Lots of reasons to smile
Gratitude, optimism and hope are keys to happy life – and success, Waterloo couple say
EVERY NIGHT BEFORE dinner, Jim and Jennifer Moss and their two young children talk about what made them grateful that day.
Wyatt was three when they started the exercise; Olivia was a baby.
“We share what makes us smile,” Jennifer says.
“When we first started with Wyatt, he’d say, ‘ketchup, table, my dinner.” Now, at age five, he says “when my friend hugged me at recess.”
Knowing he’ll be asked, Wyatt looks around at school so he can report what made him happy. In time, he’ll do it subconsciously, Jennifer says.
Olivia, now three, is quick to add her own insights after being part of the discussion her entire life. It might be her pink dress, the way her hair looks, her grandparents. >>
>> “Olivia is an extremely grateful child,” Jennifer says.
The simple, dinnertime exercise is at the heart of Jim and Jennifer Moss.
They believe so strongly in the power of positive thinking that they’ve placed all their energy and resources into showing others how it can benefit them too.
The couple founded the Smile Epidemic, a unique social-sharing start-up company in Waterloo that quickly grew out of an online gratitude journal created by Jim after he was hit by a mysterious illness that ended his professional lacrosse career in the United States.
Simply put, the Smile Epidemic is based on the principle — backed by academic research — that the more you acknowledge what makes you happy, the more likely happiness will find you.
It involves training your brain to look for those positive moments, Jennifer says. “The more you ingrain that in your brain, the more optimism starts to live in your brain.”
The company has a website, an app, and users around the world who share their feelings of gratitude online by taking photos while holding a smile picture in front of their faces, along with a few descriptive words, some quirky, some profound.
Visit www.thesmileepidemic.com any day, and you’ll see messages like: “getting my toes painted” and “being in love.”
It has an eye-crinkling, mouth-curling purpose that seems simple enough.
But Smile Epidemic is also a serious business that wants to help companies improve the optimism, and therefore the performance, of workers. It has five full-time employees, two part-time web developers and a team of seven researchers to do it.
It has substantial contracts in the works with international companies for its training program. Using its innovative social and digital technology, Smile Epidemic will train employees to develop “psychological capital” known as “hero” skills — hope, efficacy, resilience and optimism.
They’re traits of the healthiest and highestperforming people in the workforce, Jim says. We acquire 50 per cent of those traits through our genetics, he says. We can be trained to gain the rest.
“There’s a lot of intellectual horsepower behind this,” says Steve Farlow, executive director of the Schlegel Centre for Entrepreneurship at Wilfrid Laurier University. Smile Epidemic works out of Laurier’s space at Waterloo’s Accelerator Centre.
“There is substantial and well-documented research about the positive impact of happiness and gratitude.”
For friends who dine with the Moss family, it’s enough to see how Wyatt and Olivia have grown to convince them to adopt the same mealtime routine
of expressing gratitude.
“The first time they did it, I thought it was one of the coolest aspects of parenting I’ve seen,” says Mike Laba, Jim’s best friend since their high school days in the Lake Huron town of Southampton. Laba, marketing director for Muskoka Brewery, says the experience inspired his girlfriend, an elementary school teacher, to try the Smile Epidemic in her classroom. Now, when the two of them host friends for dinner, they ask their guests around the table: What makes you grateful?
At first, people think, “‘That’s odd’ . . . and then all of a sudden you see smiles.”
At the peak of his athletic career, Jim learned a difficult lesson about the power of positive thinking. Nicknamed “The Axe,” Jim had played 10 years with professional lacrosse teams – the Albany Attack, San Jose Stealth for which he was captain, and the Colorado Mammoth. He was a member of the Team Canada squad that won the 2006 World Lacrosse Championship and was later inducted with teammates into the Canadian Lacrosse Hall of Fame.
The family was living in San Jose, California. Jim was training for the fall season with the Colorado Mammoth and working for STX, a sports equipment manufacturer.
Jennifer, a marketing and public relations specialist, worked for Robert Half International, a specialized staffing firm. In 2008, she was awarded the Public Service Award from the Office of President Obama for her involvement in a community relations campaign that resulted in employees doing 63,000 hours of public service in a year. They were working hard and making good money. Jennifer was pregnant with Olivia. But while they were happy enough, “we weren’t as happy as we should have been,” Jim says. “When Jim was away, I was lonely for
>> him,” Jennifer says. “We are each other’s best friend and wingman.”
Then, in September 2009 Jim, a glass-halffull kind of guy, had his optimistic nature tested when, inexplicably, his legs stopped working.
He lost feeling in his hands and feet, and co-ordination in his legs. He couldn’t walk.
In hospital in California, doctors treated Jim for Guillain-Barre syndrome, a disorder in which the body’s immune system attacks the nerves. (Since then, the diagnosis has changed. Doctors now say he has an “undiagnosed neuromuscular mobility disorder.”)
Facing the future, he had a choice. He could fret about the unknown or he could appreciate what he had, he says.
“I think of it (the illness) like a forest fire,” he says. “It’s comparable to the forest burning down and the big strong trees that are your family stayed standing.”
The illness made the couple re-evaluate their lives. Unknown to them at the time, it led them to lay the groundwork for the Smile Epidemic.
“Illness was the rocket fuel,” Jim says. “I think when lives are fast-paced, you don’t stop until something happens and it forces you to stop.
“You think: ‘What are the things I’m grateful for?’ ” he says, reaching for his wife’s hand.
Writers at heart, Jim and Jennifer expressed their new path in moving blogs.
Jim let friends and fans know how he was doing in a “gratitude journal” called Why Moving Sideways Is Actually Still Moving Forward.
Later, the couple expressed their appreciation for each other in blogs called: A Mile in His Shoes and A Mile in Her Shoes.
Jennifer writes in her blog introduction: “When my wingman lost his wings for awhile – we got real smart and decided life’s about a lot more than high-price cereal.”
Doctors told Jim his good attitude helped improve his condition. He researched gratitude and positive psychology.
Six months after the illness appeared, the family came back to Canada, moving to Waterloo to be close to family. Jim became a stay-at-home dad while Jennifer worked at Quarry Integrated Communications. In 2012, she launched her own marketing and public relations company, Spark Plug Consulting.
Jim adjusted to the change in fortune – he was no longer a pro athlete and the big income was gone. He continued to see specialists.
But he also listened to his children laugh as they played and he posted his first Smile Epidemic photo.
These days, although the symptoms come and go, the condition does not define him. On a recent morning at their Waterloo home, Jim is contained energy as he sits beside Jennifer, who is expecting their third child. He’s like a runner springing out of the starting blocks.
“There’s so much to do,” he says, stroking the ears of their black Labrador retriever, Jackson. “It (Smile Epidemic) is moving really fast. We’re not going slow and steady.”
Recently, Jim went six months without symptoms, “except for a couple of blips.” Then, for a week or so, he was hit with loss of co-ordination. He was unable to walk fluidly. He spent the time at home.
He’s back at work again, running to appointments and speaking engagements.
Jim prefers not to talk about “the deep, dark places.”
“They don’t register on my radar. I focus on the positive,” he says. “I have a tendency to assume the best.”
Jennifer, who describes herself as more of a worrier than Jim, says she has “developed” her sense of optimism.
“She’s happier and she worries less and she’s far more optimistic,” Jim agrees. “Jen’s a good example of developing the psychological skill.”
“I think it (worrying) is an occupational hazard” when you work in public relations and issues management, Jennifer says. “I have changed that occupational hazard in that I spend time researching information about the science of positive psychology.
“You train your brain. It has really changed me.”
In one short year, the Smile Epidemic has chalked up impressive results.
It won the attention of the Oprah Winfrey Network. It got the support of WLU which hosted “the largest research study on expressed gratitude in Canadian academic history.” WLU became the first campus to participate in the Smile Epidemic’s “30 days of happiness” project.
Laurier LaunchPad, a joint partnership with WLU and the Communitech Hub digital media innovation centre, gave Smile Epidemic space, resources and other support.
Even while Jim, Jennifer and their team work “crazy hours” to build the business, they visit schools and do other pro bono events. The company’s “Smiles in School” program is used internationally.
It’s an important part of their work, Jennifer says. “Kids with gratitude and optimism in their lives are less likely to be bullied. They’re more likely to go to postsecondary education.”
In March, the Smile Epidemic team made their way in a rented van to Austin, Texas, where Jim had snagged a coveted invitation to make a pitch to big-name investors at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival.
The team made stops at an orphanage, food bank and homes for families with sick kids. Jim dressed up as a fuzzy camera mascot.
That zany love of life, that drive to be heard, that no-holds-barred approach to their goals characterized the couple’s early life together.
When Jim, then playing for the London Knights hockey team, spotted Jennifer Young, a bartender and server in a London, Ont., pub in the summer of 2000, there was no question.
“I saw Jenny and I pretty much fell in love immediately,” he says.
But Jennifer didn’t date hockey players, his buddies told him. “I thought they were all the same,” she says. What’s more, Jennifer, newly graduated from the University of Western Ontario, was going to Australia with a friend in the fall. “We were going for six months and leaving the world behind.” Jim, who had finished high school two years early “because I was a nerd,” was studying philosophy and ethics while Jennifer had studied media, information and techno culture. Hunted by the OHL, he turned down a full academic scholarship to Cornell University in order to play hockey.
“I figured I’d play sports while I was young and school would be there,” he says. He also played varsity hockey, and later, joined a professional team in West Virginia. But in that London bar, Jim decided that persistence was the best tactic. “She wouldn’t give me the time of day and I went back every single day for six weeks,” he says. “I’d write love notes on the back of coasters.”
Jennifer began to look forward to his visits. She made him a “prairie fire” drink – Tabasco sauce in tequila shots. “I took her worst,” Jim says. Then one day, Jennifer knew. “I walked up and gave him a kiss and said, ‘Let’s do this thing.’” They had nine weeks together before Jennifer would head for Australia and Jim would start the hockey season.
“It was zero to 150,” Jennifer says. “We were crazy about each other.” Jim, however, did not start the hockey season after suffering a seizure in a park. He’d had concussions while playing hockey. He made the tough decision not to play for a year.
Then, two weeks after Jennifer left for Australia, Jim got a tearful phone call. Jennifer and her girlfriend had become separated in a tough neighbourhood and been spooked by some creepy characters. Jim got a work visa, sold his treasured >>
>> red Dodge Dakota truck and bought a ticket to Australia.
He and Jennifer had the time of their lives while they travelled, tended bar and, for a time, lived at a marina on a rented sailboat called The Gadfly. They had a bar routine: Jennifer, sitting on Jim’s shoulders, would catch the bottles he flipped and pour drinks into the glasses he held. They composed and recited bar poetry.
They returned to Canada when they ran out of money, just before Christmas, 2000.
“I’ve never missed Christmas with my family,” Jim says. “While I was playing hockey, I’d drive 12 hours to be with my family.”
They moved to Toronto where both had full-time jobs. On weekends, Jim played lacrosse.
Jim became a top tier player, winning the defensive player of the year award in 2003. In his first professional lacrosse game, he scored 4.2 seconds into the game. It was the fastest first career goal ever, he says. “I just ran on the floor and screamed,” Jennifer says, laughing.
In 2003, they moved to San Jose. On July 9, 2005, they got married in Port Elgin, where Jim’s parents lived.
They worked and travelled, with lacrosse as their focus, until Wyatt was born in 2007. Then, when Wyatt was 15 months old, Jim got sick, and change started happening.
“Some couples grow apart as they change, but Jenny and I have grown closer together,” Jim says.
Friends and colleagues marvel at how the couple’s skills and personalities complement each other.
“I find Jennifer one of the most creative people I’ve ever met in understanding social media,” says Farlow, who manages the LaunchPad program. Jim is the “get-it-done business guy. . . . Here are the five things we have to achieve in 48 hours.”
While other couples might crash and burn when they spend each day together at work, Jim and Jennifer “work really well side by side with their desks adjoining each other,” Farlow says.
The new baby, “our little mascot” will come to the office too, Jennifer says. “The team is excited about it.”
Farlow says he’s impressed that no matter how much they have to do, the couple is gracious about sharing their time and knowledge. “They always begin by asking how they can help you.
“Their enthusiasm, their make-it-happen culture is infectious for the other creative, bright people who are engaged in creating businesses,” Farlow says. “I’m inspired by it.”
Creating a new enterprise is tough, and it involves risk. But that first big contract “validates” their enterprise, and they’re serious about the long term, Farlow says.
The couple says they rent their house, take a small income to pay their bills, and have invested $90,000 of their own money. They sold five per cent of their company and reinvested it.
“We never said it would be easy. We said it would be worth it,” Jim says.
Down the road, they’d like to develop an international research centre for psychological performance in health and happiness – kind of like a Perimeter Institute for mental health and well-being, Jim says.
Think quantum mechanics and how it might overlap with happiness, he says. Think architecture – how can we build happier schools? “Let’s find a way to study it.”
The couple say they’re happy, but “people misconceive we’re happy all the time. Some people say, ‘You guys are so lucky to do what you do,’” Jennifer says.
And yes, they are grateful. But also, “we made a choice and sacrifice and work hard,” Jim says. “You can take your ideals, make changes and build a life around living your ideals.”
“I feel good everyday,” Jennifer says. “Anytime I do a little thing, it feels like it’s driving to a greater purpose. It’s a really profound way to live.”