Sunday Serenity - Monday Version

Good evening to everyone in the Cadre sphere. This is Jason Lennox coming at you with Sunday Serenity special Monday version. Sunday serenity was supposed to happen and my phone was at about 7%, I think out and about walking. So it wasn't going to last long. So I thought I'd just postpone to Monday instead. Got a little more here. Hanging in the hotel in Brentwood, Tennessee and excited to be coming at you again from Brentwood, Tennessee and I'm Jason Lennox and like I say, I'm your resident recovery champion.

Hello, Speak, wonder. Good to see you. And what that means is I live, breathe and eat everything. Recovery from substance use, mental health, just generally love, wellness, fitness, nutrition, all the things. But I'm coming to you today with a little bit of a special edition again on Monday. I am in Tennessee nearing the end of a long walk. It was originally planned to be a 307 mile walk from West Virginia to Kentucky, to Virginia to Tennessee. Have since detoured and gone to southern Tennessee and to Georgia, over to Alabama and think I'm somewhere at like 460 miles at this point.

So 10 miles south of Nashville. This is a 307 mile walk for the 307,000 people we lost last year to drugs, alcohol and suicide in the United States. And this flagship 307 though, again it's gonna be closer to 500. This walk was meaningful. I'm landing at a conference, Nashville, and that's Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, gonna do a little speaking there and head back to the great state of Minnesota. And for those in Minnesota, I'm telling you, the more and more I get out, the more I realize just how great of a state we do have.

So I'm excited for that. But I'm coming to you tonight and just wanted to talk. Yeah, Matthew, Matthew Perry's memoir, Just A Brief Interruption There. He really, really had a tough life and I'm glad he wrote that book before it was over because I think we just have such a misconception and kind of stigma. And the reason we talk and we do what we do is to really illuminate what's really going on for people like you, me, those of us who've dealt with this. It's not most of the time, not what people think, but.

But I want to talk tonight about tapping into the hard and what I mean by that is the hard stuff. And I think for me, I realized early on in my own recovery and I hope other people can too, how challenging and how difficult, getting through addiction, substance use disorder and all the things that plague us from alcohol, from drugs. Getting through that, living through that life, and then you compound it with mental health. It's a challenge. It's a real challenge, maybe as challenging as anything I've ever done.

And getting on the other side of that really should help us understand just how we can succeed and actually get through the hard. And what I mean by tapping to the heart is I intentionally go for hard things and I try to do that first because frankly, it makes there's nothing quite like getting through something incredibly hard. Now, I do a lot of workouts, I do a lot of challenges. This nearly 500 mile walk, some might think it's a little bit wild out of this world. And for me, I gotta tell you, I'm not getting to the end of this going.

I just can't wait to cross the finish line. It's been the hardest thing ever. Not really. I have 16. I was thinking about this the other day. It's crazy to think, crazy to say. I have a 17 minute workout that I do. And I think there are plenty of times throughout that 17 minute workout where I'm more mentally fatigued and just kind of dreading and like, am I going to get there? This just so hard mentally. I think it hits me more in that 17 minute workout than it has on this 460 plus mile trip so far.

But my point is we tap into the hard because of that workout. Because I challenge myself, I'll just use that 17 team and workout as an example. I keep doing that, I keep doing that. It gets harder. I want to beat my time. I want to get better. It is the hardest thing that I do physically. It makes getting out here and walking 500 miles not nearly as hard again, when we can realize we've actually gone through some of the hardest things. We've gotten through things that are harder than most people will ever experience in life, period.

To come out the other side of addiction is such a hard thing. My buddy, our founder, Luke said this very well. It's only hard until it's not. That's the other thing. We choose the hard. And it's only hard until it's not. In other words, yes, it's hard to start. At some point it just becomes normal operating procedure. We started by walking, you know, 20, 25 miles a day, Blisters on both feet. Everything's hurting. It's brutal. Every five mile stretch is tough. And now it's a five mile stretch is just kind of a, you know, normal.

Just a quick leg of walking and that's all because again, it's only hard until it's not, until it becomes a new norm. Same thing. When we find recovery, we get further removed from the drugs, the alcohol, we start working out, we start eating better. All those things happen. So I always like to tap into the hard and go for that because again, I know it's only hard until it's not. I know on the other side of that is the most reward coming out of that 17 minute workout I do. I cannot tell you the relief and the feeling and just the rush I get at the end of finishing something like that, especially when I can break my record.

That doesn't happen often. It's been a while. But that is on the other side of the hard. A 500 mile walk. I'm getting to the end of this. I talked to somebody today who said, like, look, there just aren't a lot of people out there that can just say they did something like this. That's not what it's about for me. But it is something incredibly hard, rewarding. On the other side of it is, you know, something again, not a whole lot of people say or try to do. And really the point is to raise awareness, to have a greater conversation.

But tapping into the heart intentionally is something that I regularly do. It's something I challenge you to do one thing per week. What is really hard, is it having a conversation? Is it getting up and going to the gym, Is it eating right for three days out of the week? Is it something, something, something? We've all got those different versions. If it's at work, if it's starting a new venture, if it's, you know, writing the intro chapter to a book, there are plenty of examples where there are really, really daunting things in our lives.

We can chunk them out, we can take a little bit. I can try. I can. Instead of 10 rounds of the hardest workout may start with 7, or I can start with 6, even half 5. Let me start with 5 and work my way up. But tapping into the hard again, tapping into the fact that we've already done hard, incredibly hard. To be alive in most of the scenarios that we've lived through is a feat in and of itself. But then to get on this side and realize that we can continue to challenge ourselves and we can grow and grow and grow physically, mentally, spiritually to the point where, again, I just took a 500 mile walk almost and it just really doesn't feel like I'm wearing down.

I actually feel more energized now than I did at the beginning because I've mentally prepared and physically prepared myself through these regularly hard, consistent practices that I have that I don't always want to do. But I know on the other side of hard is an incredible feeling. So just not a ton else here this week. I am a little bit tired today, as you can tell. I've been hiding on the yawns for a little bit here. But tapping into the heart is what I've been thinking about today. Because again, it's.

We can do some incredible things. Our minds, our bodies, we get used to it. It's only hard until it's not. We get used to it. And all of a sudden what seemed painful and brutal last week is it's just a normal day at this point. So I hope you all find something that you can try. Something that's hard. If it's just that conversation, if it's just telling somebody what you've been meaning to tell them, good. Between if it's again starting a chapter of a book, if it's going to the gym, if it's doing the little extra bit, running on that treadmill, eating right, you know, skipping the ice cream for a day, I'm not going to do that too many days in the next week because I'm going to celebrate.

I've already been eating ice cream at least three of the last five nights, so it's not going to be anything new for me. But you get the point. Pick something hard. Just one thing. Go do it this week. You get to the other side and you realize it was only hard until it wasn't. Look forward to catching up with everybody again on Sunday. This Sunday. Sunday. Serenity. I'll tell you a whole lot more about this journey.