About TJ: My Story

We all have a life story that brought us to this moment. There is a history in you, that led you to this website and sparked your interest in the topic of happiness.

Here I would like to share my story and invite you to do the same.

Evoking Happiness

I did not seek to actively increase my happiness knowledge until my early college years. However, my life path has always been one that would encourage this destiny.

4^th Grade

When I was in 4^th grade, my teachers quickly diagnosed me as being a “worry wart”. I was a child who spent his recesses doing homework, his evenings reading school books, and his classroom time double checking that all work was in tip-top shape. Without a doubt they had the correct diagnosis although they would never be able to understand why.

As a nine year old I looked around me and saw the devastation in my home life, I thought to myself, “is this how it always has to be?”. Then one day early in my 4^th grade year a best friend told me that everything I did from that point on would greatly impact my future. That to me was a scary prospect but I decided right then and there that I was not going to live the life I had forever and made the decision to immediately start working on making my life a happier one.

High School

After the divorce of my parents and the detection of lung cancer in my hero/role model, I made a hard decision that taught me a lot about life.

My Papaw (my hero) had always lived in front of me growing up and he was a person I could always count on for good advice and honesty. He lived alone and when my parents got divorced they both moved away from where he was, so I no longer had the opportunity to visit him. When the doctors said he only had two years to live, I could not stand the idea of him spending those two years alone and thus decided to move in with him.

I spent three cherished years with my Papaw before he moved on. During that time we had many heartfelt talks about his life and life in general. We talked about why his life was a good one and the things he appreciated in life and the things he wished he could do differently. These talks with my Papaw – a person on the edge of death, made me realize that there’s truly only one thing in life that matters and that’s being happy.

College

Knowing I wanted to spend my life doing something that made me happy rather than something that would bring me riches (here’s a post comparing money and happiness) I decided to pursue a career in education. I chose Health Education knowing that it was the only subject that would allow me to teach children about their lives and give me a gateway in which to teach them how to make their lives a happier one.

During my second year of college a new way of teaching health was introduced to me. The professor (my friend today) taught us about wellness and how it could be used as a way to teach about health. She introduced the six dimensions of wellness: social, emotion, physical, intellectual, spiritual, and occupational. I realized that wellness and these dimensions could be used as a formula to lead people to having a high level of life satisfaction.

I ran home and began researching wellness immediately. What I found was that many people define wellness in different ways. With that being the case I formulated my own definition of wellness: “the active lifelong process of becoming aware of choices and consistently making decisions that encourage an optimal life that is fulfilling, meaningful, and satisfying.”

I learned of the concept of wellness and from that point on increasing the happiness of my life and others become my obsession.

Since that time I have:

• Written a children’s book on happiness titled, “Happily Ever After”.
• Developed three blogs on happiness (this one prevailing).
• Given a presentation on the dimensions of wellness at the Greater Convention Center in Columbus, OH.
• Am in the process of publishing a research paper on the wellness model.
• Joined and participated as an active member in the National Wellness Institute.

Please share your story

Why is it that you have become interested in happiness and all that it brings?

But wait there’s more! If you’d like to read more about How-tobehappy.com and myself please visit Welcome to How-tobeHappy.com.