Tag: goals

creativity

Dr. Seuss can help us find our way

Christa Avampato
The Waiting Place – From Oh, the Places You’ll Go! by Dr. Seuss

Does this sound familiar? It’s all you can do right now to just get from day-to-day in these weird, wild times. You’re unsure about what to do or where to go next. Your plans have fallen down in mid-flight. You worked so hard on something, harder than you’ve ever worked on anything your life, and still, it didn’t turn out as you hoped. Now, you’re just waiting.

If that strikes a chord, I want you to know you’re not alone. I feel like that most days at this particularly strange period in our history. I’m grateful for a lot of things in my life – my health, my friends, my home to name just a few. And I also find myself at a crossroads. Nothing seems clear. No matter which path I look down, I can barely see one pace in front of me. What I’d planned to do next and where I’d planned to go hasn’t panned out and maybe won’t for the next four years. I just don’t know what to do. I feel adrift. So, I’m just waiting.

This isn’t the first time I’ve been here. I’m sure it won’t be the last. Thinking about this conundrum, I was reminded of that sage of rhyme and reason, Dr. Seuss* and his setting of The Waiting Place. In his classic book Oh, the Places You’ll Go!, often given to people beginning a new chapter, the main character gets stuck.

“…Wherever you fly, you’ll be best of the best.
Wherever you go, you will top all the rest.
Except when you don’t.
Because, sometimes, you won’t…
You’ll be left in a Lurch…
You’ll be in a Slump.
You will come to a place where the streets are not marked.
Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked…
You can get so confused
that you’ll start in to race
down long wiggled roads at a break-necking pace…
headed, I fear, toward a most useless place.
The Waiting Place…for people just waiting…”

To be honest, I get a little choked up when I read this book out loud. I understand the cycle of bang-ups and hang-ups that life brings. “Some windows are lighted. But mostly they’re darked.” That one really hits home for me right now when it feels like a lot of doors are being closed for so many people.

Luckily, Oh, the Places You’ll Go! doesn’t end in The Waiting Place and the path of the story has something to offer us in these times. Eventually our hero finds his way out of The Waiting Place and he’s moving along, riding high once again. Until…he takes another tumble, feeling very much alone and afraid. He nearly gives up. He keeps going because he doesn’t know what else to do. It isn’t fun to trudge through fear and despair, but it’s necessary. Eventually he finds his way, and learns life is “a Great Balancing Act.”

Re-reading this book helped me realize even though I may not be able to make progress according to the plan I created six months ago, there are other areas of my life where I can focus. I keep thinking about the best piece of advice I heard in 2024: “When you don’t know what to do, do what you know.”

Here’s what I know: I can pour my energy and time into my writing. I can test some entrepreneurial ideas. I can help nonprofits doing important, impactful work. I can spend more time with my friends and helping make New York City a better city for all. I can learn as much as possible right where I am and do as much good as possible with and for those around me. I can work on becoming the best me I can be so when the light returns, I’ll be able to take it all in.

On January 1st, I decided my word for 2025 would be “Rebuild”. I didn’t expect that word to be so on the nose so soon into the new year but here we are. Like an arrow being pulled back, in the tension, in the waiting, I can prepare myself to fly forward – eventually. This isn’t the path I intended to take, but I can still make the most of the journey.

*I acknowledge that Theodor Geisel made some horrible, racist choices with some of his art. The books that showcase that were rightly taken out of print by his estate, and I think he would have agreed that was the right thing to do. During his lifetime, he apologized for them and made amends for the harm he caused.

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

Write every day: Advice on achieving goals from Sara Blakely, Founder of SPANX

Christa Avampato

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SPANX

MasterClass recently had a Q&A on Instagram Live with Sara Blakely, Founder of SPANX. Sara offered up practical, immediately-actionable advice for anyone who is an entrepreneur, freelancer, or has goals they want to meet. I took notes and posted them over on Medium. If you like this post, please hop over to Medium, and give it some claps!

  • Bucket your days of the week by type of work
    Sara tries her best to reserve whole days of her work week for different types of work: marketing, product, future planning, etc. It doesn’t always work out perfectly but bucketing them helps her to make sure she’s hitting every part of the business each week and also giving herself the room to devote her attention to each one.
  • Write down your goals and post them so you see them every day
    There’s so much research about the value of not just having goals but physically writing them down and posting them so that you see them every day. It keeps you accountable and focused no matter how busy life gets.
  • Have one word for the year as an overarching goal
    It doesn’t matter what it is: peace, love, rest, self-care, travel. Have a theme for your year. In 2020, mine is Productivity. It’s posted on my front door so I see it every day.
  • Visualize your goals
    Right down to what you’re wearing when it happens, visualize what you want to happen and then use your waking hours to take that visualization from your imagination into reality.
  • Regularly try to fail
    There’s a lot of talk about celebrating your failures. Many times we’re so busy building ourselves up to succeed that we don’t reach as far as we could. We don’t take risks. We don’t take chances. Sara’s not saying to be reckless; she’s saying to push yourself outside of your comfort zone. The fear of failure is really the fear of embarrassment and the concern about what others will think of you. How can you begin to put that concern aside and go after what you really want, the dreams so big that you’re much more likely to fail than succeed? What would that look like?
  • Own your ideas and don’t be afraid to stay small to be self-sustaining
    Sara owns SPANX 100%, and has from the beginning 20 years ago. She doesn’t have investors. She never took a business class. She never worked in fashion. She just created a product to solve a problem she had: she wanted to wear white pants to a party without having anything show underneath. She never got ahead of herself. She was okay staying small, running the business out of her apartment for two years by herself. She built a great product and then promoted the heck out of it. Once she was profitable, she didn’t need investors. She didn’t waste her time chasing investment money. She went out and got business to support her product.
  • People care much more about the why rather than the what of your product
    Ask yourself “Why is my product or service different? Why did I start this?” That’s the story to tell to customers, partners, collaborators, employees, and to anyone and everyone you meet.

Thank you to Sara and to Masterclass for organizing this Q&A. It’s exactly the shot in the arm I needed today. Sign up for Masterclass at https://www.masterclass.com/ and follow Sara on Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/sarablakely/

creativity

Joy Today: The detours are the journey

Christa Avampato

“Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kneel and kiss the ground.” -Rumi

We’ll be disappointed. Things won’t go as planned. Try another route. Another idea. Another pitch. These failures are all material. The detours are the journey.

creativity

A Year of Yes: The best lesson from Maya Angelou—I’m with you, kid.

Christa Avampato

“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told, ‘I’m with you, kid. Let’s go.’“ ~Maya Angelou

I’m so glad Maya Angelou got her stories down, that she left us with such a legacy of hope, encouragement, and the unbridled belief that ordinary people can chase down extraordinary dreams. This quote that she tossed out onto Twitter about a year before she passed continues to inspire me. It’s one of my favorites, and it’s the only place where she ever wrote it down.

It conjures up a mental image for me that’s empowering and action-oriented. The very best helping hands we have are at the ends of our own arms. Use them. Build the life you want. Yes, you can do this.

creativity

A Year of Yes: Take the next step

Christa Avampato

unnamed
Photo by Me 🙂

The first step of a new project is hard, but there’s a lot of encouragement out there about taking it. What’s just as hard, if not harder, and what rarely gets the encouragement it needs and deserves is the next step.

Maybe your first step was more like a stumble. Maybe the first step was greeted with joy, congratulations, and that often twinge-worthy question of “what’s next for you?” Whether your first step was successful or not, what you do next has a lot of expectation behind it. I’ve always found it takes even more energy and gumption to take that next step. Too few people take it. A lot of people start things; far fewer people continue something, and even fewer actually finish what they started.

All I want you to do is take one more step toward something you want to do. Make it a leap, or make it a baby step. Just do it. I believe in you.

creativity

In the pause: How to achieve impossible dreams

Christa Avampato

When I want to do something big, I spend about 30 seconds thinking about what that goal looks and feels like. Almost immediately, I move into what I call breakdown mode. I start to break apart that big, beautiful dream into bite-sized pieces. The big dream, for me, is too daunting and it’s not actionable. I make it happen, I’ve got to unpack it, dissect it, and put it into a to-do list with deadlines. And then I pick a place and begin. For my writing, it’s one word at a time. For my collage work, it’s one tiny piece of paper. For getting a new job, it’s making sure my resume is up-to-date in all its various forms and channels. You get the idea. It’s a puzzle and the best I can do is focus on one piece at a time.

When my head hits the pillow at night or when I sit down for my 18 minutes of daily meditation, I give myself a little chance to think about that shiny goal out there in the distance. I fall asleep thinking about those dreams and I wake up thinking about them. Everything in between, all my waking hours, are devoted to action. It’s the only way I know how to make things happen.

creativity

In the pause: Walls are made for climbing

Christa Avampato

unnamedThis week, the many different threads at my job started to connect. It’s immensely gratifying to learn a large and complex technology platform, all for the sake of bringing more art, theater, music, and dance to more people. The vertical learning curve is becoming a little less vertical. Or maybe I am just becoming a more adept climber.

This idea of scaling walls reminded me of this sign I saw a few months ago when I was shoulder-deep in my job search, including interviewing for my current job. I wasn’t sure what would happen in my search, or what I would do about what would happen when it did happen. (This is how my ind works. It’s in a constant state of whirring.) What I needed was a sign, so I asked for one as I made my way up Fifth Avenue from the New York Public Library to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. That’s when I saw this sign in the North Face storefront: Walls are meant for climbing. And about 30 minutes later, I heard from my now current job that I was moving on to the next and final round. Less than a week later, they offered me the job.

It’s this sense of optimism, asking the Universe for guidance, and then opening our eyes and ears to take in the wisdom around us that we have to take with us everywhere we go, into every situation that we face. We may not always be successful though our odds dramatically increase when we can look at a wall not as a roadblock, but as a reason to smile. I got this. You got this. We all got this.

creativity

In the pause: Finishing the first draft of my second novel by Labor Day

Christa Avampato

“Why don’t you finish your second book in the Emerson Page series by Labor Day?” my friend, Colleen, said to me.

My response: Blink. Blink. Whaaaaat?

But since she said that to me, I can’t get the thought out of my mind. I’m moved into my new apartment, I’m interviewing and job searching, and I’m catching up with friends. I can do this. I wrote my first novel, Emerson Page and Where the Light Enters, while working full-time at a startup in a new city.

The first novel sets up so many threads for the second and the world building piece, the heaviest lift, is done. I just need to get it all down so why not set a wild writing goal for myself? And look, Toni Morrison wrote her first novel in 15-minute increments before falling into bed each night while she was a single working mother. She made time to write. I will, too.

Thank you for the push, Colleen. I’m going for it. First draft of Emerson’s second book has a deadline of Labor Day, September 4, 2017.

creativity

In the pause: The surprising truth about pursuing our goals

Christa Avampato
My friend, Alex, sent this quote to me and it resonates with me so deeply. This idea is what prompted my move back to New York City and this change in career direction. I could have kept moving ahead on a corporate path. I could have continued to climb in title and compensation. Except that I really couldn’t do that and be true to myself. I have turned down jobs and projects not because I couldn’t do them but because they weren’t rooted in how I want to spend my time. This is a tough thing to do.
 
We tell ourselves all of the convenient reasons we need to keep doing what we’ve been doing even though it may not be what fires us up. It makes today easier at the expense of our tomorrows. What I’m doing is making my today more challenging because I want my tomorrows to be more fulfilling. It’s all a gamble. I don’t know how it’s going to go but here’s what I do know—if I didn’t follow this path I’m on now, I’d always wonder what might have been. And I didn’t want to wonder; I wanted to take my best shot and manage whatever happens next. It may not be the best choice for everyone, but it’s certainly the best choice for me.