adventure, career, creativity, guest blogger, health, writing

Beginning: Guest Post by Monica McCarthy of Morning Do

Christa Avampato

Monica McCarthy is one of my favorite Twitter-turned-real-life connections (@MissMcCarthy). She is an actress and holistic health coach living in New York City. Her blog, Morning Do, is a collection of her writings on healthy living. Monica is having a transformative 2011 already and I’m so thrilled that she agreed to write a guest post. She writes here about her love of new beginnings and some of her latest adventures.

When I was in elementary school I won first place in a writing competition for a poem entitled Every Ending Is A New Beginning. Little did I know then how many new beginnings would take place over the years.

I love new beginnings, always have. Maybe that’s because as a kid, I spent my summers jumping from one summer camp to another while both of my parents worked. Every week or two there were new places to explore, new friends to meet, new things to do.

As an adult, I have a similar approach when it comes to career. The results of a personality/career test I took recently stated the most important component of my Ideal Career was Spontaneity. Yep – that sounds about right.

This past year, the pull of New Beginnings strengthened tenfold. I became certified as a Holistic Health Coach after having switched to a vegan lifestyle after having understudied actress and vegan Alicia Silverstone in a Broadway play. In an effort to learn everything I could about the benefits of a plant-based diet, I also interned for the radiant Kris Carr for a bit and assisted the lovely Victoria Moran, both incredibly knowledgeable women in the vegan/health community.

Last October I started the Healthy Living website Morning DO and entered the amazing and fascinating world of blogging and social media where I’ve met some extraordinary people like Christa!

Oh, and I got engaged! So now I’m entering the crazy world of DIY weddings. Oh, I also started taking French classes because I love languages and had never studied French. Oh, and last month I took my first photography class. Oh, and last week I ran in my first New York Road Runners Race. Oh, and at the end of this month I’m taking my first painting class.

I guess you could say I’m a new beginnings fanatic. I believe we learn more about ourselves every time we try something new. The catch, of course, is we can’t do everything at once. There are still only 24 hours in a day. Every new beginning must lead to an end.

Which leaves me with just one question: What’s next?

Monica McCarthy is a certified Holistic Health Coach, writer, and actress living in NYC. She loves helping her clients transform their health and happiness in ways they never even thought possible. Her passion for healthy lifestyle make-overs is the basis for her website MorningDO.com where you can find useful tips and helpful hints along with a daily Morning DO exercise. Monica lives with her fiance and their rescue pup and spends her free time planning for their DIY wedding.

books, leadership, meditation, yoga

Beginning: Deepak Chopra and The Soul of Leadership

Christa Avampato

This post is also available as a podcast on Cinch and on iTunes.

“You are the mighty ocean in the drop.” ~ Rumi

“Leaders need to be reminders to their people of their own dreams.” ~ Dr. Deepak Chopra

On Monday night I attended an event put on by Inc Magazine at the Morgan Stanley headquarters. Dr. Chopra has written a new book, The Soul of Leadership: Unlocking Your Potential for Greatness. Yes, it’s an insightful read if you’re a CEO though it’s equally as helpful for those who see themselves as the CEO of their own lives, which is to say it’s a book for everyone.

There was so much information delivered in the hour-long event that I’m still processing a good deal of it for future posts. The quotes above are the ones that keep coming to the surface of my thoughts. It’s so easy to just imagine that we are only one small soul is a vast sea. Rumi, in his endlessly comforting words, says no, you, just as you are, have within in you as much potential as that vast sea. Your contributions, thoughts, ideas, and dreams matter a great deal. Your dreams, give rise to the dreams of others, and when living your dreams, you are inspiring others to do the same. Like passing a candle, your light gives light to others.

As Dr. Chopra continued to talk about the need for a wisdom-based society and the need to return to our role as human beings instead of human doings, he advocated for meditation and yoga. He talked about the need to stop the inner dialogue so that the wise creativity within us will spontaneously rise to the surface. The wisdom we need already lies within us if only we will quiet the mind long enough to hear it. This idea made me see meditation and yoga not as just healthy rituals, but as a necessary practice for reaching our own potential.

The idea I kept returning to was one of connection. We are now all linked across oceans and continents in a closer, more intimate way than we have ever been before. We will only grow closer as technology becomes more sophisticated and wide-spread. How we run our lives and our communities has great impacts in every other corner of the world. “No karmic debt ever goes unpaid. It is the only perfect accounting system,” Dr. Chopra said. How we treat each other, inspire each other, and encourage each other could mean a better world for all of us. And if we don’t nuture one another, then the consequences are dire. Our connection to one another will be our demise or our savior, and that outcome is largely determined by us.

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

art

Beginning: How I Made Peace with Art

Christa Avampato

This post is available as a podcast on Cinch.

“What hope there is for us lies in our nascent arts, for if we are to be remembered as more than a mass of people who lived and fought wars and died, it is for our arts that we will be remembered.” ~ Maxwell Anderson, “Whatever Hope We Have”

“Art is fundamentally a survival device of the species. Otherwise it wouldn’t be so persistent.” ~ Milton Glaser via Bruce Mau

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away I used to manage Broadway shows and national tours. I was ridiculously lucky that I always worked with big budget, award-winning productions that had incredibly high production values and top-notch talent. I started that work when I was 22 and stopped about 6 years later. Somewhere along the way, I got discouraged despite all of the success of the shows. I was afraid that I was losing a part of myself, that I was running all over the country working on artistic productions when so much of the world was suffering. People were starving, victims of war and poverty, there was so much violence and the world needed a lot of healing. And what was I doing with my fancy education? Putting on a show. I felt hollow for making art. I started to wonder if art mattered at all.

So I set off on a journey that took about 6 more years. I tried new careers, new organizations. I collected some additional skills and made my way to a good paying job that gave me the opportunity to travel and explore. If someone asked me what’s the one great discovery I’ve been hoping to make all these years on my travels it would simply be this: I want to know what matters.

David Stone, the Broadway producer of productions such as Wicked, once told me that a life in theatre, or any performing art really, is difficult. So difficult that if I could find something, anything, else that I’d be reasonably happy doing, I should do that instead of theatre. “It’s just too damn hard a life,” he said. “You should only do it if there’s literally nothing else you want to do.” I believed him and that thought lingered with me for a long time. It may have even inspired my journey away from the theatre.

In the past few weeks, a new idea’s been gripping me. Maybe art in some form is what I’m meant to do. Maybe it is my reason for being this time around. I go to museums. I watch street artists. I have recently been gobbling up books of all kinds as if tomorrow all the paper literature of the world may be gone for good. It inspires me, pushes me, makes me look at the world differently. Art reminds me of how lucky I am to be alive.

If I accomplish nothing else in 2011, here is the one enormous, glorious realization that may be sending me out into the world in a very new and unexpected adventure: art, mine and yours, matters. No matter its form or audience or scale. We don’t know who it will affect, or when or how or why. Creating is an act of faith. The act of creating, building something from our hearts that celebrates the world as we see it, may just be the most valuable thing of all.

The image above can be found here.

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

patience, success, yoga

Let’s Begin: Building a Practice Takes Patience

Christa Avampato

This post is available as a podcast on Cinch.

“It takes twenty years to become an overnight success.” ~ Eddie Cantor

“All of the effort you’ve put in could be wasted by giving up just a moment too soon.” ~ Seth Simonds

On Friday I met with Brian after a few weeks off due to the holidays. I told him about starting my own weekly yoga classes on January 30th and asked him how he managed having an independent counseling and coaching practice. Brian spent many years working for other people and eventually had a job that encouraged him to step out on his own. His business has grown by word-of-mouth to the point that he can’t take any more clients now. His calendar is full.

Brian is thrilled that I’ve chosen to try to make a-go of Compass Yoga on my own. This is exactly the type of new beginning that he and I have been working toward in my coaching – the confidence to help me realize that going my own way is the best path for me. It’s the path I was meant for, where I can give the very best of myself, where I can do the most good. And his most important piece of advice on this path: “Have patience. It takes time. Don’t give up.”

Patience is a hard one for me. I want to get where I want to be now – I’m the box in the middle of the cartoon above. So the quote above by Eddie Cantor helped. In our society, we witness an enormous number of overnight success stories thanks to YouTube and a variety of televised talent shows, or at least that’s how they’re portrayed. Dig a little deeper and we find that any lasting overnight success really was preceded by many, many years of very hard work that wasn’t always recognized or appreciated. They persevered because they got energy from the journey. Even if success never comes, they still feel fulfilled because they provided something of real value. Success is just the by-product of doing what they were meant to do, of the help they were able to provide.

When I keep that idea in mind, the fear of going my own way subsides a bit, or at least long enough to help me get through the next step of setting up my class. And when the fear finds me again, I remember to breath, and smile, and keep moving. For more information my group yoga classes starting at 6pm on January 30th, check out the Meetup page for the class.

How do you grapple with fear when you’re working on something that you care about? How do you keep going in spite of the fear?

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

interview, writing, yoga

I’m featured today on Liz Massey’s site, Creative Liberty

Christa Avampato

My first interview of 2011! Liz Massey, the author of Creative Liberty, featured my writing and yoga practice today. We got to talking about creative habits and rituals, and how to get creativity flowing again when we’re stuck. It was a fun interview and Liz’s curiosity is inspiring. I’m flattered to be included with such a wonderful group of creative souls as part of her “In the Studio” series.

Check out the interview here.

change, dogs, nature, Spring

Beginning: Take Spring Where You Can Get It

Christa Avampato

This post is available as a podcast on Cinch.

My pup, Phineas, is finally back to his usual energetic, curious self. He has an allergy to the salt that’s heavily used on the pavements in New York City. The salt, or some chemical in it, gave him sores on his little legs, cut up the pads on his feet, and made him sick after he licked some of it from his paws. He was sluggish and didn’t eat much, all of the same signs Sebastian (the pup my sister owned) showed shortly before his passing. I rushed Phin to the ER on the morning on New Year’s Eve. As I was taking him downtown to the hospital, I sat on the subway train, head down on his carrier, tearing up. I knew I loved him, but I didn’t realize how much He’s come to mean to me in 4 short months until I started to worry that I might lose him.

After allowing the salt to pass through his system, learning how to carefully clean his paws, getting him a warm wool sweater, and discovering the miracle balm Musher’s Secret (great protection for dogs who won’t wear booties), Phineas is out in the world frolicking with the best of them. [I must insert an endorsement here for the PetHealthStore, a local shop in my neighborhood where I got the sweater and learned about Musher’s.] He likes the snow well enough, though I can tell that the novelty of it has worn off. He wants the spring – the grass, the leaves, and the warmth. Last weekend we hopped around Central Park, clamoring over snow banks many times taller than Phin, to get to the few grassy areas that the melted snow had exposed. Phin rolled around in them, thinking warm Spring thoughts. He saw some fall leaves around a tree trunk and he got so excited to run through them that you’d thought he’d just seen a long lost friend.

We sat on a rock for a few minutes and basked in the warmth of the afternoon winter sun on our faces. Spring is a long way off, but Phin and I are already dreaming of daffodils and butterflies and the re-birth of a bright, green world. For now, we’ll take whatever bit of grass and dried leaves we can get. Spring is where you find it.

The image above reminds me that resilience can be attained in any environment. The image can be found here.

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

meditation, yoga

Beginning: The 21-day Yoga Challenge with Yoga Journal

Christa Avampato

Yoga Journal is getting better and better with every issue, or maybe I’m just becoming a better reader of the publication. The last few months of issues have reinvigorated my practice and teaching. The depth of the articles and the deeply moving stories have helped me to re-discover the transformative power of yoga in my life.

Did you make a resolution to do more yoga in 2011? Worried about how to get keep that promise to yourself? Help has arrived and it won’t cost you a dime. Starting tomorrow, January 10th, Yoga Journal and 4 talented yoga teachers – Jason Crandell, Kate Holcombe, Elise Lorimer, and Rebecca Urban – are helping to jump-start our home practices by hosting the 21-day Yoga Challenge. Online, there will be daily practices as well as pranayama and meditation audio instruction. There is also a daily newsletter and the opportunity to share the experience of the 21-day challenge with other participants via an open blog.

It’s all free so we have nothing to lose and a home practice to gain. How do you join, you ask? Just visit http://yogajournal.com/21daychallenge and enter your email address. That’s it. I hope you’ll join me. See you on the mat!

The inspiring image above can be found here.

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

animals, dogs, love

Beginning: Loving an Animal

Christa Avampato

“Until one has loved an animal, a part of one’s soul remains unawakened.” ~ Anatole France

I’m a new dog owner. I adopted Phin almost 4 months ago and he is the first pup I’ve had whom I’m solely responsible for. By some great good fortune, I have a team of dog whisperers. My brother-in-law, Kyle, my friends Trish, Janet, Amanda, Col, Courtney, Kerry, Blair, and Ashley (who thankfully have talked me down off the ledge several times as I puzzle my way through how to best care for my favorite furry friend.) And my newest animal-loving friend – Gregg.

I met Gregg and his lovely wife, Linda, at the semi-annual dachshund festival held each Fall and Spring at Washington Square Park. Gregg was easy to pick out because he proudly wore a Godfather themed t-shirt that very simply said, “The Dogfather”, and that he is. He and Linda are the owners of two amazing full-sized dachshunds, both therapy dogs. Gregg is a professional dog trainer and has provided me with an enormous amount of advice and counsel, and has cheered Phin and I on as we helped transition Phin from a rescue to part of the pack. I highly, highly recommend Gregg if you need a trainer.

Right around Christmas Gregg sent me an incredible slide show with a simple note that said “This is why I thank God that I’m able to do what I do…” It’s a collection of fantastic dog photos that show just how much humor and love is wrapped up in these remarkable beings. And it makes me burst with happiness to know that one of those lovely souls found his way to my home.

Click here to view the slide show.

I snapped the photo of Phin above over the Christmas holiday. Deep in thought perched high on the couch.

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

career, dreams, writing

Beginning: My First Blog Circa 2004 And How I Haven’t Changed

Christa Avampato

This post is also available as a podcast. Click here to listen.

I joined Blogger in 2004 with a tiny collection of writing before I even really knew what blogging meant. I guess that was before anyone knew what blogging meant. There are exactly 26 posts on my first blog, which I titled “Eyes and Ears Wide Open”. I made it private because I was afraid someone would read it. Ha! Silly, and hilarious when now I live so much of my life online for anyone in the world to see.

There are still a few things I keep to myself. Or at least I used to. I used to moderate comments on this blog. I’m not doing that any more. Any one who puts a comment on my blog will see it published immediately. [Mom, please refrain from any gushing in the comments section. Just send me an email telling me how awesome I am. :)] Another thing I used to do a lot of was poetry writing. I won some very tiny poetry contests when I was a teenager and in my early twenties. There are a few of my poems out there published in anthologies, though I don’t own a single copy of any of them. Most of what’s on my first blog is poetry, deeply personal narratives that I never intended for any other soul to read.

Until now. In this year of new beginnings, I’m working on an illustrated book of those poems and a few others I’m writing, sprinkled with my doodles on my new Wacom Bamboo, a drawing tablet that connects to my Mac. My brother-in-law is a genius with his drawing tablet; me – I’m purely an amateur. I thought in looking back at my first blog that I’d see so much progress, that I’d changed so much as a person. I actually laughed out loud when I saw how similar I am to my 27-year old self. Outwardly, my life may be very different. On the inside, I’m still the same gal, but now with more real confidence.

To give a flavor of just how similar I am, and just how out-of-whack some aspects of my life are with how I’d like them to be, here is a post from December 2004 about cubicles. Despite my distaste for them, I work in one. I’m part of the legion of cubicles dwellers that I promised myself 7 years ago that I’d never be again. Life makes me laugh, and then shake my head, and then get up and make some serious changes. By December 31, 2011, I’m bound and determined to finally live up to the promise I made in the post below many years ago.

Saturday, December 11, 2004
Cubicles

I will never understand the human desire to set up boundaries and divisions, to seal themselves off from one another. Why is it important for people to say, “I am this and you are that. I sit here and you sit there”? I hate the cubicle culture and I fear it’s growing at a furious pace. I am getting off the train here – no more cubicles for me. And when I’m running my own operations, I will refuse to have cubicles. I’m actually going to business school on a quest to get rid of cubicles. To make them as obsolete as slide rules.

I recently saw a photo of an office that didn’t have walls between desks, but had gigantic tropical fish tanks winding through the office. You can see the person on the other side of you. You can take a boat and send it “down tank” with a message for a colleague. If we must have boundaries, then can we at least make them transparent and filled with color and life?

The image above is the one that inspired my post back in 2004. Not as inspiring as I remember it. I would make my office fish tank much more colorful.

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.

dreams, music

Beginning: Save Some Time To Dream

Christa Avampato

Listen to a podcast of this post (song included!) on Cinch.

“Save some time to dream ’cause your dream could save us all.” ~ John Mellencamp

I was watching the David Letterman show last week and John Mellencamp was a guest on the show. He sang the song Save Some Time to Dream from his most recent album No Better Than This. His performance alone was powerful – if you’ve never seen him perform I highly recommend it. He’s a performer who puts his whole heart out there all the time. He lives his life with wild abandon, which is to say he is someone who truly embraces and basks in freedom. Couple a performance like his with the words of this song and there’s no way you’re not acting on the urge to run out into the world and live it up.

Our obligations, or perceived obligations, can sometimes get the best of us. We can feel selfish for dreaming, and even more selfish for acting on our dreams, especially when our dreams require disappointing others so we can be true to ourselves. John Mellencamp turns that idea on its head. The world needs you, me, and every dream we can muster. Keeping the best of ourselves hidden behind a veil doesn’t serve anyone, and actually can really generate harm. Your dream, the one you’ve got right now germinating in your mind’s eye, could really save us all.

We owe it to ourselves and everyone else to dream, and then act on that dream. In the process of changing our own lives, we’re going to change the lives of others, too.

My dream right now is to try anything new that catches my eye. If I can do that, then I’m living my dream. So tell me, what is your greatest dream, right now, at this very moment?

Full lyrics of Save Some Time to Dream
Save some time to dream
Save some time for yourself
Don’t let your time slip away
Or be stolen by somebody else

Save some time for those you love
For they’ll remember what you gave
Save some time for the songs you sing
And the music that you’ve made

Could it be that this is all there is?
Could it be there’s nothing more at all?
Save some time to dream
‘Cause your dream could save us all

Save some time for sorrow
‘Cause it will surely come your way
Prepare yourself for failure
It will give you strength some day

Try to keep your mind open
And accept your mistakes
Save some time for living
And always question your faith

Could it be that this is all there is?
Could it be there’s nothing more at all?
Save some time to dream
‘Cause your dream might save us all

Cast your eyes up to heaven
Oh what does that mean to you
Try not to be too judgmental
So others will not judge you

Save some time to think
Oh before you speak your mind
Many will not understand
And to them you must to be kind

Could it be that this is all there is?
Could it be there’s nothing more at all?
Save some time to dream
‘Cause your dream might save us all

Oh yeah
Your dream might save us all

This blog is part of the 2011 WordPress Post Every Day Challenge.