courage, experience, gratitude, story, strengths

Beautiful: I’m Glad I Lost Everything – 4 Years After My Apartment Building Fire

Christa Avampato
Use the fire of your living

“What matters most is how you walk through the fire.” – Charles Bukowski

4 years ago today, my apartment building caught fire and I lost almost everything I owned. I got out of the building just in time. A few moments later and I might not be here writing this post to you today. On that day if someone told me I’d be grateful for that fire, I probably would have punched them in the nose. Now I know better.

I’m more grateful than ever for that experience. Through that healing process, I found out what I’m made of, and I found out what so many other people are made of, too. I emerged from the other side of that grief a far better person than I was before. It was difficult, and many times it was awful and painful. A big part of me wanted to give up on remaking my life. A small part of me refused to give in. I listened to that small voice. I fed it, and eventually it grew loud enough to drown out the doubt. And if knowledge is power then I’m more powerful now than I ever dreamed I could be.

It doesn’t matter what challenges we face. What matters is how bravely we face them. It doesn’t matter how much nor how little we have, but how much we do with anything we have.

action, decision-making, friendship, time

Beautiful: Wait or Act? How to Decide.

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“I like things to happen. And if they don’t happen, I like to make them happen.” – Winston Churchill

The most striking outcome of my time in California is my decreased tolerance for waiting unnecessarily. Some times, we need patience. We need to take a beat, a breath, a moment. A gathering storm needs to pass. We need to deal with a new emergency. But patience can be used like a crutch. We wait because it seems less scary than action. 

So how can we tell if it’s time to wait or time to act? Remove ourselves from the decision. Imagine that a friend is asking for your advice on the exact situation you’re in. This friend is strong, capable, ambitious, and talented. She will succeed or learn trying. Should she act? Should she wait? That’s your answer. 

Almost always I find my answer is to act. Try this experiment. Let me know how it goes. 

adventure, animals, creativity, dogs, travel

Beautiful: Roll The Dice of Life Like a Dog

Christa Avampato

When I get out Phineas’s travel carrier, he never knows where we’re going. Sometimes, we get on a plane. Sometimes, we head for a car or the subway. We’ll go over to Brooklyn and visit two of our favorite friends, Amanda and Jordan. Sometimes, we’re going to the vet.

No matter. Without fail, Phin enthusiastically jumps around at the site of his carrier because he knows we’re going somewhere to do something out of the ordinary. He doesn’t need to know where he’s going; he’s just prepared to enjoy the ride. We, and by we I mean me, should live more like Phin.

Thanks to my friend, Alex, for this beautiful photo – and the reminder to enjoy every adventure.

holiday, vacation

Beautiful: Happy Labor Day, Sans Labor

Christa Avampato

“Every person needs to take one day away. A day in which one consciously separates the past from the future. A day in which no problems are confronted, no solutions searched for.” ~ Maya Angelou, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now

I hope today is this kind of day away for all of you. It is for me. Happy Labor Day, sans labor.

From Pinterest
career, learning, time

Beautiful: Jack of All Trades, Master of One

Christa Avampato
From Pinterest

“Be a jack of all trades, master of one. Be a specialist and a generalist.” ~ Calvin Soh, SXSW V2V

This piece of insight from SXSW V2V may have been the most helpful in terms of my own personal career. For a long time I’ve wrestled with a way to reconcile my vast number of interests with the desire to choose an expertise. During the recession and in its aftermath, I’ve seen specialists struggle to make ends meet. Personally, I’ve felt the stress of being pulled in many different directions by my passions and eagerness to learn new skills and information. Calvin helped me see that both are possible in the world that we live in. Being a generalist and a specialist isn’t weird; it’s necessary.

The secret is self-control and self-monitoring. The key question I have to ask when tackling something new is: how much knowledge do I need to connect the dots and make this new information useful? My former boss Bob G. used to say, “I want to know enough to be dangerous.” In other words, know enough to be articulate and ask the best questions of the experts. I don’t need a PhD in every subject that interests me. I just need to go as far as the fun of learning takes me. That is enough.

choices, creativity, decision-making, journey, time

Beautiful: Give Life to Your Madness

Christa Avampato

80a9859ef75df428fb6ac4cff03310d8Wrapping up a week in madness, I’ve reflected a lot on the ideas of creativity, transformation, and acceptance. Remaking ourselves and our lives takes courage. Some people may not understand what you’re doing or why or how. They might put us down in every way possible, and we might start to do the same to our own mad dreams. Don’t take your cue from them. Their words and actions, as much as they may hurt, have nothing to do with you. It is just an expression of them wrestling with their own demons and lost dreams that they didn’t follow. And the reasons for their choices don’t matter. They chose. Now you choose: Go down that road even though you know how it ends, and it doesn’t end well, or go in a new direction.

New directions can be frightening. We are leaving behind our history, our patterns, our expectations, and the impressions of others. Of course it’s mad to chart a new course. The old worn one is so much easier to travel. Be mad. I know it sounds so easy to say “let go”. No one tells us how painful that process can be. There’s a grieving, a mourning period. But on the other side of that grief, is light.

And here’s something else no one tells us: once we strike out on a new road, we don’t travel alone. Up ahead, just around the bend, there is someone new waiting, lots of someones waiting. They took off before we did in the same pursuit of something new and exciting, something that they feel passionately about. They are our new examples of how to be. We are both teacher and student, always. We learn and then we turn around and teach others through our example. That’s how it’s always been.

Yes, we’re here to take life by the horns, madness included, but we’re also here to give even more back. We’re here to be generous with our experience so that others may be encouraged and inspired to invest in their own mad dreams. That’s progress.

choices, courage, decision-making, design, determination, time

Beautiful: The Mad Path Is One of Possibility

Christa Avampato

113b7d49aefec161100fed4bc73d5d9b“I don’t want people to think I’m crazy so I won’t say, do, try…’x’.” How many times have you said that to yourself? I hear that recording running in my mind all the time. And I’ve learned to acknowledge it, thank it for its counsel, and then let it go. We have to release that thought if we are to do anything original. Our value, and the value of work, is found in what’s not obvious, in connecting dots that have been disparate.

That’s the place to go – into the dark corners, into the places that others won’t go. And don’t be meek about it. Hold your head up high, confident, bold, brave, and daring. Attempt to go so far in the direction of your dreams that you merge with them. Your life is an expression of what matters most to you – who you spend your time with, where you go, the actions you take, the support, encouragement, and love that you provide to others.

Don’t be discouraged if others can’t see what you see. It’s not their fault. They don’t have your vision in their minds. You have to build it for them. You have to bring along those who are interested in your path bit by bit. The expression you wear on your face and the light you emit from just being who you are, living your very best day every day no matter what circumstances you face, is all the proof you need.

choices, creativity, time

Beautiful: How to Stop Regret

Christa Avampato

986deadf17932b6f366f124d13b52ec5“And the only thing people regret is that they didn’t live boldly enough, that they didn’t invest enough heart, didn’t love enough. Nothing else really counts at all.” ~ Ted Hughes

The hero’s journey is never a choice between two options, one wonderful and one awful. The hero’s journey is a choice between options that are all good. We have to decide where to spend our time if our time is limited, which it always is. We don’t know much of it we have. We have only now, right now, today. Ted Hughes gives us an excellent framework to evaluate the paths that lay before us. If we are to use our time wisely, the essential questions that we have to consider at the end of each day are:

1.) Today, did I do something bold?
2.) Today, did I wear my heart on my sleeve?
3.) Today, did I put love into everything I did?

Make today count. Answer yes to each question every day.

adventure, art, beauty, change, courage

Beautiful: Let. It. Go. and Take A Chance – My Public Contribution Projects

Christa Avampato

Have you seen this sign around your neighborhood?

How about this one?

These are posters for my public participation projects. In my quest to help people let go of things that are holding them back and take more chances to live the lives they want, the sole purpose of these projects is to celebrate participants and to have their stories inspire others. These are promotional posters that I’ll be hanging up around New York City though anyone anywhere in the world of any age can participate. And if you’re so inclined to print them out and hang them in your neighborhood, I would love that! Just contact me through a comment on this post and I’ll send you the PDFs.

Here’s how it works:
Let. It. Go.
Let something go – it can be anything from a possession that is a painful reminder of something to an emotion like anger, greed, jealousy, disappointment – and then tell me about it at onefineyogi@gmail.com. You can let go of something very big, like an old, hurtful disappointment, or something very small, like forgiving the person who cut in line at the grocery store. This can be about something you just let go of or about something you let go of a long time ago.

Take a Chance
Take a Chance – it can be anything from saying hi to someone new to applying for a new job to changing anything about your life that you want to change – and then tell me about it at onefineyogi@gmail.com. You can take a big chance, like moving to a new city, or something very small, like having a healthy snack instead of an unhealthy one.

You can participate in either project (or both!) and email me as often as you’d like. Actually, I’d love it if you emailed me every single day with something you let go and a chance you took. The emails can be very short or they can include a story of any length. They can include photos, too. (I know this goes without saying – please keep all contributions clean.) I will respond to every email I receive. Your chances and things you let go will always be kept completely anonymous unless you specifically tell me that you want me to include your name or initials. I’ll use these contributions to populate a new online project I’m launching in the coming months. You’ll be notified as soon as the online site launches and when your contribution is live.

I hope you’ll join in these exciting new endeavors to celebrate and encourage you and your dreams.

change, creative, creative process, creativity

Beautiful: Alice and the Mad Hatter Believe the Best People are Entirely Bonkers. I Agree!

Christa Avampato

photo Alice in Wonderland is my favorite children’s book. When I did summer stock theater in Vermont before my senior year at Penn, I fulfilled one of my dreams and played Alice in an adaptation of the story. The tale of Alice resonates with me because she and I believe in madness, impossible things, and the reality of imagination.

We’ve got to be a little bonkers to dream up something and believe we can breathe life into it through sheer will. But that’s exactly how it happens. It’s exactly this kind of madness that built New York and every other city. It’s this kind of madness that invents, explores, inspires, and creates. This is the madness that sees the present state of the world as just the beginning, rolls up its sleeves, and starts to change it. Madness makes the world go ’round.