Happiness is Watching Your Child Succeed, Part 3

My eldest child, Kelly (a regular reader of this blog), has been bugging me since I started it, asking, “when are you gonna write a column about ME?”  For a long time I put her off by pointing out that this is my professional blog, not personal.  Well, since I recently wrote about BOTH of her brothers, I clearly can’t use that excuse any more.  So to keep peace in the family :)  I will write today’s post about her.

This is Kelly Smith Gibson.  After graduating from the University of Notre Dame, she attended med school at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia.  She married a wonderful young man from Seattle in December 2007 in a ceremony that took place in the Basilica at the Notre Dame campus, which is where they met.

Today, she and Paul live nearby and Kelly is a first-year resident in an OB/Gyn program that is run jointly by Metro General Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic.  She delivers babies.  Lots of babies.  A lot of the babies she delivers are born to moms in high-risk pregnancy situations, like those who are very young, very old, and those who have diabetes or other complicating health conditions.  Metro boasts one of the finest high-risk pregnancy units in the country, and I know that Kelly is very proud to be a part of the team there.

Not all is a bed of roses for Kelly.  Students who graduate from Med School in the United States carry a huge debt load.  I get nosebleeds just thinking about how much money she owes in student loans.  Residents work 80-90 hours a week – including a LOT of nights and 24-hour weekend shifts — for not a lot of money.  And she has to study constantly – huge big textbooks and journals and new research into exciting topics like female cancers and rates of morbidity for high-risk pregnancies, and so on.  And hubby Paul just got laid off from his job last week as an Actuarial Analyst for a consulting firm.  And the liability insurance premiums for Obstetricians is a scary number – OB’s have to deliver a ton of babies each year just to pay for their insurance.

AND she and Paul are a very happy and engaging couple whom my wife and feel blessed to count as our friends.

So, Kelly, this is your blog post.  Now the whole world (of my subscribers, anyway) know what a great person you are and how proud I am of you and your accomplishments.

Can we be done, now?

And NO, I’m not writing a post about your dog.

Happiness is Seeing Your Child Succeed

Last week I was privileged to attend Kent State University’s annual Student Awards night.  At this event the university recognizes the accomplishments of its many student leaders and student organizations; it also serves as the transition point for all Undergraduate Student Government (USG) positions.

During the past school year our youngest son, Jared, was a Student Senator in addition to serving as president of the largest fraternity on campus, Sigma Chi.  He will serve as one of the six elected USG Directors for the 2009/10 term.  We drove down to see him recognized for his contributions and then sworn in to his new role.

We sat at a table with many of Jared’s fraternity brothers and were delighted to see the quality of character so many of them possess.  These young men, some about to graduate in a few weeks, represent the next generation of leadership for our country. I feel inspired when in the presence of their energy and determination to succeed and create change.

I was pleasantly surprised, as I scanned the evening’s program, to see many of these young men’s names on the list of nominees for several awards.  I was proud to bursting as I realized that Jared’s name was listed for seven out of twelve possible leadership awards, in addition to his USG recognition.

Jared went up on stage several times during the evening to receive recognition for his contribution and accomplishments.  The awards he was nominated for acknowledge leadership, scholarship, commitment to the university, contribution to the community, and so on.  These are all admirable qualities in any young person, and even more fun to watch when that young person is my own child.

I was a proud and happy Dad, for sure!

Everything’s Amazing, Nobody’s Happy

This is a simply riotous video that you’ll especially appreciate if you are “older” (over 25).  In a four-minute clip of Conan O’Brien hosts the comedian Louis CK who is talking of the spoiled generation (tho frankly, I know a lot of older folks who behave the same way).

The sentiment here is that we are living in a world that is truly astounding… and we’ve become numb to the miracles we live with every day.    Enjoy!

If you cannot view the video clip here, you can see it at YouTube

Putting this sentiment into action

While I was nearly hysterical with laughter the first time I viewed this, I found that a second viewing led me down a more reflective path.  What ARE the everyday miracles I take for granted? Here’s just three:

• Ten years ago if I wanted to discover facts about a topic I would have to read the Encyclopedia (a now-ancient format for gathering info), or spend a half day going to the library for research.  Now, I just Google it, in seconds.
• When my oldest child went to college, we established our own toll-free phone number, because that was the only way to avoid outrageous ‘long-distance’ phone charges.  Now, my “land” phone is via the Internet, and I can call anywhere in the world and nobody cares about cost.
• And one of my favorites:  my record collection when I was younger weighed about 60 pounds and required two people to carry a huge, heavy-duty crate;  AND I could only play one record at a time.  Now, I carry over 220 albums — enough music to mix and play continuously for 10.1 days! — in a container slightly larger than a deck of cards.  OH, and I have my entire movie collection in that same container.  OH, and the equivalent of  six photo albums.  How cool is that?!

When you take a moment to appreciate what you DO have, rather than focusing on what’s missing,  you’ll have a much happier ride!

Hey, how about you take a moment to leave a comment and share just 1-2 everyday miracles that you thought about while reading this post! Thanks.

Money CAN Buy Happiness

I recently re-discovered a fabulous article originally published by Harvard Business School’s Working Knowledge site, way back in June.  It’s a research-based report on the concept of spending and Happiness.

Selected excerpts from the article:

Can money buy you happiness? Yes—so long as you spend the money on someone else. According to new research, giving other people even as little as $5 can lead to increased well-being for the giver.

That’s the insight into the secret of happiness by HBS professor Michael Norton and two colleagues from the University of British Columbia….
“Intentional activities—practices in which people actively and effortfully choose to engage—may represent a promising route to lasting happiness. Supporting this premise, our work demonstrates that how people choose to spend their money is at least as important as how much money they make,” the researchers explain.

“Our findings suggest that very minor alterations in spending allocations—as little as $5 in our final study—may be sufficient to produce non-trivial gains in happiness on a given day.”

According to researcher Michael Norton: “one of the most puzzling paradoxes in social science is that though people spend so much of their time trying to make more money, having more money doesn’t seem to make them that much happier. My colleagues Liz Dunn and Lara Aknin—both at the University of British Columbia—and I wondered if the issue was not that money couldn’t buy happiness but that people simply weren’t spending it in the right way to make themselves happier. Liz had the great idea to explore whether, if we encouraged people to spend money in different ways, we could uncover the domains in which money might lead to happiness. We conducted a number of studies—from national surveys to a field study in which we examined how the manner in which employees at a Boston-based company spent a profit-sharing bonus impacted their long-term happiness—in which we showed that money can buy happiness, when people spend that money prosocially on others (giving gifts to friends, donating to charities) rather than on themselves (buying flat-screen televisions).

View the complete article here: Spending On Happiness

During the lead-up to the 2008 holidays, one of the consistent themes I saw in my professional circle was the notion of making a donation to a community cause rather than spending $$ on holiday parties.  This research explains WHY this notion is so appealing.  When we spend our money AND believe we are making a difference for someone else, we get a little burst of happiness.

I think this also explains why people who just spend $$ on gifting to “impress” others often find gift-giving to be a real downer.  When the goal is to impress and “out-gift” others in a “keep up with the Joneses” sort of holiday competition, there’s not a lot of space for joy.

But when one takes the time to select a gift that they know the other will truly appreciate, use, get joy from… well, then the giving is a lot more fun.

Just yesterday,  I bought a last minute gift at the grocery store (of all places), and it cost me less than four bucks.  It happened to be a favorite snack of my dying-of-cancer aunt, which I’d learned was difficult to find on the other side of town.  I lucked out in noticing it on the shelf, bought it, and gifted it “just because.”  I think I got more joy from picking up that little gift than from all the $$ I spent on others.

Our intention — our knowing that we are ‘making a difference for someone else’ — is what really creates our Happiness.

May all of my readers experience the Joy of giving this holiday!

More Happiness from Starbucks

So, I’m out of coffee beans at home. I wander into my regular Starbucks location for coffee, and decide to pick up a pound of… something. But I’m looking at six different possibilities. What’s the difference? I’m so confused. This is the same feeling I get when I’m standing in the wine aisle. How can I choose without tasting?

A barista notices my perplexity, and makes an offer: “would you like me to press that for you?”

My first reaction was, “you mean, like iron it? Huh?” She explained that she’d be happy to grind a bit of it up and make a fresh pot in the French Press for me to taste. I accepted her offer.

Five minutes later, I had my own private coffee tasting!

And that made me very happy.