choices, passion

Beginning: A Time and A Place for Reason (Always In the Backseat)

Christa Avampato

“Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.” ~ David Hume, Scottish philosopher, economist and historian

Somewhere along the way, “reasonable” got a good connotation and “unreasonable” got a bad connotation in modern society. Comprise, consensus, and contentment hopped aboard the reasonable train. Renegade, fringe, and non-conformity jumped to defend the ground of “unreasonable.” And we all lost in the process. At least until now.

It’s not sustainable. It’s not good for us or for our communities. Reasonable thoughts and behaviors, when left to their own devices, lead us around in circles. They put blinders on us because the preoccupation of a circular path is the center, the indecisive middle ground that stands for nothing except appeasement, which honestly no one wants. Reason needs to be checked.

Think of all the people you admire, products you love, missions of organizations that make you see the world differently, and works of art (broadly defined) that inspire you. Do they define “reasonable” to you? I highly doubt it. I bet they go against the grain.

The trouble is that it’s only when someone achieves the heights of someone like Steve Jobs, my hero of unreasonableness, that we encourage this MO. If someone is “out of line”, meaning that they do something that many others don’t, they get a sideways glance and wide berth as we circumvent their presence, as if we’re afraid of being sucked into their circle of unreasonableness. It shouldn’t be that way. The next Steve Jobs isn’t going to look, act, or sound like Steve Jobs at all. He or she is going to do things his or her own way because that’s what Steve did.

When the phrase “why can’t we all just along?” entered the American lexicon, it was not meant  to be translated into “can’t we all just stand for nothing and never stray from the cookie cutter?” We should be accepting of all people to walk to their own beat. And more than that, we must encourage and reward new ways of being and thinking in schools, in communities, in our families, in business, and in our government.

I’m in David Hume’s camp. Reason, and everything that goes along with it, shouldn’t be vilified but it needs to be contained. For us to progress, reason must be tempered with passion. Not the other way around. And it’s not too late for us – we can turn this around.

business, nonprofit, yoga

Beginning: Compass Yoga is Officially Incorporated

Christa Avampato

Rob, Michael, and I trekked downtown to see our rock star attorneys to review our by-laws. They surprised with the wonderful news that in record time the Department of State has granted incorporation status to Compass Yoga. We are official, moving us one more step down the road to getting more yoga and wellness programming to more people who need it to improve their health.

Up next:
Approve the by-laws
Vote in the board members
Open a bank account
Apply for our EIN (Employer Identification Number)
File for nonprofit 501(c)3 status

As we wind our way through this exciting and complicated process to establish a nonprofit, I continue to pinch myself. I am so grateful to the incredible board, our amazing and generous attorneys, and for the many people who keep encouraging our mission. Sometimes it’s hard to believe that it’s falling into place so well. By putting our very best out into the world we are receiving so much good fortune in return.

It’s amazing how much magic we find when we have the courage to begin.

career

Beginning: Hire Me

Christa Avampato

Last weekend I had lunch with my friend, Sara, and she told me I needed to talk myself up more. I hate doing this. I much prefer to talk up other people. After some reflection, I realized that if I talked myself up in a way that showed others how I could help them and their ideas shine, then that would be a very worthwhile cause. This is a follow on to my conversation with Brian in which he advised me to put my creativity to work to build my career by my own design.

So I did it. I created a “Hire Me” page on this blog. This is a big flipping deal for me because I’ve never done anything like this before. And it was actually fun to do. A true creative confidence builder. I highly recommend you give it a whirl, too.

Two days in and already I am getting a few bites via the contact form on the page. I should have done this sooner. Better late than never.

Click the tab above or here to check it out. Let me know what you think! (And tell your friends, family members, co-workers, neighbors, and Tweeple, too.)

creativity, economy, money

Beginning: Where Wall Street and the Occupy Wall Street Protestors Needs to Go From Here

Christa Avampato
From http://www.illuminatiworld.com. This paradigm has to change for everyone's sake.

We have a lot to learn from history. If we take a trip down Wall Street’s memory lane, we’ll discover that it was founded on the principle of creative destruction, the creation of new industries and companies that build better products and services than those we currently have. Instead, as Tom Friedman so eloquently stated in his column this week, they’ve fallen into the horrible habit of “financing too much “destructive creation” (inventing leveraged financial products with no more societal value than betting on whether Lindy’s sold more cheesecake than strudel).” This is a problem but is not yet one that is too far gone. I believe Wall Street, and by extension our economy and our society, can be saved.

Wall Street can create jobs outside its walls
Most job creation comes from start-ups – companies founded by passionate, insightful people seeing a pain they want to fix and then inventing a product or service to alleviate that pain. Maybe that’s the need for a better vacuum cleaner – thank you, Mr. Dyson – or maybe it’s the need to help creative get their projects funded by small contributions from a large group of strangers – thank you, Kickstarter.

Why can’t financial firms take a small portion of their earnings and provide more loans to start-ups at very low-interest rates? There’s plenty of waste going on in financial firms on projects that never take off beyond the ideation phase, money that would do just as much good being burned in the middle of the street. Instead, take that money and take a chance on a set of entrepreneurs who are trying to build something of value rather than rearrange value by moving money around in a big circle.

Consider it corporate philanthropy or just the right thing to do. Wall Street should figure out how to reinvent itself as a jobs creator, and that doesn’t mean hiring more bankers. It means funding people with good ideas that the world needs. About a year ago I wrote a letter to the CEO of the company I worked for and proposed this type of idea. He never responded; he may never have received the letter. But I’m going to give it a go again and point to a recent peer of his, Howard Schultz of Starbucks, who is doing something on par with this idea.

We’re all in this together
The Occupy Wall Street protectors and the banks have conspired together in a war of “us” (the people) against “them” (the banks). It doesn’t need to be that way. And actually it can’t be that way if we want our economic situation to improve. Like it or not, money and creative ideas, together, make the world go round. We’re in this life together, in this world together. And no one person has more of a right to a good life than any other. We are equals, and we need to start treating each other and supporting each other as such.

economy, learning

Beginning: How to Understand the U.S. Economy for Free

Christa Avampato

Over the weekend I watched the movie Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps, and it took me back into those scary days 3 years ago. I started working in the financial services industry in August 2008, 5 weeks before Lehman Brothers failed and our economy spun into a seemingly hopeless downward spiral.

They were dark days, and somehow I was able to keep my fear at bay so that I could actually use the opportunity to learn something. I had a front row seat to the recession, and at any moment I could have been a casualty. There was little I could do about that potential outcome so every day I got up, went to work, and hoped that I could take some lesson away from the situation. Most of the days that strategy worked.

I was lucky to receive a top-notch education as an undergraduate and graduate student. It gave me a base of knowledge to draw from as I read about and listened to economic data. I adjusted my career and savings plans as a result of the recession and years from now I’m confident that I will look back on these years as ones that were tough and made me tougher.

But then I thought about how many people don’t have the education I have, and how daunting it can be to learn about the economy. It’s a mess of acronyms, numbers, and opinions that make it difficult to decipher the truth from fiction. I was also inspired by Occupy Wall Street and wanted to do something to help the protestors and their audience make sense of what’s going on around them. So I went looking for free sources that could help people who have an interest in learning more about the economy though don’t know exactly where to start.

About.com’s page on the U.S. economy – a well-done overview of the U.S. economy. Suitable for beginners and those who want a brush-up lesson.

Investopedia – I used this resource all of the time when I was in business school. They have a great financial dictionary, tutorials, and a well-organized set of top current news stories that relate to business.

Free online economics classes – collection of links to free Economics courses from the world’s leading universities. You can download these audio & video courses straight to your computer or mp3 player.

choices, decision-making, discovery

Beginning: Planning Leads to Much More Than Plans

Christa Avampato

“Plans are useless…planning is indispensible.” ~ Einsenhower

As a relentless planner and practitioner, I’ve sometimes wondered if I slog through this process in vain. After all, so few of my plans work out the way I want them to go, or the way I think I want them to go. Maybe planning is a waste of time.

Now, come on, you didn’t really think I’d throw in the towel on planning did you? How could I toss away this highly attuned skill for scenario mapping, decision tree drawing, and pro con list making? It took a lot of work to get here, and even if my plans don’t work out it’s not a waste to plan, is it?

According to Ike, it’s very valuable. And I agree. I do love the act of planning, outcome aside. I like to think about possibilities and compare them to one another. Planning gives me a chance to consider how I want to spend my time and with whom. It gives me time to reflect on past experiences and to relive their lessons. Planning makes me realize just how far I’ve come along in life and they get me excited for what’s ahead. Planning is the compass for self-discovery.

I’ve often heard it said that the act of giving is its own reward. I think that goes for planning, too.

1

Beginning: The Week in Review 10.16.11 – 10.21.11

Christa Avampato

I’m trying something new here on Saturdays – a recap post to link together the week’s learnings. I started doing this a weeks ago for my own benefit and then thought it might be beneficial to others. So, here goes:

The week kicked off with reflections on a tough conversation I had with Brian last week about how to manage the fear of taking more of my career into my own hands. Employ Your Creativity to Live a Better Life, Facing Up to Fear, Failure, and Monsters, and You Can Change Your Mind deal with several key lessons Brian conveyed in our conversation:

1.) We are free if we choose to be
2.) If you feel stuck, put your creativity to work to imagine your way out
3.) We can’t shake fear so we might as well befriend it and learn what it has to teach us.

After a month working in close physical proximity to the Occupy Wall Street protests, I put some thoughts down on paper about my initial confusion around their methods and reasoning, and then to articulate why I’m not a part of it.

With all of the news reports piling up that are continually causing us to rethink and reconsider our plans, long-term and short-term, it is easy to feel bogged down and to second guess our abilities. I watched a documentary this week that reminded me so powerfully that the real trick of life is to make good of everything that comes our way. Even from the most horrible, tragic circumstances, we can learn and grow and help others do the same.

Happy weekend and happy reading!

career, failure, fear

Beginning: Facing Up to Fear, Failure, and Monsters

Christa Avampato
Scene from Monsters Inc. by Pixar

Earlier this week I mentioned the tough conversation that Brian and I had about my fear of just jumping into my own business full-time. Admittedly, I was in his office whining and trying to decision tree my way out of fear. His sentiments about my fear have echoed throughout my week in a variety of other experiences and reading. One week later, the key piece of advice from him that I keep coming back to is that taking a leap like this is always scary. There will never be a time when the fear subsides.

Fear is a part of the process
This same idea was framed up by Sean Duffy in his Talent Zoo post entitled “Seven Tips for Aspiring Entrepreneurs”. Though the title seems a bit dull and run-of-the-mill, I read it anyway and I’m glad I did. The article is loaded with sobering advice for anyone considering a jump like mine like this: “The dictionary says that an entrepreneur is someone who starts and manages a business or other enterprise with considerable initiative and risk.” The risk, and the fear associated with it, cannot be extricated from the work of heading off on our own. Fear and risk are bound up in the very nature of the work itself. In other words, get used to it! 

Sobering failure stat
But what if I fail? What if I hold my head up, look fear dead in the eye, and I don’t make it? Duffy lays out some statistics that first made me ill and then gave me hope:

A company’s chances of surviving its first five years in business = 20%
A product’s chances of surviving past launch = 5%
A company’s chances of ever reaching its long-term financial goals = 5% survival

This may be enough to cause us to throw in the towel before we even start. After all, the odds are steeply stacked against us, but there is some deeper meaning hidden in those numbers. These statistics actually helped me to set aside some of my fear. The great likelihood is that I will fail. It’s practically a given so there’s no sense in worrying about it. Whew – it’s kind of a relief to know this, isn’t it? If I do fail then I will be in good company. And still, I want to give it a whirl on the slight chance that maybe I’m stronger than the odds.

A one-sentence mission helps to release fear
I had coffee last weekend with my friend, Sara, who was in my yoga teacher training. She was also not having it with my decision tree abilities that are delaying my decisions about how to move forward in my career. “Didn’t you go to college and get all of these business skills to have something to fall back on?” I nodded. “Okay, then,” she said. “So try to do what you want. Talk yourself up!” I couldn’t refute that statement. She’s right.

I am a master planner but what I’ve done is plan my way right into plan B without even giving plan A a shot. With Sara’s prompting, I crystallized exactly what I want plan A to be in one sentence: “I want to buy into a holistic medical practice where I work with doctors and therapists to treat the whole patient.” From there, the fear started to dissipate not because I had successfully walled it off so I could walk peacefully around it, but because I just stood up and walked straight through it with my words. And in the process, it made my next steps clearer and more meaningful. Now, I have a concrete goal. (More on those steps in a later post.)

Fear takes a new form
I had been envisioning fear as this big, obnoxious monster whom I thought could be wrestled to the ground and contained. I imagined myself lassoing a big rope around its neck and tethering it to a tree so it couldn’t get to me. Fear is more slippery than that. There isn’t a way to keep it at a safe distance. It’s going to get us, and what really matters is how we face up to it when it is on our doorstep.

In my mind’s eye, I’m trying to put my fear in the form of Sully from Monsters, Inc., someone who looks very scary on the outside but on the inside isn’t so scary at all. I think of myself grabbing the furry hand of this fear monster and leading him along as we chart our course forward up over a grassy hill and on toward a brighter future, together. We can’t shake fear so we might as well befriend it and learn what it has to teach us.

business, economy

Beginning: Now I Know What Occupy Wall Street Wants and How I Feel About It

Christa Avampato

My friend, Amy, sent me a link to a The 99% Declaration put together by the members of Occupy Wall Street. After reading through it carefully, I understand what they’re looking for as well as their goal. And now I know for certain that I am not a part of their 99%. I’m not a part of the 1% either. I guess I am on my own, which is where I’d prefer to be.

Here is the link to the Declaration if you’d like to read it: https://sites.google.com/site/the99percentdeclaration/. Here are my concerns with it:

1.) I don’t like that they are suggesting that as an individual I would not be able to donate to the candidates’ campaigns whose ideals I support. I think that’s infringing upon my own individual freedoms.

2.) Many people in this country have retirement savings in 401Ks, IRAs, etc. that are made up of mutual funds and stock holdings. To say that I can’t have those savings if I or anyone in my immediate family holds public office is again infringing upon my rights to financially care for my future. Exactly what am I supposed to do with those holdings if I or someone in my immediate family decides to run for office?

3.) I am all for healthcare reform and change but single payer healthcare seems like a very scary thing to propose is such a sweeping gesture. Our healthcare system is quite complex and there are many countries with nationalized healthcare who are unhappy with their system as well. In the end, doctors actually don’t have to take insurance at all and wealthy individuals will just pay out-of-pocket for the best care, likely to the best doctors who would no longer be a part of the healthcare system because they couldn’t afford to practice in a single payer system. We’d run into the similar issue we have with public versus private education.

4.) Why should free market corporations subsidize all student loans? Individuals choose which debts to take on – I certainly did and I am responsible for those choices. There are deferment programs already in place which I have taken advantage of at times when I was not employed so I’m not sure why they think that is not an option.

5.) The recall of military personnel is based upon a great deal of top-secret information that we are not privy to for our own safety. While I do want the troops to come home, I also want to make sure that all of their efforts don’t fall apart and that our national and global security is not further jeopardized in the process.

6.) In general, our economy is moving toward more skills-based roles and away from manufacturing. Tom Friedman wrote an excellent article on this topic today that lays out his opinion on how to transform our economy: Imagined in America.

7.) They are implying the passage of embargoes against certain nations like China who manipulate their currency. This would be disastrous for our country, particularly in this recession. Again, Tom Friedman addressed this idea in his column today.

8.) The bank regulation they are proposing around lending does not allow financial institutions to take risk into account to make good business decisions. In short, if someone has a low credit score then it is tough to justify that banks should give them loans at a very low rate. What if they again cannot repay the debt they take on? Who pays then if banks couldn’t appropriately price for risk in granting the loan? I also think they don’t fully understand how regulated the banking system has become in the last few years since the recession hit full force. Much of that regulation is a very good thing but the side effect has been that it is much harder for those in lower socioeconomic brackets to get any credit.

9.) I absolutely think that they should form their own party and run candidates in elections. YES! Their last point all but says that this is what they intend to do. I think that’s a great idea and I hope they follow through with it. This is the way to have them voice their concerns about the system and become a part of participatory government, as well as to see the complications that are inherent in running an incredibly complex political, economic, and social system.

Get in the game Occupiers and don’t wait until July 2012. Now is the time to make yourselves heard and for others to consider your proposals in the upcoming election season.  

choices, movie, New York City

Beginning: Making Good of Everything That Comes Our Way

Christa Avampato
Manhattan at night. From http://www.destination360.com

I just finished watching the 8-part PBS series on the history of New York City. The PBS series on New York closes with former Governor Mario Cuomo quoting Teilhard de Chardin, a French Jesuit paleontologist and philosopher. De Chardin said that, “One of the tricks in life is to convert everything into good.” You’re a sculptor and you have a stone with a scar in it. “So now you have to sculpt around that scar,” Cuomo says. “You’ve got to use that scar to make it part of whatever it is you’re going to produce that’s beautiful, and work with what you have. Play it as it lies. So whatever the circumstance, use it for good purpose.”

I don’t believe that everything happens for a reason. I don’t believe we are destined to go through this struggle or that hardship as some sort of predetermined development. As free thinking, free feeling individuals who have a tremendous ability to adapt to new information and new circumstances, we create reason and meaning from life. We can make good, as de Chardin encourages us to do, as Cuomo encouarges us to do. Even from the most horrible, tragic circumstances, we can learn and grow and help others do the same.

This work of making good is not easy. I’m not sure that it really comes naturally to anyone. However, on the other side of anger, grief, embarrassment, and disappointment, there lies a vast expanse of possibility if we choose to see it. Every day, we have the opportunity to take a look at our lives, the good and the bad, and draw conclusions and lessons to carry forward into tomorrow. Making meaning of what happens to us and to our communities is our greatest creative act. We are literally willing meaning into being. This is where our stories are spun, where our gifts come alive, where in the act of inferring meaning in our days they become meaning-full. Go there.