Christa Avampato

My Year of Hopefulness – The Transformative Power of Tenacity

June 29, 2009December 7, 2009 Christa Avampato

“Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal: my strength lies solely in my tenacity.” ~Louis Pasteur

My friend, Laura, the author of Laura Reviews, recently posted an interview with Hugh MacLeod, author of Ignore Everybody and 39 Other Keys to Creativity. At the end of the interview, Laura asked him for his advice to writers. He simply said, “Keep doing it. It’s better to write 50 words every day, than 2,000 words every month.” In other words, keep going.

On Daily Good, a blog that promotes positive news stories, I read the quote above by Louis Pasteur. Pasteur is best known for the development of vaccines and the process of pasteurization. While he could attribute his vast scientific accomplishments to intelligence or creativity or even a variety of qualities, he credited his tenacity as the only key to his success. In other words, his achievements are due to his ability to keep going.

With all the rain falling in New York City lately, I’ve steadily been working my way through my Netflix cue. I rented We Are Marshall. It looked like a compelling story, and one I was unfamiliar with. After a tragic plane crash in which nearly the entire team, coaching staff, and many fans of Marshall University’s football team perish, the university considers deferring its program.

One of the four remaining players rallies the school’s students who stage a peaceful demonstration outside of the school’s board meeting as the board is deciding whether or not to defer the program. Every student at the university turns out, chanting one single saying, “We are Marshall.” After an exhaustive search to find a new coach, Jack Lengyel (then head coach of the football team at The College of Wooster) convinces Marshall to give him the job of head coach.

A grieving town, a spare number of players whose hearts and spirits were wracked with guilt, and a university suffering with a tremendous sense of loss and loneliness. That’s all Jack Lengyel had. And though the team had far from a winning season in 1971, the fact that they could rebuild any sense of spirit and win any games at all in the competitive arena of college football was nothing short of a miracle. They just wouldn’t take no for an answer, not matter how many obstacles they encountered. They kept going.

Tenacity pays. It obliterates challenges. It provides confidence to those who embrace it and inspires others who witness it in the spirit of others. So when we’re down or lost or we don’t know what to do with what we’ve got, the only way for us to get unstuck may be to just keep plowing through.

The image above can be found at: https://christaavampato.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/tenacity.jpg?w=300

celebration, human rights, justice, New York City

My Year of Hopefulness – Gay Pride

June 28, 2009 Christa Avampato

Today marks the 40th anniversary of Gay Pride. Last night, I went to the movies with my friends, Thomas and Richard, a couple who have been together for 24 years. After the movie, we walked over to the Christopher Street subway stop to head back uptown. Before getting on the subway, we went by the Stonewall Inn. Richard explained the history and significance of the Inn to me and how it served as the stage for the tipping point of the gay rights movement in what would become known as the Stonewall Riots.

We enjoyed watching the crowd in the neighborhood, and read the newspaper clippings and admired the replica of Judy Garland’s Wizard of Oz dress in the window of the Stonewall Inn. (Judy Garland, a hugely popular gay icon, died several days before the Stonewall Riots began and her funeral was held the day before the riots.) It’s important to bear witness, to remember how difficult and frightening a time was for people courageous enough to stand up for themselves. And while it’s easy to consider how far we still have to go on certain human rights issues such as gay marriage, it’s equally important to celebrate how much has been accomplished in the 40 years since Stonewall.

In New York State, we are on the cusp of legalizing gay marriage. If passed, we’d be the 7th state to legalize gay marriage. Gay marriage and the equal treatment of gay Americans is the civil rights issue of our time. I am certain that decades from now, we will look back on this period as one of embarrassment and shame. I cannot fathom how anyone would deny the basic rights of another human being based on their sexuality. Are the movements that led to equal treatment of women and ethnic minorities any different than what the gay community now faces? If two gay people want to get married, what bearing does that have on two straight people who are married? Who are we to stand in judgement of someone else’s lifestyle?

I hope the concept of denying gay marriage never makes sense to me. I hope to never understand why a portion of the straight population is so convinced that the gay population is ruining the sanctity of marriage. What I do hope happens is that the very politicians and their supporters who are fighting so hard against gay marriage, the same ones who are so quick and earnest to dismiss their own issues of infidelity, will find a way to see the world and the rights of all people through new eyes.

I hope that someday we will look at all people as equal, gender, sexual orientation, race, and religious beliefs aside. I hope that someday very soon, my gay friends are afforded the same right to union and happiness that my straight friends and I have. I hope that very soon the gay rights movement becomes something for history books – a time that we collectively look back on, and shakes our heads in wonder, asking “why did it take so long for simple justice?”

The photo above was taken from: http://sunfollower.wordpress.com/2009/01/09/civil-rights-movement-the-stonewall-riots/

art, creative, creativity, education, Google, kids

My Year of Hopefulness – Doodle 4 Google

June 27, 2009December 7, 2009 Christa Avampato

Google put forward a competition, Doodle 4 Google, for kids K-12 to design the Google logo with the idea of expressing the theme “What I Wish for the World”. The Cooper-Hewitt Museum currently has the finalists of the competition on display. I went to see them today with my friend, Dan. I’m currently working on an after-school program for public school children and knew that this exhibit would help inform the program. After all, the idea is to discover the way kids would like the world to be.

Several themes cropped up frequently in the doodle: environmental conservation – everything from climate change to species protection to green energy. Even the importance of pets! Creativity, acceptance, and education were also prevalent in the doodles. And some were advocating specific causes such as a cure for breast cancer and an end to war.

As I walked the exhibit, I considered what I would wish for the world and how I might depict it to create my own Google Doodle. If I had one wish for the world, I’d want to see the desire to be helpful become the main goal of every person’s life. I like that being helpful is a specific goal that’s open to interpretation depending upon each individual’s talents and interests.

Being helpful could mean volunteering, going into a helpful profession such as medicine, or being a good listener. It can be done in small spurts or over an extended period of time. It usually doesn’t cost anything to be helpful outside of an individual’s time and energy. When one person helps another, both their lives are enriched. You can pay it forward, and every act of helpfulness triggers another similar act.

Best of all, helpfulness naturally causes other positive changes in the world that we need in abundance: more kindness, empathy, and generosity. By being helpful, we become useful and we have a hand in shaping the world to be a bit more the way we’d like it to be. In short, the fastest road to a more hopeful, brighter future may start with the extension of a single helping hand.

The images above was created by Sinceraty Alexander for the Doodle 4 Google conference. Sinceraty’s image was a New York State finalist.

education, learning, psychology

My Year of Hopefulness – Potted Plants

June 26, 2009 Christa Avampato

There’s a lot to learn by listening. How many times have you gone to a meeting and people are talking over one another, jockeying for the spotlight, playing them game of “the loudest voice in the room wins”? In every one of those situations, there’s always at least one person who’s quietly observing, taking in the different streams of opinions, beliefs, and facts – being a ‘potted plant’ has its advantages.

I wish I could take credit for the idea of being a potted plant, but I can’t. I heard it a while back during an executive speaker series. A woman was talking about how she advanced through her company from being an admin to a director. She said whenever she had an opportunity to learn, even if it meant to learn something that had nothing to do with her current job, she made the time and just observed. Taking notes, taking in the facts, figures, and nuances of the conversation.

When you’re a potted plant in a meeting, you don’t have an angle and you aren’t trying to persuade someone to something. All you have to do is listen. No participation necessary. You don’t have to form a point-of-view. Just be present and consider the situation at hand from the point of view-of-all others.

This is also a great lesson in patience, empathy, and psychology. Watch for the interactions between the people in the room. What persuasion tactics work? What caused someone to lose interest or become more engaged? Did the structure of the meeting work? How did people present themselves and their beliefs, and were they effective.

The ability to be quiet and open-minded is an under-rated skill in today’s work place, yet it’s the people with that skill that will likely advanced faster within their organizations, or pick up on something that others miss and that becomes the seed for a new business idea. Information and insight is all around us, but it’s tough to recognize if we’re always pushing our own opinions out to the world. It takes patience, perseverance, and the ability to remain calm at the table, paying attention .

fame, learning, loss

My Year of Hopefulness – Lessons of Icons

June 25, 2009 Christa Avampato

Today the world lost two titans of our time, Farrah Fawcett and Michael Jackson. Cultural icons, Fawcett and Jackson were young, 62 and 50 respectively. As I get older, I pay more attention to someone’s age when they pass away. This exercise forces me to consider how much time I may have left. This might sound morbid. I find it motivational.

Fawcett and Jackson were originals, risk takers, at once controversial and enormously intriguing. We couldn’t take our eyes off of them. While Michael Jackson has become a recluse after his 2005 controversy, Fawcett became more public in the last years of her life. Jackson was in the midst of planning a hopeful comeback. Fawcett had made her comeback; her documentary on her experience fighting cancer aired recently to wide acclaim and extensive viewership. There is even talk of a posthumous Emmy.

Fawcett and Jackson stand in stark contrast when we consider the last days of their lives. Michael Jackson was interested in claiming what was – he wanted to get back to his fame and the reputation he had before his 2005 fall from grace. Fawcett took a different road. While the pin up pictures and her world famous smile and hair might be the first images that spring to mind when we hear her name, she wanted to make sure that people saw other, less glamorous images of her. She wanted people to see, up close and personal, what it was like to fight cancer with every weapon possible. She was living in the now, and she wanted us to live it with her.

What they shared in a very deep, emotional way was their desire to live as full as life as possible. They went after everything that this world has to offer. Fearless, unflinching. And that’s a lesson we can all learn from.

childhood, choices, decision-making, growth

My Year of Hopefulness – The Day I Grew Up

June 24, 2009 Christa Avampato

I am in the midst of preparing an essay for a contest with the theme “the day I grew up.” I’ve been racking my brain, conjuring up old memories, to get to that one realization that defined the end of my childhood and the beginning of my adult life. Trouble was I couldn’t think of any one moment. It seemed to happen gradually – actually, I think I’m still in the midst of that transition. Or at least I thought I was until today.

Two events happened to me today that signaled to me that I had turned the corner – leaving my childish insecurity and lack of confidence behind, tossing it off in favor of the confidence and self-assurance I have always admired in adults. I recognize that it’s odd that it would take me 33 years of living to make the leap. Better late than never.

Event one: I was told that I may have to stop writing, or at the very least have my writing approved and heavily edited, if I am to continue my association with an organization that I am currently involved with. It seems that they think my writing reflects upon them, even if I’m writing about a subject entirely unrelated to them.

That means that this blog would go silent and that my Examiner.com column would grind to a halt, just as I am finding my own voice and rhythm. I would have to stop doing the one activity I love most in the world – writing – because someone else demanded it. Without a second thought I decided that if I cannot have my writing life and be associated with that organization, then that organization would cease to be a part of my life. As a child, if my mother told me to stop jumping on the bed, I stopped jumping on the bed. As an adult, I won’t stop doing something I love because someone else say I have to.

Event two: I was asked to put my name on a request that I cannot support because “that’s the way it’s always been done.” Even though the request doesn’t make any sense, and everyone involved with the request agrees it doesn’t make sense, I was still being asked to push it forward. I will admit that I got a bit exasperated. My emotions got the best of me. I’m a passionate person.

As if someone was asking me to dishonor my name and my sense of judgment for the sake of being compliant to a rule I disagree with, I was handed the dare: say yes, even though you disagree, or face the consequences. A child would flinch at the thought of the consequences. I chose the consequences. I know the value of my name and judgment, and they’re worth so much to me that I’d rather suffer any consequences that their defense may trigger.

When I was a kid, I always imagined that growing up would be this phenomenal achievement. It would be a welcome release. And it is, sort of. But it’s a little lonely, too. Today, I shut some doors. I made a few decisions that cannot be undone. And while I am confident that they are the right decisions for me to make, those doors are still a little painful to shut. It means there’s one less avenue, one less path to take to wherever it is my life is headed.

It’s almost as if I didn’t even make the choices in the two events today. The world made them for me. It handed me a set of circumstances, already knowing which direction I’d take, in order to push me forward. Fate’s a funny thing. On one hand, it’s comforting to know that the world has something in store for us that’s far better than anything we can dream up on our own. On the other hand, we have to cede control to a grander plan that we don’t entirely know. One thing is for certain: in order to grow up we have to let go of all the “might-have-been’s” to focus on the “all-that-will be’s”.

art, simplicity, values

My Year of Hopefulness – Jackson Pollack, Explained

June 23, 2009 Christa Avampato

I was in DC a few weekends ago and met up with a bunch of friends from business school. One member of the group who is more a classmate than a friend of mine criticized Jackson Pollock and his work, citing that even he could drip a bunch of paint on a canvas. (And this guy doesn’t have an artistic bone in his body!) At the time, I had no words to explain Jackson Pollock, and I was really upset by the guy’s criticism. I like Pollock’s work very much, though must confess I never understood it. I just love the patterns, colors, and textures of it.

As luck, and karma, would have it, today I found out why I love Jackson Pollock. If only I had read Matthew May’s book In Pursuit of Elegance before my DC trip! May explains the genius of Pollock’s work, thanks to the research of Richard Taylor, a physicist from Australia.

After studying Pollock’s work in connection to his physics research, Taylor recognized that Pollack built his paintings based upon fractals: “repetitive patterns nested within each other that remain the same at differing scales of magnification…[fractals] are simple rules…that create beautifully organized and highly complex designs [that are pleasing to the eye].” Trouble is Pollock died in 1956 and fractals weren’t discovered until 1975. Pollack lived and died ahead of his time, precisely 19 years ahead of his time.

I have been thinking about fractals all evening, their importance to physics, to Pollock, and to every day life. In a very real sense, our core values are fractals: repeating patterns that remain constant, even when examined up close. We don’t abandon them at our front door or in certain company. They stay with us and play themselves out in every area of our lives. From those simple values (aka, simple personal rules) – honesty, kindness, loyalty – we build complex, intricate relationships that form the very foundation from which all our life experiences grow. Fractals make art, and life, appealing to the eye, the mind, and the heart.

Lest we think that life is all about politics and facades and putting on airs – it is not. Life is about getting down to the simple matter of what matters to us. At the end of the day, what really counts? What do we want to be known for? What are the constants that underlie who we are, under all circumstances? It’s those things, those constant, consistent patterns, and their intersections that help us build beautiful lives.

The image above is of Blue Poles by Jackson Pollock. It recently sold for $40M.

art, books, music, silence, writing

My Year of Hopefulness – It’s what’s missing that counts

June 22, 2009 Christa Avampato

Today I started reading In Pursuit of Elegance by Matthew May. May’s premise in the book is that what’s not there – in a product, a service, a piece of art, a book – often trumps what is. 12 pages in and I am completely hooked. It’s about what we choose not to do that shapes as our lives as much as what’s on our to-do list. It’s about editing, making decisions, and taking away the unnecessary so that the necessary can shine.

May quotes a lot of sources, referencing everything from ancient Chinese proverbs to pop culture. It never feels contrived, forced, or overly ambitious. He is making connections between seemingly disparate ideas, and teaching us how to live a more valuable, satisfying life in the process.

Early on, May quotes Jim Collins’s now infamous essay that he wrote for USA Today on the subject of “stop-doing.” Collins says, “A great piece of art is composed not just of what is in the final piece, but equally what is not. It is the discipline to discard what does not fit – to cut out what might have already cost days or even years of effort – that distinguishes the truly exceptional artist and marks the ideal piece of work, be it a symphony, a novel, a painting, a company, or most important of all, a life.”

It’s these last two words that got me. I understand editing a novel, a piece of music, a company. We spend a lot of time, maybe most of our time, stuffing our lives full of experience, people, places, and things. We do more and more and more to the point that we can’t remember what we did 10 minutes ago. So what if we did and said less and less and less. What would our lives look like then? What if we only put the precious time we have with one another toward things that passionately, ardently interest us? How would we be different, and how would the world around us be different? Could we actually have a greater positive impact by focusing on the precious few things that really matter to us rather than the mediocre many?

Jazz great John McLaughlin said, “All the music that was ever heard came from the inner silence in every musician.” I extend that quote to say that every human accomplishment has come to be because someone took something from their inner being, from their own personal silence, and gave it to the world. It’s really the only work we ever have to do: strip away the fascades, the excess, what we can live without so that we can know and nurture the handful of things that really count.

entrepreneurship, Examiner, music, technology

NY Examiner.com: An interview with Steven Cox, CEO of TakeLessons.com

June 22, 2009 Christa Avampato

Inc. Magazine featured TakeLessons.com a few months ago. The company capitalizes on the growing trend of learning an instrument through the use of technology to match up music teachers with music students. From guitar to voice to trombone, in cities that stretch across the U.S., TakeLessons.com connects people with a mutual love for learning and music. It simplifies and enhances the quality of the experience of finding the right music teacher and ensuring that the student’s needs are being met with 100% satisfaction.

To read my interview with Steven Cox, CEO of TakeLessons.com, please visit: http://www.examiner.com/x-2901-NY-Business-Strategies-Examiner~y2009m6d22-An-interview-with-Steven-Cox-CEO-of-TakeLessonscom

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