Category: work

entrepreneurship, environment, work, worry

Leap: We All Need Soil and Rain, or How to Never Be Intimidated

Christa Avampato

“No matter how wondrous our works, we have to remember that our very existence depends upon 6 inches of soil and the fact that it rains now and then.” ~ Dan Lufkin

I found this quote on a park bench, literally. Phin and I were taking a walk in Central Park and there are four metal plaques on a string of benches that have this quote. I don’t know who Dan Lufkin is, but when I read his words, I tossed up a stream of gratitude. They were the words I needed.

Starting a business, pitching partners and investors, can be a scary endeavor. I feel stark naked all the time! In pitching them, I’m really pitching me – my talents, my experiences, and my abilities. Self-promotion is just about my least favorite task. I’d rather do the dishes and clean my bathroom than pitch myself, but neither of those tasks are going to help me live the life I imagine. (But they do help me to keep a neat and tidy home, where I do most of my planning work for Compass Yoga!)

In pitching, it’s important to remember that the person across the table is just a person, just like you and me. They have to eat food, have shelter, and breathe air, just like us. They, too, had to start somewhere. We weren’t born with our current set of circumstances. For the most part, we made them, one way or another.

With that in mind, I feel a little less naked, a little more confident, and a lot more hopeful, in life and in pitching.

art, literature, work

Leap: Longfellow Shows Us How to Keep Our 2012 Resolution

Christa Avampato
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

My friend, Col, posted A Psalm of Life by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow on her Facebook page as 2011 drew to a close. It’s last stanza, “Let us, then, be up and doing, With a heart for any fate ; Still achieving, still pursuing, Learn to labor and to wait” is such a beautiful sentiment as we turn our attention to this new year that I decided to share it here. It’s eloquently lays out what we must do in 2012 to make it a stellar year:

We must be ready to work hard, very hard.

We must be ready for anything and everything that comes out way.  

We must pursue our passions.

And then we wait to see what fruits our labors bear, knowing we’ve done all we can to do to create our own success. 

There is a timeless resolution if ever I heard one. Poetry has a way of making us see so plainly the road that needs to be taken.

Here is the full poem in its entirety:

A PSALM OF LIFE

WHAT THE HEART OF THE YOUNG MAN
SAID TO THE PSALMIST

TELL me not, in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream ! —
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real !   Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal ;
Dust thou art, to dust returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way ;
But to act, that each to-morrow
Find us farther than to-day.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums, are beating
Funeral marches to the grave.

In the world’s broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle !
Be a hero in the strife !

Trust no Future, howe’er pleasant !
Let the dead Past bury its dead !
Act,— act in the living Present !
Heart within, and God o’erhead !

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time ;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o’er life’s solemn main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us, then, be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate ;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (1807-1882)

business, creative process, creativity, organize, work

Beginning: How to Remember the Milk (and Everything Else!)

Christa Avampato

Working full-time, running a new nonprofit, plugging away as a freelance writer, keeping up with friends flung across the globe, and taking part in all of the exciting goings-on in New York City can take a toll on even the most organized person. My reflexologist, Heather, said to me on Wednesday, “Christa, your brain is swollen.” This is one of the incredible values of holistic care. To look at me, you wouldn’t know my brain is swollen. Heather knows better.

I needed to find a better way of wrangling all my projects, tracking their progress, and planning my next steps. Gmail, Google calendar, and my DROID are an incredible help, but I needed more than that – something open source, mobile and online, customizable, sharable, and preferably free. I got some incredible suggestions on project management software but they weren’t exactly what I needed.

I consulted my friend, Amy, who also has a wide set of interests and projects. She gave me a few suggestions, once of which is Remember the Milk. At first glance I was smitten and now I’m completely in love.

Remember the Milk’s clean, bright, and intuitive interface is exactly what I need. I have different to-do lists for each of my projects, each to-do can have a note attached to it with further detail and a due date. It is available online and through a large array of mobile devices and syncs with many of my existing services like Google Calendar. (One I’d love to see them add is Evernote, where I track all of my online links.) I can email tasks to myself as well and it archives all of the tasks I’ve completed. And all of the above is sharable with contacts and groups of contacts.

If you need to add more orchestration to the different pieces that comprise your life, I highly recommend giving Remember the Milk a try. (It’s also great for simpler things like, well, remembering to pick up milk on the way home.) It’s taken the pain out of project management and restored the joy in the projects themselves.

career, television, work, writing

Beginning: Career Advice from Andy Rooney

Christa Avampato
Andy Rooney as we will always remember him

Last week we lost a great icon of opinion writing. I will never forget the 60 Minutes episode in 2010 where Andy Rooney went to the Super Bowl, a pilgrimage for him for over 40 years running. I loved getting a glimpse of him out from behind his now-famous desk and in the world – driving his car, going through the stadium turnstile, and making his way to his seat. Episodes like this let us know that the Andy we knew and loved on television was exactly as he appeared to be – nothing more and nothing less.

When he stepped down from his post at 60 Minutes, I got the same horrible feeling I had when Steve Jobs stepped down from his post at Apple. He loved his job so much that this could only mean one thing: his time with us was coming to a close in every sense. Though we know him for his curmudgionly opinions and writing, he was also a solid defacto career coach.

At every age, he presented exactly who he was. He never towed any company line and he never tried to make nice for the sake of politics. His opinions were strong and well-researched. Disagree with him all you want, but there was no way to refute his intellect. Sometimes this “area of development”, as some would unfortunately term it, cost him his job. It’s also what made him distinctive and memorable. There will never be another Andy Rooney.

Most people I know scorn the idea of being defined by their jobs. Not Andy. He had a secret: if you work at what you love, then there’s no problem with the job defining who you are. The job is who you are. Like it or not, most of us spend a great deal of our waking lives at work. And if we’re going to spend that many hours working, then we might as well like it.

Andy persistently and adamantly did only work he loved. On Sunday’s edition of 60 Minutes, we watched Morley Safer interview Andy Rooney on the eve of his retirement. Watching the piece, it seemed so strange to me that he is no longer among us. Just weeks ago, he was so full of life, wit, and yes, opinions. Morley asked him what he’d do with his time if he had his career to do over again. Without missing a beat, Andy replied, “I’d get a weekly spot on 60 Minutes where I’d give my opinion about anything I wanted to talk about. I’d write it and I’d say it. I complain about a lot of things, but one thing I can’t complain about is my life.”

When my days are up, I hope I feel the same way. And I hope I have the chance to work at doing something I love until the ripe old age of 92 or beyond. What more from life, or a career, could we ask for? Thanks, Andy, for this final lesson. You will be missed.

animals, eating, food, nature, work

Beginning: Be Here Like a Duck in the Ocean

Christa Avampato

“The little duck is at ease in the heaving Atlantic because it is in the Atlantic. Rest in the immediate as though it were infinity.” – Edward Espe Brown, Buddhist monk , chef, and star of the documentary How to Cook Your Life, reading from a poem written by his mother as she was preparing for the end of her life

The kitchen holds an abundance of wisdom and life lessons if we choose to show up in it day after day with an open mind and heart. As I have recommitted to cooking more and teaching myself to bake, I find myself growing more and more present in my own life, in and out of the kitchen. I have long thought of myself as a recovering multi-tasker, trying again and again to foster a life of consciousness and presence. Too often this is the moment we miss, and knowing the preciousness and fleeting nature of life, I don’t want to miss any more moments.

I also try to be conscious of when I am fighting life, when I am plotting, planning, and charting my actions toward a specific outcome with little regard for present circumstances. I don’t believe in the road of least resistance. Every road has its hardships, every path its detours, and every life its suffering. I have never actually felt the easy way break open as some people have. Everything I’ve ever done has taken effort so I am quite used to and comfortable with work that feels like work. I’ve grown to enjoy it so long as it’s work that feels worth my time.

As for the little duck in the ocean, he is not just bobbing along carefree. Beneath the surface of the ocean, his little duck feet and legs are churning. Rather than having his efforts fight the ocean, they are working in tandem to the rhythm. It still takes energy and effort and attention. He isn’t floating along; he’s paddling and taking his directional cue from the ocean. He’s present and realizes the awesomeness of the ocean’s power. He channels that power in his own work below the surface. He is there, in that moment, and nowhere else. I try to follow his example.

dogs, Life, time, to-do lists, work, writing, yoga

Beginning: How I Find the Time

Christa Avampato

“You have to live your life spherically, in many directions.” ~ Frances Mayes, Under the Tuscan Sun

A lot of people ask me how I can live such a varied life with so many interests that don’t necessarily fit together in a logical way. I like being a Renaissance woman; I love figuring just how all the pieces come together, even if on the surface they seem to have nothing to do with each other. I am a firm believer in connections and relationships.

I’ve struggled a bit to come up with a good answer for people who truly want to know how I fit it all in, how all these subjects and activities can live side-by-side in my brain. Part of it is my training – I’ve been on a vertical learning curve all my life, so much so that it’s where I’m most comfortable and engaged. I like having a challenge nip at me until I crack the code. For me, that’s play.

But people don’t like that answer. It’s not enough of a silver bullet. And then it dawned on me (in the lady’s room, if you must know!): most people don’t give a hoot how I fit it all in and maintain so many simultaneous interests. They want to know how THEY can do that. They want “the how” that they can replicate. Now I’ve got a bit of a better answer to their question.

Generally, this is how time works in my brain:
In the morning, I am in list mode. I jot down everything I need to do for the day, in no particular order. I add to it throughout the day, though most of my to-do’s strike right when I wake up.

Some time between 5:30am and 6:30am I head out for a walk with my pup, Phineas. You might think this is a time suck because I walk him for a full hour and I don’t multi-task when I walk him. Trust me, I need it as much as he does. It clears my head to walk Phin and I find that the whole rest of my day is much more productive after I get some exercise with him. I often return with a mental list full of writing ideas and people I need to contact later on.

After my favorite meal, breakfast (another time when I don’t multi-task – I just focus on chewing), I plow through as much individual work (at home or at the office) as I can before noon because I’m a morning person and a late night person. I’m not so much of an afternoon person. (I blame my European roots for this!) If I’m commuting to work, I use the subway ride to flip through emails and read the top news stories, again making notes in my to-do list as they arise from my reading.

Then lunch rolls around and I usually read through lunch. Again, I check the news, get through some of my to-do list, and invariably add more to my to-do list. (I’ve noticed recently that I have a tendency to mindless gulp my lunch – I need to focus a bit more on my chewing this meal.)

Afternoons are for listening and gathering information. I try to have all of my meetings and phone calls in the afternoon. I’m sure there’s a brain study here, just waiting to happen. (Now adding this research to my to-do list!)

Most of the time I have plans after work, whether I’m teaching a class, taking a class, or seeing friends. That’s down time for me and recharges me for the evening. If I don’t have plans, then I take the time for myself at home.

When I arrive home, I play with Phin for a bit and read the note from his dog walker to see how he did in the afternoon. Sometimes we take a little jaunt around the block, depending upon how we’re both feeling.

I do some yoga and an 18-minute meditation every night. No matter what. I set get out my mat and bolster, set my timer, and get it done. No compromises.

Then I write, usually with Phineas sitting next to me. The writing part of my brain kicks in when the sun goes down. I’m not sure why – perhaps because the distractions of the day have fallen away by then. I feel like way up on the 17th floor, I can be alone with my thoughts when it’s dark outside. All the listening and gathering I’ve done throughout the day has had time to gel.

Yoga, meditation, and all of the personal work I’ve done over the last two years have paid off by banishing my lifetime of insomnia. Occasionally I toss and turn, though most of the time sleep finds me pretty easily. I take Phin out for a last quick minute (literally) and then I try to shut off the lights just after I catch the top stories of the 11pm news.

That’s an average work day for me. So far, it’s working though I’m always open to changing it up as needed. How does your day map out? How do you get it all done?

career, work, yoga

Beginning: Knowing When to Walk

Christa Avampato

By Miruna Uzdris
I’ve been speaking with a number of potential partners for Compass Yoga as I explore the possibility of offering on-site yoga classes. Classes begin at the Manhattan VA Hospital on October 7th. The VA development came about so quickly because one of the clinical directors has practiced yoga for quite a few years and believes in its power. She is a kindred spirit and so we’re giving this a try to see how it goes. We’re partners and collaborators.

Another organization I’ve been speaking to has not been able to mirror the experience I’ve had the VA. The Executive Director, a social worker, was on the defensive the moment I met her. I know I can help the people in her program through a yoga and meditation class. I know they will benefit greatly from my personal and professional experience. All she had to do was have an open mind and provide an space for a trial class. She would have seen the low-cost, high-quality impact immediately.

Instead her haunches were up and her aggression was released. “All that woman wants is to come in here and do her little program so she can get some PR for her website.” And worst of all, she asked one of her staff members to deliver that message rather than contacting me herself. The board and I put together Compass Yoga with a lot of heart. No one’s going to spit on our efforts on my watch. Rather than taking the second-hand abuse, I consulted with the board and walked away from the opportunity, much to the shock of the social worker.

Several hours later I got a call from the social worker, and somehow the Executive Director has completely changed her tune and is interested in having me present at a community meeting. I guess he thought I’d be honored by the invitation. Instead, I turned it down in favor of focusing our efforts on other partners who want to be true collaborators.

Here’s what I learned from this situation:

1.) We have to focus our efforts if we’re going to make this practice available to all who are open to it. There is tremendous need for wellness programming among populations like returning veterans who have specific healthcare issues that yoga and meditation can address. We don’t have time to get bogged down by naysayers and people who are trying to defeat our efforts just as we’re beginning to lift off.

2.) A fish rots from the head down, especially in the nonprofit world. If there’s a surly Executive Director in place, the chances of break-through innovation and partnership are slim to non-existent. The organization can have the greatest mission in the world, but if the leadership in place isn’t qualified to actually manage and lead then the mission, and it’s recipients, lose. Management matters.

3.) We have to be well ourselves before we can help others be well. This Executive Director is a therapist. She is trained to help others heal and transcend their own grief, and yet she is not a healthy person. I understand the scarring that can occur from being burned one too many times and the trauma that ensues. I get that on a very personal level. Before I could be a teacher, I needed to be whole and healthy. I needed to deal with my own issues so they didn’t become anyone else’s. It took great courage to face up to my issues and I’m exceedingly proud of that personal work. Many people pass one without taking this road. I hope this Executive Director takes up the challenge and heals her own grief before it’s too late for her and for the people who need her help.

4.) People will treat you the way you let them treat you. If I had let that Executive Director run over me, she would have without thinking twice. Had I gone to that community meeting under those pretenses, I would have set a dangerous precedent with her. The right and professional action to take was to walk away and focus on the partners who want to be well. We have very little time on this Earth – we have to make the most of it.

career, growth, work

Beginning: The Meaning of Work

Christa Avampato

I had brunch on Saturday with my friend, Susan, in DC. An amazing and inspiring woman, Susan talked about so many strong women she knows who are now beginning to frame up their own futures in every sense. We couldn’t figure out if it has to do with our age (we’re both in our mid-30s, as are many of our friends) or if it’s more of a societal shift. Is carving our own road the way of the future? Is the entrepreneurial path, or some flavor of it, the new norm. Will we begin to become a society of people who take a role at a company for stability as we build up our own unique ideas that eventually take more of our time and generate more of our income?

Later that afternoon I had a drink with my friend, Matthew, where we talked about wanting to give our lives meaning. We believe that there is so much good work in the world to be done that we cannot simply phone it in for 40+ hours / week to a job that doesn’t fulfill a mission. There must be and can be more that comes from work. It should make our lives bigger and generate energy within us rather than leave us feeling insignificant.

There used to be an idea that a job is a job and we get paid to do a job because it isn’t supposed to be fun. Last week I sadly heard a friend of mine lament that she felt there was no use looking for a new job at a new company because every place is just as bad as every other place. She’s in her late 20’s, and my heart broke a little for her. She’s too young and too talented to be so deflated, though on some unfortunate level, I get it. Corporations beat you up. They do make you think it can’t be better elsewhere and that there is always a bad apple in every barrel. I have to challenge that notion for my own sanity. I believe the bad apples can be pitched for the sake of fostering a healthy system. It takes courage, concern, and enlightened leadership, and it can and should be done.

I got the chance to meet MJ, whom you may know from all of her amazing comments on this blog and links to resources that relate to my post topics. It’s always a treat for me to meet new friends whom I get to know through my various online channels. Whoever said technology is isolating us isn’t using it correctly. It’s expanding my network and opportunities for learning significantly.

MJ made a very astute correlation between work and a bucket of water. GRab a bucket full of water and stick your hand in it. Your hand is you at a big corporate job. Pull your hand out. You’re left with some water clinging to your skin as evidence that it’s been in water (call this water experience) and notice that the space where you hand once was in now filled in, the water level being every so slightly lower in the bucket. That pail of water is the corporation you work for. When you leave, there’s a minor change in the environment, but not much and it’s quickly filled in. We talked about the desire to make a change to new roles that can uniquely be filled by us, where our presence is needed and would be missed if we left.

All these conversations had me turning over the meaning of work in mind. It should be something that contributes to the mission of crafting meaningful days. I’ve no desire to feel that my work in ancillary to my life; that I am one person at work and another at play. I want to be in an environment where I can bring to bear all that I’ve learned and have the environment teach me more in return that becomes useful in my continued work the following day. That’s what I hope work becomes for all of us – just another word for “grow”.

art, dreams, faith, free, work

Beginning: Let Yourself Get Carried Away

Christa Avampato
Illusion of Control by Brian Andreas

“If you hold on to the handle, she said, it’s easier to maintain the illusion of control. But it’s more fun if you just let the wind carry you. “ ~ Brian Andreas

The image to the right the latest piece of art gracing the walls of my tiny New York apartment. Brian Andreas is one of my favorite artists so I was thrilled to find this print of his at the new Housing Works store in my neighborhood just after writing a post about “Letting Go to Be Free”. It was like a universal affirmation telling me, “Hey kid, you’re on the right track. Keep going and have fun in the process.” Thank you, Universe. Duly noted.

I have often written about the illusion of control that came crashing down on us for a solid 18 months starting in 2008. The economy had been chugging along at a healthy clip for a number of years with only a few naysayers wondering just where on Earth all this growth was coming from. We wrote them off as fast as possible, covering our ears, smiling widely, and spending to our heart’s content. And we learned that the heart is never content. It always wants more so we leveraged ourselves to the hilt, the government included, and fooled ourselves into thinking that we were safe. The mind is a slippery place; we can convince ourselves of anything if we try hard enough.

Safety lies not in your company or your professional network. Both are as slippery as the mind. Like the girl in Brian’s painting above, you can hold onto the handle to maintain the illusion of control – after all, that’s what handles are for, right?

Or you could trust the wind, your own intuition. You can tune in to the circumstances around you in a very honest way, understand exactly the resources that you have at-hand (literally), and find the best way to get the two to mesh. The wind will carry you, like it or not. Try to fight those winds, and you’re likely to struggle to no avail. Recognize their power and give yourself a chance to steer them in a direction that works for best for you. Less struggle, more fun, more learning.

From one control freak to another, let’s hold hands and see where the ride takes us.

career, experience, work

Beginning: Learning from the Tiny Experiments of The Onion, Starbucks, and Chris Rock

Christa Avampato

On Friday, Brian and I talked about the idea of tiny experiments that get us ready for big leaps. I had been chiding myself a bit about all of the things I haven’t done yet in my 35 years of existence. This kind of topic always gives Brian a good chuckle.

A Realization Date
Last weekend I went on a date (nice guy, but not the right guy for me) and we got into talking about all of the work we’ve both been doing on our own personal projects. I tend to shy away from this type of topic on a first date because I know I am hyper-productive. Unfortunately, this guy kept asking questions and so I had to keep answering. Several times he articulated that he couldn’t believe how much I’ve done in the past two years. While I appreciate the compliment (?), I also know that I need to be with a guy who is in that same mode of productivity, who’s in this life to get as much joy from it as he possibly can. I need someone who inspires me and helps me grow.

The Mind Prepares
This date woke me up a bit and got me out of my tiny rut of being a bit down on myself as of late. I am a tough self-critic. Relentless. I expect a lot of myself. I’m a little annoyed that at 35 I haven’t made some bigger leaps in my professional life. Brian reminded me that I needed all these little pieces that I’ve been collecting over my career, that the step into full-blown entrepreneurship is a big, mind-shifting step and so our bodies and minds try to ease that transition as much as possible. It’s a step-wise process. “Inch by inch, it’s a cinch. Yard by yard, it’s hard.” Every role I’ve had has played it’s part, which might be why I’m being so darn picky about my next role. It’s got to fit in to the master plan, which is a new perspective for me to take.

So how do we cut ourselves some slack to take the small steps that prepare us for the big leaps? Author Peter Sims has some ideas. This Sunday’s Times ran an article by Sims on the “daring to stumble on the road to discovery”. Sims’s book “Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge from Small Discoveries” is a treasure trove of successful examples that illustrate how powerful it is to try, tinker, and try again based on experience. Starbucks, The Onion, and Chris Rock hold the same truth: try out a creative idea on a small beta scale, learn, and then go bigger.

Quiet Down
The article helped to quiet my inner critic. This is exactly the approach I’ve been taking with Compass Yoga. I offered by-donation classes – made a bit of money, grew as a teacher, no way to scale. I rented my own studio space for group classes – broke even financially, took a lot of marketing time, and brought me little satisfaction as a teacher. I attempted to partner with nonprofit organizations and grow a community of new teachers to offer free classes to their communities – no money, lots of administration, grew as a teacher and leader. None of these experiments were a waste, and ultimately they each gave me something that lead me to my latest experiment in mission and direction for Compass.

My message is this: take your time, figure out what you really want to do, and then give a small bet a-go. Hang your foot out over the edge and pay attention to how it feels. If that bet doesn’t work, place your foot back on solid ground, regroup, and try again with a new bet based on your learnings from the first bet. Get going, stumble, discover, learn, repeat. A winning formula.