Sunday Serenity: Integrity Over Popularity

Happy Sunday evening. First Sunday of June. Hard to believe if you are in the northern hemisphere like I am. It's kind of the beginning of what we consider summer here and all of the things, graduations, time on the lake, time outside, traveling, all kinds of events. So grateful to be here Sunday evening. Looking forward to being here with you all, sharing space. My name is Jason Lennox. I am your resident recovery champion and this is my Sunday Serenity livestream series. And tonight I titled Sunday Serenity integrity over popularity.

Very important to get those two in the right order. And I want to talk a little bit about both of those, popularity and integrity. Welcome to the people tuning in. Really looking forward to sharing with you tonight because I had some moments this last week and. Hi, Jules. Jules. I also read in the community that it sounds like you have a huge one year anniversary. So congrats to you on all your work and being here with all of us. So, integrity over popularity. First thing I thought I would be wise to do is share a little bit about, I guess, the definition of each of them.

So, popularity. And I wrote these down so that they. Or so that I didn't mistake any of the words, but popularity is the state or condition of being liked, admired or supported by many people. And, you know, that's something I think all of us naturally desire as humans is to have some level of popularity, to be liked, to be admired, to be supported. That comes naturally with the way that we live our lives, especially today with social media and all the ways that we're connected and seeing what other people are doing and perhaps comparing ourselves.

That's a definition of popularity. Now, integrity. I thought I would lob this out to the group there. I would love to hear some of the definitions you all have for integrity. I'll share a couple that I use and that I've found, but I would love to just give you a moment and drop in one word, short sentence, anything. When you think of integrity, how do you define that? First birthday? Being sober. Oh, wow. There you go. That's a. That's a big deal. Thanks for clarifying that, Jules. So, first one, that's, um.

That is a really big deal. All these events for the first time that we start doing and thinking about. So congratulations. 95 days, which are some of the hardest and to get to. That is incredible. You'll be at that big 100 mark here on Friday then, and look forward to continuing to count those days. It's so fun to do. And kudos to you for being here. I'm grateful that we get to share some space and hopefully you take some nuggets here. So, definition of integrity for those here that have joined.

Would love to. Yeah, you're welcome. Would love to hear what you think of the word integrity and what you, what you would define integrity as. So keep dropping those into the comments. You know, the couple that I found were probably one that we think of, we think of integrity, we think of morals, things like that. So there's a quality of being honest and having strong moral principles is one definition. So again, being honest and how do we present and how do we share with the people and engage with those in our lives in an honest way.

One of them that I really love, it's actually a little bit simpler, maybe a little more boring, because it doesn't include those morals and ethics is a state of being whole and undivided. Whole and undivided. And I just think that's, that's such a valuable state to be in. It doesn't mean that I'm over the top with the ethics, morals, all of that, but that I'm whole and that I'm undivided so that I don't have things deep down inside me. And I believe this is one of the biggest things that plague us.

Those that struggle with substances, mental health, is we don't keep our word. We're not whole. We leave things undone, unfinished, and it doesn't mean we always get everything right. I want to be clear. Whole. That doesn't mean that I do everything perfectly every day. It just means that if there are things that are disturbed or left undone, I deal with those and I call those out and I take responsibility and I take accountability, and I try to tackle it the next day. Or the next, or the next. So, whole and undivided.

I love that definition of integrity. So, integrity over popularity. Why does this matter? Why am I even talking about it? I'll get to that briefly, but I want to give you three examples in the last week, the three things that I've thought about when it comes to this whole thing. And the second one will be where this came from. And I'm excited to share about that one. The first, today, happens to be the day 17 years ago, that one of my best friends was killed in a car accident. And actually, we had been partying the night before at a place, and everybody got kicked out.

It was a graduation party, I believe, but everybody got the boot. And I was incredibly intoxicated. I was 19 at the time, and I decided to sleep in this van where I was parked out near the road. And this friend of mine, Jake, he came to me and he said, come on, you got to come. We're not done. We're going to go over here. We're going to go to this place and this place just come on. Kept nagging me, nagging me, nagging me, and I just said, I can't do it. I'm not in a good position. I'm not in a good spot.

I'm staying. You go. And it turns out just a few miles down the road is when that car went around the corner off the ledge and he ended up dead. And the driver was in a coma and had some severe trauma for a long time. So he was one of my best friends. But the reason I bring that up is one, today is his anniversary, the anniversary of his death, which is not a good one. It's not one to celebrate. But it reminds me of this man, this young man that he was 19 when he passed, and Jake was that kind of guy.

Integrity over popularity. He wasn't the most popular. A lot of people liked him, but he wasn't the flashiest. He wasn't, you know, the one who was out getting all the attention. He didn't have those kinds of traits. But you knew what you got with Jake, and that's why integrity mattered. You knew that he was going to be consistent and that he was going to stand up for what was right, and he was going to be there for you when you needed it. That's what we remembered about Jake, and I still remember that to this day.

He's one of those few people in that time of my life that I knew I could count on. So he practiced integrity. He would rather be in a state of wholeness, of completeness, of upright morals and all of those things, than he would be the popular one, be the one who had all the girlfriends and all the things, and that was Jake. So that's one example why this thing, integrity matters. The second one, which I'm really excited to share about, came from a graduation ceremony, and it happened to be my son's.

He is officially done with high school. I know I say that, and a lot of people look at me sideways, but, yes, I had my son when I was very young. I was 18. And I'm not going to take credit for having him because I know there's a lot more to that that I didn't have to deal with. My son was born when I was 18, and he is now 18 and officially graduated. In fact, I went to a second ceremony just this afternoon, and where I came from. But I went to another ceremony on Thursday for another school that he had attended, and it was really neat.

Smaller school, smaller setting. And what they did was they got to pick a teacher who would share on behalf of them, and they walked up to the stage and they sat in this seat right next to the teacher that was sharing. It was incredibly intimate. It was great. It was really neat to see. And my son had picked a teacher who was actually gone because he was at a track meet, sections, and so he couldn't be there that day on Thursday. So instead, he recorded a couple videos for the people that chose him.

And as I was watching the video, the thing that stood out and gave me goosebumps, and, you know, it got me a little bit emotional because, you know, that's my son. That's my boy, the teacher said, the thing that I appreciate, Aidan, about you the most is that you will choose integrity over popularity every single time. And so that's where the title of this video came from, because it blew me away. One, because it's such a powerful thing to say about someone for three reasons. One, it's such a powerful thing to say about someone.

Two, that's my son, and I couldn't be more proud of that. And three, that's an 18 year old boy, a young man. And I look back to my time there, and one of the things that got me into so much trouble is, was I sought that popularity for so long. All I ever wanted as a kid was to be somebody who was liked, not picked on. I wanted to have the friends. I wanted to do all those things. And so I'm certain I would have sacrificed integrity, and I know that I did, over and over and over, if it meant the popularity was there.

And we do this as adults, we do this all the time. All of us. We're guilty of it. But to have this 18 year old boy have a teacher say one thing about him, the most important thing was that he would take integrity or popularity any day of the week, every single time. It was really a wonderful moment to celebrate with that boy and just a testament to who he is and hopefully a little bit of what he's been able to see and what I've been able to share with him, because that's the life I try to live. But like I said, 18 years old.

No way in heck. That's what I was thinking. No way in heck. That's what people were saying about me. Maybe today at 37, but it was really just an incredible moment. The last area I just want to touch on is this isn't always as cut and dry as just me individually and what I'm doing. I work in the substance use disorder space, mental health space, as many of us do, that you run into on this app and many of my colleagues. This is the work that we do. And when I think about integrity, it spans beyond me.

I can do all the things that I want to do that I say I'm going to do. I can try to take responsibility, accountability for me. But the reality is, I have a responsibility and an obligation working in this industry, because this industry means life or death for people. It did for me. Thankfully, I got life, and I was saved, and I found a way to get here today. Not everybody does, but this is life or death. And when that's the case, integrity means something well beyond me. And I'll tell you what.

I'll tell you what I mean. I'll just illustrate this a little bit. I've been managing people now in this industry for probably five years. I've tried to count. I would say I'm roughly in the 50 to 60 range in terms of the number of people that I've managed directly. I've always had smaller teams, anywhere from three to five to six to seven. But I've rebuilt a lot of teams, and I've stood up some programs and kind of taken teams on and just done a lot of cool things. So I've just had the opportunity to work with a lot of people.

And one of the ways in which this integrity shows up in this industry, outside of me, individually, is that we're working in a space where, again, it's life or death for people. And for that reason, we need to show up differently. So I'll give you an example. I manage this intake team. They're responsible for pulling referrals and for making sure that people who are calling, looking for help are not sitting there waiting and wondering and not getting anyone on the other end. And I would struggle and we would go back and forth, some of those people on those teams.

And by the way, I'll tell you this, before I get into whether or not people tend to like me or not like me, the whole popularity thing is, I think in those 50 or 60 people, I've had one, I'm gonna say maybe a second, that have actually voluntarily resigned on me. And so it's been a pretty good run for me. I'll say that. And one of the things, this intake team, where I would struggle, we'd have people who'd say, and I would hear this and I would know that there were just certain people who didn't appreciate me.

They didn't appreciate my style, the way in which I approach things. Because, again, integrity for me in this industry means life or death. And so when I show up, I'm going to make sure that we're all being accountable and that we're being held responsible and that we have visibility and transparency into all the work we do. Because, again, picking up the piece of paper that's a referral today versus tomorrow very well could mean that someone ends up living or dying. And so I take that very seriously.

I'm going to wrap all this up by saying the whole point of this is integrity isn't always just about me. When I choose to get into this space and lead in this space and do the work that I do, I've got an obligation to keep integrity across teams, across programs and across the industry. And when that's the case, not everybody's is the popularity is going to fall sometimes because we're humans. We don't naturally want to be held accountable. We don't want to be held responsible. We don't want the things that we're not doing in the ways that we could or should be.

We don't want those exposed. We don't want people calling us out on those. And the natural reaction to that is to fight and to run and to talk about, you know, people that maybe in ways that we don't appreciate them. But the reality is, that's what I'm talking. Integrity over popularity. For me, it isn't about being liked by everyone. We have jobs to do. People's lives depend on us. And I'm going to tell it how it is and I'm going to do everything in my power to stand in the space with the people who need the support and be there for them.

But again, naturally, as humans, we don't always respond to those things, especially if we don't, if we haven't had the practice and just the practice of it over and over and over. And when we land in this recovery world, we get that practice because we realize how out of accountability and out of responsibility and out of integrity we are. And people show us that if we want to live free, we need to restore that integrity, to clean that up, to take accountability and responsibility. So it's a little easier, I think, for those of us who have gone through that to start to practice this and be workers who can take feedback and really get on board with, you know, we're all in this together.

And we're going to do our darndest to make sure that people get the help they need. So those are three little tidbits of stories and just kind of areas in which I think about integrity and why it matters so much. And I just ask you, as you, as you leave, where, as you think about this ponderous over the week, where do you find yourself out of integrity or in, or with integrity? So think about those spaces. Think about where it is that you don't have integrity. Find out why. Think about what it is.

Maybe it's easier to think about where you do have integrity. You know, where things feel good, understand, like, what, what drives that? And then how, like, I always talk about this purpose thing. You hear me, forever talk about it. How can you connect what you are doing in your life just like I do in my life to a greater purpose? Because it makes the idea of not being the popular one. It makes the idea of integrity over popularity so much easier to digest. Because when I'm out here doing the work on the mission I'm on with the purpose.

I'm with the purpose. I have to help save as many lives as I can. It's really easy to throw popularity away and say I need to stay within the bounds and stay in a state of integrity to do this effectively and to give other people a chance. It removes the selfishness, the self centeredness where I'm thinking about my own reactions to things. So we've gone on a little bit here, but I really get passionate about this whole idea of integrity. I used to really be the person that wanted to be the popular one way more.

And I would sacrifice integrity nine times out of ten. And that's what got me to the place where my life was almost over. It was miserable. I struggled with substances, and I didn't want to live anymore because I didn't know how to deal with all those things that I was out of integrity with. Today I know that my life is the way it is because I keep integrity. I keep my word. I try to be honest. I have ethics and I have values, and I stick to those, and I will go to my grave, hopefully continuing down this path and doing that.

So I'm passionate about it. I hope you are, too. Take those questions, find where you're in integrity, find where you're out. Figure out why, and then connect it to a greater mission. What is it that gets you up in the morning? If it's family, if it's the work we get to do. And think about that when we're thinking about making decisions that could equal popularity versus integrity. Hope you all have wonderful weeks. I hope the weather is beautiful wherever you are and that you get to experience some of the joys of nature in summer.

And you're welcome. Speak, wonder. Always great to see you here. We'll see you all next week. I'll be putting on a different time, a little FYI, because I will be, I believe in person at a Boston Celtics game at this time, and it might be a little loud for me to do a live stream there. I'm hoping it is because that means that we're doing well there. So I'll drop a different time. It'll be a little earlier Sunday, but I'll get to that this week. And we'll see you next Sunday. Back here for Sunday.

Serenity, integrity over popularity.