EP28 – The Key To Happiness For Your Children

Hello and welcome to this episode of, I don't know Jack about parenting, but in today's episode I'm going to share with you the one secret to your kids' happiness, so come on and take a listen.

Be in a state of gratitude

Hey, welcome back to this episode of I don't know, Jack, about parenting, where I'm going to give you the one golden nugget that it takes for a true happiness in life, and you're gonna say, man, I'm already happy and I hope that you are. I hope that you're happy. I hope that that translates into your children's happiness. I hope that your kids truly embody what it is to enjoy life and what I believe that to be is to be in a state of gratitude and in order to be in a state of gratitude, in my opinion, I believe that we have to understand and have perspective from what we have. And I recognize this in my little one at some point is, you know, I grew up and growing up without a dad growing up, uh, where, uh, you know, money and resources were not in abundance, right?

There was some scarcity there. There were some challenges around all of those things. Uh, and I was just a normal kid, right? I like every, everybody lives this way, but at some point you understand that other people may have it a little bit better than you. Maybe some people don't have it as good as you, but my son, uh, thankfully, like, has, doesn't have some of the same challenges that I had. And he thinks that this is the way it is for everybody. And in order for him to understand true happiness and be in gratitude for the things that he has a, I believe that it's important for us as a family to give back. Uh, we, we, we've gone multiple times to a homeless shelter so that he can see what it's like, um, to not have the things he's witnessed. Kids his age that live in this shelter.

He was standoffish

And we're like, are there video games? I remember him saying, are their video games here? I said, I don't think they have video. And he's like, no, video games. I would never want to live here as a CEO. You need to be an appreciation of what you do have in gratitude for what you do have. In addition to going there and having him experience that we have gone and made meals for the homeless and pass those meals out. And he sees that people don't always have a home and that they don't always get to take a shower. And the cool thing about this for me is when we first did this, he was standoffish and kind of like uncomfortable. And then at some point he said, dad, when are we going to go back and help those homeless people? When are we going to go make those meals again?

I had a good time. I enjoy doing that, which was amazing to me. Um, in addition to that, we, and this is kind of a plug for this campaign. For those of you who don't know the number one clothing need for the homeless is socks. And, and why would that be? Think about what I just said, their socks for the homeless because many people will donate jacket, still donate jeans, they'll donate shirts, they'll donate pants. But what happens to your old socks? Uh, I dunno about you, but I know my socks ended up with holes in them before I tossed them. And then I toss them. We're not going to donate somebody my holy socks. Socks are the number one need for the whole homeless and foot, uh, disease. Uh, or, or diseases come through the feet for a lot of homeless people.

I've been involved with the a organization

So if they're not protected or if they don't have clean socks, a lot of times that I'm. The reason they ended up in the hospital because their feet aren't protected, so I know the founders of an amazing a nonprofit organization called the socket to 'em sock campaign. If you're watching this on youtube, the link will be below. If you're watching this on the of your reading this, obviously the link is there. If you are not on either one of those platforms, please, please, please feel free to subscribe to the blog and be the dad you wish you had four slash blog or go to my youtube channel, which again is be the dad you wish you had and we get socks for the homeless at this point. I've been involved with the a organization for a little over two years. At the time I got involved, they had collected and donated over 60,000 socks to homeless people. At this point they have collected and distributed over 500,000 pair of socks and counting and and I'm proud to say that I am a small part at my son's school, which I've organized at the school. We've raised over the last three years a little over 5,000 pairs of socks and a are getting other organizations involved. If you want information about the sock it to 'em sock campaign, if this sounds interesting to you, it's http://sockittoemsockcampaign.org/ and again, those links will be available.

Why is this important? When we distribute, once we collect the socks, we make it a big thing at my son's school. When we give, give it away, I bring him to the homeless shelter. I bring him to the streets of Atlanta at where we hand these things out with meals to the homeless people. He gets to give back. He gets to see the effort it takes. He gets to promote and talk about the socket to website campaign, but guess what? He's in gratitude for the things that he has because he now has perspective of the way somebody else lives. He understands that he has a lot more than some other people he's willing to share. He's willing to do some work to provide for the others, and when you're in gratitude for what you have, not in a, Oh, I need this. I need that mode, which at one point he was to be quite frank, I want another video game.

I need to bring socks for the homeless

I want this, I want that. And I was like, what you have is a lot. Let's go see what some other people have. And now he's like, Dad, thank you for getting me the games, dad. Thank you. Forgive me this new bedroom set. Dad. We had an awesome Christmas. Thank you. That. Did we get socks for people for Christmas? I organize the sock it to 'em sock campaign. I had donated a bunch of socks unbeknownst to him. And he came home one day when they got the flyer and they were talking about at school. He's like, Dad, I need to bring socks for the homeless, you know, we need to bring socks for the homeless. I said, absolutely, you want to go out and buy socks and went out and purchased more socks so that he could, um, put the more socks in the bin. Um, and then I got a group of my friends have some of which I'm going to be spending some time with over the weekend here together. There were six of us in a small men's group and we got an additional 550 pairs donated, uh, through our efforts.

So if you want true happiness...

If you want true gratitude in life, give back have perspective, be grateful for the things that you have and don't, uh, don't dwell on the things that we don't have. We could always have more. There's, we're in such abundance in this country for the things that we have a that we keep wanting more. We're keeping up with the Jones', but if we get perspective by giving back, figuring out a way that your family can give back, whether it's going to a homeless shelter, whether it's collecting socks for the homeless, whether it's donating your time to, to pass out meals at, at, at the holiday time, pass out meals when it's not the holiday time where there's scarcity. 

The number one day that the homeless are the hungriest because throughout the week, many people visit them on the weekends. People visit them. But Monday is the day that most of them go without a meal because that's not the day that people are donating. So just wanted to say that the true meaning of happiness is to be in gratitude. In order to be in gratitude, we must have perspective. So give your children the gift of perspective by allowing your family to get involved with those who may be less fortunate. That's it for this episode. I hope you enjoyed it and we'll see you on the next episode.