Sunday Serenity

Happy Sunday, Cadre crew. I am happy to be here with you, sharing. My name is Jason Lennox. I will give it a couple minutes, but I'll tell you a little bit about who I am. In case you're new, you watch this later on. I am your resident recovery champion, and what that means is I'm here to talk about all things recovery, well being, and just wellness in general. And this is my live stream series, which is titled Sunday Serenity. I love Sundays. I'm actually really happy that for the first time in a long time, behind me, you'll see light.

When we're doing this. It's exciting. The days are getting longer. So welcome, everyone who is joining in, but again, Jason Lennox, resident recovery champion, and here to talk about all things recovery. So I wanted to talk. I was reading this morning. I read most days I'll say 10, 15, 20, sometimes 30 minutes. And I'm in the middle of a book by somebody named Peter Attia. And Peter Attia is a doctor. He doesn't really practice anymore, but he does a lot of work in the longevity space. So he's in healthcare and really just thinking about how we.

Hello. Welcome from Pennsylvania. How we incorporate wellness and all the things that we do to create longevity in life, not just lengthen our lives, but actually lengthen them with a level of quality that makes sense. So I'm reading this book, and, you know, he's big on what he calls the four horsemen. So you think about metabolic dysfunction, and really that's diabetes. So then there's cardiovascular, which is heart disease, and then neurodegenerative disease, the dementia, Alzheimer's, things like that, and then, of course, cancer.

And those four that he calls the four horsemen makeup. I think I read this statistic. Over 80% of all deaths for people over 50 who do not smoke. So over 80% of people over 50 who don't smoke die from cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and neurodegenerative diseases. So he focuses a lot on those things. And, you know, he has four pillars of health that he likes to look at. Nutrition, exercise, sleep, and then emotional or mental health. So those are the four things he really talks about. But he really is pioneering this idea that we need a new version of medicine and healthcare.

0, which has been over the last several decades, where we have gotten really good at treating a lot of these diseases. But unfortunately, that happened at the time that the disease has already progressed. 0, in his mind, is, how do we start to prevent some of these things and think about that. Anyway, that's a little bit of background about him, but a lot to say. It really gets my mind thinking about how we've gotten to a place where we have trillions of dollars into the pharmacy industry and trillions of dollars into the treatment of these diseases, and only a fraction of that thinking about the prevention.

And we have weight loss drugs, we have weight loss surgeries, we have all these things, and not enough, in my opinion, my humble opinion, time, energy, resources into the things that will actually prevent those. So why do I say all that? I say all that because I think about serenity, and I talk about serenity, and I have this, you know, really this, this livestream, because I believe that serenity is what, the level of serenity I have is directly correlated to my desire to find fulfillment in other forms.

And so we think about, you know, drugs, alcohol, food, money, sex, fame, you know, co dependencies, all of those things, those are related to discontentment, a lack of serenity. And so I believe wholeheartedly. And my life proves this, because I went from a young child for the first twelve years of my life, who struggled, who was in a lot of pain, and then I went through twelve years of addiction. And now for the last 13 plus years, I found a different way of life. And so I've gone through those battles for 24 years, and now I've come out the other side with a very fulfilled life.

And I understand, again, the level of serenity in my life is directly correlated to my desire to just be content and not seek fulfillment elsewhere. And I think there are two key components when we think about the fulfillment, and those two are availability and desire. And again, I talked a little bit about desire, like my desire to find something, but I'll start with availability. And we think about the number of people that died from drugs and alcohol annually at this point is about a quarter million, over a quarter million.

And about half of those are because of drug overdoses, you know, fatal encounters with drugs. And that really illustrates the point of availability. We didn't have some of the drugs that we've got today running around, and so that number has just skyrocketed, that number of overdoses. So availability makes a big difference in why we seek other things, other forms of fulfillment, good and bad. And then the other component really is desire. And again, the, the lack of serenity in my life is going to create some desire for me to feel fulfilled in other ways again.

And today it's not the drugs and the alcohol, but it could be food, it could be fame, it could be attention, it could be, you know, money, all those things. And I think that, you know, that really, desire comes from two different things. It comes from the alternative, hurting too much. So again, my upbringing as a child with, with a lot of mental health struggles, I found drugs and alcohol, and I realized that the alternative, without the drugs and alcohol, hurt too much. And so I stuck in that, and I got into trouble, and all the things happened, and eventually that became too painful.

And so I found myself in treatment, seeking something else. So again, either the alternative hurts too much, or we experience some of it. So I experience a little bit of what it's like to have some money, and, and now I continue to seek that. But again, we have that on the not so good side with all the things that I just mentioned, also on the good side. So serenity, relationships, peace, contentment, those things are also available for me. And I do also strike up a desire for those. They're available to all of us.

By the way, some of you I know a little bit harder, you might have little kids running around. Serenity and peace are words you might not have even fathomed in the last couple decades. I can appreciate that. Had a young one at one point, he's a senior now, going to be graduating in a couple months, but it is still available. And there are practices and tools that give us serenity and peace. And I believe personally, one of the biggest ones is really integrity. And by integrity, I mean whole and complete.

That's my favorite definition of integrity, incomplete. Am I doing the things that I say I'm going to do? Am I showing up when I'm supposed to show up? And, you know, at the end of the day, am I feeling like I left it all out there? And so I think, you know, that, yes, we need healthier relationships and more serenity. Good. Good. Sherry. Love that. So, again, serenity is just as available. And when I can do the things that I say I'm going to do, when I can show up, when I say I'm going to show up and I can continue to do good for this world and not think as much about myself and what's going on in my own mind, you know, things get a little bit better.

And I'll just repeat one more time that the level of serenity in my life is directly correlated to my well being and where I'm at with my word. And then, of course, if I'm in a good place with my well being and my wellness, then the level of serenity is there. And I want to finish with just a little bit of a challenge, a little bit of a request of you all as we go throughout this week and we think about how do we find more serenity, how do we access it? So we don't really have to find it because it's actually right here inside of us.

We just need to, like, dig and get rid of all the other stuff that's in the way to access that serenity. And how do we do that? And I, again, I'm a firm believer, Peter Attia, what he says, the dimensions. He talks about nutrition, exercise, sleep, and mental health. But if we just break that down into three of the dimensions of wellness, we'll keep it simple. Three. We have physical, we have emotional, and then we have spiritual. And so as you go throughout this week, or even tonight or even right now in this moment, think about in each of those three dimensions, what is one thing that you know, and these are usually pretty easy to come by when we think about it, what's one thing that you know that you want to improve physically, emotionally, and spiritually and document that.

I was listening to a podcast earlier, and someone said, you know, the quickest way to make something happen is to write it down and so document, what are those three things? What are the three things that in each of those areas will contribute? And then we show up and we do them. So that's the other thing. That's the downside of I write these goals down and I set things up throughout the week to do. If I don't do them, that just actually creates more of the, you know, the negative feelings and all the thoughts and all the things that we all tell ourselves.

But again, if we can just keep it simple and we can come up with one thing physically, one thing emotionally, one thing spiritually, chances are we can hit that throughout the week. So document that. Give that a whirlwind, and think about where in your lives can you find, where can you access that serenity more? What can be removed out of the way to access more of that? For me, I know it's exercise, it's eating right, it's doing the right thing, and continuing to show up and support the rest of the world, getting enough sleep, not overdoing the caffeine.

I have all those components, and I know I can feel when I'm, when I'm doing those to the best of my ability, and I can feel when I'm not. That didn't used to be the case ten years ago. If I would have eaten a cheeseburger and a bunch of fries, it would have just been par for the course in another day. Today. If I did that, though, I will. I did actually have a couple sliders last night, but if I had a massive, juicy, greasy cheeseburger with a bunch of fries and just, you know, food that's not of the greatest quality, I will pay for that.

And sometimes I'm willing to do that, as we all are and as we should be. We get those moments of grace. But again, I know that. And so physically, emotionally, spiritually, find one little thing, one little nugget in each of those dimensions of wellness that you know that you want to do better at. Document that and set something simple to take care of throughout this week that gets you there and then come back and tell me about it. Love hearing from you all and love sharing space with you and hope you've all got something of value.

Again. Reach out if you have any questions, if you want a little help with this. Happy to go through that. I love this topic. I love serenity. And again, I believe that when we are serene and when we are whole and complete and full of integrity and the rest of our lives go a whole lot better, and then we're not worried about treating all these things after the fact. That doesn't get to that point. I live the healthy life that I live and that sets me up for a long period of time without nearly the problems that so many of us have.

So again, reach out, look forward to chatting with you all. Look forward to, of course, seeing you all next week. Have wonderful weeks. Bye.