About Me

Who am I?

  • Husband.
  • Father of two.
  • A religious guy.
  • High School Teacher.
  • Student of Happiness.
  • A pretty decent guy.

Personal

I’m in my 50s with three kids. One is married and the other is in high school. I know. Here’s to afterthoughts! I’ve been married to a beautiful woman for almost 30 years and love her deeply. I love life. I love my family. I love my faith. I would love you to travel the paths of life here with me as we seek to unravel the secrets to a happy life.

I have been a student of human potential and happiness for well over 30 years now and have fallen passionately in love with blogging. I communicate ideas for a living. This blog has become another format to extend ideas that matter to those who are looking for them.

Professional

For 10 years, I worked as a Residential Counselor in a group home for kids who had been removed from their homes by the state for various forms and degrees of abuse.

Some had been severely neglected, living on porches, in hallways, in parks or in friends’ backyards. Others suffered more direct forms of abuse.

All of it was heart-wrenching stuff.

Well, in 2000, I finally decided to scratch a long-standing itch to teach. So I went back to school, got a degree in history, did my credential work and got a job teaching high school juniors and seniors.

I’ve been teaching for almost 2 decades now and love it.

You see, I believe ideas matter. They have consequences. They lead to things like freedom, democracy and prosperity, to decency and human elevation. Or they lead to destruction and oppression and slavery and racism. The social sciences are filled with such ideas and the historical context as a display for how ideas play out “in real life.” That’s why history appealed to me.

I currently teach Economics to high school seniors, but taught AP Government and Politics for 18 years and U.S. History to juniors a number of years ago. I love my day job.

Background

Growing up, I was a shy kid. One day, I decided I was no longer interested in being that shy, insecure kid. So I started reading books to find out how to improve the person underneath the hood. I read works in psychology, philosophy, religion, leadership and self-improvement.

I explored the ideas of Aristotle’s Ethics, Lao Tzu’s Tao Te Ching, Plato’s Dialogues, the writings of Mencius, the Analects of Confucius, Buddha’s Dhammapada, and the Bible. I read works from Seligman, Myers, Skinner, Maslow, Jung, Fromm, Burns and Selye. I read Covey and Robbins, Dyer and Peale, Carnegie, Hill, Gladwell and many, many more.

I also listened to countless programs on tape, later CD. From Nightingale to Schull er to Ziglar and Dyer and everything in between, and much that has come after. I currently read over 100 books a year. This isn’t to brag or to give myself a public pat on the back, but to say that I’ve done my homework.

I’ve spent a considerable amount of my life studying the works of those who have also given a considerable amount of their lives studying and researching what exactly makes us humans thrive, what adds meaning and purpose, direction and joy to the art of living well.

And I have thought and experimented endlessly with the ideas I came across as I pondered the elements of a happier, more meaningful life.

I have absorbed countless hours of information, ideas, insights, and personal application experiences that I believe will be helpful to others. There are 6 books that stand out from the rest, though, that I attribute to having changed my life in significant ways.

6 books that changed my life:

  1. Scripture (especially the Book of Mormon and the New Testament)
  2. As a Man Thinketh, James Allen
  3. Man’s Search for Meaning, Victor Frankl
  4. Learned Optimism, Martin Seligman
  5. 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Stephen R. Covey
  6. An Autobiography: The Story of My Experiments with Truth, Mohandas Gandhi

From my studies and experiences, I came to realize there were 7 basic life-changing principles that would forever change the way I approached and interacted with life and thought about happiness.

7 life-changing principles I gleaned from my studies and ruminations on happiness:

  1. Happiness is primarily the product of thoughts.
  2. I am responsible for my feelings because I am responsible for my thought.
  3. Integrity to moral values is central to happiness.
  4. Doing leads to being.
  5. Pleasure and fun do not equal happiness.
  6. Happiness requires work.
  7. No one can make me happy … or unhappy, for that matter (see #s 1 & 2 above).
  8. There are exceptions to these rules because biology and brain chemistry is real and complex and tricky. Since we are biochemical beings, if our biochemistry os off, so often will our feelings be off. Sometimes terribly, horrifically so. In such cases, professional treatment is likely necessary.

There are, of course, many other principles upon which the hope of happiness rests. I hope you will come back often and travel the road to more joy and more fulfillment, more purpose and meaning, and much, much  more happiness than you have experienced before.

I would consider it an honor and a privilege.

For more about me, visit this article on 50 things you don’t know about me.

For more about Meant to be Happy, click here: About M2bH.

For more on Happiness, click here or here.