Nice Guys Finish First!

There’s no shortage of discussion surrounding the subject of kids’ health.  And everywhere we turn the message seems to be the same:  our kids’ health is going down the tubes.  It’s a cynical consensus for sure, but it does seem hard to argue the facts.  According to the CDC, the childhood obesity rates in the U.S. [...]

I’ve seen the commercials and trailer for the new movie, “Dinner For Schmucks.”  It looks really funny.  But there’s been something bothering me since I first heard the title.  I always thought that the word “schmuck” was a dirty word.  At least that’s what my dad told me back in 1971 when I was about 12 years old.  [...]

By my estimations, it was around the turn of the 20th Century when the scientific case for proving that Nice Guys Finish First began to take shape.  At that time the fields of psychology and physiology were beginning to merge in an attempt to explain scientifically how and why people behave.  This study of human behavior [...]

My own father was a quintessential Nice Guy himself, and he gathered his Nice Guy traits throughout his lifetime, one influence at a time.   One of the tools Dad had learned to use with great effectiveness was the art of self restraint; he had the uncanny ability to repress his emotions in situations where most [...]

In reflecting upon the Nice Guy influences within my family history, the great personality contrasts between my ever-affable Grandpa Tony and my no-nonsense Grandma Mac raised some interesting and perplexing questions.  I found myself right in the middle of the classic “nature-versus-nurture” debate, wondering just how much of their personalities were driven by genetic predisposition versus being shaped by their respective [...]

I was sitting in my home office on Mother’s Day contemplating what – if any - wonderful words of wisdom I could offer to link the nation’s celebration of moms to the message of Nice Guys.  It should have come easily to me, but I admit that I was having trouble conjuring up the creative juices on this particular day.  Maybe it was [...]

In the last couple of years of her life my Grandma Mac had become legally blind due to the effects of cataracts and glaucoma.  But no such physical burden seemed too great for her to endure.  At least that’s the way she continued to project her hard outer shell.  Heaven help the friend or relative that would try [...]

While searching my own family history to determine what sort of Nice Guy family roots I may have had, I was quickly able to identify the most obvious forebearers of these tendencies.  Clearly my own father, along with his dad – the lovable Grandpa Tony - stood out among our more recent Nice Guy family lineage.  But in examining our [...]

About a year after I began my unofficial role as Grandpa Tony’s personal chauffeur, his health began to deteriorate.  Despite being a heavy smoker well into his late 60′s, when he stopped cold turkey, and despite being overweight for most of his adult life Grandpa Tony had always been in remarkable health.  But eventually his [...]

“Traveling Nice Guy” Grandpa Tony loved his big Plymouth station wagon.   The car was more than just a prized possession.  For Grandpa it represented freedom, mobility and – I guess you could say – escape.  After all, from the time I was just four years old, Grandpa – a single widower – had lived with us [...]