My wife of 56 years, Barbara (we met in high school), and I had an extraordinary life together. I called her The Sunshine Girl because she was always happy, and she taught me how to be happy, too. To our surprise, our unintended example seemed to have a powerful effect on so many of those around us. Barbara died in 2019. This is her legacy.
Happiness begins with decency. Decency is the critical ingredient in achieving and maintaining happiness. Happiness and decency come to those who help others create it for themselves. It begins with those closest to you. Barbara and I committed ourselves to helping each other first, and then found happy ways for others to improve their lives. The way it worked out, we found that helping others achieve those things they feel are meaningful, helpful, and important to yet others, often need help completing what they hope to accomplish. Our relationship revolved around our constantly doing good things for each other first. This created a beautiful life for the two of us.
| Live by Barbara’s happiness ingredients every day. And act now whenever unhappiness is threatening – do it now, fix it now, question it now, make it better now. Or, just let it go, which we often did. |
Barbara’s Legacy:
7 Ingredients of Happiness, and maybe yours, too.
Throughout much of our life together, we deferred talking about how our happiness occurred. Frankly, we figured that if we talked about it, we’d probably mess it up. But toward the end of her life, people pressed us to talk more about our relationship and how it came about. The result of our conversations is the list below. They can help you as they helped us.
- Intentionally say nice things about and to each other in private and public every day, everywhere. Spend part of every day thinking of nice things to say and do.
- Avoid saying the two or three divisive, corrosive, “Get-even” things you might really want to mention every day. Let them go.
- It is always better to be positive or blah and avoid being negative or inflammatory.
- Rid your lives of negative, irritating, and intentionally abrasive people. Walk away. Skip the goodbyes. Immediate happiness will break out.
- Make every day simple, sensible, and satisfying for yourself then for others.
- Maintain a genuine respect for those you care about 24/7.
- Give the credit for your success to those closest to you or who really care about you.
I’ll always remember the day when Barbara was confronted with a truly major, personal decision. She kind of clammed up, so I knew something was up. One morning, she was very talkative and had made quite interesting decisions. Out of curiosity I asked her, “What took you so long to make this logical decision?” Her answer was immediate, “My decision was pretty simple. I had three choices: Do nothing and suffer, surrender to the problem and be miserable, or be happy and see how things turn out.” Throughout her entire life, Barbara subjected big decisions and circumstances to her “Happiness Barometer.” It had to be happy, or we walked away.