Sunday Serenity: Two of the Greatest Keys to Happiness

Happy Sunday evening, Cadre crew. Say, Jason Lennox here. Happy to be with you. I am your resident recovery champion and my live streams, I talk about everything, recovery, mental health, well being. And tonight I want to talk about happiness. And I was doing some reading. I was on a retreat, a little solo retreat. This weekend I went to Winona, Minnesota. It's quite funny. Everybody in my life that was watching me have the debate between going to Florida this weekend versus a town that was getting ten inches of snow and was in the negative degree weather thought I was nuts, but there I went.

Good evening, junk food junkie. So, Winona, Minnesota, I'm on this retreat, just clearing my mind. I'm doing some reading and seeing a lot of. Hey, good evening, Sherry. Just reading a lot about happiness. And of course, that's part of what brought me there, is just to kind of regroup, begin the year, start thinking about some things. So happiness is what I want to talk to you about tonight. And I believe that happiness, and if you define happiness definition, I looked up and found was a feeling of pleasure or contentment.

And I believe when we can be in states of happiness and feeling content, that leaves a lot less room for us to go seeking elsewhere. I think it's also important to distinguish that when talking about happiness, there's external versus internal. And another important distinction is material versus non material. And I know there are people out there who say, well, anything external and anything material that can't quite possibly lead to happiness. And I don't subscribe to that. I don't think it's all or nothing.

In fact, the fact that I could go to a little town, enjoy an Airbnb and pay some money and go to coffee shops and get the food and all the good coffee and all that, those kinds of things, external and material, do bring some level of happiness, and I just don't think they're as long lasting as the internal or non material items. Interesting thing I was reading, I don't know if it's in the world happiness report or some study where, you know, out of ten people, it indicated that one person is not happy at all.

Six out of ten are generally happy, and three out of ten are very happy. And, you know, I thought I would put myself in the one of the three. I feel very happy with my life. And again, as I was doing some reading, I came across something that Freud wrote, Sigmund Freud. And I think it was in the book flow. I'm reading the book Flow by Mihai Chicksentmihei. Don't know if I'm pronouncing that right, but look it up. Flow. It's about the psychology of an optimal experience. And I think he quotes in there that Freud mentioned that there are two keys to happiness in life, in all of life, and those two are work and love.

And I want to clarify a little bit, that doesn't necessarily just mean the job that I show up for every day, and it doesn't mean that that's a romance or the person that I'm in love with or married to work. What he was pointing to is the way in which we contribute positively to society, into this world, and then love. What kind of relationships do we have going on? Good evening, Luke. He's at the target center. Always interested in hearing about those experiences. Happiness for you can also be when you make someone's day brighter.

Junk food junkie. Yes. Yes, absolutely. There's so much happiness and contentment in doing for others. If you listen to me over and over and over, I talk about generosity and how that leads to contentment. So Luke's daughter is playing at halftime. That's happiness. Luke will tell you, watching his child go do that, that's the contentment we're talking about. So, anyway, back to work and love, and Luke's talking about relationships and who's in life. And so, as Freud said, with work and love, again, work isn't necessarily the place I show up to.

It's how I contribute to society. And I think there were many instances throughout this book flow where he's bringing to the table people who did everyday jobs. There was a farmer and this woman who would walk. And he said, if you could go back and do it all differently or when you could retire, what would you do differently? And she said, I would actually just keep working. I love what I do. I love that it contributes to the world. I can't tell the difference between love, work, and life. An interesting statistic is only about half of us are generally happy overall with our job, and we think about what we contribute to society and our purpose.

There was a study done, and I quoted this in a previous video, that the chances of mortality after a 15 year period decreased by about 15% for every standard deviation above the average that someone had purpose. So, more concisely, the average person feels this level of purpose. And for the person who's one away from that average, their chances of mortality in the next 15 years decrease by 15%. So clearly aligning with purpose and thinking about how we contribute to this world makes a big difference.

Then he talks about love and another interesting stat, I love statistics about love and about connection and about the relationships and community is there is a 39% higher chance of mortality with social isolation. So again, 39% greater chance that we end up dead with social isolation. That was another study also quoted that in a previous video. Again. So these two things are so critical to me, and I've felt so blessed when I read this work and love, it resonated so much. And I just looked and I thought, maybe I don't have it wrong, because I have to ask myself all the time, am I too involved?

Do I put too much energy and effort into the, into what I call work? And I absolutely love what I do. I love the space I get to play in, the recovery space, the mental health space, the people I get to interact with, the programs I get to support, and the things that I get to see on the other side, knowing that we're making a difference and making a dent in the world. And relationships. I have so many relationships, so much so that I spend most of my weekends. This last was an exception, but I spend most weekends and many nights during the week running around to different family events, to birthday parties, to sporting events, just like Luke, he's at an event, you know, at the target center.

I do those things all the time, and sometimes I don't feel like I spend enough time to rest, to get down, to do all those things, but those are, that's because I have rich relationships. And so that really feels like my life. I go from the purpose and the passion that I get to deliver to this world, to really delivering the same kind of thing, but just in a family setting. So it really made me feel like I was winning at something when I got to read this, because work and love, that's my life. And so as we think about how we incorporate this, and by the way, that carries into, that's the beautiful thing about this.

And when those two things are in alignment and I can have the right relationships and I can be aligned with my purpose and making a difference in this world, they carry through all areas of my life. So when I'm on this retreat, man, life was just great. And I was by myself in a town. I don't know anybody there. I've never met these people. I'm going to a different coffee shop every day. I'm running around. I'm hiking out in the middle of a, you know, snowstorm all by myself. And you know what? Absolutely loving it.

That's because of the work that I get to do and the relationships that I get to have. So as we, you know, move into this week, I want you to think about a couple things, maybe take a chance to document what does. And again, work isn't just some of us can't work. Some of us, I get that some have different lifestyles and maybe, you know, work is beyond us and behind us at this point, but it's still, it's still considered what I contribute to this world outside of those 40 hours of employment, whatever they might be, and the relationships that we have.

And I know sometimes that's harder for some of us than others. But I've built a lot of relationships inside family and outside my family. And, you know, I put in the effort, and that takes a little bit of effort. So work and love, or I'll call it a passion, is my mission, my purpose. That's what I look at work as, and I love getting up to do it every single day. And then love the relationships I have. Who is my community? Who am I connected to, relationships, what's my purpose in my work? And when those two things are, you know, running smoothly and, you know, I'm living those to my highest potential, life is pretty dang good.

So again, I ask you to think about those as we move into the week and think about where you can, you know, add a little bit to either of those. And let's come back and talk about again next week. Luke. Hopefully everything goes well there. Yes, happiness is alignment and purpose. Love that, Sherry. And, yeah, during the pandemic, yeah, well, numbers went out of the, you know, out of this world, things got much worse. And so it's just even more important, I think we realize, coming out of that, to stay connected to people and to find our passion and continue to do what we love to do and make a difference in this world.

So good luck, Luke. Hope to see some videos, hear about the daughter playing at the target center, goatee, wolves. And hope you all have wonderful weeks. If you have any questions, comments, thoughts, drop them in here, shoot me a note. Would love to hear about it and bring it back next week. Have a wonderful week, everyone. We'll talk to you very soon. Work and love.