“To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intel­li­gent peo­ple and the affec­tion of chil­dren … to leave the world a bet­ter place … to know even one life has breathed eas­ier because you have lived. This is to have suc­ceeded.” ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Today I’m joined by a spe­cial some­one who brings joy, laugh­ter, and car­ing into this world is some very amaz­ing ways.  Please help me wel­come Katie West!  Katie is the bril­liance behind The Lev­ity Project (more about that below), where I first had the oppor­tu­nity to con­nect with her this past sum­mer.   She also has a coach­ing ser­vice, Lev­ity Life Coach­ing, encom­pass­ing life coach­ing and laugh­ter yoga.  Today Katie and I sit down and talk about her life, and how she has arrived at where she is today.

NOTE: We’re hav­ing a give away here today!  For the price of sign­ing up for email updates from The Lev­ity Project, one lucky win­ner will be cho­sen at ran­dom (on Jan­u­ary 31^st) to receive a com­pli­men­tary one hour lev­ity coach­ing ses­sion with Katie.  (note: signup is on the right-hand side­bar of her web­site)

In addi­tion, if you are inter­ested in becom­ing a Cer­ti­fied Laugh­ter Coach, Katie is offer­ing 50% off the early bird dis­count of this cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to the first per­son to con­tact her, with the words “I want to be a laugh­ter Coach ha ha ha ha” included.  Sev­eral ses­sions are form­ing, please visit The Lev­ity Insti­tute for details.

Please read along as I ask Katie some chal­leng­ing questions!

1. Tell us a lit­tle bit about who “you” are (fam­ily, career, any spe­cial life expe­ri­ences you’d like to share, etc.)
I am an eter­nal adven­turer.  I am hard wired to see every expe­ri­ence as a new jour­ney lead­ing to unex­pected results.  So much so, that I par­ent that way, work that way, love that way.  More recently, I have real­ized what a med­i­ta­tion that has become in my life. No mat­ter what is going on I try to see it as an explorer would look at a new land with all of the excite­ment of the poten­tial tri­als and celebrations.

I prob­a­bly have this approach because I led wilder­ness sail­ing trips for many years up the coast of Maine with teenagers, as well as liv­ing on a boat for the bet­ter part of sev­eral years.  I think this time period of being a wilder­ness guide truly shaped my out­look on life.  I had always been a very spon­ta­neous per­son which was help­ful in adapt­ing to the chal­lenges of being a guide and cap­tain of a boat, yet what the expe­ri­ence impressed most upon me was the impor­tance of good plan­ning, being orga­nized and hav­ing a clear vision of where one wants to go.  I think it some­how cre­ated a bal­ance of my two sides.

I love wilder­ness expe­di­tions because they truly bring us face to face with our “Oh no!” moments and pro­vide an oppor­tu­nity to move beyond them so that what has held us back is now no longer hold­ing us.

Also, it has been so use­ful to approach par­ent­ing this way as I am a mom of two chil­dren, two and four years old.  I have joked so many times that each day of par­ent­ing some­how holds inside it both ecstasy and insur­mount­able chal­lenge.   And the only way through it, is to allow the expe­ri­ence to run its course, or bet­ter said, to see myself as fully in the flow of the river of what is hap­pen­ing.  This includes trea­sured  moments such as once when I was gave my kids my home­made fin­ger paint (which I was so proud of) only to watch it get flung to the floor, ceil­ing, win­dows, and onto lit­tle bel­lies!   Within that moment was every­thing: the delight of cre­at­ing, shar­ing, play­ing, and the chal­lenge of clean­ing, clean­ing, clean­ing!  (Note: I finally gave up and pho­tographed the mischief.)

My fam­ily means every­thing to me; I want my chil­dren to grow up to be joy­ful, con­fi­dent, thought­ful, and open minded peo­ple.  And in order to do this it is how my hus­band and I must live to set the example. 

In this way, my work as a coach helps peo­ple to dis­cover or re-discover their inner light-heartedness, or lev­ity, is a great reminder to enjoy the moment….good or chal­leng­ing and allow a sense of buoy­ancy to reign know­ing there will be a new dis­cov­ery momentarily

One of my stick­ers for The Lev­ity Project says, “Pow­ered by Laugh­ter” and nat­u­rally, I have it on every­thing, my car, my cof­fee mug, my com­puter.  And I can­not tell you how fab­u­lous it has been when I am in a grumbly mood to go into the cof­fee shop and hand over my mug-only to see the reminder to allow laugh­ter to be my fuel and not what­ever state I might be in that is not serv­ing me, my fam­ily, or the world.    It is an instant shift! It really helps me to have this account­abil­ity on those inevitably grumpy days.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Hey, I think I have a t-shirt that says “Pow­ered by Laugh­ter”!  (thanks Katie!!)   And I have to think that the whole sail­ing expe­ri­ence really helped to shape the foun­da­tion from which you base liv­ing on today.  Very cool, adven­ture girl!  Let the mis­chief continue…

2. You have started a move­ment called The Lev­ity Project.  Tell us about the inspi­ra­tion behind that, and how long you have been doing this.
The Lev­ity Project started in March 2009 when I was in New York City for a week­end.  While I was there, I had this fan­tas­tic expe­ri­ence on the sub­way.  As I was rid­ing a long, I had my head­phones on and was danc­ing a lit­tle bit with my eyes closed.  I began to smile this huge grin (it was one of the first times away from both children-so I was in awe of the time alone).  When I opened my eyes, I real­ized peo­ple were star­ing and not smil­ing back-some even frown­ing at me.  And I simul­ta­ne­ously felt deeply con­nected to every­one and quite sad that it would pain peo­ple to see some­one happy and enjoy­ing her day.

That week­end, I vowed to myself that I would do some­thing to make a dif­fer­ence.  I had never seen myself before as an activist of any sort.  But I knew I wanted to actively be a part of a move­ment that sup­ports the idea of liv­ing with more joy, laugh­ter, and play.  Imme­di­ately, the name “The Lev­ity Project” came to me…because I had been kick­ing around the word “lev­ity” in my head for a cou­ple of months.  I had just learned that the old (rare as of 1913 Merriam’s) def­i­n­i­tion of lev­ity was “buoyancy-being lighter than that which sur­rounds us”.   What struck me about this is that the idea of buoy­ancy does not deny what is hard or pre­tend that it is not there, it just means we have a right to feel freer or lighter than what is hap­pen­ing.  What was also inter­est­ing is that today’s dic­tio­nary def­i­n­i­tion of lev­ity sounds unap­peal­ing, “inap­pro­pri­ate humor, lack of appro­pri­ate seri­ous­ness, irrev­er­ence.”  How could we for­get and dis­miss the def­i­n­i­tion of gai­ety and buoyancy? 

That was when I began to joke that my goal was to bring buoy­ancy back!  The Lev­ity Project’s goal is to cre­ate a par­a­digm shift to a lighter and more buoy­ant soci­ety.  My hope is that by engag­ing in pub­lic acts of laugh­ter, play and cel­e­bra­tion, we can inspire a re-emergence into col­lec­tive joy.  Ulti­mately, I think it is about awak­en­ing to what can be.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Katie, I’ve had the oppor­tu­nity twice now, to expe­ri­ence a “lev­ity project” in action.  One with your assis­tance in set­ting it up, and another together with you.  Both of these events are real (reel?) high­lights from the past year!  And if they even make one person’s day just a lit­tle brighter, it is so worth it (and I’ll say that my day was def­i­nitely brighter after both of these expe­ri­ences!).  Hey, I even have these really cool umbrella hats I got out of the deal!! 

3. You are a sea­son of the year – what would you choose and why?
A sea­son of the year?  I love them all for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.  In fact, when my daugh­ter was born, one of the songs being played was Sting’s song that has the lyrics “All four sea­sons in one day”.  We gave her four names (includ­ing her last) to rep­re­sent the dif­fer­ent sea­sons she holds within her­self as we all do.

For me, I guess I must say late spring when it is warm enough to play out­side but still breezy enough to feel a deep grat­i­tude for the warmth cours­ing through my body.   I love the flow­ers emerg­ing and the way every­thing is elec­tric at being alive again.  And at the same time, give me a cozy, fall day full of poetry and woodsy walks through the leaves and I am a happy camper.  I pretty much adore the cycle of the sea­sons.  Since I live in Maine that is a very good thing to love!

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Katie…this is deep.  The sea­sons we all hold within our­selves, wow!  I keep think­ing of the yearly life cycle of a tree — and how we really are like that as we travel through our own lives, as the sea­sons come and go.   

4. Laugh­ter and joy are a big part of what you are all about (I think that’s so cool!).  Tell us about those moments when you might not be feel­ing that joy­ful. 
When I am not feel­ing joy­ful (and it is a time that I am sim­ply feel­ing like a stick in the mud) I laugh.  No joke. Ha ha!  I get my kids to laugh.  The prac­tice of laugh­ter with­out humor has really (gasp) changed my life or at least how I approach it.  I know that by say­ing ha ha, I can CHOOSE to feel dif­fer­ently, to feel better(since our brain does not know the dif­fer­ence between real and fake laugh­ter).  With a tool as easy as laugh­ter,  I have to really WANT my foul mood to stay in it.  What it takes is get­ting over my ego, my pride which is usu­ally guilty for mak­ing me feel like a stick in the mud anyway. 

Once I am able to I con­nect to my deeper desire that I hon­estly and truly would rather feel joy­ful than grumpy, all I need to do is prac­tice laugh­ing …and really, every­thing is sud­denly in bet­ter per­spec­tive!  Plus, as par­ents know…if you try to be grumpy when you have lit­tle kids, it really does not work, because they just get grumpy or whiny too.  What is worse than deal­ing with our own grumpy mood than hav­ing to deal with another’s?! 

I try to see myself in those moments as a change agent with the empow­er­ment to shift the winds of my mood.  When I am feel­ing truly sad due to some­thing chal­leng­ing or grief-filled, I offer myself patience and breath to allow it to move through my body.  I have found in my coach­ing work that the ten­dency peo­ple have is to deny these deeper feel­ings, but I believe that there are key times when it can be use­ful to allow them to flow as they need to dur­ing a dif­fi­cult time and then later reset the course we want to chart.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Well, that’s a great exam­ple of the ther­a­peu­tic ben­e­fits of laugh­ter.  It just makes us feel good! 

5.  You kiss your hus­band, and instantly the two of you are trans­ported to a strange new place, with noth­ing for the two of you to worry about.  Where might this be?  Why?
I have been there before but it is the first place I thought of.  Orcas Island in the San Juan Islands in Wash­ing­ton State.  Hands down.  It is where I wish to be every time I get one of those mag­i­cal trans­portable kisses.  To me, Orcas Island is heaven on Earth!   Why?  Like falling in love with some­one who knows why?  There is just some part of me that feels per­fectly aligned with all the other parts of me when I am there.  You will have to go and see for your­self, but call me first I have great rec­om­men­da­tions of what to do!

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  My fam­ily and I had the oppor­tu­nity to vaca­tion in the Pacific North­west a cou­ple of years ago.  While we didn’t make it to the San Juan Islands, we did fall in love with the whole area and the beauty that is there.  Next time we go, I have a new des­ti­na­tion to visit…and I’ll be call­ing YOU!

6.  In the strange way the life some­times works, you are sud­denly asked to assist some ambi­tious city in a pilot pro­gram to bring more fun and joy into people’s daily lives.  What do you do?
I would cre­ate a Lev­ity Pilot Pro­gram which would be unveil­ing the four part sys­tem I use with my clients that leads to feel­ing lighter and more joy­ful.  I would cre­ate The Lev­ity Project Cen­ters where peo­ple gather to cre­ate their own pub­lic Lev­ity events, lis­ten to speak­ers, train how to laugh for no rea­son and re-learn the art of play as adults. 

These cen­ters would become a new bas­tion for the com­mu­nity.  And the part that peo­ple would love the most is The Lev­ity Project events that would hap­pen all over the city spon­ta­neously; peo­ple laugh­ing in a Laugh­ter Flash, wear­ing umbrella hats and smil­ing at each other, bounc­ing on hip­pity hop bouncy balls, play­ing kazoos.  These things may seem goofy, but they aren’t.  They are expres­sions of light heart­ed­ness and our mutual desire for it. 

The goal for the pro­gram would be to dilute the power and atten­tion we have given stress by plac­ing empha­sis on some­thing else truly and deeply impor­tant: a sense of deeply con­nected joy and lightheartedness.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  I lived in Kala­ma­zoo for a while.  The word “kazoo” always reminds me of liv­ing there!  And I think we even had a cou­ple of kazoo’s at the time…maybe it’s time to get a cou­ple more!   On the art of play, we have a game we play, espe­cially dur­ing the cold win­ter months, called “garbage”.  It involves lots of run­ning, lots of laughs, and is a pretty good work­out too!  The “art of play”…what a great mes­sage to get out there!  Keep bounc­ing, Katie!

7.  In Maine terms you land the big lob­ster.  In base­ball terms, you win the World Series.  In Katie terms, you?
Well, I would say that up till recently, it has been get­ting on the “Oprah” show! …and then it switched to “Ellen”.  And I will thor­oughly enjoy the days when both of those hap­pen.  But right now, it is about cre­at­ing a sys­tem that empow­ers peo­ple to con­nect with their right brains-the side that allows for the reju­ve­na­tion and immer­sion of play, the free­dom of laugh­ter, and the inspi­ra­tion that comes with won­der and gratitude. 

The big lob­ster would be see­ing The Lev­ity Project as an Inter­na­tional move­ment in which peo­ple cel­e­brate together inter-generationally and cross cul­tur­ally.  And it would be hav­ing The Lev­ity Insti­tute become a respected forum for new devel­op­ments and research on how to live more light heart­edly and also to have it become a gath­er­ing place from which the next gen­er­a­tion of social lead­ers can emerge and share their messages.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  On the contrary…it would be Ellen hit­ting the world series of talk shows, hav­ing you on there! 

8. Tell us one unex­pected thing that has hap­pened to you, from going down this path of start­ing the “The Lev­ity Project”?
With­out a doubt, it has been watch­ing how peo­ple are touched by the idea.  How clearly I can tell it feeds some part of them whether they are at the event or watch­ing a video.  I get emails from peo­ple thank­ing me.  And some­times I just think, “Why are they thank­ing me, we are just laugh­ing, play­ing, and cel­e­brat­ing!”  I have met amaz­ing peo­ple and it has helped me to real­ize that I am on a path and that I have to keep going to see where this adven­ture leads me and above all trust that it will take me, and hope­fully our world, to a new place.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  One unex­pected thing for me from you going down this path, Katie…is a friend­ship that is pretty spe­cial.  Keep on cel­e­brat­ing life, you are touch­ing lives in very deep ways! 

9. If you had to pick one thing as your great­est achieve­ment, what would it be (and why)?
You may laugh…but really birth still ranks above every­thing.  I mean, a human being came out of me.  That was crazy!  And it hap­pened twice!  What also moves me is that the first birth was hard, totally not how we pic­tured it, and had a lot of med­ical inter­ven­tion.  What was so strik­ing about this is that one of the peo­ple present said, “That was just the birth you needed to have.”  At the time, I am pretty sure I wanted to haul off and hit her, but in the years since I real­ized that what that birth did was shake my per­fec­tion­ist qual­i­ties right out of me.  Noth­ing went how I had “planned” it with the excep­tion of one thing, a healthy baby in my arms.  And with that aware­ness came the under­stand­ing of how to look at each sit­u­a­tion and “juice” it for what is most impor­tant.  By let­ting go of all the seem­ing ways things were sup­posed to hap­pen and let them hap­pen, I got to expe­ri­ence life’s jour­ney and what it had in store for me.  And since then, the gifts from what I learned in that moment have ben­e­fited me every day.

And of course, as the story would have it, my sec­ond child’s birth was dreamy.  Labor­ing at the beach, laugh­ing at the hos­pi­tal dur­ing active labor, and hear­ing Johnny Cash singing as my son was born which made every­one there crack up.  It made me real­ize cel­e­bra­tions come in all forms…some that make us shout with hap­pi­ness and oth­ers that ask us to see the mag­nif­i­cence and holi­ness in the hardship.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Hmmm…I can relate.  Well, maybe I should say my wife can relate!  Wait, I was there, too!  Now I’m get­ting con­fused!  Our first birthing expe­ri­ence was one that was very much the oppo­site of every­thing we expected.  (see how I use the the word “our”…you know, because it was like I was going through that labor too!!!)  Some­how we sur­vived, and were blessed with a healthy baby also.  And that made it all worth it.  Would you believe me, now, if I tell you I can com­pletely relate???   

10. What does a typ­i­cal day with your fam­ily involve?
Which day?  Each day has a dif­fer­ent fla­vor.  Both my hus­band and I work and both of us stay home. And if any­one read­ing this shares that expe­ri­ence, you are laugh­ing your head off right now.  But each day has a lot of hugs, play­ing, craft­ing like I said before, debat­ing what to do for din­ner, get­ting together with peo­ple, email­ing, laugh­ing, and danc­ing.  Every Sat­ur­day night, we have a fam­ily mini-party.  It is called  “Every­body loves Sat­ur­day Night”, the name came from my daughter’s children’s CD.  So every Sat­ur­day night, as a fam­ily, we put on that song and dance, eat cake and do some­thing fun.  We always get bal­loons and some­times silly masks and cel­e­brate.  If you hang out with me long enough, you will know that one of my cen­tral tenets is celebration….it just does not get enough air time in our soci­ety.  The Sat­ur­day Night Dance Par­ties with the four of us is a good exam­ple of us.  We may not be the fam­ily trav­el­ing to every place, we may not be stay­ing out late doing excit­ing things, we may not be tak­ing the kids to every museum, but we have our own brand of fun.  And it feels really good.

Lance’s Com­men­tary:  Sat­ur­day evenings sound like a blast at your house!  I think we should have a big party…and YOU can host!!  I’ll bring the cook­ies!!  And excit­ing is what you make it, anyway…so keep on rockin’ in your own groovy way!

11. Deep-down, Katie, what makes you, “you”?  
I think it is how I started this inter­view.  All is an adven­ture.  All is wor­thy of our atten­tion and expe­ri­ence.  There is noth­ing with­out merit that hap­pens.  My “me-ness”  is in being open to see­ing the adven­ture and my will­ing­ness to allow it to trans­form me.  Even in the grump­i­est of grump days, I know with­out a doubt, we are all con­nected and we are all one.  And that brings me a deep joy that some­how man­ages every time to break up any clouds that may be there and allow the light of pos­si­bil­ity and inter­con­nect­ed­ness to shine brightly.  My mom recently told me when I was born that she almost named me “Joy” and that many days since she wishes she had.   It seems only fit­ting that my work here on the planet would revolve around this idea.

And well, I also really really like mak­ing choco­late chip cook­ies and can do the recipe from memory.

Lance’s Com­men­tary: Joy!!  That IS a fit­ting name for you, too (your mom just knew!!).  Katie:  That’s the new word for joy!

Life is an adven­ture.  And wher­ever that adven­ture leads us, those are the moments that are our life.  And whether they seem hum drum or filled with excite­ment, they are all ours.  In fact, I believe it’s not so much the big and grand things that define our life as much as it is the reg­u­lar day to day mini-adventures that life leads us on that are really the cor­ner­stone for our life jour­ney.  Katie, I know you have weaved a life filled with all of this, big adven­tures all sand­wiched between lots and lots of mini adven­tures.  And you choose an atti­tude of belief in what IS pos­si­ble.  And that is what makes life grand!

Clos­ing Thoughts:  Katie, it is an honor to have you here today!  You have a mix of goofi­ness, deep under­stand­ing, and love that are sec­ond to none!  In our world today, you are sunshine…warm and radi­ant out into the lives of those you touch!

To para­phrase Ralph Waldo Emer­son:  Katie you HAVE succeeded…in so many beau­ti­ful ways, you give love and life a touch of joy.  And in that, the world is a bet­ter place.  In that, I am a bet­ter per­son.  Con­tinue to give the world a bit of this magic fairy dust.  

And con­tinue to rock the world, buddy!

Now…about those cook­ies… 

You can keep up with Katie by sub­scrib­ing to The Lev­ity Project,  and fol­low­ing her on Twit­ter.