Mayor of Sioux Falls writes new book

June 26, 2024

SIOUX FALLS, SD (Dakota News Now) – A book called “The Code of Contentment” addresses some of the challenges Paul TenHaken faced during his time as mayor of Sioux Falls.

“Over the last four or five years, with COVID and social justice issues and all of these things, there were just a lot of hard lessons that I’ve written down and carried with me. And I thought, ‘I’d like to put these into a real devotional, not a biography or something. What lessons have I learned that might be useful to other people?'” TenHaken said.

The book has 52 short chapters. Mayor TenHaken wants readers to read one of them every week throughout the year and then write about it.

“You can read it and then think about how it applies to your own life. And start writing things down, and documenting and writing down goals that you have for yourself and steps that you want to take to improve as a result of what you’ve read. Read it for ten, fifteen, twenty minutes a week — maybe on a Sunday night before you start your week — and set goals for the week. Go about your week. And at the end of the week, look back and see how you did. Did I stick to the things that I wanted to do? And then do it all again. Hopefully over the course of 52 weeks, in a year, slow micro-changes will happen and you’ll start to achieve some of the things that maybe you thought you could never achieve,” TenHaken said.

With a Bible verse for each chapter, “The Code of Contentment” also emphasizes the importance of faith in the mayor’s life.

“I know the impact it had on me personally, so I thought, ‘Hey, if I can share the impact my faith has had on me and my journey through a devotional book, then I want to do that.’ That was another big reason for the book,” TenHaken said.

He says he felt a calling to public service despite living a comfortable life as an entrepreneur with a successful business. Leading South Dakota’s largest city taught him a lot.

“One thing I’ve really learned is that as a society, as a community, we need to be more open to other people’s views and perspectives – which doesn’t mean we all have to agree. But you can think one thing, I can think another, and we can have completely different opinions. But you’re still a good person. And in your heart, you believe what you believe for a reason. I don’t believe the same thing, but that’s okay. And we don’t have to demonize each other just because we don’t believe the same thing,” Paul said.

There are less than two years until his last mandate, and the book contains no hints as to what will happen next.

“Could I find that satisfaction, that sense of fulfillment in another elected office? I don’t know. I don’t know if that would be possible. I miss entrepreneurship. I really miss the ones and zeros of the business world. One of my goals is to ask God to open the doors for me to do what’s next. I honestly don’t know what that is. So hopefully this book speaks to me, too,” Paul said.

The book can be ordered from PaulTenHaken.com.