adventure, happiness, luck

Step 317: Waking Up Ecstatic

Christa Avampato

“Joy is not in things; it is in us.” ~ Richard Wagner

I take Phineas outside for his walk early in the morning. Thankfully with the end of Daylight Savings Time, the sun is now up before we are. This week we stepped out of our building to meeting a friendly, gorgeous yellow lab. He that characteristic big head that he just nuzzled right into my side and Phinny just loved him. When Phineas really likes someone he doesn’t just wag his tail; he wags the whole back-end of his body.

The lab’s owner, and I’m embarrassed to say I didn’t ask her name, said “wow, he is just ecstatic!”

“He wakes up that way every morning,” I said.

“Isn’t it inspiring (and exhausting),” she laughed.

I laughed, too. Up to that point, I hadn’t thought of how inspiring it is to be around a constantly ecstatic little being like Phin, but every morning since we met our friend, the lab, it’s the first thing that pops into my head. Phinny wakes up every morning, happy to get another day and he goes for it with everything he’s got in his little 15 pound body. He doesn’t hold back his energy or enthusiasm, he says hello to everyone, and he always approaches even our most routine routes as if they’re brand new experiences. It’s truly awesome, and yes, inspiring. We should all feel so lucky to get another day.

home, luck, politics, war

Step 316: I’m Lucky to Be Home

Christa Avampato

On Wednesday night I went to a debate series run by Intelligence Squared, an organization that brings together experts and thought leaders on a specific topic who debate from two polar opposite angles. The audience votes prior to the debate and then just after. The side who convinces the greatest percentage of people to change their minds wins the debate. the topic on Wednesday night, “Afghanistan is a lost cause.” A very loaded statement.

Afghanistan is a multi-layered, hugely complicated issue that I would argue most experts don’t even fully understand. Our U.S. presence there is hotly debated – it’s not clear if we’re helping or harming the situation, nor if we’re helping or harming our own national security by being in Afghanistan. We’ve spent tens of billions of dollars over many years to make a modicum of improvement. Some argue that improvement is worth it. Others have called it a colossal failure.

I went into the debate confused, and left with a clearer opinions. Yes, I support our troops. No, I don’t think we should be in Afghanistan with any more military than required to get much-needed humanitarian aid to the area. Getting more education, food, electricity, and basic housing to more people would do much more good than more weapons. I’d like to see someone like Gregg Mortensen deciding the US policy in Afghanistan. I hope President Obama calls him.

One statement at the end of the debate really struck a chord in me. Matthew Hoh, who has a wealth of on-the-ground experience in Afghanistan though is a lousy debater, said, “I don’t care who wins this debate. I just want you to go home tonight and think about all of the troops there who aren’t going home tonight, who will never go home again.”

And I did. And I thought about it this morning when I woke up, too. I spent a few minutes snuggled under my covers, counting my blessings that I live in a safe, warm home, that I have friends and family whom I love and who love me, that I’m about to take my adorable dog for a walk, that I live a free life whose limits are only set by the limits I place on myself.

Who’s luckier than me? No one, and I’m grateful for that luck every day.

adventure, career, change, choices, decision-making, risk

Step 315: Risks Are Less Scary Than They First Appear

Christa Avampato

I’m a fan of the daily newsletter from Psychology Today. Every day they send over 4 stories that are loosely connected, and try to make their readers better people. A few weeks ago they sent over a set of article about fear and how the mind interprets different fears. My big take-away: we have a warped view of risk, real and perceived.

I think about risk a lot for several specific reasons:

1.) At the moment I work in financial services – an industry built around the ability to manage risk
2.) I’m working on starting a small business – a challenging proposition even when the economy is at its best
3.) I live in New York City, a city built and run by people who take their dreams, and all the risk that those dreams carry, very seriously

One of Psychology Today’s articles talks about the 10 ways we screw up our perception of a risk. The good news: we’re actually much more capable than we give ourselves credit for. I understand that the economy’s in the hole because we got way too confident, that for years we were living way out of the ballpark of our means. I’m not suggesting we get back to that place of too-risky living.

What I am suggesting is that we’ve gone too far in the other direction. We tell ourselves that we can’t take any risk now. Better to stay in the job, relationship, city where we are. New is scary. New is uncertain. New is overrated. I hate that we’ve painted ourselves into a corner. It’s true that we need to make smart choices, but it’s also true that we need to live, really live. We’re creatures of dreams and aspirations and joy. We won’t thrive if we don’t strive.

I’m not telling you to run out into the world, full tilt, throwing any and every caution to the wind. (Well, actually, I think it’s good to do that once in a while.) What I am asking you to do is keep in mind that we only get one crack at this go-around in the world and that this world needs you to live the best life you can imagine. We need you at your very best. It’s my firm belief that we’re at our best when we’re happiest, and we’re happiest when we’re out there in the world living the way we want.

So take a little tip-toe outside of that box you put yourself in. Try something new and different that does nothing but lift your spirits. If we all take some small steps, together we can leap.

celebration, Christmas, holiday, New York City

Step 314: The Holiday Season

Christa Avampato

Around this time of year, a lot of people complain about retailers pushing along the holiday season. “Christmas candy is already out and it’s not even Thanksgiving yet!” they say. I’m okay with that – retailers, put the idea of Christmas in our heads for as long as possible. I’d do just about anything to lengthen the holiday season – the joy, the decorations, the music, the cookies. New York City becomes a truly magical place during the holidays. I’ll take as much of it as I can get.

This past weekend I walked by Bryant Park and saw that the ice rink and holiday market was already busy. And you haven’t even packed away your Halloween costume, you say? Who cares?! It’s the holidays. Bring it on! Get the most out of this holiday season in New York City – see the Nutcracker, check out the holiday windows at Bergdorf’s, listen to some carols, pay a visit to Santa, and go see one of the great big beautiful trees decked out in more lights that you can count. Here’s a comprehensive guide to all of the festivities in NYC – http://www.nycgo.com/?event=view.article&id=245898. Make the most of it and happy holidays!

risk, teaching, yoga

Step 313: No More Waiting

Christa Avampato

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~ Mark Twain

The anticipation of beginning is always more frightening than actually taking the plunge. At the edge of the cliff, we hesitate. We look back and see all that we have to lose by moving forward. Even if what we have isn’t exactly what we want, it’s comfortable. So long as our dreams live “out there”, in our mind’s eye, they remain perfectly intact. No disappointment. No embarrassment. No potential admission of failure.

There are few things that make me cringe more than the possibility of regret. I’ve been putting off the effort I’d like to put into Compass Yoga because of the risk. “I have to wait to get space,” I tell myself, but the truth is that I’ve been scared to go for it. My biggest fear: what If I offer weekly classes and no one shows up? What if I can’t break even? Or worse, what if people come to the class and they hate it? These are the nagging fears that have kept me making only incremental progress in my yoga teaching.

On Sunday morning, as I was enjoying my extra hour in bed thanks to the end of Daylight Savings, I woke up with such a clear idea of what to do. I couldn’t think of a single good reason to continue waiting. It’s time for me to throw caution and fear to the wind, rent a space for a weekly class, and get going on the marketing of it. I’m going for it. Starting in January, I’ll be giving a weekly class for $10 / person, donating 20% of the class fees to charities selected by the students, giving them the tax deduction. I get to teach a weekly class, students get affordable yoga, and the world gets a little brighter with the donations made to nonprofits that the students care about.

Bye bye, safe harbor. Weekly class details to follow in the coming weeks. I hope you’ll join me.

change, choices, creativity, imagination

Step 312: Growing Imagination

Christa Avampato

“Even as you research, you are filtering out the things that do not resonate with your inner ideals and choosing what does. In doing so you are telling the universe to narrow down the infinite possibilities, focusing all the combined energy of co-creation on what you have chosen. This creates a channel through which your goals can find you, like a beacon in the vast darkness of the universe. Today you are the creator of your future, and your only limits are the boundaries of your imagination.” ~ My horoscope from DailyOm on Friday, November 5th.

My friend, Laura, introduced me to DailyOm horoscopes about a year ago and I am always amazed by their ability to strike just the right chord and help me to feel okay with where I am. I read the horoscope above on my phone just as I was leaving Brian’s office. I was talking with him about a shift in my career that I’m hoping to make in 2011, as well as some other plans I’m making for new projects. I’ve been toying with different ideas and filtering as needed. I explained to Brian that the filtering process can be a little frustrating because it seems to take so much time and the pay-off builds in such small increments.

I’ve started to believe that every creative act requires more editing than content. The initial recording of the idea is important, though the culling down, the focus, and the distillation of what matters and how to execute it are equally important. And that focus is needed if we want to truly expand and grow our imaginations to their full potential. And the incredible thing about imagination is that once we choose to embrace it, celebrate it, and nurture it our goals really do find us. This isn’t magic; it’s only the harvesting of all the seeds we’ve sewn for so long.

change, time

Step 311: An Extra Hour

Christa Avampato

“All my possessions for a moment of time.” ~ Elizabeth I

I never believed it would happen, that life would go by faster as I got older. This year has flown by for me, and the holidays are just around the corner. So many of my friends have talked recently about the passage of time, how one day falls into the next and before we know it too many days have gone before we’ve all gotten together again. I know every second of every day passes by at the exact same length as every second that came before it and everyone that will come after it.

I think times goes by more quickly once we fully realize just how fleeting it all is. When we see the lines start to creep around our eyes, when we see our parents start to grow older, and when we have to start checking the next demographic box on market surveys we realize time doesn’t have to ask for our permission to pass by and it doesn’t care about whether or not we accept it’s passing. It has a stubborn mind of its own. It will go on, with or without us.

I thought a lot about time yesterday as we got an hour of it back. The end of Daylight savings time is the one day when we get that 25th hour we so desperately crave. And you know what? It didn’t really matter that much, just like it doesn’t really matter if we have a little more money or a little more luck. We are remarkable creatures of adaption. If suddenly days shrunk to 23 hours, we’d find a way to still get everything done. We’d flex. We always do.

care, health, teaching, yoga

Step 310: Healing by Example

Christa Avampato

“The physician who knows only medicine, knows not even medicine.” It would follow that the care-taker that does not care for themselves cannot care-“fully” for others.” ~ Mark Twain

Yoga City NYC is a fantastic resource for anyone interested in yoga and wellness, two giant common interests among many New Yorkers. In their newsletter last week they published this quote by Mark Twain. It reminds me of how important it is as a teacher to not only compose a well-organized yoga class, but to practice what I teach in my daily life for my own benefit. To give care, we need to receive care, too.

For the new year, I am exploring new opportunities to teach yoga to under-served populations in unconventional spaces. Caregivers are a population I’m particularly keen on because it would help me to lever up my impact. If I can help caregivers be well, then they can take care of others more effectively. Caregivers come in many forms – doctors, nurses, teachers, coaches, mentors. They give of themselves every day, but how often does anyone give to them?

I hear a lot of people, especially moms, say that they just don’t have time to take care of themselves because they’re too busy taking care of everyone else. The truth is that taking care of themselves is the best way that they can care for others. We can’t give from a deficit – the math just doesn’t work that way. So if we really want to heal and care for others, we need to heal ourselves first. And there’s not a single selfish thing about self-care; it’s actually the most generous thing we can do. What we give is rooted in what we have.

Uncategorized

Step 309: A Review of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain

Christa Avampato

“I’m going for it. You only go around once.” ~ Anthony Bourdain

I’m a phenomenal eater and dinner guest. I always bring a gift, I will wash dishes, and the only thing I don’t eat is mayonnaise. I remember starting college at Penn in West Philadelphia, a very ethnically diverse neighborhood, and realizing just how many kinds of food there were in the world. Ethiopian, Indian, Vietnamese, Korean. I learned that although Spaniards, Peruvians, and Venezuelans all spoke the same language, their food was vastly different and was decidedly not the Tex-Mex I once associated with all Latin cooking. Philadelphia was my introduction to the world of food.

History was one of my majors at Penn, and I love food history. I love cookbooks that read like adventure stories and convery the cultural understanding and insights that are wrapped up in food from a specific country. You can learn a lot about people by what they cook and eat. I started reading Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, the journey of Anthony Bourdain’s mad ride from lowly summer dishwasher to Executive Chef at Brasserie Les Halles, one of the top restaurants in New York, and am entranced by his storytelling.

I had a brief and unremarkable career in the restaurant business, composed of:
1.) 2 weeks as a server at the Rocking Horse Ranch when I was in high school. I was terrible.

2.) A summer as a cocktail waitress at a local bar in my hometown. I was also terrible. I didn’t drink then, and therefore didn’t know what any drinks were when people ordered them.

3.) A summer hostessing job at the Ground Round. This I was pretty good at because all I had to do was smile and say “right this way”.

4.) A barista at several coffee shops through college and during my early career. I was actually a decent barista, even though I didn’t drink coffee then. (Now I drink it every day and realize I missed out on this pleasure for far too long.) It kind of felt like I was inventing every drink I made, and I loved the scent of coffee and the baked goods that went along with it. That counter between me and the customers made it far less stressful than being a waitress.

5.) After I left theatre, I worked in a restaurant for about 2 weeks as a waitress – I sadly realized I had gotten even worse at this skill as I got older. So I threw in the towel on any possibility of taking up a career associated with a kitchen and have never looked back.

Kitchen Confidential made me realize why people take up careers slaving over a hot stove, torturing themselves with long, irregular hours, and working their way up a very long, unforgiving chain. There’s nothing glamorous or sexy about life in a kitchen. What food does offer is a pathway into the hearts, minds, and souls of others. It can heal, nurture, and teach. It brings people together, fosters friendship, and sparks love. Food is at the heart of so many cherished memories. It can transport us.

I don’t think my career will ever take a turn back into the food business, but I certainly have a new-found respect and admiration for the art of cooking and serving thanks to Bourdain’s brutally honest culinary tales. Chefs are societal heroes. Do yourself a favor and take the trip down memory lane with him. It’s well worth the time.

(Warning – this book contains some pretty crude language, which I find fabulous because it’s wrapped in unbelievably good storytelling. I marvel at the power of a well-placed profanity because I have no idea how to use them in writing, mostly because I don’t use them very often in my every day life. I have a feeling Bourdain spends a good deal of his day practicing the use of curse words so he’s a master at it. It’s not everyone’s cup of tea, so I wanted to provide a word of caution. Cheers!)

government, hope, politics

Step 308: A Letter to President Obama

Christa Avampato

Dear President Obama,

While last night’s election results may seem like a referendum on the policies you’ve advocated for over the last two years, I think they are a greater reflection of the fear that so many people feel about this new economic level setting. It can be tempting to voters to think a change of power will bring a change of scene. People want the good ol’ times again, or at least what we thought were good ol’ times.

I graduated from the Darden business school in May 2007 into what my classmates and I thought was an unstoppable economy. 6 months later it was all-to-clear to us that we had built our short-term career aspirations on a tremendously unstable house of cards. We had to rethink those dreams, at least in the short-term. Maybe even delay them a bit or alter them.

But our underlying confidence in our abilities to make positive contributions to the world around us did not waver, and your confidence shouldn’t either. We needed you to take up the seemingly insurmountable challenge of the Presidency two years ago, and we need you now more than ever.

Change worth having takes time to build. There are a lot of people in this country who haven’t lost heart. I haven’t, and I hope you don’t either.