Having children has caused me to think a lot more about happiness. Lots of folks quote studies that claim parents are less happy than childless people. I don’t really care to debate that. I guess the Atlantic did, but there are a lot of words there, so I didn’t read it.

I recently listened to the TED radio hour on happiness and it reminded me about a bunch of things that I could use being reminded about daily. Here were my takeaways.

“Slow down” Carl Honore

More specifically, he said something to the effect of “I found myself arguing with my child about what words were actually in his bedtime story because I was trying to skip parts to accelerate the bedtime routine.” I found myself in this exact circumstance about a month ago. Stepping up to two kids is hard. It’s natural to look for ways to cut corners, but I stopped, because what’s the point? Save time reading him bedtime stories just so that I can speed more quickly to him being in college?

“Less stuff = more happy” Graham Hill

I actually started to catch wind of this over a year ago. It was about the time we were starting to think seriously about a second child. We also started to think about a larger house. Instead of getting a larger house, we got rid of 1/3rd of our stuff. It was a great decision. I still need to work on not buying the stuff in the first place though. 😦

“Gratefulness => Happiness, not the other way around.” David Stendl-Rast

I first learned this when I visited my sister in her village in the middle of Niger. I met the most amazing people there. They had so little, little education, little opportunity, little water, little food. But they had community and family, which were basically the same thing there. And they were grateful for it. And they were some of the happiest people I’ve met.

“Happiness comes with practice” Nate Muller

So with all that I’m working everyday to achieve happiness and more importantly, imprint it on my boys. I do my best to slow down, minimize my stuff, and be grateful for what I have.

An update

Speaking of grateful, I never posted about bringing George home from the NICU. Well, we brought him home after a short 3.5 week stay, and yes, I’m grateful for it. Not bringing him home, but I’m grateful for the opportunity to be in the NICU. I know how lucky I am to have not one, but two beautiful, healthy boys, thanks to the University of Washington NICU team. Last weekend, we took them for George’s first run in a double stroller. It’s just a simple run around the lake, but I can’t even describe how grateful I was in so many ways in that moment.

George’s first run