Hello, MJ--

I hear what you're saying--that those who sacrifice stuff like leisure time and personal relationships to be successful are likely to be unhappy.

Sure, we all have to make sacrifices--can't run around having fun all the time when we have responsibilities--but the type of sacrifice that worries me here is the kind where they're sacrificing by suppressing their nature. Your nature may be more suited for the intensity of military life, or working outdoors, or working with your hands, but you give up what suits your nature to work at a desk or do more 'tame', safe jobs. You may willingly do so--maybe even feel you have to to be a good spouse or son. In doing so, you might gain the approval of those who love you (or reduce conflict with those they love), but unhappiness from a suppressed nature seems to leak out in other ways. Sometimes they don't even understand that suppressing their true nature is, in some ways, at the root of the unhappiness and the poor behaviors (e.g., golfing and playing video games instead of helping out at home).

If only the people who love us will help us find ways to be successful within our own natures as best as possible.

It seems I didn't make it clear--nothing new there:)--but the chair was able to handle a 400-lb person (very needed when football centers come to my office and wiggle around in my chairs), but the student himself wasn't 400 pounds. I definitely can't let football centers sit in my cute accent chairs which only have a 225-lb capacity:):)

Anyway, I see what you mean, that saying he had mediocre grades seemed to mean he wasn't successful. I believe the student was successful: He was in college, so he'd made it to college though many high-schoolers don't. Also, despite mediocre grades, he was on track to graduate college. Many well-paying jobs only require a college degree--the GPA doesn't have to be all that high, the grades don't even have to be that great. Plenty of people making 6 figures had mediocre grades in college. Sometimes, as long as you have that degree, who you know matters more than what grades you got. And something I didn't know until I started on this career path: There are plenty of people running around with doctorate degrees who had mediocre grades in college. That was super surprising to me because I assumed Ph.D types had pretty much perfect college grades, but I quickly learned that's not the case.

This student (and very successful athlete) was well on his way to a typical kind of success yet was already experiencing that low-level unhappiness that I see in people who make sacrifices in terms of their true nature.

Maybe those mediocre grades at college mean this student would make extra-ordinary grades at lineman school:) Who knows...interesting to consider though.

Thanks as always for helping me think through what I've written and flesh out more thoughts, MJ.

--Lee