“Spiritual Fitness Lunch Gathering”
Wednesday November 24, 2010. Noon to 1:00
Oak Knoll Lutheran Church
600 Hopkins Crossroad
Minnetonka MN 55305

Join us as we discuss: “got happy?”

Happiness is often elusive in life, especially in the public safety professions.  Join us as we share conversation about how our faith lives have a significant impact on the level of happiness we experience in life.  I started this conversation in my weblog posting today.  If you want to see a possible direction for our discussion check out my Nov. 22 blog post.

As always, you can bring your own lunch, coffee is provided.

Take Care, Dan

I’m not sure what the protocols are for using national marketing slogan formats to deliver my spiritual fitness messages.  I think just acknowledging that the slogan has been burned into my body, mind and soul should be sufficient.  The “got milk?” campaign has such a slogan as you can see from the title of today’s post.

The idea of identifying our personal levels of happiness came up today in an article in the Mpls StarTribune “Going to his happy place” by Jeff Strickler.  The article is a review of a book by Dan Buettner, “Thrive”.  I suggest you read the article since it shares some interesting insights about personal happiness.

The piece of the story that struck me today was a quote from an academic expert on happiness.  He said one of the key things a person can do to be happy is “You have to work at it”.  So often we’re looking for the next “trend’ that will give us something we are looking for in our lives.  But a common denominator I have found to so many of these trends, if they really are effective, is that we have to do them intentionally, deliberately and actively.  We have to “work at it”.

I had a comment sent to me on my post of October 29, 2010 “Don’t Think So Hard”.

Dan, nice article.   My guy, Edwin Friedman, used to say, “Thinking more about something never got anyone unstuck.”  Getting unstuck requires action.

Edwin Friedman was a Jewish Rabbi and family therapist whose teachings have often been helpful to me.  So as I ask you the question today, “got happy?”, if you do, I’m guessing you have taken action and worked at it.  If happiness is something that eludes you, if you don’t “got it”, I suggest you try to go and “get it”.

Take Care!

First snow is an event in our house, almost like a holiday. For those of you reading locally you know what the weather is like this morning. For my national and international readers, it’s about 32 degrees, damp, windy and wet. But very warm and cozy sitting in my chair, drinking my coffee, watching the winter weather move in through my front window. The view shown above.

They say we could see 10 inches out here in the western communities of the Twin Cities. I’ve got to head out in the weather soon. But I’ll get to spend most of the day at home gearing up for winter. So Take Care, and have a happy “First Snow!”