Sunday Serenity

Happy Monday, Cadre Sphere. This is Sunday Serenity on Monday, Jason Lennox, and I'm your resident recovery champion. What that means. I'm here to talk about all things recovery from substance use, other addictions, mental health, and really just general wellness. And a lot of what I talk about is really driven by purpose and fulfillment, peace, serenity, all the things that I think prevent us from looking elsewhere for some of that fulfillment. So appreciate you joining tonight. I told you last week I might have to make this a Monday, Monday session this week because I was out of town celebrating my aunt's 70th birthday party this weekend.

It was phenomenal. Trip of a lifetime, really. So thanks for being patient. Good evening, Jules. Good evening, Sherry. Love to see you two here all the time. Love when you contribute. So. But anyway, yeah, resident recovery champion. So I'm here to talk about all things recovery. And if you've been watching or maybe if you haven't, I'll just say in the last few weeks, I've been talking a lot about mental health. Thank you. Back in the great state of Minnesota, I flew in bright and early this morning, was up at 2am and here we are.

But I've been talking a lot about mental health, unfortunately, lost an old friend, really was one of my best friends, much further back in my time and a roommate and just a good guy in general. And mental health got the best of his state and where he was and unfortunately suicide took him. So really been thinking a lot about that. Been doing a lot trying to figure out how to make something of that, how to leverage some of these harder times to talk, turn something into good. But I want to expand on that a little bit.

Obviously, it's been a whirlwind since I've been on here last Sunday before. Yes, a week ago Sunday. And we had an election in there and we had, you know, maybe a big surprise there and, you know, people on either side, but a lot of fighting, a lot of divide. And it just really feels like when we're on social media and other places that there is a lot of divide. And I, for just the sake of sanity, had to kind of prove to myself that maybe it's not as divided as we thought. And so I want to share a couple examples and stories about why I think that's the case.

And one of them dates back to this past summer. I was at a conference, the National Speakers Association. It was their annual conference, the big Hoorah. We were in Denver, Colorado, and we were at one of the keynotes, which probably houses I'M going to say 900, 1,000 people. And these are big, big sessions. A lot of people. And one of the guys is up there, and he called on someone from the audience, and he said, all right, I want you to tell me, do you have a child? And she said, yeah, I've got a child.

And. Okay, now I want you to play along with me. Now, imagine that your child is about 30 yards over there on the other side of a body of water, and she cannot swim, but she's in the water. What are you going to do? What is your instinct? What is your first move? And she said, I'm jumping in, and I'm getting over there as fast as I can. Got it? The guy said, what happens if the water was so frozen that when you get in, you might take the risk of actually being paralyzed and maybe you can't even make it over there.

I don't care. She said, I'm in, and I'm going after my daughter. All right, got it. Now, what happens if you see a pool, a bunch of sharks swimming around, and you've got to navigate through all these sharks that are circling near and around your daughter? And again, she said, I'm not even thinking twice about it. I am going to get my daughter. I don't care what happens in the. In the meantime, in the middle, I'm going to get your daughter. I'm going to get my daughter. And he said, all right, that's great to hear.

He said, I want to take this a different direction. I'm going to look out here, and I'm going to talk to the crowd, and I'm going to ask them a question. So he turns to all of us and he says, I want you to raise your hand if going through that paralyzing water and risking everything by approaching all these sharks is something you would do, and you would jump over there and go after this woman's daughter. And everybody in the room, it was fascinating. Everybody has their hand up. Of course everybody has their hand up.

But it wasn't even a thought. Nobody even took seconds to think about that. And this woman turned around and she got emotional because she looked and she saw a sea of people that she didn't know, probably 90 to 95% of them had never even met. And nobody even hesitated to say, I would go through h*** to get your daughter, who I don't even know, out of danger. The point the guy was trying to make is, see, nobody actually stopped to think about, well, do I know this person? Where do they live? What Race are they, what gender are they, what sexuality are they?

Who did they vote for? Politically, none of those things were in the mix. It was just when danger was there, was imminent. Everybody said, I'm in. I'm going to save this child, even if it's not mine, even if I've never met the child, never met the mother. And it was. It was really one of the most beautiful moments of the conference. But the guy made a very, very valid point that when we're faced with danger, when we're faced with hardship, all of these things, people just do not consider those things.

And to me, there's evidence that inherently we are good people looking out for each other, and instinct has us do what we can to support the next person, especially when there's a dire need. And, you know, over the last few weeks, I started a fundraiser and try to get some traction there to see who might be able to participate and who would help these kids of my old friend. And, you know, it got a little slow start, but then all of a sudden it took off and a bunch of people contributed. And, you know, here we ended up doubling, more than doubling what I anticipated or what I had set for the goal and got a couple contributing sponsors, corporate matches as well.

So, anyway, ended up with this. And my point there was, I put on social media last week, again, people were looking at this and they were seeing these poor kids and they were seeing what was needed in a dire situation, and nobody stopped and went well. But depends. What political party did Brandon support? Well, it depends. Who's this Jason Lennox guy? Who is he supporting and should I be participating in some of that? People don't do that. See, when times get tough and we need each other inherently, instinctively, we jump.

We jump and we jump. We are there and we are ready to chip in. Some of these people, I said, were contributing to this fundraiser. They're probably five to seven connections removed from this child, from either of the children, yet somehow they're still inclined to give and support. And so my point, again, is reiterating what I. What the point was at the. At the conference, and that's that, you know, as much as we get caught up in the politics and all the dividing and polarizing things that are going on in our country right now, some of that is really fed to us through, through media, through all the different campaigns out there and through the just.

Just the hate that gets thrown out there and when people, you know, seek power, it seems these days, it's about, you know, talking down on the other person. And really eliminating them versus just promoting what we do all that to say, I really don't think that it matters when it comes down to it, when we can get in front of people, even people we don't agree with, we can get in front of them. We can realize they're still human beings. They're just out here doing what they think that they're supposed to be doing, believing what they've.

What they've been taught or what they just feel. And that's okay. And it's. And sometimes it feels like it's not, and maybe sometimes it isn't, but it really. The point is exactly what Sherry said. She's just going to jump in and take over from here and she's going to finish the deal because she said that humanity can never be divided. Sorry. Politically, we can be divided from a sports, from a news, from a work, from a family, from a friendship. All those things can be divided. Humanity can never be divided.

That's absolutely beautiful. Like she said, she says humility, but humanity, too. Humanity was my point in my social media posts. The white letters on the white background, if you're reading, reading along, not the easiest to read, but humanity and humility, they both fit very, very well there. Humanity can never be divided. Humility can never be divided. How do we stay humble when we come to the table and we talk to our fellow human beings? Because if we could all do a little bit of that, guess what?

At the end of the day, whatever politicians are in power, whatever bosses we have, whatever in laws we have, whatever family we have, we still have the choice to be humble, to bring that humanity, to show the love, to show the support, to be there for our people. And that's what I'm really. I've learned, and I don't take a lot of credit for this, because I've learned from the people who are here before me, the people who showed me how to live this kind of life and showed me the tips and the tricks and the things that would get me to a place where I felt at peace, where I could go to bed at night.

And I wasn't worried about what I did that day, because when I got to that place, the mental health, the substance use, those things weren't as prevalent. They weren't there. This thing wasn't constantly going. It suddenly stopped. It just stopped. It stopped. It stopped. And. And that always depends. And again, I was taught this. That will always depend on my level of willingness to contribute and do something. And so that's why it's A fundraiser in the middle of all the things that we all have going on.

I didn't anticipate that. That's another work week or two in a matter of a month and a bunch of physical exercise that's going to come from it and continuing to go and continuing to push and do what I can. And again, I was just taught this, so I don't take a lot of credit for that. I just know that my level of peace and fulfillment and serenity in my life is directly correlated to what I'm willing to put in and what I'm willing to give up and what I'm willing to sacrifice. And that's what it is.

Sometimes we sacrifice. But I know what's on the other side of that. And so I'm continuing to push that forward. I would love if you would join as well. Again, you can find me on. On social media. I could drop some links into the community, but we've got the fundraiser. I've kind of gotten past that phase and now it's all about how do we check in with each other. On my buddy Brandon's birthday, which is this Thursday, so 11:14, I'm hoping to get as many people out there checking in with their loved ones and their people, because we just don't know.

And I just shared tonight that I was having a conversation with my therapist and she said 80% of people who get to a suicidal state could actually come out of it with intervention. In other words, 80% of people who get to that place can be helped. She thinks at 20, like 20% of people, unfortunately, they're just so far into that, that's going to be hard to come out of that. But 80%, eight out of every 10. And what does that intervention mean? We don't know. But every one of us have at least one intervention in us, and that's to reach out.

That's not to have the people reach out. We see that. We. I see it, I understand it, I appreciate it, but it also. I can't. I can't get on board with just waiting for people to reach out to us because I've been there, I've done that. I've experienced what that feeling is like. Well, I don't want to do this life anymore. And I don't have it in me to reach out to somebody because again, I feel like there is no other way. There is no other life. The only option for me to feel better is to not be here.

I don't have it in me to comprehend, to grasp that maybe Me reaching out would do something. But maybe, just maybe, if I'm on the receiving end of somebody else taking that action, making the call, sending the text, doing whatever, it could alter my day, maybe, maybe there's somebody in that 80% that that's all they need. And we don't know what happens if we're doing those check ins. Like we don't know what that's going to result in at the end of the day. I always say we know what it won't result in if we do nothing.

It won't result in anything if we do nothing. So I'm here to do something. I hope you're along for the ride as well. And you know, if you're the person struggling, here's me saying, you know, how you doing today? And really, really how you doing today? It's okay to talk about that. And continued to see, now we see something like this happen and then we see more. But I've seen at least a few examples of suicide over the last few weeks now because of that. And as tough as it is to talk about it as, as much as I think is this annoying that I'm sharing so much that I'm talking about this, that I continue to just open up, it's not about me, maybe that's the case for some people.

6 million people attempting suicide last year. 6 million, 50,000 of them didn't make it. They're actually gone. And that number is just going to continue to skyrocket until we can do something, until we can talk about it. So I hope you'll join me. I hope you'll talk about it. Yes, Most people need to be heard and loved and it can be that simple. Sometimes we just need somebody to hear us. You've been in that position, I've been in that position where it doesn't feel like anything can feel good. Somehow just letting it out and somehow just having that person who was there to listen, who is compassionate, who empathize, who just had a listening ear that made a difference.

So hope you'll join me, hope you'll keep talking, hope you'll check in and you know, look forward to doing this again. Again, November 14th. That's coming up quickly, it's three days away, hope you'll jump in and again come find me, join, do the pledge, do the check ins and keep talking, keep doing the deal. Because we've all got some version of mental health. It's all on a spectrum here and we all move back and forth, some of us just a little further than others. But the reality is there's nobody on this planet who doesn't have something there.

And we're a lot more alike than we think. So look forward to chat with you all. Doing it again next week. Yes, you're welcome. And Sherry, thanks for all you're doing as well. We need, we need more of us out there doing this and hopefully you'll join as well. Anyone else listening? Thanks so much and we will talk to you Sunday.