In present day, economically troubled America, a wealthy, responsible, warm-hearted man took on the challenge of teaching what it means to be grateful for what you have and not to take it for granted to his family.

Michael, a 28 year old successful individual, has a job he loves, a beautiful wife, and a sweet three year old son. Michael may seem like he has the perfect life, but it wasn’t always like this.

Michael’s story starts when he was a young boy, he was eight years old when he started to realize his family had money trouble. When he was ten years old when he started chopping wood and selling it to families with wood stoves in small Welch, West Virginia. He has two younger brothers and a younger sister. As each of his younger brothers turned ten, they also started to work to make money for their family, while his sister helped their mother with house work. Doing all this work still did not contribute to the family as much as they desired. Michael’s Family was still poor throughout his childhood life.

As he continued to grow up into his teenage years Michael worked hard for everything he wanted and needed. When he was in high school he had very good grades. Michael only had a select few of friends that he appreciated with all his heart. He had all the friends he needed because he was so focused on school. School was very extremely important to Michael and he wanted to have a career later in life so he could provide for him family and so his children wouldn’t have to work to support his family like he did. He wanted better for his family than he had. With his grades as high as they were (averaging at a 4.0), he got a huge scholarship to Bentley college in Massachusetts. Michael had worked all during college in order to pay for his apartment while his scholarship payed for the college tuition. Michael made it through college with a bachelors in Business Administration and had graduated with an EMBA, maintaining a 4.0 grade point average. When he was an undergraduate, he had met a girl named Allison. They hit it off, and began to date. Michael and Allison dated through the remainder of college. They had their ups and downs but always seemed to work through their problems. Neither Michael nor Allison had ever felt a connection toward anyone else as strong as they had felt toward each other. Allison understood Michael like nobody else ever had, and he was so grateful that he met Allison and was extremely thankful for her.

After graduating, he got a job for the same computer company he works for now, right out of college. He was a hard worker and his boss liked this about him. Slowly Michael moved up the ladder at work until his boss had retired and left Michael as the CEO of the computer programming company knowing he would fill his place extremely well. Michael and Allison then got married six months after they graduated. They then moved to Belmont, California and bought a house together. Michael continued working at the computer company while Allison owned her own bakery. Belmont was one of the richest suburbs of California.Two years into the marriage they had their son and named him James. As Michael raised his son he was always trying to teach him to appreciate everything he had. Michael never took anything to granted and he didn’t want his wife or son to either. Allison didn’t understand how a man with so much money could be so considerate and caring. Most people in general but men imparticularly change for the worse when they get wealthy, they begin to think they’re better than everyone else, but Michael wasn’t like that. Allison loved this about him. Michael only had three goals in life, to provide for his family, to make them happy, and to teach them to appreciate everything they had.

He already was doing his best to provide for them, and as far as he knew his wife and son were very happy with the life they live, as they were rich and had everything they could possibly need. But Michael wanted more for than this for his family, he wanted them to appreciate the money they had, everything that came from it, and the love they received from each other.

When James had turned six months old Michael had been pronounced to have a brain aneurysm, from a birth defect, that was quickly getting worse. Allison was devastated when she found out. Michael knew he didn’t have more than about a year and a half left unless they cured it, which the doctor said was unlikely because they had caught it so late. He knew he had to make the best of the time he had left, though he was hopeful they could cure his aneurysm he didn’t depend on it. James was too young for Michael to be able to teach him the important lesson on appreciating what he had, so he needed to come up with a plan on how he was going to teach his son a life lesson after he had passed. Michael thought for days until he finally came up with his idea.

Michael was going to write a book to explain to his son everything he wanted him to understand throughout his life and any helpful hints that might help him with problems he could be having that Michael wasn’t there personally to help him with. He started this book early, Michael told all about his childhood and how tough life was for him and his family, he told his story with great detail so James could almost feel how Michael felt as a child. Michael explained how hard he worked to support his family, have good grades, and how he got a full scholarship to a major business college so he could grow up and support his family. Michael made sure that he explained in great detail that everything he did was so his family had a good life later on and so they were happy and didn’t have to go through what he did as a child. He wrote about how his childhood made him appreciate everything he had because he had worked so hard for it. Michael wanted James to understand that most people didn’t work as hard as he did for what they have, or at all and this is why he is grateful for everything he has unlike other people. He made a big point in his book that he had only three goals in life, to provide for his family better than was provided for him, to make them happy, and to make sure they appreciated everything they had and didn’t take anything for granted. Michael made sure to write about how he did everything in his power to do these things for his family. He believed that he had provided a house in a good neighborhood and was leaving his family with enough money to support themselves and was hoping this book would help him with his last goal. It only took Michael about 9 months to write his book, he then got it looked at by a professional editor because this book was extremely important to him, he wanted it to be perfect and something James would hold onto forever. The book took about two months to be edited.
Right before Michael got his edited story back he had gone to a doctors appointment for a check up. They ran some tests and Michael went home waiting for results hoping for the best. The next morning the doctor called Michael with his results. He picked up the phone not expecting anything great, when the doctor gave Michael shocking news, news so good that Michael almost didn’t believe what he had heard. The doctor told Michael that his aneurysm had been healing miraculously, the bleeding had stopped completely. Michael, his wife nor the rest of his family could even begin to believe the amazing news. After looking more closely at his test results, his doctor informed him it was a 98 percent chance he was going to completely recover, survive and be able to go back to his normal life again. Since Michael was going to survive his brain aneurysm he didn’t need to leave the book he wrote to his son, the editor offered the idea to Michael that he could publish his story and dedicate it to James because he thought Michael’s story would touch a lot of people and be a huge hit. Allison liked the idea of this a lot and thought they could use all of the money the book made and put it toward James’ college fund. The editor of the book was right, Michael’s book was a huge hit and touched a lot of people and changed many, many people's outlooks on life, money, and appreciating things they had and not taking anything for granted. His book was even translated into nine different languages. Michael met his only three goals. Though his third goal was more than met. Instead of just getting his son and wife to appreciating everything they had, he was known for changing the lives of millions of people for the better. Allison had never been more proud of Michael. He had never been more proud of himself. He had done more good than he had ever imagined. Having the childhood he did, growing up where he did, with the little that he had, he never even dreamed of having all he did now and making such a difference in people all over the world.