Sunday Serenity

Happy Sunday to the Cadre Sphere, everybody out there tuning in here live and or watching a little bit later. Grateful to be here on this cold Sunday. I just spent a bunch of time walking outside, disoriented me a little bit, but happy to be here with you. My name is Jason Lennox and I like to say I'm your resident recovery champion, which means I'm here to talk about all things recovery, from substance use disorder, mental health, and I sprinkle in a bunch of wellness, purpose. And again, Sunday serenity.

I think serenity is the key for so many of us, especially in recovery. I know for me, when my life has serenity, there's a lot less reason for me to be looking externally for fulfillment and that's what happened in my life. It was lacking serenity for so long that the only way I could feel better and at peace was really finding those chemical substances, all the things, food, the money, everything that we can replace what's naturally there with. Good evening, Sherry and yes, Jules. Got a little circle of you that know when each other show up, that's great.

But again, I, hey Jules, yeah, great to see you. So I, tonight, obviously we're coming into a period of the year with the holidays and this week specifically with Thanksgiving and some of us celebrating with families, maybe some of us not, maybe being harder time of year for some of us. There's just a lot there with some of these holidays. We have associations with the past and we have to work through and understand how to reassociate those. So it's a big week coming up. Fortunately for me, I feel very blessed in that it is a busy week and it is a week I get to spend time with family.

I had my first actually Thanksgiving celebration earlier this afternoon with about 40, 45 people. So it was really phenomenal to have that time. I'll have more of that just kind of several big traditions in my life that happen in the next week. But again, I know it's not always that easy. But having said all of that, you know, with with Thanksgiving and what the spirit of what we're trying to celebrate here is really a feeling of gratitude and thankfulness and how how do we learn to practice that a little more and express that and spend time with people and be thankful for the things we have.

And that was not always easy for me. And so I want to share a few different ways which I've pointed to certainly and alluded to at different points in my sharing here and of course in everything I do on a daily basis. But a few ways that I think sometimes we have to kind of fabricate or like produce, if you will, a level of gratitude because it's not always a natural way of being, at least not for me. I tend to fall into everything that comes with life and the traffic that I'm about to go hit and the people and the day-to-day to day and work and all the things that can frustrate us and make us really feel certain kinds of ways.

So I know I have to be intentional about creating something that opens space for gratitude. And so a few ways, again, that I've talked about in some way, shape, or form in the past that I want to reiterate here and take into the week as we move into, again, getting together with family and hopefully reflecting on the things there are to be grateful for. One, I think one of the easiest things that I've been able to do is just stay in touch with the people I know that will continue to share with me exactly what it is that there is to be grateful for in this world.

I have a close circle of people and I'll give you a very specific example about a man who is much older than me, was helping me early in my years of recovery. And we were doing some work around kind of cleaning house and really just getting me to a place where I could feel good with things. And I had this resentment list and my father was on my resentment list. I was really angry with my father because I thought he chose to drink and do drugs overview with his children. And as I shared this with him, he asked me where my son was on the list of people I'd done harm to and he wasn't there even though I had done the same thing.

So again, my dad wasn't really around. He died young age from cirrhosis. I took that on. I really felt that. And then I had a child of my own and I was not there for my child in the same way for several years. And it never occurred to me because I was so mad at him that I had actually done the same to my own son. So this man kind of flipped the perspective a little bit and he went on to say, Maybe instead of being so upset with your father, you could be grateful for him being 1/2 of the reason that you're here on this planet, he gave you life.

And it was just such a powerful moment for me that, again, I know I've probably shared that, but that's somebody in my life that can help me understand and see things that I otherwise wouldn't be able to see. So my point in all that is how do we keep a circle of trusted advisors in our worlds? that really help us to see what there is to see and to see what's possible when we're in those kinds of states. So I think that's one of the easy things. As long as I'm taking my people and carrying my people with me and being vulnerable and being transparent and honest and sharing, I've got a really good chance of getting the feedback I need to try to think a little bit differently about situations.

Another thing that I did and I know I'm sure about is gratitude lists. And I've done anything from what I do every morning, which is a list of three things that I'm grateful for on any given day. And sometimes I expand on that a little all the way to an exercise that perhaps I've mentioned. If not, it will be new where I created a list of 100 things that I was grateful for every day for like a month. Someone left it on my mattress. It was an exercise. It was a challenge to do that. And I did that.

And I got to tell you, it opened my eyes to being grateful for things that I never would have even thought twice about, like toothpaste. Because the fact was I had to sit in my room and look around the room to see what things could I be grateful for because I can't think of anymore. So it really was quite the exercise to turn into 100 things I'm grateful for. So making a list of things we're grateful for, naturally for me every day, that's one of the first things I do and I'm thinking about three things and sometimes it's people, sometimes it's places, sometimes it's things, sometimes it's concepts, ideas, characteristics, any of those things that are fresh in my mind.

That's why I'm starting my day and that tends to point me into a direction of more. I'm going to think and see more of what there is to be grateful for in a day. And the last little trick I want to share about before signing off, this is something I did, I'm going to say 8 years ago. I took the entire month of November, and again, I'll share how this can really happen in different forms. It doesn't have to happen this way. But each day in the month of November on Facebook, I would post the one person that I was grateful for and I would elaborate on that a little bit and I would share why.

Maybe it wasn't always a person, maybe it was person thing, again, just kind of like the gratitude list, what is something I'm grateful for that day and I would share that, but I would elaborate again, this isn't just I'm grateful for mom, no, this is what I'm grateful for, this is why, this is what it means and again, it doesn't have to be on a social media platform, it doesn't have to go to that extent. But just that exercise, I did that behind the scenes once actually, where I picked a different person every day and I actually reached out directly to that person to let them know why I was grateful for them, the things that they meant to me and so on.

So actually making that intention and sharing either with other people and again, not everybody's a social media person. I feel like there are valuable lessons we can all share there, but I realized that not everybody is, that's not everybody's cup of tea. Other ways I can do that, like sharing directly with people in my life and so on. So the three things, and I know it got a little dark there because the lights automatically go off here in my car, which prevents my car from dying and that's good.

One, I just have the right people in my life that can help me see things in a different light because sometimes that's all that it is. Sometimes I do have a lot to be grateful for and I just can't see it because I'm caught up in all the things that I feel like I don't have working in my life. So that's one thing. Who's my network? Who am I sharing with that can share with me and give me honest feedback? Second thing is I'm making a gratitude list. I still do this daily. It keeps me in a frame of mind where I tend to think about the things that I do have.

And even in the tougher situations, I can pull out of there, this is something I'm grateful for. This is somebody I'm grateful for. And even if we can't agree or there's got to be some kind of agreement to disagree, I can still walk away with some wins there. And then third, how do I actually put that gratitude into practice? and turn it into an action. And again, for me, I did a daily share for a month. I also did it for about a month where I shared directly with people. I just think there are so many ways.

The point in that is that I get that out there and it becomes more than just I'm grateful for this. Why am I grateful for it? What has it done for my life? What has it meant to me? If it's a person, again, a place, thing, concept, all the things. But then that direct outreach and sharing and kind of expressing that outwardly love and joy and appreciation for people, there was no intention other than to do that for me, but the feedback that I regularly got from doing that kind of exercise was phenomenal because then we get to hear about how we actually impact other people and that only adds to the gratitude because it really makes me feel good about who I try to be and who I can be.

So those are three critical things I think for me that really make gratitude a regular part of my life and make it something that's a strong asset that really makes me a much healthier person and better version of myself because I'm again leaning always toward thinking about reasons to feel good about things and appreciate things versus you know the alternative so hopefully you can take something from those few things into the next week and continue to you know let these things play out in your own lives.

And yes, thank you, Sherry. Incredibly grateful for you as well. And you know, I also know I just always have to say this time of year, I know it's not always easy. And trust me, it's not always easy for me. My job here is to share some inspiration, hope, and hopefully some things that create a level of serenity and peace in life that again, remove the need to seek elsewhere. Having said all that, I know it's not always easy and if there are things you have going on this week and family things that get really hard and triggering and all I'll say is just always go into these kinds of seasons with plans and with people.

People and plans like what am I going to do when something doesn't? What am I going to do when it actually gets hard? What am I going to do when something comes up? If somebody offers me a drink, if I'm going to be around alcohol, what am I going to do in all these scenarios? Where's my lifeline? And then again, to that point, the second part is people who are the people in my life that know me well enough to know when they need to check in with me, but also people that I know that I can reach out to when it gets hard.

And I have those four or five people that I know would answer tomorrow. I have way more than that, but I have the regular people that I know without a doubt any time of day. I can call and they know me well enough to know exactly how to respond. So I know it's not always easy. And again, having a plan and having the lifeline of other people is so important at this time of year. So hopefully you all have wonderful plans here for the holiday week. Hopefully you get some downtime, some rest, the ability to bring a little peace and serenity into life.

and hopefully you can take some of this gratitude stuff and run with it because I think gratitude, it's one of the three pillars of my life and it's one of the critical keys that actually got me here to the place I'm at. When we're grateful for things, it's this cycle where more of that comes and it's a fascinating thing but it is a real thing in my life and the lives of so many people I know. Take some of that with you, have wonderful weeks, spend time with your loved ones, do all the things, be happy, be joyful.

And if that isn't all that possible, then just know that there are some of us out here who are trying to do that for you and would love to share some of that with you. and reach out, but so look forward to catching up again next weekend. Again, thank you for tuning in and for taking some of this and running with it and making the world a little bit better because you're showing up and practicing these things.