly):

A.) I am hardly living a life of leisure. I’m working a lot more now for myself than I was a few weeks ago when I was working for someone else. The difference is that now I work on projects that light me up and that I decided were worth my time rather than having someone else dictate work that I felt was largely pointless given its lack of usefulness to just about anyone.

B.) I’m not unemployed; I work for myself and not out of necessity. I chose this path.

Here’s the lay of the land in my new world of work:
When you work for someone else, you set aside a (big) portion of your day in exchange for a stable salary. Usually that time is blocked off on a regular schedule and you get into a routine: getting ready for work, the rhythm of the work day, and then traveling back from work into your personal life. When you work for yourself, the boundaries are a lot less clear. You need to set up your schedule with discipline and you work far more hours for yourself than you do when you work for someone else. Luckily, your passion for the work makes the longer hours worthwhile.

Working for yourself is a huge time commitment. Remember, you’re doing everything yourself – from the mundane administrative work to the big picture strategic thinking. It’s rewarding, but it’s not leisure. It’s work and it takes time.

You keep your current clients happy, you pitch new business, and you research for new leads. That cycle of work has to be maintained to keep the business going. The freedom and the passion you feel for your work provides a tremendous amount of satisfaction with opportunities to constantly learn and grow. It’s a ball and a half but it needs near-constant attention, especially at the start.

This life isn’t for everyone, but it is most certainly for me. I’ve never felt better about my career and life, present and future. There’s so much opportunity all around us and I’m grateful for the time to make the most of it. We only get one crack at this life in this form; every second counts!