Sunday Serenity: The Other Side of Hard Work

Good evening, Cadre crew. Happy to be here. m.. Sunday. Coming to you with Sunday serenity. And perhaps you notice in the background, I'm one of the people. Yes, my Christmas tree is up as of last week and is a strong source of my serenity. I am Jason Lennox and I am your resident recovery champion. And what that means is I'm here to talk through everything, recovery, mental health, well being. And you know, this live version of my videos is entitled Sunday Serenity. So grateful to be here. And what this consists of is I look throughout the week for different stories and experiences in my own life that I can turn around and share with you all in ways that hopefully inspire and bring serenity, peace, happiness, recovery into your own lives.

And this week is no different. I actually had a pretty neat experience, and I want to start by saying the title here. I said, on the other side of the hard stuff is what I was thinking about as I thought about this week. And what do I mean by that? Well, the hard stuff that we all deal with, it comes to each and every one of us throughout the week. We're lying. Good evening, Luke. Always great to see you. We're lying if we don't feel like we deal with the hard stuff. So the hard stuff comes and it happens throughout the week.

And for me, and I think for a lot of us, when the hard stuff comes, it feels easier to give in. And what do I mean by give in? That's look for things that provide comfort so that maybe is just escaping the thing altogether. Finding drugs, alcohol, money, sex, food, all those things that we find comfort in, you know, that's often what we end up doing. And so giving in. And I think while that feels easy, it's actually easier. I've learned through my own experience to lean in. And what do I mean by lean in?

Lean in and actually address what's there, what's uncomfortable. Share about some of those things. And I actually have done that in the last few weeks. Two weeks ago, I talked about the pink cloud concept and how there's this idea that when we go to treatment, we're on this pink cloud and in a different state and it's artificial and it will go away. But again, I believe that's because I was actually addressing something in my life. I was talking about something that I didn't feel like could be talked about.

Our partner here at Cadre Shannon with aloud does a very nice job of this, opening up a space for us to talk about what we don't want to talk about. And yes, Luke Hart is leaning in. It definitely gets hard to do some of those things. But again, on the other side then is serenity. And so I talked about that pink cloud. And then three weeks ago, I actually talked about, yeah, easy. The comfort choices, for sure. And that, again, that's intuitively naturally where I think we often feel like going.

So then three weeks ago, I talk about the idea of not giving up. And that was from my own experience when I was about a year into recovery, where I didn't feel like I could live. Recovery. I didn't know how I was going to live with drugs and alcohol, though, because of all the effort I'd put in. And so I was in this spot where I thought, maybe I just don't belong on this planet. And I was not in a good spot. I make a call, go back, check those videos out. I call a buddy of mine and said, hey, I really need some help.

So I leaned into all those thoughts that were going on in my head, and within a matter of five or six weeks, on the other side was this most serene, beautiful moment in my life where everything became worth it and I could feel a sense of peace and joy for the first time in a long time, perhaps forever. So those are a couple examples I want to get to this week, though. A story. It was Tuesday morning, and I was actually getting into an Uber, heading out to the airport because I was flying to the east coast, and I had gotten a message from someone on Facebook.

And this person said, hey, my partner's in a really bad spot. It's been bad for years. I really need help. I don't know what to do. How do I do this? So I make the mistake that I usually do in the Uber where I'm down trying to, you know, text away and doing all the things, and I get sick because I get motion sickness, easy in cars. So I'm nauseous, I'm not feeling well, but I'm leaning into this because I'm going to help this person. And so it goes on for about a day, day and a half, get the person scheduled for an assessment, and then I'm opening doors with my people and my network and, you know, within, I'll say, 28 to 30 hours, this guy, this person is in treatment.

And I get a message that next night. So it's Wednesday. I'm in Massachusetts at this point. And the message actually made me tear up because it said, I'm on my way home now. I feel like I'm on top of the world. I can finally breathe. It has been years since I've experienced this. Thank you. And so it went on and on. And a couple lessons I'm sharing about that story. One, this person. So there are actually three people involved here. The person who reaches out on behalf of their partner opens up, I'm sure, with all kinds of thoughts and guilt and what is this going to seem like?

How is this happening to our family? She put in that hard work, and on the other side, she's driving home the next day feeling like she had never felt in her life. I mean, it had been years, she said, and then you have the person that went to treatment, and I don't know because I haven't gotten a chance to talk to that person a whole lot. But then on my side, I'm thinking, okay, the nausea, the headache, all the things, it kind of derailed a lot of what I was doing that day and even the next day.

But when I got that message, I thought, this is. This is what it's about. And it's because I had the experiences I had, where I leaned in, I shared, I did what I did and came out the other side with a level of serenity. So now I owe it to the rest of the world to be there and be the person that can take in and be the ear and listen, support, do all the things I can do because of the network that I have. And so I just wanted to share those few stories because, again, it doesn't always feel easy physically.

Like I told you, I wasn't feeling well. That's just one example. But spiritually, emotionally, these things get challenging and they get really hard. And dealing with these hard, especially when it comes to recovery and addiction, because we don't always want to talk about those things, it's embarrassing, it's shaming. Unfortunately, that's the way that our world is, and it's getting better, but we have to continue to lean in, talk about those things. And so I want you to take away and think about a couple things.

One, you look at Luke's comments. How do we take the hard path, which again, by the way, in my opinion, ends up being easier? It's in the moments. It's not. It doesn't feel that way. But long term, that's what gets me where I want to be. So how do we take that path and lean in and share with people? And then if you've been there and you've been on the other side, or even if you have been and you have the opportunity to be on the receipt receiving end and be the ear and be the person that gets to facilitate some of those conversations.

Help people understand where to go. Lean into that, too, because on the other side, in both instances when we're the ones that need to lean in, when we're the ones being leaned into, it can be hard. And on the other side is so much serenity and joy. So again, think about those couple things as you move throughout Thanksgiving. I know that this week can be really hard for certain some people you depending on family circumstances. And so leaning into that, sharing a little bit about that, reach out.

Reach out to your network, to me, to other people and talk about those things. How does that feel? Hard. Why is that hard? And it's amazing what comes on the other side of just sharing. And then if you're again on the other end where you have the opportunity to help people throughout this week, continue. Invite people to Thanksgiving, to the family events. Share with them, just let them know you're thinking of them. Send the messages. Let's talk about how grateful we are. So I am grateful that I get to share with you all here.

Looking forward to next Sunday where I'll continue to share and then drop some recorded videos here again throughout the week. So I hope you all going into this week, have a beautiful week. Get to spend time with those people that you want to, and if not, they have peace, comfort and serenity in doing all the things around this holiday. Enjoy some time off, hopefully some good food. But until next week, thank you. Thank you. See you then.