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Professional News Articles : : ON PRACTICE MANAGEMENT by Janyce Hamilton : Happy dentist-father an unshakable thanks-giver

Happy dentist-father an unshakable thanks-giver

November 3, 2008

Inspired by his life’s lesson, dental assistant daughter grows up, writes 2008 New York Times Bestseller

Only one-third of people describe themselves as happy—yet for the other two-thirds, their “happiness set-point” (50% genetic, 10% circumstances, 40% habits) can be raised. All this is according to the authors of Happy for No Reason, Marci Shimoff with Carol Kline (New York: Free Press). In a sentence, the book is about how to experience happiness no matter what’s going on in your life. This is one of 2008’s top 10 best-sellers.

Ms. Shimoff was a keynote speaker this fall in Orland Park, IL, and I had the opportunity to hear her talk and to speak with her one-on-one. During her presentation, she delivered interesting data. For example, children laugh an average of 425 times daily. Guess how many times a day the average adult laughs? 15.

After hearing her talk and interviewing her, I bought her book and read it cover to cover. Beyond its lemon-hued hardcover, the dedication page has these words: “To Dad, my first Happy for No Reason role model. I carry your joy in my heart.”  

In the first chapter, Ms. Shimoff introduces herself and her parents, writing that her father, Marcus (Marc) Shimoff was a dentist. By the second chapter, readers sense this is no ordinary man. This is a deeply satisfied, peaceful, glad-to-be-alive-every-day–type person, who happens to be a dentist.   

Who is this guy?

Biography of Marcus Shimoff, DDS, FAGD, FADI, FACD, FICD

Marcus Shimoff graduated from UCSF Dental School in 1940, and served on the teaching faculty until he was called for military service. He served as a Major in the US Army Dental Corps in the South Pacific during World War II, where he was awarded a Purple Heart. After the army, he practiced dentistry in San Francisco, and later in San Bruno and South San Francisco until his retirement in 1983. Marc was a leader in many organizations: President of the Academy of General Dentistry, Executive Council (including president) of the UCSF Dental Alumni Association, charter member of the Academy of Dentistry International. He was also Founding Director and later President of the California Academy of General Dentistry. He received many awards including the Medal of Honor from the Alumni Association of the School of Dentistry in 1996.

Back in the 1970s, young Marci worked during high school summers in her dad’s San Bruno, CA, dental practice. The Schimoffs wanted Marci to grow up to be dental hygienist. Marci was talkative as a young teenager and had already set her sights on being a professional speaker. While working in the dental practice, however, she received a rare gift—perceiving her dad through the eyes of his patients and staff. She saw something fascinating: he seemed to enjoy every day of being a dentist.     

Ms. Shimoff writes in Happy for No Reason about her dad:

I was blessed to grow up with one of these Happy for No Reason people: my father, Marc. He’s clearly hit the happiness set-point jackpot. No matter what he did or where he went, there was a perpetual sparkle about him. Yet, my dad’s happiness didn’t stem from his outer circumstances. He grew up quite poor during the Depression, struggled to pay for his education, had his share of personal losses, and stood a whopping 5’4 on a good day. But none of that seemed to matter to him. He loved everything.     

After working his way through dental school, including a one-year stint in a chocolate factory (perhaps ensuring future patients), he went on to serve four years during World War II as an army dentist in the South Pacific. Though he certainly didn’t relish being in the midst of battle, he never lost his inner sense of happiness. He was so devoted to my mother that he wrote her a letter every single day he was overseas—858 letters total—some of which have survived to this day. While in the army, he saved enough money from his poker earnings to finance his first dental practice when he returned home. He loved his career as a dentist, and when he retired, he did some amazing things that you’ll hear about in a later chapter.

Although he continued to face challenges after the war—sometimes money was tight, we didn’t exactly pop out of a Norman Rockwell painting, and his health eventually failed—my dad still felt happy all the time, passing away peacefully at age 91 [in 2006], having spent his ninetieth birthday playing golf.

My father woke up every morning excited and grateful to be on this adventure called life. He was my first Happy for No Reason role model and the inspiration for this book. One day when I was about 19, I asked him his advice for life. He answered with two words: “Be happy!”

“Great, Dad,” I said, “But how?”

He had no answer for me. Being happy was so natural to him that he couldn’t understand why everyone didn’t feel that way and why they were so busy pursuing happiness.

Her dad’s words, sometimes expanded to “Honey, just be happy”—offered without explanation or directions—tumbled around her head. It took his daughter some time for the principle of Occam's Razor (14th-century Franciscan friar and logician in England) to take effect: "All other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best."

“He always had a smile. I realized that ‘just be happy’ was it. There didn’t need to be ‘a reason’ for me to be happy,” Ms. Shimoff said.

During our short interview, she acknowledged that dentistry is one of the most stressful jobs, and that this stress may be part of the reason some dentists experience depression. Yet, according to her, there are habituated ways of being—things people do daily—to raise their happiness level. The book details, with a surprising amount of study data included, specific examples of ways people make themselves happy and case reports of how, despite all odds, those you’d expect to be the saddest and angriest of all, are sometimes instead the most peaceful and genuinely cheerful.

Ms. Shimoff’s message to the dentists reading this began with a question: “Who do patients want to go to, a depressive dentist or a happy dentist? For you and for your business, learn about the Law of Emotional Contagion. We ‘catch’ people’s emotions. If you have a cold, you are not going to sneeze on your patients because you care about them. Then why spread your ailing emotional state to your patients? Your whole office is affected as well because, emotionally, we become the five people we associate with most.”

(Doing a little research, I found several articles in peer-reviewed journals and books from respected psychologists about how the neurons and brain’s amygdala process verbal and nonverbal cues from others with an “unmediated resonance.”)

And, our emotional state may also affect our own level of tiredness or feelings of restfulness. “Our mental and emotional diets determine our overall energy levels, health and well-being more than we realize. Every thought and feeling, no matter how big or small, impacts our inner energy reserves,” according to Doc Childre, founder, HeartMath Institute, Boulder Creek, Calif. HeartMath Institute “educates people about stress and emotional management.”

In conclusion, data continues to be produced indicating that our emotional state is to a great extent within our own control, and it affects everything and everyone—including being clinically proven as the strongest predictor of heart attack recurrence.

If you believe even part of this, then how can devoting your life to learning how to improve your mood be discarded anymore as some silly “self-help” past-time?

By Chapter eight, Ms. Shimoff provides the final punctuation of the story of Dr. Marc Shimoff, her dad:

I learned about doing what you love and loving what you do from my father. Dad absolutely loved being a dentist. He retired at age 72, reluctantly. He wanted to find a new outlet for his talents, so he analyzed what he loved about dentistry. He realize it wasn’t about putting fillings in people’s mouths—it was that he loved working in intricate ways with his hands, in ways he felt were artistic.

So at age 72, Dad took up needlepoint—and loved it. He became a master needlepoint artist, winning awards throughout California. I remember going home one day for a visit when he was about 85. He’d just begun the biggest and most intricate needlepoint project I’ve ever seen, a detailed depiction of the Tree of Life.

I asked him, “Dad, how long is this going to take you to finish?”

And he said, “Honey, I figure at the pace I’m going it’s going to take me about four years.”

Imagine, an 85-year-old man beginning a four-year project—but his passion for expressing his artistry gave him a strong sense of purpose. And did he complete the project? You bet he did! It was his greatest work of all. Today, it hangs proudly on the wall of my mother’s living room in the same house that my parents shared for 53 years.

My dad taught me that feeling a sense of purpose allows you to bring joy to whatever it is you’re doing.

Today, his daughter not only gets it, she travels the world, sometimes flying every few days, to spread this happiness message. Ms. Shimoff achieved her life goal of being a professional speaker.    

At the end of the Orland Park keynote speech, Ms. Shimoff said that what ever it is that each of us does, she wants us to do it with all our heart and all of our soul.

At the end of her book, Dr. Shimoff’s daughter, recounted her retired dentist-father, and his final thanks-giving.

In his last days, my dad, my original Happy for No Reason role model and the inspiration for this book, gave me one final gift.

Celebrating his 91st birthday at a dinner at home with the entire family, my father ate what turned out to be his last meal. It was also the last time he was up and about before he passed away, peacefully, a week later. Though we didn’t realize what he was doing at the time, that evening he made a very specific and deliberate point to take each one of his children—my sister, my brother, and me—one by one over to the Tree of Life needlepoint, his final masterpiece, which was hanging on the living room wall.

As he smiled lovingly and pointed at the framed needlepoint, I knew he was trying to convey something important. He could barely talk, but now I believe that with this final gesture he was trying to communicate to me, “You’re the next generation in the Tree of Life, and I want you to pass on the message of my life. I have lived a deeply happy life. Please live that happiness yourself and help others to live it too.”

Happy Thanksgiving.

Janyce Hamilton is an award-winning Chicagoland freelance dental writer and editor. Send suggestions for topics to be covered, or any comments on this column, to review@cds.org.

© 2008, Chicago Dental Society