What Nightbirde’s Song “It’s OK” Can Teach My Personal Finance Students About Joy
You can’t wait for life to be free of hardship to be happy
This year was my fifth opportunity to teach personal finance to a group of seniors at Logos Academy where I serve as CEO. All of our students are required to take this class where they learn about money, budgeting, the stock market, and a bit of basic economics.
I am convinced that their most important takeaway is not how to stay out of debt or become wealthy, but rather how to find joy in a life where hardship and difficulty will be unavoidable.
Two-thirds of my student body come from homes living with the harsh economic realities of poverty. Financial hardship is a day-to-day reality many of my students have already encountered.
Hardship is no respecter of human boundaries
The reality of hardship for my students is not simply due to their socioeconomic status. Difficulties like broken relationships, cancer, and job loss are not limited by gender, class, or age. The size of your 401k won’t help you resist many of life’s challenges.
As a young family, we have experienced spinal tumors and the loss of loved ones. In 2008, I watched my neighbors’ world shattered at the murder of their two-year-old granddaughter Darisabel.
A hefty investment account would have offered us little help in either situation.
I don’t need to remind my students that life will be full of difficulty. They live in a city and home that regularly reminds them of the fact.
Joy doesn’t have to wait in line behind hardship
Life’s hardships have a way of demanding that joy and happiness wait in line behind them. You can almost hear difficulty say to you:
“Happiness will have to wait until you heal from your spinal tumor surgery.”
“You can have joy once the relationship split is over and you find a new partner.”
The path to becoming a cynic is life is paved first with the belief that the presence of hardship is a hindrance to joy.
Jesus wants to move joy, peace, and hope to the front of the line in your life by the power of the Holy Spirit.
May the God of hope fill you with all joy and peace as you trust in him, so that you may overflow with hope by the power of the Holy Spirit. (Romans 15:13, NIV)
Jane refuses to wait for joy
I was moved by 30-year old Jane Marczewski’s (her stage name is Nightbirde) audition story on America’s Got Talent. She sang a song called “It’s OK” and moved the oft-grumpy Simon Cowell to tears.
Before Jane performed her song, she told the judges the song was about her resolution to overcome cancer that permeated her body. After her performance, Jane calmly stated that she has a two percent chance of survival.
You can watch Jane’s performance here:
“You can’t wait until life isn’t hard anymore before you decide to be happy.” -Nightbirde
Jane is the most credible testimony that God can move joy to the front of the line in your life.
Three seconds of joy
I use a simple hack I borrowed from Google’s former happiness guru called “three seconds of joy” to teach my personal finance students how to find joy. Chade-Meng Tan was a former engineer at Google who led mindfulness classes for employees.
Leveraging basic neurological research about habit formation, Tan developed this simple exercise that includes a trigger, a routine, and a reward.
I typically lead my students through this exercise at the beginning of class, and usually on the Monday class. Through the years, I have noticed that students come in from the weekend needing a boost, but many students are struggling because the weekend was hard at home.
Tan suggests the “trigger” is a pleasant moment. I encourage students to begin by talking about simple, pleasant moments I enjoy like a cup of coffee or a blossoming flower.
I ask the students to share a pleasant moment from the weekend. Common answers are getting to spend time with a family member, a meal out, or time playing a game. If they get stuck, I usually share how much I enjoy the first bite of Snickers bar.
The “routine” is the simple act of noticing. Tan writes in his book Joy on Demand,
“Noticing sounds trivial, but it is an important meditative practice in its own right…noticing is the prerequisite of seeing. What we do not notice, we cannot see.”
My own daily routine involves pausing at the first sip of early morning coffee to smell deeply before I taste.
The final step is the reward, or what Tan observes is the feeling of joy itself. Upon noticing something simple and pleasant, we must allow ourselves to savor the goodness of the moment: the goodness of that first sip of coffee, the feeling of warm water in the shower, the cool of an air-conditioned room soothing the body after sweltering heat.
I like to take the reward a couple of steps further, by simply smiling and saying “thank you” to the Father above.
Every good and perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of the heavenly lights, who does not change like shifting shadows. (James 1:17, NIV)
There are literally thousands of opportunities around us to find joy in these simple, pleasant moments.
It’s OK
In teaching personal finance, I try to remind my students that the topics (money, emergency funds, cars, homes, debt, clothing, vacations, investments, retirement) are all fraught with potential difficulties. My goal is to help them plan appropriately, to develop self-control and discipline so that they can be best prepared when hardship strikes.
More than that, I hope I have taught them that, regardless of life’s outcomes, joy never has to wait in line for hardship to do its work. There are too many gifts to enjoy in life, too much joy to be missed by allowing difficulty to cut in line.
God is always present with us in the enjoyment of His gifts. His goodness shines through the dark in the smallest moments.
Jane’s song reminds us that when we feel lost, stumbling through the valley of the shadow of death, God is spreading a banquet table for us (see Psalm 23) that says “It’s OK.”
It’s okay, it’s okay
it’s okay, it’s okay
If you’re lost
We’re all a little lost
and it’s all right
