Sunday Serenity

Good evening. Happy Sunday to everybody in the Cadre sphere. Watching, tuning in, watching a little bit later. I am happy to be here with you tonight. My name is Jason Lennox and I am your resident recovery champion. What that means I'm here to talk about everything. Recovery from substance use disorder, mental health and also just general well being, I believe they're so intertwined and the intersections between all of them are just hard to avoid and we see them all over the place these days. So again, here to talk about everything, mental health, substance use disorder and today I want to talk.

Hey, good evening. Speak wonder. Good. Good to see you here. I want to talk about mental health and the intersection with. Good evening, Sherry. With physical health and I want to give you an example of, of how that's played out for me in the last month. I think everybody here could agree that, you know, we carry stress and we, we have different places and different ways that things manifest physically when we're struggling mentally and maybe not even struggling but just having stress. And so about a month ago, I'll say beginning of October, I was out for a run.

I got back and I could just feel this pain in my neck and my upper back and just progressively got worse. And so by Tuesday morning I was in the chir. Emergency visit to the chiropractor. And then a couple more times that week I was getting ready to go out to the east coast so I had to fit some things in. Anyway, I went to the Cairo. Things felt a little bit better. I was gone for 10 days and kind of got back to normal, it felt like anyway. And then a couple weeks went by and there's just been a lot going on.

I was planning a the big surprise birthday for my aunt on her 70th birthday out east. Also 1114 was a big day. Just last week it was my buddy Brandon's day. You've heard me share a little bit. If you've been listening, you've heard me share. He passed away to suicide a little over a month ago. So all these things and I'm doing a lot of work there and just trying to stay afloat business, everything that's going on. We all have things in life and you know, they just continued to pile up. And so what happened was about a week and a half ago I got that pain that came back in my neck and my upper back and it got to like it was just this ongoing and it was actually kind of worrisome because just this little bit debilitating.

And so I haven't been working out my Point in all this is just mentally, I've been absolutely drained, thank goodness. This weekend, I kind of changed plans, 11th hour and decided I'm staying home all weekend. I'm not gonna plan anything. I'm not gonna do any work, and we'll just see where it goes. I end up doing a bunch of house cleaning, organizing. I got my tree up. Some of you agree with that, some of you not, but that's all right. It brings me a lot of joy. So I did all these things this weekend and, you know, got myself a little bit of a retreat.

But the interesting thing was, I told you, for about four or five weeks, I was not really doing the workouts that I would be doing. Course, that contributes to my mental health. And so not getting to work out, and the stress is adding up, and the stress is showing up in my shoulders. Thanks, Sherry. Same one. It's just the same thing. I put the exact same setup every single year. I love it. Simple, easy, but contributes to my mental health. And then again, because I'm stressed, I'm feeling a little more pain.

All the things can't work out. So what happened was, on this November 14th, the thing I committed to was raising some money for my buddy Brandon, his children. And I said for every dollar up to 11, 14 of them, 1114, I would do a burpee. And that money was raised pretty quickly, and we continued on and probably brought in a total of about 5,000 with some matching sponsors. But I knew I had committed to these 1,114 burpees. So there I was all last week going, should I be doing this back in the Cairo?

Should I be going? Should I be doing. That's a lot of burpees. That's probably the worst exercise I could think of for shoulders and backs. But I ended up doing it because I committed to doing it. I went and spoke at our old high school that morning. It was really busy day. Found my way back up toward the cities and found a gym, a landing spot, and I went for it. And I went at it. And it strangely ironic, surprisingly, I didn't even really stop. I hammered through those things much, much more seamlessly and easily than I thought I would.

But the interesting thing was, after that happened, I didn't really feel that neck pain that had been there for the better part of a month. It was practically gone. So I thought, all right, you know, I got some adrenaline, I got some things moving. Let's see. And the next day is Friday. Again, not really feeling a lot of it, not really feeling Anything there. I went to the Cairo, you know, he said, well, yeah, sometimes we just got to get moving. And, you know, and of course, the stress and some of those things coming off, it's probably all intertwined.

And, you know, yesterday, this weekend, like, maybe just a little bit, but mostly just not feeling anything. And so my point in all that is mental health, it can take a real toll physically. And, you know, physical health then takes a real toll mentally. And so it's probably a com of. I wasn't doing workouts, so I was feeling a little more stressed. All the things that I'd been doing kind of came to an end on that day. And, you know, I don't know. And maybe Brandon was just cheering along, giving some kind of massage or something.

But let me tell you what. Mental health, the. The impact that it has and the way that it manifests physically is a real, real thing. And I knew that, I've always known that. But I think something like this, where it goes from one extreme to the other and then it's essentially gone at the end of a very stressful month. And after 11, 14 burpees, that's the most baffling part. But my point to all of you is, again, mental health manifests physically. The question to ask is, are you feeling things physically?

Do you have pains and aches? And, you know, I have them all because I've had six knee surgeries, I've had back problems, I've had a lot of issues physically over time, but I continue to exercise and stay in good shape, do everything that I can do there, again, to keep my mental health in a better place. I mean, I go to the gym, let me tell you, and I work out and I go sit in the sauna for 30, 40, 50 minutes. It just. It all comes out and it's like the weight of the world is gone and. Good evening, Jules.

So it's. It really is physical health, the exercise, the way in which we treat our bodies, makes a real difference on us mentally and the way that we treat our mental health and, you know, how much that rest are we getting and how much are we trying to carry? I know sometimes I go and try to carry the weight of the world. Sometimes it feels like that's necessary, but I pay for it and I need to be mindful of that. So do you have that going on? Are you carrying a lot of weight? We've got families, we've got holidays coming up, we've got all the things.

And so how is our mental health? What does that state look like because if we don't take care of it, it's going to manifest physically and again prevent us from being active, from doing the exercise, all the things which contributes to the mental health. So I just thought it was very interesting that after one month of dealing with a real concerning problem in my upper back, neck, shoulder, I went out and hammered out an hour and 10 minutes of non stop burpees and it seemed like it was gone again.

There was a lot of other stress and stuff that kind of came to, came, came to an end that day, which is helpful. But here we are, we go out and we do this work. So that's not gonna stop. I need to recognize and know how again to take my care of my mental health. And that's why I said this weekend it's time to just stay home. And I don't know the last time that I've done that. I don't know the last time that you've done that. But I would highly recommend fitting a weekend in here before the end of the year.

There's no work, there's nothing planned. And it's just, let's see what the weekend brings. And ironically, I probably got more accomplished in a weekend than I would normally because usually I've got a plate that's so full that I spend the weekend trying to rearrange it and push stuff to next week's plate. And this weekend was just wide open and I got to play around and organize and clean closets and do all the things so grateful that I know where mental health plays a role in physical health and vice versa.

And ultimately all that leads back to me keeping a safe place in recovery. Because I know that as soon as I get too uncomfortable and as soon as I get too far into a bad mental state, physical state, the chances of addiction and everything that comes with that baffling disease, the chances of that rearing its head again is higher. So I know to take care of things sometimes I just need a little help from the other people, the people I have in my life. That's why I have them there. So, yeah, where is your physical pain showing up and how much of that is manifesting from the mental state and from all the stress and the things that we carry each day and how.

Oh, thanks, Larry. It's good to see you. Larry is one of the people that likes to keep me in check and need to keep me in check. So. Yeah, Sherry, work, life, balance and self care is so important. Yeah, we got to take a break and slow down sometimes, especially in our work in this industry, it's non stop. This kind of disease and the disorders, they don't stop. And so we don't really get a chance to stop. But sometimes we just need to, we get a little bit lighter, we get refreshed, we go back and we do it again.

But you're feeling the physical pain. If you're feeling the stress, you know, check in, check in with your people around you. Take a little breather, take a day, go get some exercise in, let it work all the kinks out physically, of course, with the, you know, guidance from medical consults. I'm not no doctor by any means, but I tell you what, that exercise made a real difference for me and it seemed to wipe away a lot of pain. So I'll continue doing that and continue to set aside some time on the weekends and hopefully you can do the same even during the week.

Big, big month and a half coming up at the holidays. I know they can be stressful. So it's even more important to make sure that we're taking care of ourselves physically, mentally, spiritually. All three facets of like to call overall health. So look forward to doing this again next week. As always, it's nice being with you, sharing some stories, hopefully bringing some serenity and some good ideas and tactics into your lives. And like I said, look forward to doing it again next week. Have great.