Thomas F. Shubnell, Ph.D., FHIMSS is a two-track figure:
– Healthcare executive:
He’s a senior healthcare executive associated with Cavanaugh Consulting Group, based in the Plano, Texas area. The “FHIMSS” credential indicates he’s a Fellow of the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, suggesting a career in health IT/informatics leadership.
– Prolific humor author:
Under his own name, he’s written and published 52 books, mostly humor collections — things like the “Greatest Jokes of the Century” series, “Shubnell’s Profound Thoughts”, and “The Best of Terrible Tommy and Yucky Chucky”. He’s noted that his “real job” sometimes slows down his writing but also feeds him new material.
He doesn’t appear to be a widely known public figure outside these two circles (healthcare IT and self-published humor writing) — most of what’s available online is LinkedIn, Amazon author pages, and Goodreads listings rather than press coverage or biographical profiles. If you have a specific context in mind (e.g., you came across his name in a particular article, book, or professional setting), let me know and I can dig further.
You will never be who you want to be, until you are happy with who you are.
The quote plays on a paradox: you’d think dissatisfaction drives self-improvement, but it argues the opposite.
– “Who you want to be” is your aspiration — a future, improved version of yourself.
– “Who you are” is your present reality — flaws, limitations, and all.
– The claim is that you can’t genuinely become that better future self while you’re at war with your current self. Chronic self-rejection tends to trap people in insecurity or self-sabotage rather than fueling real change.
– “Happy with who you are” doesn’t mean complacency or “I’ll never change.” It’s closer to ‘self-acceptance’ — acknowledging your present self honestly, without shame, as the stable ground you grow from. Change built on self-rejection is fragile; change built on self-acceptance tends to stick.
This echoes a common idea in psychology — sometimes summarized as “acceptance before change” — that fighting your current identity keeps you stuck in it, while accepting where you are gives you the footing to actually move forward.
Origin:
Like many quotes that circulate widely on Goodreads, Tumblr, and Pinterest-style quote pages, this one doesn’t have a clearly documented origin — no dated interview, essay, or specific book passage it’s traceable to. It mostly appears in modern quote-aggregator collections rather than a well-documented literary source. So it functions more as a widely shared “inspirational quote” than a line with a verifiable original publication.
Author:
It’s commonly attributed to Thomas F. Shubnell, an American author associated with short reflective/inspirational sayings. He’s credited as the author of the book “Gracious Me… Is Nothing Sacred” (2008), and quote sites list this line alongside other short Shubnell observations, such as “Unread books are like unopened doors.”
