change, experience, psychology

Beginning: This Year, Change Your Mind

Christa Avampato

Listen to a podcast of this post on Cinch.

On New Year’s Day I spent the morning happily curled up on my couch with Phineas (he was a little under the weather due to an allergy to all the rock salt they slather NYC sidewalks with), my computer on my lap, Anthony Bourdain on my TV traveling and eating his way through exotic lands, and a cup of Bengali Spice tea. I was having a perfect start to the new year.

I was flipping through the New York Times on my computer and came across an op-ed by Oliver Sacks, an author and scientist who was very influential during my undergrad years at Penn. The way he looked at cognitive psychology and its implications on culture and understanding the human condition, really struck a cord with me so I was thrilled to read about his latest ideas.

In the article, he talks about how New Year’s resolutions tend to be things like lose weight or go to the gym, wonderful resolutions that are good for the body. He asks us to consider making a resolution to grow and strength our minds, and suggests that one of the very best ways to do that is to try something new, which could mean brushing your teeth with your weaker hand, traveling to a new destination, or taking up a new instrument. Giving ourselves over to the beginner’s experiences does for our mind what working out does for our bodies. How wonderful since I just pledged to be a beginner for the entire year of 2011!

Here’s to stronger, more open mind in 2011. What new adventure are you taking up?

The gorgeous image above appeared with Dr. Sacks’s op-ed and was created by Valero Doval.

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

choices, dogs, experience

Beginning: A Lesson Along the Snowy Path

Christa Avampato

Listen to a podcast of this post on Cinch.

Phineas and I took our first walk in the snow last week. He’s pretty psyched about snow and not at all psyched about slush and wet pavement. For some reason, the snow really agrees with him and because he’s only 6 inches at the shoulder, it wears him out, too. (Imagine how tired we’d be if we always had to walk in snow up to our waists!)

Over at Riverside Park, you can frequently find us frolicking in the meadows, hanging out with other dogs and dog owners, and taking in the view. We love that park, maybe even more than we love Central Park. Its slow pace, river-facing views, and arching trees make us happy in every season.

On our first snowy walk together, I chose the safe path, the one shoveled and cleared by others because I thought it would be easier for Phin. He, however, chose the snowy path because it was more fun. He dove right into that snow with wild abandon, made little snow angels (more appropriately snow dachshunds), and tossed the snow up in the air with his ample nose. It was glorious to watch him living so fully. And inspired me to do the same.

The heck with the well-traveled path. Like Phin in the snow, I want to carve my own. (And then after all that work, a nap is in order!)

The photos in this post are, respectively, Phin dashing around in the snow (tough to catch on camera – he’s a fast little guy!) and then coming home and promptly finding his blanket to settle in for his afternoon nap.

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

choices, decision-making

Beginning: My Non-Resolutions – What I Won’t Do in 2011

Christa Avampato

Listen to a podcast of this post on Cinch.

Last week I spoke with Drew Allen over at Scoutmob NYC. Scoutmob NYC is an amazing resource to give New Yorkers local deals without asking them to make an upfront payment. Good for us. Good for local businesses.

During our conversation, Drew and I talked about New Year’s resolutions. I’m not sure how we got on that subject but it was a wonderful, enlightening conversation. “Even more important than New Year’s Resolutions,” Drew said, “are our non-resolutions. What will be decide not to do in 2011?” That got me thinking, which always leads me to list-making. How I love, love, love lists.

Here are my non-resolutions for 2011:
1.) I will not beat myself up for trying something new, either before I try it or if it turns out to be less-than-a-great experience
2.) I will not focus on success – mine or that of others. Instead, I will focus on value.
3.) I will not pack my schedule at a dizzying rate.
4.) I will not forget to breath deeply, especially when I feel stress creeping in.
5.) I will not dwell on dreams and forget to live. (Thank you Albus Dumbledore for that bit of wisdom.) I will live, truly live, every moment with mindfulness.

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

yoga

Beginning: Yoga Passbook

Christa Avampato

Listen to a podcast of this post on Cinch.

Yoga in New York City is an expensive hobby, too expensive in my opinion. That’s why I started Compass Yoga and developed a business model of donating 20% of the class fees to the nonprofit of the student’s choice and giving the student the tax-deduction. Good for students. Good for nonprofits. Good for me. Win-win-win. I’m not going to get rich from Compass Yoga; I started it because I really want to give people a way to have the benefits of yoga without a pain to their finances.

Even though I’m a yoga instructor, I love going to class. Going to class gives me so many ideas and it really inspires me to try new sequences, intentions, adjustments, and even new ways of phrasing my explanations of different yoga postures. My friend Courtney (an amazing yogi and founder of Moonshine Yoga) told me about an amazing resource for people who want to try different types of yoga at an incredible price – the Yoga Passbook. Available for New York City, Chicago, Houston, and LA, the Yoga Passbook provides 425 passes to yoga, pilates, and dance studios for $75. The Passbook is good from January 1st through December 31st.

Give it a whirl – you might just find the practice you’ve been looking for!

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

experience, writing

Beginning: New Writing Intention for 2011

Christa Avampato

Listen to a podcast of this post on Cinch.

“We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” ~ Edith Lovejoy Pierce

As I moved closer to my goal of Step 365 on my path to extraordinary living, I started to worry about what I would set as my writing intention for 2011. In 2009, I set out to write a post every day that discussed something that made me feel more hopeful. In 2010, I wrote a daily post that described one more step I was taking to live an extraordinary life. I learned so much in those 2 years, and it felt like a streak that would be tough to maintain in 2011.

And then my friend, Amanda, sent me a lovely email and asked me to write a guest post for her blog ZENyc, which focuses on how to maintain balance in the crazy place we know and love as New York City. Of course I said yes and I asked her if she had a specific topic she wanted me to address. She didn’t have anything particular in mind, just a post about how I stay sane in New York.

The mere suggestion of my sanity was very flattering. Sometimes I feel totally off-kilter but apparently I am holding it together well for a majority of the time. New York keeps us on our toes – we grow comfortable with being uncomfortable from time to time. You’ve gotta be a little nuts to live here, and a little more nuts to stay for a while. Thankfully, I’m a lot nuts – gratitude to my upbringing by a very bohemian mother and an austere, psychoanalyst father – so not only do I choose to stay in New York, but I also choose to call it home.

For Amanda’s guest post, I batted around the idea of writing about yoga, having a dog, my amazing friends, my writing, having a quiet home – all topics that I write about all the time. I wanted to do something really unique for Amanda, offer something up to her readers that would be new and helpful. I wrote, re-wrote, and tossed away a number of posts. None seemed quite right.

About the same time that Amanda asked me to write the guest post, one of my co-workers told me about his New Year’s Resolution to be open to new experiences. He said it worked well for him in 2010 and he was thinking of taking it up again in 2011. That sounded like a good idea to me, and inspired me to write a guest post for Amanda’s blog about the topic of beginning. It takes courage to try something new. To have a beginner’s mind seems to me to be the best way to stay balanced. If we’re always beginners, always learning, always energized, always bold and courageous, then it’s possible to achieve great things while keeping our humility. We don’t know what we don’t know, so as beginners we experiment and explore and try, and then try again without beating ourselves up or second-guessing ourselves.

Just writing that post on the beginner’s mind was invigorating, and it got me jazzed to head out into the world and try all sorts of new, cool things. It put more fun and laughter into my writing and my life. Calling myself a beginner, I was able to look at everything with new, fresh eyes. And before I knew it, I had my writing intention for 2011. (Thank you, Amanda!)

In 2011, you’ll find all of my beginnings recorded here. All of my bumbling, fumbling, and shenanigans as I try these new beginner shoes on for size will be exhibited daily for your reading pleasure. Sometimes it will be a story of some experience I had or person I met or place I went. It may just be a cartoon or a quote or a picture. I’ll write about my new business, Compass Yoga, and how it’s going. I hope you’ll come along for the ride with me, take in the sights and sounds of a new writing journey, and tell me about your new adventures, too.

Let’s get going – as an old Levi’s ad once said, “the frontier is all around us.” Our frontiers are waiting.

The image above cracks me up. I hope it makes you laugh, too. Find it here.

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

adventure, books, career, celebration, change, choices, creativity, discovery, experience, family, friendship, grateful, gratitude, growth, happiness, ideas, meditation, New York City, story, writing, yoga

Step 365: What’s Possible? A 2010 Wrap-up.

Christa Avampato

“I am neither an optimist nor pessimist, but a possibilist.” ~ Max Lerner

As I cross over the finish line of 365 days of living and writing about an extraordinary life, I marvel at the passing of another year. On December 31, 2009, I wrote a post explaining that in 2010 I wanted to record something every day that put me one step closer to an extraordinary life.

This December 31st post is always fun to write because it’s a chance for me to reflect on the past year and realize how much has happened. Just like flipping through the New York Times’s Year in Pictures helps us remember what’s happened in the world around us, flipping through my posts from the last year lets me remember all the tiny steps that brought me to do this day.

My road to recovery from my apartment building fire:
I was in denial about the true effect it had on me and that brought me to Brian, my coach and therapist, who has helped my life grow in leaps and bounds. By June, I finally felt safe in my home again and could make my apartment feel like a peaceful space.

Stepping into the writing life:
I moved my blog over to WordPress and for the first time in the 3 years since I seriously began to contemplate living a writer’s life, earned enough money to be a freelance writer for hire. This year I connected with so many talented writers – Josh, Laura, Amanda, Erica, Sharni, Will, Sara, the Wordcount Blogathon writers, Katherine, the fab team at Owning Pink, Elephant Journal, and Michael.

I wrote and published my first e-book, Hope in Progress: 27 Entrepreneurs Who Inspired Me During the Great Recessions, a compilation of 27 of my interviews that I conducted with entrepreneurs through my Examiner column.

Yoga at the forefront of my life:
I completed my 200 hour yoga teacher training at Sonicstarted Compass Yoga, my own small teaching company, and will begin teaching a regular Sunday night yoga class at Pearl Studios NYC. Through Sonic I was inspired by the incredible teachers and the 23 amazing women in my class whom I hold so dear after our journey together. My yoga teacher training helped me to establish a regular meditation practice and cured the insomnia I’ve lived with all of my life. I found the joyful noise of kirtan, which re-ignited my interest in music. Yoga led me toward a true contemplation of my faith and spirituality that continues down a very healthy, peaceful path. There are not words enough to thank the people at Sonic for how much joy they brought to my life, but I gave it a shot in this post about our last class and the closing ritual of the training. I am forever and happily indebted to them.

Some wrong turns, too:
I studied for my GRE and despite doing well on the exam, Columbia sent me an email that began “we regret to inform you that you have not been accepted” [into a PhD program in education]. I wrote a curriculum for LIM College that I was tremendously excited about, and then the class was canceled at the 11th hour for reasons that still make me shake my head. I was so excited to be selected to serve on a jury and sadly realized just how imperfect our system is. I still think about the case on a regular basis.

Making peace with New York living:
In 2010 I fell in love with New York City, again and again and again. It became my home. Our love hate relationship ended its many years of turmoil and now we’re living together in a general state of bliss, with an occasional side dish of annoyance, just for good measure and because, well, it’s a very New York thing to do.

A few unexpected journeys:
I conquered my fear of swimming in open water while on a yoga retreat in Greece. I found that mistakes can be joyful.

Wonderful new additions to my family:
We happily welcomed my new little niece Aubree and after years of wondering whether or not I should get a dog, Phineas, a sweet little dachshund, has graced my life via the Humane Society and New York dachshund rescue.

And 10 valuable life lessons that I’m grateful for:
1.) Goodness is created and remembered by sharing what we have with others.
2.) Shouting dreams helps bring them into being.
3.) Stubborness can be a beautiful thing.
4.) We get what we settle for.
5.) Obstacles in our lives are valuable.
6.) We never have to wait to live the life we want.
7.) Letting go is sometimes the bravest and best thing to do
8.) Trusting our gut is the best way to get to get to the decision that’s right for us.
9.) Be thankful for less.

My favorite and most treasured discovery of 2010:
10.) Truly extraordinary living is found in very ordinary moments.

Wishing you a very happy start to 2011. Thanks so much for being with me on this journey that was 2010.

The image above makes me feel free. Find it here.

food, meditation, silence, simplicity, yoga

Step 364: The Secret We Know

Christa Avampato

“We dance around in a ring and suppose but the secret sits in the middle and knows.” ~ Robert Frost

This quote was sent to me by Archan, a very loyal and supportive reader and commenter on this blog. He is constantly feeding me with encouragement and sending along resources, books, and quotes to inspire me. It’s been the very best thing about taking this adventure to write every day and click the button “publish” – I’ve been able to connect with and be inspired by so many people that I may not have met otherwise. A sacred and precious reward.

Over the Christmas week I read The Story of Tea: A Cultural History and Drinking Guide by Mary Lou Heiss and Robert J. Heiss, proprietors of Cooks Shop Here. It’s a gorgeous book that takes readers through so much interesting history and cultural influence wielded by tea, the second most popular beverage on the planet. I was inspired to pick it up after I went to a tea date with my pal, Amanda, at a beautiful little spot in midtown called Radiance, a place I highly recommend, especially if you need some comforting shelter from a monsoon like Amanda and I did that day. My interest in tea has been growing steadily over many years, not surprising since Alice in Wonderland is my favorite book and because it’s a symbol of far off lands, adventure, and intrigue. I love that it is something simple and something so complex at the same time. Dichotomies, you can’t beat ’em for keeping us endlessly entertained.

In The Story of Tea, the Heisses include a section about chanoyu, the Japanese Tea ceremony or “Way of Tea”. It is a sacred art that is part performance, part culinary masterpiece and tea masters study it for years. Sen no Rikyu is the most famous of all Japanese tea masters and said to have been the most important historical figure in the development of chanoyu. His students would ask him how he learned so much about chanoyu, how it became a part of him. He always replied, “boil water and drink it.”

Ha ha, I thought. How flippant. Boil water and drink. Very funny. What else? How did he really gain his vast knowledge? And then I realized that tea, like yoga, like meditation, is really very simple. To know it, we must practice it. There is no other way. For it to sink into our bones, we have to make it a part of our every day lives. Practice – that is the only way. We can read books, study with masters, go to every conceivable workshop or class, but what it really comes down to is Sadhana, personal practice. (I silently apologized for my “ha ha” at Sen no Rikyu.)

My yoga teacher, Jeffrey, told me that during yoga teacher training but in applying the concept to tea, I realized how true that is of everything we want to really know. Practice, practice, practice. We have to sit with that practice and let it reveal itself to us. How right Robert Frost was. The secrets that we want so much to know are already known, we just have to be with them long enough to hear them.

The image above can be found here.

change, meditation, New Years Eve, yoga

Step 363: 4 Ways to Bring About A Transformation

Christa Avampato

“What we think determines what happens to us, so if we want to change our lives, we need to stretch our minds.” ~ Wayne Dyer

On Monday I wrote about caterpillars. Yesterday I wrote about focusing on goals of value rather than success. Some people get Spring fever. I’ve got New Year’s fever! As we take a look toward 2011 just days away from now, we’re reflecting on the lives we had, the lives we have now, and the lives we’d like to have going forward. We’re setting goals, making resolutions, and positioning ourselves to hit that big ol’ restart button when the clock strikes midnight on the 31st.

And if we are to be successful. if we are to really make lasting, meaningful changes, writing it down, finding buddies to help us keep up our resolutions, or any other mechanism to keep us on the straight and narrow won’t do the trick unless we are really willing to take Wayne Dyer’s counsel. To change our lives, we need to change our minds. And that’s no small feat.

I’ve got some ideas to help you expand your mind if you’re a resolution-making kind of person – I certainly am.

1.) Meditation will help – even just 5 minutes a day. Take a comfortable seat, close your eyes, and just breath for 5 minutes.

2.) Yoga will help, particularly if practiced consistently in small doses.

3.) Certainly I believe in writing down goals and getting buddies who have the same ones. There is strength in reminders and numbers.

4.) Getting some good rest and eating well helps just about everything, including the noble and difficult task of expanding our minds.

5.) Pick up a book by someone who has a very different viewpoint on a topic you are passionate about. Nothing expands the mind by having to see a subject through someone else’s eyes. For example, I completely disagree with Condoleezza Rice’s politics but her story fascinates me so I’m going to pick up her new book about her upbringing. Coincidentally, it’s called Extraordinary, Ordinary People – the subject I’ve been writing about every day for the past year. I love synchronicity!)

Now stand in the center of your world as it currently exists, take in the view, and then decide what it is you’d really like to see change in the year ahead, and how you’re willing to change your mind to get that to happen. I promise to share my journey and I hope you will, too!

The image above can be found here.

change, decision-making, design, imagination

Step 362: Success and Value

Christa Avampato

“Try not to become a person of success, but rather try to become a person of value.” ~ Albert Einstein

2011 is coming at us fast and furious, and I’m getting nervous. Nervous about ideas and plans that I’m putting into action. I’m starting to teach my own independent yoga classes on Sunday, January 30th. I’m starting a new Taproot Project as a Strategic Consultant for Bottomless Closet. I’m thinking about trips I’d like to take, classes that would help me improve some skills I have and gain others that I’ve never tried before. I’m working on some new writing projects and adding some new features to this blog to broadcast my message and enrich the content.

2011 will be my year to try on a lot of new ideas and see how they shape my life. I’m re-imagining just about every nook and cranny of my life, and then some. I’m adopting the mantra, “I’m going to give it a shot and see what happens.” Exciting, and a little daunting if I think about it too much, which I am likely to do several times a day.

What calms me down and talks me down off the ledge is the idea of focusing on value, not success. I’m done doing things that don’t add value, to my life or someone else’s. And it’s A-OK if it only improves the life of one single being. That will be enough. I’m done feeling like I must do A, B, and C. I’ll do any and all of them if it’s useful, if it makes a difference. If an activity doesn’t help me create a world that I’m proud of, then I’m just not doing it. I’ve paid my dues over and over and over again. Those dues have been settled. Success will be on my terms, and be inextricably linked to value that I can feel in my heart.

The image above can be found here.

change, dreams, faith

Step 361: The Caterpillar’s Promise

Christa Avampato

“There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” ~ Buckminster Fuller

I read this quote over the Christmas holiday as I was learning more about Eric Carle’s work. He wrote the book The Very Hungry Caterpillar (for his sister, Christa, I might add), as well as the Brown Bear, Brown Bear What Do You See Series. My niece loves those books and I bought her a game based on the stories. The butterfly gets a lot of credit in our society as a powerful metaphor, without much mind being paid to the humble caterpillar who believed he could be more.

Think of a caterpillar, a small, wormy looking animal, not particularly attractive or inspiring. He doesn’t don any beautiful colors, he can’t fly, and no one is particularly glad to find him out there in the world. Butterflies, however, are magical. We covet their appearance, and think imagine that a beautiful thing like a butterfly came from a tiny caterpillar. Without understanding the science behind the transformation, would anyone really believe that something that looks like a caterpillar could become a butterfly? No one except the caterpillar.

Think of all the people you know who have wild, far-out-there ideas. People who keep reaching and believing that they can change the world, or at least their small corner of it. People who never say never, who don’t give up, who roll with every punch and every speed bump that pops up in their path. Big thinkers who also get out in the world and do, even if it’s against all odds.

They may just be the caterpillars among us. We would do well to believe in them, and in our own ability to transform if we just believe that we can.

How would you like your life to transform as we start the new year?