Tag: future

creativity

How I keep going when things don’t work out

Christa Avampato
Flourless lemon zucchini cake from https://courtneyrecipes.com/

This week was filled with more than its fair share of disappointments: a few people I trusted let me down; the heavy emotional challenge of having a foster pup who not only isn’t happy to see me when I get home but who actively runs away from me because of the tough life he’s had is a painful circumstance for both of us; opportunities that I hoped would work out and didn’t despite my best efforts.

Of course there were bright spots this week, too: NYC’s Secrets & Lies, my storytelling show on the 28th, sold out and I’ve hit upon a great ghost story to tell; I had a great conversation about the show with a podcast host I admire; I was finally able to get supportive meds for my foster pup so both of us could get a full night’s sleep; I read, researched, and wrote about topics that matter to me.

Also, this month is my 5-year cancer-free anniversary so really that far outweighs any disappointment life will ever throw at me. I looked death in the eye and didn’t flinch, multiple times. A few disappointments? I’ll take ’em!

After a long work meeting this afternoon for a new project I’m about to begin, I walked home through Green-Wood Cemetery. The sun on my face and the scent of autumn leaves felt like a gift. It occurred to me that the challenges I’ve had this week are pointing me in the direction I’m meant to go. The universe is closing some doors so that the path for me to take going forward is clear.

Over the past year I’ve felt a bit stuck and unsure of which way to go, and so I’ve waited – hoping some insights would emerge. While I prefer insights with positive outcomes, learning where not to spend my time and effort is also valuable. It just doesn’t feel as good when the revelation arrives. I put a lot of effort into making plans and when those plans don’t work, it can feel discouraging.

Looking back on my life, the best things that happened to me aren’t things I planned. They were opportunities that found me and that I grabbed with both hands because they were even better than what I had planned. Maybe this week has again taught me to be open to possibility, to change, to growth. Maybe there’s some even more wonderful than I could ever imagine just up ahead, around the bend, and what I need to do to find it is to keep going.

In the meantime, I made myself a sunny bake – something I often do when I don’t know what to do. This week my lovely friend, Stephanie, posted a recipe for zucchini lemon cake and I gave it a whirl. Fuel for the sweet journey ahead.

creativity

A dream realized – I graduated from University of Cambridge

Christa Avampato

It happened! A dream deferred, but not denied. The hope of going to and graduating from University of Cambridge was part of what kept me alive during my cancer journey in 2020 / 2021. On Friday, that hope became a reality — I graduated with my Master’s in Sustainability Leadership with my friends, family, and faculty there.

The best part of these years has been to do this programme with such a stunning group of people who have inspired me from day one when we started down this path together in September 2022 – students, faculty, and staff. No one’s more fortunate than me to have had this experience with them and to call them dear friends.

In this uncertain world, I’m not sure what my next chapter holds. I do know I’m on my way and all the better for having these gorgeous people as fellow travelers.

A profound thank you full of love and an enormous congratulations to everyone in Cohort 13. I’m beyond proud to be one of you and I’m already looking forward to our next reunion.💚 (Happy photos below!)

creativity

In 2025, I’m rebuilding

Christa Avampato
Photo by Mike Erskine on Unsplash

Each year I choose a word to live by. In 2024, my word was vulnerability. In 2025, my word is rebuild. To rebuild and do work with our whole heart is to be utterly vulnerable. The two go hand-in-hand. Our greatest work begins once we’re able to be completely vulnerable, giving voice to our deepest dreams knowing we may never reach them and trying anyway because it’s what we’re called to do.

I’ve been thinking about the Mary Oliver quote, “Listen, are you breathing a little and calling it a life?” Sometimes, I’ve done exactly that because I didn’t feel ready, or I was missing something I thought I needed to move forward. I have notebooks full of ideas and dreams that I want to get to “someday”. I’ve decided that someday is today, and this year I’m going to be open to all those words I’ve written for years taking shape. I don’t need more time, money, experience, or training. I need to give my dreams everything I’ve already got. Some will work out and some won’t, and that’s okay. I’ll be a better person for giving those dreams a fighting chance to become real.

2024 often felt like a dark season for me. Maybe it was for you, too. I tried to climb out of it and into the light until I was exhausted. So, I sat in the dark. It wasn’t comfortable but it was necessary. The darkness always has something to teach us, and this is what it taught me: we can only find our way out of the darkness and into the light if we journey together.

My 2025 will primarily be about building community, seeking out advice, trying something, iterating, and trying again, supporting others, and lifting them up as I rise. I’m most interested in being the most generous person in the room, the best listener, and the most collaborative partner. Our world needs so much love, kindness, and healing, and we have to be there for each other, especially when the going gets tough.

2024 taught me that progress isn’t permanent. It needs protection. 2025 will test our resolve, values, and strength. We’ll be called to have courage in the face of intense adversity. What’s on the line is bigger than any of us can face alone; we have to face it together. In 2025, you’ll find me rebuilding bridges and longer tables, publishing writing that ignites curiosity, wonder, and a sense of belonging, and creating spaces, products, and experiences that provide safety, comfort, and care for all beings. I hope you’ll join me for this adventure because I’d love to share it with you.

creativity

The good news from 2023

Christa Avampato
Redwoods in California show new shoots after a forest fire. Photo by Melissa Enright – US Forest Service

“Sometimes I think heaven is just a new pair of glasses…if I put on the better pair of glasses, I really notice what’s still working [well in this world].” ~Anne Lamott

As I look around at our world plagued by war, the climate crisis, and a seemingly endless stream of difficulties, I’ve been thinking a lot about Anne Lamott’s quote about putting on a better pair of glasses and operating from that lens. It doesn’t mean I’m ignoring the challenges and their scale; I’m seeing them alongside the progress, joy, and good news that’s alive in the world. A sampling of good news if you need a boost:

– Transplanted corals in the Caribbean showed a 98% survival rate

– A newly discovered bacteria eats carbon dioxide at an astonishing rate and if scaled, could be a partial solution to our climate crisis

– Brightline, the first new privately-held train company in the U.S. in 100 years, began operations in Florida

– In 2023, the U.S. spent $8.2 billion USD for new rail projects in 44 states, including the first bullet train that goes from Los Angeles to Las Vegas in 2 hours

– Electric car sales are up 68% over last year

– The FDA approved the first medication for postpartum depression and the first over-the-counter birth control pills, improving access to necessary healthcare for millions of women. New treatments for Alzheimer’s, diabetes, and obesity were also released, along with the use of AI to find breast cancer at its earliest stages when it is often missed in traditional mammograms.

– The new President of Brazil has slowed deforestation by 48% in only the last 8 months

– A 10-year project turned Latin America’s largest landfill into a thriving mangrove forest

– The California wildfires in 2023 damaged numerous redwood trees that can live for 2500+ years. However, in the process we learned these redwoods have always had a backup plan – new green shoots of new redwoods, harbored for centuries in the damaged trees, have sprung to life and carry the hope of repopulating those forests.

– AI has also been used to identify the beginning of wildfires before any people ever knew they were happening, allowing them to be extinguished before they burned out of control.

– A hole in the ozone layer is on track to completely disappear

– A universal flu vaccine begins trials

– Southern white rhinos are now back in the Congo after 17 years

– A new drug to treat Parkinson’s begins Phase III trials

creativity

Which job skills will be most needed in an AI-dominated world? The answer may surprise you.

Christa Avampato
Photo by Steve Johnson on Unsplash

With AI rapidly advancing, which skills will be most needed in the future? I guessed STEM. However, Christopher Pissarides Nobel Prize-winning economist and professor at The London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE) told Bloomberg that empathy, leadership, communication, and creative skills may be the ones most needed in an AI-dominated world and job market. This is because those skills are much more difficult for AI to replace, and they are skills needed to make AI useful and impactful. Humanities friends, rejoice!

Do you agree with Pissarides? How do you feel about the rise of artificial intelligence? What do you think the biggest opportunities and risks are with AI?

creativity

To create a joyful life, imagine these 3 versions of your career

Christa Avampato
Photo by Denys Nevozhai on Unsplash

What would you do if the work you do right now ended tomorrow? I’ve been thinking about this question since I was at University of Cambridge / Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership (CISL) in December for my Masters in Sustainability Leadership program. My wonderful friend, Karen, in my cohort found me one morning to show me a Stanford TEDx talk titled 5 Steps to Designing the Life You Want by Bill Burnett that she felt I needed to see. She was right.

The whole talk is worth watching and the part that affected me most is a future visioning exercise called 3 lives. You imagine the next 5 years of your career in these scenarios:

1. Keep doing exactly what you’re doing now and it’s going to turn out great. What does great look like? In your career and life?

2. What would you do if what you’re doing right now ends tomorrow? How would your career and life change? What would that look and feel like?

3. Now for your wildcard plan. You have enough money to pursue any career you want, and no one would laugh at you for it. What would you do? What would your life and career look like then?

Which of these lives feels like the best path? Put aside the inner critic. Which one makes you happier and more fulfilled? For various reasons, that one may not be the one you choose to pursue but having a sense of these different paths helps us get unstuck.

Futures visioning is a part of my Cambridge dissertation so doing this exercise was a part of practicing what I preach. I sat down and sketched out these 3 lives for myself. It helped me uncover hidden ideas, interests, and desires I didn’t even know I had. It also helped me realize a few things that Bill speaks to in his talk:

1. The really interesting opportunities present themselves in our periphery. They are the things we didn’t see coming and didn’t plan for. Realizing this encourages me to be open to new people, information, learnings, ideas, and opportunities.

2. Bill encourages us to look at these three lives with our head and our heart. Decisions made from your emotions are just as valid, if not more so, than those made from our logic and reasoning. Emotions have much more wisdom than we give them credit for.

3. There isn’t one way to build a life or career. We can and will grow into different lives, and that can happen at any and every age. There is no timeline that we must follow. We can trust the timing of our lives and career. Things unfold in ways we don’t always understand. That’s okay. Be open, and be prepared to be lucky.

Let me know how it goes for you if you try this exercise. I’d love to hear about what you discover and I’d also love to support your journey.

Bill’s TEDx talk in here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SemHh0n19LA

He also has several books with Bill Evans on the topic of designing a joyful life and career: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Bill-Burnett/author/B01KVOW2RS?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

creativity

The Most Creative Look to the Future

Christa Avampato
From the UN Global Pulse . https://www.unglobalpulse.org/

Too often our society is quick to label people, to put us in a box as creative or not creative, and that term is not always used as a compliment. Regardless of our profession or where we work, we are all creatives. Our imagination is the most powerful tool we have to build a brighter future.

UN Global Pulse, The United Nations Secretary-General’s Innovation Lab, just published “The Most Creative Look to the Future” that offers learnings and recommendations about how creative practices can help the UN embrace uncertainty and complexity through peace, unity, and collaboration. The creation of the UN itself was a bold creative act borne out of darkness and difficulty, and continues to be a work in progress in a complex and complicated world. This publication is valuable for organizations of any size and type. My favorite take-aways from it:

– Our imaginations give us a way to connect with one another, even those of us who have been previously disconnected.

– Creativity helps us to give voice to emotions and values, and offers us a new way to see others and to be seen by others.

– Storytelling is one of the oldest forms of technology, allowing us to describe and grapple with complex systems to model change and play out a wide variety of scenarios.

– A more peaceful, sustainable, healthier, and happier future begins in the imagination, and we can imagine ourselves and our world into a better state.

– Imagination is a team sport, and becomes richer and more meaningful when we collectively pool our creativity.

The publication concludes with further resources and frameworks that organizations can start using today to embed creative practices into their work and teams. In the new year, I’m excited to share these with my teams as we begin to shape our future work together.

You can download a free PDF of The Most Creative Look to the Future here: https://christaavampato.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/12/the-most-creative-look-to-the-future.pdf

creativity

Stories of climate change teach us that we are each other’s tomorrow

Christa Avampato
Photo by Tania Malréchauffé on Unsplash

This morning’s joyful find—THIS is the style of academic writing I’m here for! I’m reading through an academic paper about climate change communications that quotes one of my storytelling queens, the great author Ursula Le Guin. I nearly fell out of my chair with happiness!

Paraphrasing, it says we need to lay aside stories of the one hero versus one villain and begin to tell what Ursula Le Guin in “Dancing at the Edge of the World” called “the carrier bag narrative”: collecting stories to construct transformative narratives to help us find the strength to “stay with the trouble” so that we can change and inspire change in others. Stories transform our world by affording us the chance to co-construct our shared future.

We are all in this narrative of climate change, though our personal stories of its impact are not the same. Following Le Guin’s counsel, we need to tell our stories and also listen to the stories of others to construct the narrative system of climate change. There are many voices, many perspectives, and many outcomes, simultaneously being told and lived. They are all valid. They all play a part. It is therefore our responsibility to not just make ourselves heard and understood, but also to make sure others have the opportunity to do the same.

This isn’t about getting and taking what we think is ours. It’s about the idea of being the Mother Tree in the forest, making sure that each individual in the system has what they need to grow and thrive. We are all made better when each of us is well.

creativity

The Joy of the Unknown with Eric Fisher

Christa Avampato

Every day the unknown is waiting for us. As much as we plan our lives, the unknown is our constant companion we meet every day. In this wide ranging discussion about joy, faith, and the future, storyteller Eric Fisher takes us through his three tiers of joy and explains how reframing the stories of our past can help us create a brighter, more joyful future.

Topics discussed in this episode:

  • The philosophy of joy
  • How to reframe our challenges, not only as sole actors, but collectively in community with others
  • Building back better after difficult times so that the world is improved for all beings
  • The beauty of being able to hold a whole range of disparate emotions at the same time
  • The best compliment that anyone can give us when we tell them our stories
  • How to look forward to what’s next when we’re in liminal space
  • How Eric’s faith helps him to find joy and helps him help others
  • How joy can heal us on many levels and bring us closer to one another
  • The wish our friend John Bucher has for anyone and everyone who goes through challenges
  • Cory Booker’s comment about joy on the Senate floor, “You can’t steal my joy”
  • Eric’s business that helps people preserve their life stories
  • Eric’s three levels of joy that help him find meaning
  • The difference between joy and happiness
  • Eric’s life philosophy rooted in the classical narrative structure of stories
  • How joy can and is present in all phases of our story, even and especially conflict
  • Making joy in the midst of the experiences we never wanted to have

Links to resources:


About Eric:

Eric Fisher has always had a large imagination and loves good storytelling! In his early years, he expressed these passions through sports and humor with friends. He’s worked several types of jobs and specialized in wellness and coaching for over ten years. He now pursues writing and acting. He’s always dreaming of what’s next. Even now, his life is full of unknowns! He knows he will undoubtedly fail, but he holds hope in every possibility. 

creativity

Why we create art—inspired by the words of Scottish actor, Robbie Coltrane

Christa Avampato
Photo by Allison Batley on Unsplash

“50 years on, my children’s children will sit down to watch these [Harry Potter] films. Sadly, I won’t be here. But Hagrid will.” -Robbie Coltrane, Scottish actor

This is the most true thing I’ve ever read about art and the motivation of artists. It’s our chance to be immortal, to get down stories and put them out into the world. They will be here long after we’re gone. Someone will see them or read them or hear them and a part of us will be there. Our energy, our hopes, our dreams, our fears, our disappointments, our joy.

It will mean something to someone across space and time who we never had the honor to meet on this plane. And maybe they will feel less alone.

They will find in our art someone like them, someone who validates everything they’re feeling, someone who makes them feel seen and heard, who helps them see that they matter. Art is the gift that never stops giving. It becomes our home, in the truest sense of the word, the place where we will always belong.

This week we lost Robbie Coltrane, the actor who immortalized Hagrid, a character who is dear to so many of us. His memory lives on in his work and his art.