Ladies Who Launch: Mystery in a Toll Booth

Happiness, as a life goal, has a history of being elusive. Do you 'get' happy? Does happy just 'happen' spontaneously one day when you aren't waiting for it? Is it a choice? Watching Eliot Spitzer's wife endure the painful press conferences that accompanied her husbands hooker habit hit me in the gut. To say nothing of their daughters! But this scandal will not rob them of happiness. They either possess already, or will learn to, channel their own sense of completion and well-being, despite the external circumstances that have and will swirl around them. Ladies Who Launch member Elizabeth Cassidy relays the story of a toll booth operator who defined (and created) his own happy world, one beat at a time.

Amy Swift, Editor-in-Chief, www.ladieswholaunch.com

***

Elizabeth Cassidy, CTACC

www.BranchingOutLifeCoaching.com

[e-mail]

Vertical Coffins Spotted in San Francisco. Why is this Man Dancing?

My storytelling father always seemed to be able to hold our collective breaths with his tales of ghosts and the undead. You knew how effective his scary stories were by the number of under the bed inspections that were held in our house. I'm sure my mother appreciated it since my father worked at nights at the New York Times. My father's imagination and storytelling were legend and so were our nightmares. Just don't ask me to go down to your basement.

I was listening to "The Second Half of Life" in my car last week. The author, Angeles Arrien, PH.D, talked about how storytelling can trigger memories, associations and one's imagination.

She went on to recount a true story by Dr. Charles Garfield who has written about high performance people.

It unfolded something like this:

Back in 1984, Dr. Garfield encountered a toll booth employee on the Oakland/San Francisco Bridge who was dancing to loud music that was blasting from his toll booth. The doctor asked what was going on. The dancing man in the booth said that he was having a party. What about the other people working in the other booths? Oh, they were not invited to his party. Loud horns blasted from impatient drivers (don't you just love them) and ended the conversation abruptly but the doctor made a note to find the dancing man again.

And he did. The dance party was still going on. The Dancing man remembered the doctor and asked him what the other 16 booths looked like to him. The doctor had no clue. "No imagination, no imagination," was the reply that came from the toll booth. "Look again, look again."

The doctor was stumped, gave up, and asked for an answer from the dancing man.

"Vertical Coffins. These 16 people come to work everyday at 8:30 and die in their booths and then at 4:30 they come back to life just in time to go home. They look like Vertical Coffins."

"What makes it different for you?" The doctor needed to know why this one man was so happy.

"I have a corner office with glass on all sides. I can see the Golden Gate Bridge, Berkley Heights, and San Francisco and while thousands of people travel everyday to visit, I get to live it. I get to dance. I get to do what I love."

So many of us don't get to live the lives we are entitled to. We go by someone else's rules and expectations and we forget that we even had dreams that were so full of hope and adventure. We find ourselves getting by on "no imagination, no imagination" and we struggle in our own vertical coffins.

How would it feel to dismantle one or two of those vertical coffins that keep you from what you really want to do? It could be as simple as saying "No" to some of the requests that others pour on you (and not feeling guilty!) so that you can have 30 minutes to read, take a walk or just sit and listen to your own heart beat. It can be as grand as reexamining where your life is going: does the job do it for me, would going back to school open me up again, or would Jimmy Choo's heels really make me feel better? The latter was what Gwyneth Paltrow asked me ... in a dream. I assured her that they would.

So it might be a little stretch, but how about taking a look at one of your vertical coffins and screaming "boo", making it go back under your brother's bed?

Your brother will get over it. Eventually.

***

Elizabeth Cassidy's Bio

Life has not always arrived gift wrapped but I know it has made for a more interesting existence. Would I have preferred an easier life? Well, maybe if it came with me being 5'11" and winning the Nobel Peace Prize and having Daniel Day Lewis escort me to Oslo to accept the award while my understanding husband stays home to watch the cats and dog.

But my life has been about facing challenges and moving forward. I have had some great successes - first New York Director of Project Linus, stand up comic in Manhattan and comedy writer for WNBC radio, a member of Who's Who in American Poerty and surviving a near fatal car accident (along with 15 surgeries) to some sobering disappointments. But each experience has helped me become the person I am today. And a healthy dose of humor has made getting thru each chapter in my life quite doable.

The decision to "reinvent" myself came after 20 years in the NYC advertising field. Sprinkled in between I created and sold my own jewelry designs, worked as a fundraiser and AIDS volunteer and operated an upscale consignment business. But I wanted more in my life and I wanted to connect with motivated women who were looking to take a similar journey.

I went back to school and became a certified creative life and career coach.

My colorful background, life experiences and non-judgmental nature give me a unique perspective on life and the notion that change is not to be feared, but embraced. We baby boomer women have learned much and have earned the right to discover new passions in our lives. I've learned that if you really listen, life gives you the clues to discover your blueprint for success in all the areas of your life.

My philosophy is if you long to take that unfinished manuscript out of storage, paint with Paris as a backdrop to your artistic side, start a new business or change careers or become happier by peeling away those old tired layers of insecurity now is our time. It is never too late to be the person you need to be. To be the person the world needs you to be.

And that is why I started Branching Out Life Coaching.

Comments

[rixhex56]

I liked this post -- I hope more will read and respond.

The problem that I think most people have with "finding happiness" is that they think of Happiness as a constant state of euphoria, or feeling good, or laughing or maybe just not feeling badly. If you think about it, being in any of those states constantly is not only not possible in this world, but would most likely become just as mundane or undesirable as being in their opposite states.

Part of what makes happiness desirable is that it offsets those states. If you never experience those states, then happiness becomes somewhat unnecessary, or pointless; at least that is my perspective.

I think another problem is the culture in America of worshipping PRODUCTIVITY. American productivity always equates with money and profits. A wealthy criminal may be resented, but will be treated with more respect than a poor person every time. And, let's face it, when someone is happy, they don't particularly value MONEY beyond its ability to provide necessities. But our culture drives the idea that more is always better, no matter how much you already have. How can anyone be happy under those conditions?

The issue is a matter of EXPECTATIONS. People who have bought into the American propaganda of more-is-always-better, will always want more, and pursuing more always leads to stress, unhappiness, stifled imagination (as pointed out in the anecdote), and most importantly, simply missing those things you have that create happiness, if they are noticed. The man in the anecdote was happy because he had tempered his expectations and learned to notice what he had rather than craving more all the time.

When I first meet someone, I always dread the inevitable question: "So, what do you do?" Most of the time I answer: "I live". That either opens up an interesting line of conversation, or ends the matter right there. And that makes me happy.