Sunday Serenity

Happy Sunday, Cadre crew. Jason Lennox here with you. I am your resident recovery champion. I am excited to share with you tonight a little bit more about mission and purpose and if you've been here the last couple weeks or seen any of the replays a couple weeks ago I talked about purpose. Last week I talked about mission. And these things just come back to every conversation that I'm in because I just realize both from the standpoint of recovery, but mental health and wellness and just growing as people aligning with that purpose and just staying core to who we are and what we're out to do has such a positive impact and it cures so many of the ills and the voids and all the things that I've been dealing with in many of my worst years, I guess.

So I want to share here a little bit about this serenity prayer, if you don't know what that is. The serenity prayer goes like this. It's spoken often in recovery meetings, and it was the topic of a recovery meeting today. The serenity prayer is, God, grant me this serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference. Hey, good evening, sherry. Good to see you here. So accepting the things I cannot change, having the courage to change the things that I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.

And so the topic got going and people were talking about, well, this is a hard one because accepting the things I cannot change, that's hard. And, you know, I thought about it, and sometimes it's not even easy to know what I can't change. And I actually think we use that as an excuse sometimes. Well, I can't change the way other people feel. I can't change the way other people think. I can't change their, their reactions, their perspectives, their perceptions. But the reality is when I'm continuing to grow and work on the things that I can work on, I certainly can impact and change the way that people think and change the way that people view me and so on.

So there are indirect ways that I can change the things. Maybe I don't think I can. So a lot of times people are like, I can't change the way other people feel. So I'm just going to focus on what I can change. So again, I think we use that as an excuse sometimes. But the more important thing is sometimes it's just not easy to know what I can and can't change. I don't know. I mean, we have a lot of influence and the ways in which we can impact people are tremendously great. And I just think it's not always easy to distinguish.

And so my comment there and what I want to share a little bit about here is rather than spend time thinking about what I can and cannot change, I go back to am I aligned with who I am in this world and what I'm for? And if I'm thinking about that, I'm not thinking nearly as much about all the things that I cannot change, accepting what I can't change. So I'm laser focused on the things I can do and the things that will put me in alignment with who I want to be and what I want to be for this world.

And so, as I think about those things, you know, it really just helps me stay on the track, stay away from accepting, because, again, we start thinking about all the things we can't change inherently, those are usually not good things to be thinking about. And so really just staying true to my mission, my purpose, is the way to go. And again, the irony in that is a lot of times these things, we might think we don't have control or we don't have impact on influence over, oftentimes they can change and they do get better if we work on doing the things you do.

So if I can continue to work personally and individually on all the things I know I want to accomplish in this life, then oftentimes those other things continue to get better. Julie, good to have you here. Totally want to be that. Yeah. And that's inside all of us. That's the beautiful thing about this. And I've just done. I've done a lot of discovery over the years to really get clear on who I want to be and what I want to be for this world. And then it's just a regular effort and practices and the tools and the habits that keep me in alignment there and continue to push me toward that.

And so, again, the irony is when I can do that, a lot of the things around me change. I wrote a book. And again, I hear people say all the time, well, I can't change the way people think. I can't change the way they feel. And when I wrote the book that I wrote, I cannot tell you how many responses and how many people reached out and sent messages saying, I just had no idea. And, wow, I think about this completely differently. Addiction, I just had no idea. And then I read a story, and I walked alongside someone who went through the pain and the suffering, the humiliation and the fight over and over and over.

And now I see it differently. Right. And so that's just me aligning with, again, my mission and my purpose, writing a book, putting it all out there for people to. To see and then to have a bunch of people read that and go, yeah, I didn't realize that this was the case. So again, yes, thank you, sherry, I know you're a big proponent of recovery and spreading the good word. You do a lot of that. So thank you. I really just appreciate the time and being able to spend it with you all. And again, my call to action this week is I would think less about what are the things we can and can't change, because, again, I don't like to go down that path of trying to change those things, but rather, how do I focus on who I am and what I am for this world?

And the beautiful thing about that is then the things that are supposed to change, my habits, my ways of being, my behaviors, they do naturally because I'm clear on where I'm going and I take the steps to get there. Everything else falls into place. So call to action for you. Think about what it is, what it is that you want to be in this world, for this world, who is the kind of person you want to be for your people and get clear on that. And then again, we start documenting some steps to take to get us there.

So I am grateful, as always, to be able to spend Sunday evening with you, even if it's just for five to ten minutes. Thank you all for regularly tuning in and look forward to doing it again next week. Hope you all have wonderful weeks. Have a great night.