Where Thanks Are Due

Could You Be Happier Than You Think You Are?

If you haven’t already seen it, be sure to make time this weekend to watch Martin Seligman’s TED Talk on Positive Psychology, especially if you tend to measure your own or your children’s happiness by what you think happiness is supposed to look like.

Seligman outlines three kinds of happiness:

“The first life is the pleasant life and it’s simply as best we can find it, it’s having as many of the pleasures as you can, as much positive emotion as you can, and learning the skills, savoring, mindfulness, that amplify them, that stretch them over time and space. But the pleasant life has three drawbacks, and it’s why positive psychology is not happiology and why it doesn’t end here.”

In my experience, intense children are sometimes happier than we think they are. A father recently talked to me about his daughter’s lack of friends and his fear that she was unhappy, but, the more we talked, the more he realized that she didn’t seemed bothered by the number of friends she had. He was doing what we all tend to do: Look to the external world for signs that our child is doing okay, rather than realizing that, in the much quoted and loved words of Leslie Sword, there is normal, and then there is “normal for gifted.”

Giving Thanks to James T. Webb and Janet L. Gore

Martin Seligman also discusses in the above video the idea of a gratitude visit:

“Gratitude visit. I want you all to do this with me now, if you would. Close your eyes. I’d like you to remember someone who did something enormously important that changed your life in a good direction, and who you never properly thanked. The person has to be alive. OK. Now, OK, you can open your eyes. I hope all of you have such a person. Your assignment when you’re learning the gratitude visit is to write a 300-word testimonial to that person, call them on the phone in Phoenix, ask if you can visit, don’t tell them why, show up at their door, you read the testimonial — everyone weeps when this happens — and what happens is when we test people one week later, a month later, three months later, they’re both happier and less depressed.”

I’m not going to play exactly by the rules, but I have my own gratitude visit to make today. Ten years ago, I was at home when the phone rang, and a deep, musical voice said, “This is Jim Webb, publisher at Great Potential Press, and I just received your proposal for a book on homeschooling gifted children.”

That moment not only changed the direction of my professional career, but it led eventually to my involvement with SENG (Supporting Emotional Needs of the Gifted) and meeting amazingly intense and passionate people in the field of giftedness, including Janet Gore, Great Potential Press’s Vice President, Acquisitions Editor and Developmental Editor, who has shaped by writing in more ways than she could know through her editorial skill and magic. I am just one example of not just hundreds but certainly thousands of people touched by the support and guidance of Jim and Jan.

Even more important, their willingness to publish a book on homeschooling gifted children at a time when the topic was still suspect in many circles, gave permission to many other families to allow their children to learn in an environment and at a pace that fit them. I’ve talked to many parents who say that being able to point to a published book on the topic has helped their family members and friends to accept their choice to homeschool. What I did was simply to weave together a lot of information and resources available but not always readily so. What Jim, Jan, and Great Potential Press did was to do what fewer and fewer publishers seem willing to do these days: Make the courageous and at times risky choice to give readers what they need.

For these reasons and so many more I say not only thank you but a warm and well-deserved congratulations to James T. Webb and Janet L. Gore for their being named co-recipients of the Sanford J. Cohn Lifetime Achievement Award for 2011! Read (and please subscribe to) the Great Potential Press blog for more information.

Finding Intensity in the Blogosphere

Finally, I have recently discovered a most delightful blog that many of you might enjoy, Figments of a Dutchess, by Marion Driessen (no, the title isn’t misspelled–she’s Dutch!). Her self-description is as a “writer torn between English and Dutch, reader, DnD, RPGamer, Harley Witch, nature lover, information manager, elearning coach,” and her recent post on the gratitude she feels for her parents will make you think twice about whether you want to skip that call home this weekend.

Happy weekend, everyone!