[Moon Rise at West Creek Ranch]

This past week I spent four days at West Creek Ranch, where I was forced to eat gourmet food, do sunrise yoga, experience a ropes course (briefly becoming a “flying squirrel”), watch a reflective horse session, dance away one night, hike in the beautiful Paradise Valley, and hang out, converse, and learn from about 25 very smart/cool/fancy people. Yes, it was a painful and grueling experience—which I did not deserve—but of which I happily partook.

On the first morning, I provided a brief presentation to the group on the concept of belonging, from the perspective of the Montana Happiness Project. Despite having shamefully forgotten to take off my socks during the sunrise morning yoga session, and having anxiety about whether or not I belonged with this incredible group of people, they let me belong. They also laughed at all the right moments during my initial mini-comedy routine, and then engaged completely in a serious reflective activity involving them sharing their eudaimonic belongingness sweet-spots with each other.

If you don’t know what YOUR eudaimonic belongingness sweet-spot is, you’re not alone (because hardly anyone knows what I mean by that particular jumble of words). That’s because, as a university professor, I took the liberty of making that phrase up, while at the same time, noting that it’s derived from some old Aristotelean writings. Yes, that’s what university professors do. Here’s the definition that I half stole and half made up.

That place where the flowering of your greatest (and unique) virtues, gifts, skills, talents, and resources intersect (over time) with the needs of the world [or your community or family].

I hope you take a moment to reflect on that definition and how it is manifest in who you are, and how you are in your relationships with others. If you’re reading this blog post, I suspect that you’re a conscious and sentient entity who makes a positive difference in the lives of others in ways that are uniquely you. Because we can’t and don’t always see ourselves as others see us, in our University of Montana Happiness course, we have an assignment called the Natural Talent Interview designed to help you gain perspective on your own distinct and distinctive positive qualities. You can find info on the Natural Talent Interview here: https://johnsommersflanagan.com/2023/12/26/what-do-you-think-of-me/

And my West Creek presentation powerpoint slides (all nine of them) are here:  

You may have missed the main point of this blog post—which would be easy because I’m writing like a semi-sarcastic and erudite runaway loose association train that’s so busy whistling that it can’t make a point. My main point is GRATITUDE. Big, vast, and immense gratitude. Gratitude for the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation (AMBFF) and our massively helpful program officers. Gratitude for our retreat facilitators. Gratitude for the staff at West Creek Ranch. Gratitude for the presence of everyone at the gathering. And gratitude for the therapeutic feelings of belonging I had the luxury of ruminating on all week. My experience was so good that I’m still savoring it like whatever you think might be worth savoring and then end up savoring even more than you expected.

Thank you AMBFF and Arthur Blank for your unrelenting generosity and laser-focus on how we can come together as community and make the world a better place.

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*Note: At the Montana Happiness Project, we do not support toxic positivity. What I mean by that is: (a) no one should ever tell anyone else to cheer up (that’s just offensive and emotionally dismissive), and (b) although we reap benefits from shifting our thinking and emotions in positive directions, we also reap similar benefits from writing and talking about trauma, life challenges, and social injustice. As humans, we are walking dialectics, meaning we grow from exploring the negative as well as the positive in life. We are multitudes, simultaneously learning and growing in many directions.