Sunday Serenity

Good afternoon. Happy Sunday. Welcome to the end of the weekend. Sunday is one of my favorite days, if not my favorite. And that's partly because just a day of quiet, usually a little more peace, serenity. And that's what we're here for, Sunday serenity. But I wanted to start Just giving you a little background. My name is Jason Lennox and I've been a contributor here at Cadre for, I believe, three years now. I've actually been away for probably four or five months. I don't think I've done a live since maybe May, maybe June.

And I was just on a really long journey, a long walk. I see Rolando here, he knows all about that. He was with, walked around the entire border of the state of Minnesota. So I've been away for four plus months, five months, happy to be back and just kind of want to set the stage for what this is about. I believe serenity is the antidote, is the thing that can fight against substance use disorder, mental health disorders, all those things. And those are things I struggled with for a long time, struggle with substances from the ages 12 to 24 before I ended up in treatment and mental health was much earlier than 12 and carried into recovery and it's just a continuous thing that I continue to work on.

So that's what Sunday serenity is about. That's where that comes from because until I got into treatment and got into the world of recovery, I didn't really understand what serenity was, peace, any of that. And once I got that, once I started digging to the core and cleaning up, cleaning house, if you will, internally, things started to feel a lot better. And I realized that my problem for most of those years was that I was running on chaos, lack of serenity, lack of peace, the opposites. And so when that happens, I think we're filled with all that anxiety and the chaos and all the things, we look elsewhere to be calm.

We look at substances, we look at food, we look at money, we look at relationships, we look at work, all those things that can just give us those quick hits of feeling like everything's going to be okay. And my goal here with Sunday Serenity is to help people at least understand what's worked for me, which is not going after things, not finding things. There's nothing that I can seek out there that's going to bring serenity. It's actually quite the opposite for me. It is stripping away all the things that are in my life.

So it's the absence of most things that are materialistic that actually bring peace, serenity and joy into my life. So I'm going to over the next few weeks, I'm going to go ahead and share in three different realms what I think brings serenity and how to strip back some of what I'm talking about physically, mentally, spiritually. So I'll start physically because like I said, I've been gone. Emily, it's good to see you back here again. I love watching the comments. I love watching the people join.

It's so great to see some of you again. Again, for those of you joining a little late, I'm just getting back into action here after a several month hiatus and a long, journey. So good to see some old friends back. But going to start this week just talking about physically, materialistically, however you want to put it, what works for me to bring serenity. Because I just got home from the East Coast here in the last few days. This is my first weekend home since I've been back from this long journey I was on.

And it was just I've got a lot. I still have quite a bit of stuff, if you will, that came out of the RV that we're moving along. And so I'm just going through a lot. And yesterday I spent a good chunk of the day just digging through. I got my one little spot cleaned up there, my little office space. And I spent hours doing that and there's nothing as liberating as that for me, just getting space kind of dialed in, cleaned up. And I went through a lot of things that have been sitting there for a while.

We let things pile up and that's what happens. And we don't even realize that material noise that's there that continues to keep us from that full state of serenity. So physically all the materials and I'm not a very materialistic person so it's probably easier for me to say this. I also don't have kids at home so take this for what it's worth. It's easy for me to just get rid of stuff and that's what I was doing yesterday. Happy to toss 3 bags of things that I just apparently didn't need. They've been sitting there for so long.

And it brought me back to this kind of practice that I started probably five years ago, six years ago. I watched a documentary, Minimalism. And if you've ever seen that, you know, it's about a couple of guys who started this lifestyle where they just wanted to live very minimally. And they used different tools that were pretty neat. I went through some exercises. Probably the most memorable was the 30 day challenge and for 30 days I would get rid of items one day one I would get rid of 1 item day 2 two items all the way up to 30 days on the 30th day I would have to get rid of 30 items so it was fairly simple for you know call it a week 7 to 10 days and then it quickly got progressively harder to get rid of all those items so much so that I was spending hours sometimes just going through stuff tossing out pens whatever I could do to rally up numbers but By the end of that, that's 500 items in my life that are either gone, either I threw away, or if they were donation worthy, I would donate them to someplace in need.

And I just remember doing that and feeling more liberated, at least physically, than I have in a really long time. And I catch myself doing that regularly. At least once a year, I'll go through clothes, I'll go through things, and I have no problem getting rid of them to the point that this little 700 square foot apartment I have When I moved here, I think I did it with a truck that pulled a very small trailer for the couch, the bed, the dressers, and then I think two cars is all it took. And I just know again, I didn't realize until I went through that exercise that even if there are things that I can't see, they're stuffed away in storage, they're holding space, whether I want to believe that or not, whether I feel that mentally, they are.

And it wasn't until I kind of cleaned house that I realized just how liberating that was and how much space I was holding. So again, physically, materially, there were so many tools. And if you want to watch that minimalism documentary, it's a great one. The 30 day challenge, that's a great one. By the way, a little funny story about that is I started digging through shoe boxes, old greeting cards from birthdays, things like that. And I think I found $500 worth of gift cards. And so I was eating meals, drinking coffee for about a month from that little exercise.

So I actually found money that way. So it's just a good exercise. And the other thing, just other things that they kind of practice, if you can get it for $10 in less than 10 minutes, and you haven't used it in so long, it's like six months, you throw the clothes in your closet and turn them around, turn the hooks the other way. And after six months, if you haven't used them, maybe not toss it all, but ask yourself, will you actually wear it? Will you use it? If it's been sitting there for a year, are you going to use those things?

Serenity, I think, again, is one of the biggest keys for us that are seeking reprieve from substance use disorder, from mental health disorders. And I think there are many components to serenity, again, physically, mentally, spiritually, but physically speaking, I just think it's a great practice to continue to evaluate the things that we hold on to that take up space whether we feel that directly or not. And, another thing it does is maybe passes those things on to people who could use them. If there's something sitting around my house, clothes, things like that, then I'm not using them.

There are plenty of people out there who need things. So it's just a regular practice of mine. Physically, I urge you to at least take a look at yours and just think about it room by room, if you will. So I did it yesterday. It's office space. I know it's a tiny little office, but it still counts as an office space. I need somewhere to do some things. And then maybe it's a bathroom, maybe it's a bedroom, living room after that, kitchen. And I promise you'll dig into things, you'll find things in just one little room at a time.

It's a game changer. It is for me. It's something I practice regularly. And again, the goal being serenity and knowing that serenity is not something we chase down. It's not something we find somewhere. It's not something that we add things to get. There's nothing I'm going to buy that's going to bring more serenity. I'll get into kind of the mental state and how we find mental serenity. Certainly adding things like meditation and some of those practices helps. But it's not out there. Serenity is actually stripping back all the noise that we're constantly, constantly bombarded with.

these phones, social media, technology, all the people. I spent a long time out in the middle of nowhere with not that many people and coming back into this world of 10s of thousands of people seeing every single day and the traffic and all the things. I was surprised to just feel how strongly that was, how strongly that hit me and realizing that it was just something we get used to. So So much of that noise contributes and it's not about finding things to replace that, to drown that out. It's just about stripping it back, getting back to simplicity.

And that's what I try to do. That's what I did this weekend. So that's what's been on my mind. Again, that's the physical realm. Next week I'll talk either about the mental realm or the spiritual realm. We'll just see kind of what comes up there. But those are the three things I want to touch on over the next couple weeks. just to help maybe provoke some thoughts and some practices and things that you might be able to do inside your own homes, inside your own minds, inside your own spirits to just continue to add serenity.

Because whether you've been in this thing for a few days and really trying to figure out how to get through some of these struggles or you've been doing it for years, there are always ways to improve, always things that we can continue to do. every single year I can continue to strip back my life and everything that's in it. And so it's, these are practices I think that can help any of us. I've been doing this recovery thing for almost 16 years and I'm still always looking for ways to continue to improve, take away things that don't serve me, that just get in the way, that serve as noise.

And as long as I keep doing that, I'll find the serenity and peace that doesn't make me seek it out somewhere else. And again, when I'm at peace, when I'm serene, when I'm grateful, it's hard for me to want to go out and think about doing drugs, to think about drinking, to think about all the other ways that we can be addicted to things. Instead, I have that deep sense of inner peace that's there for all of us, just underneath everything. It's not out there, it's in here. And hopefully you can feel that a little bit and take some of the things I've talked about here.

I'm going to practice over the next week. 30 day challenge, if it's a 10 day, just start somewhere and see where in your life you can downsize, help others, and just continue to clear space that does not need to be taken up. So that's what I got for you this week. I'm so grateful to be back and to see some familiar faces back in. I look forward to doing this Sundays. If you remember, these used to be Sunday evenings. But I moved them to Sunday at 4, so we're going to test this slot out and see how many people this works for, see if it works better for my schedule.

And we'll continue to just hammer on the Sunday serenity topic and try to get into the week with really an even keel state of mind, state of being. And hopefully we can do all that together. So look forward to seeing you all again next week and some of you in between. Have wonderful weeks, everyone. Bye-bye.