Sunday Serenity - Creating Gratitude When It Isn’t There

Good evening. Happy Sunday to everybody in the Cadre sphere. I think week number three coming at you with that thing. I'm gonna hit you hopefully every Sunday until Christmas with that little picture in that background. I'm excited to be here. My name is Jason Lennox and I like to say I'm your resident recovery champion. Here to talk about all things recovery for me from many, many substances, but also mental health and just day to day life. We all go through it, I think, and we're all in some version of recovery.

But again, much of my recovery comes in terms of alcohol, drugs, things like that. So I jump on every Sunday, Sunday evening, 7pm for Sunday Serenity. That's central time. And I think serenity is one critical keys to recovery, but also just, well, being, peace, a life of just fulfillment. And I believe that was a lack of serenity and peace in my life was the reason that I kept falling back into drugs, to alcohol, looking for that peace and that sense of comfort elsewhere. So that's what Sunday serenity is about.

Hey, good evening. Kathy from East Erie, Pennsylvania. Great to see you. And my title tonight was Creating gratitude when it isn't there. Because if you're anything like me or any other human on the planet for that matter, there are times in life sometimes, often that feeling grateful, that feeling of gratitude, things to be grateful for, just that mindset slips away. We get caught up in the, in the chaos and everything else that's going on in the, in the world, in our work, in our home lives, family holidays, all these things can bring about feelings that take us away and kind of shield the gratitude.

So creating gratitude when it isn't there because we know that not always will it be there. So I want to share a few different ways and I want to just dive into a real life example, but three different ways I'll call it that I've found to really kind of manifest gratitude and or just bring it to the surface because I feel like it's always there once we get into a certain discipline and habit. But sometimes we just need to bring it back to the surface. So three ways that I do that first of all, tell you a long way, although it's very effective and very powerful.

One time I was at a treatment center early in my recovery and somebody had left a little meditation, daily meditation thing, just with tips, tricks, things like that on my bed. And it said to make a list of 100 things that I was grateful for every day until I felt something change. And I took that challenge on and it was not easy. In the beginning, I sat and I looked around the room. I got stuck. 100 things is a lot. I didn't think I could do it, but that consisted of things like characteristics, personality traits.

So things about ourselves, things about our environments, things about our relationships. We're just really forced to think when we make a list of a hundred. But sure enough, as I began to think about those things and had to look around and go, okay, toothpaste, the lights, warmth, all those things, and inward, right. The things that I did appreciate about myself there weren't a lot then because it was new to recovery and had a long history of a bad life that I was running from. But I got to 100 and I did that.

And I did it every day for like three weeks, I think, and just could tell that there was something different. The way that I looked about things. I appreciated things a little bit differently. And so I did it. I took it as a challenge. And again, some days it was easier than others. Some days it just overlapped with a lot of the things. But I just put the pen to paper and I just did it. So that's one way, that's one way of doing it. And I would recommend doing that for a couple weeks. Even if it's a list of 50.

You can trim that down a little bit. Yes, it is ambitious. But again, I took that challenge. I just was, you know, hungry for anything that was going to make a real difference for me. So number one, we can make these long lists and really just write out. And by the end of it, it's like we're feeling this and there, there's a lot there. So it really helped me in the moment. Second way I'll say that I've done this is I remember just a few Novembers ago, every single day in November, I made a point to think about somebody who had made a differ my life.

And I sent them a message or a call. I reached out to them somehow to let them know just what kind of difference they made for me and that I wasn't grateful for them and so on. And I gotta tell you, as much as that was powerful to send off those things and I'm sure to receive them from the others, what would come back to me was almost as powerful. I would hear things back and people. It would open the door for people to share back and just how much of a difference it made for some of those people in some of their times they were struggling, whatever the case might have been.

So and again, a month is a little bit ambitious, but Again, if it's one week, if it's two weeks, grabbing every single morning, thinking about somebody in life who's made a real difference, reaching out to that person, letting them know that you're grateful for them. And more importantly, why. I think that's very important, not just, hey, I'm grateful for you, thank you for this. It's really like, what do these people mean to me? And that was one of the most powerful exercises I'll probably never forget.

The third and probably simplest or simpler way of really sparking some gratitude is something I do every single morning. I make a list, a journal entry of three things that I'm grateful for every single morning. It's one of the first things I do. I think about the threes, the three intentions for the day. So three possibilities, and I share those with people. Three things I'm grateful for and three things that, that I hope to get done throughout the day. Another thing I do is dedicate the day to somebody.

But back to the three gratefuls. Today I'll just share. And I can tell you this works because before I came on, I was just thinking about this and thinking about these three things and it just elevated my mood significantly. So in writing these three things and thinking about them again, it's not just writing on paper. These are the three things that I'm grateful for. Why? What is it about these things that makes me grateful? What is about them that I'm grateful for? And the three things for me today, Sunday.

I am, especially on Sunday, grateful for Sunday. I think Sunday is probably my favorite day. It's a day that is usually filled with peace to serenity. Saturday. I'm still kind of reeling from the weekend, maybe trying to play catch up, usually running around a little bit more, trying to accomplish some things. Sunday tends to be a day where I'm at home a little more, get to wind down early and just kind of prep for the week, get my things in order. And so Sunday tends to feel like the most peaceful day.

So I was grateful. So Sunday was first on my list. And that's why I'm grateful for the ability to reset, to plan, to prepare, and to just do all the things. 2. Family. My life revolves heavily around my family. I have a large family, many different branches, and I try to spend a time of lot, a lot of time with all of them. S. bank Stadium for the Minnesota State High School League Football Championship. A cousin of mine and her daughter and got to spend some time there with them. From there, I drove to a suburb where I got to spend time with another cousin, go out to dinner and hang out a little bit after with some of the kids.

So got to do that Saturday. And then today had first of the few family Thanksgivings, another area with another branch of the family. So family and I journal regularly and it's a theme in all of my journaling that when I am spending time with my family, inevitably I feel better about everything. It is what makes me feel best when I'm with my family. It's my number one. So family was the second thing I wrote down. Lastly, the holidays. Holidays, thinking about them. And I wanted to touch on that because I know it's not always easy, especially early in recovery.

Look, holidays, they used to be my favorite time of year when I was a kid until they weren't. And holidays turned into something else. They turned into fear of showing up in front of the people, wondering what they're going to think, having to spend time with people. Maybe I was just running from them. So I wasn't even attending holidays. They tended to be just times of heavier partying and me doing things that are regretted. So it just never really felt like a good time of year. I dreaded it a lot.

I missed the joy and all the things that came with the holidays as a kid. And now since, you know, getting into the recovery world and for about the last 15 years almost having spent time here each year, the holidays have meant a little bit more and creating experiences, intentionally spending time with family like it's back to being my favorite time of year. And again, it wasn't always that way. So if you don't experience that today, that's all right. That is perfectly all right. Again, we just create these kinds of experiences.

So give you a few examples of holiday experiences. Just told you, usually the first Thanksgiving comes before the week. Do the turkey trot Thanksgiving morning. So Thursday morning that's going to be happening. It's going to be cold this year. It's been cold the last few years. But then I go and spend time at my great aunt's and we do the Thanksgiving tradition. That's been ever since I've been on this planet. That's been what we've done. So really kind of tapping into that nostalgia there as from again that I used to experience as a kid.

Then usually there's setting up the tree on Friday with family and then even later the weekend with family. My birthday almost always comes after that. So that mixes in weekend after Thanksgiving. So next weekend we Do a Christmas opera as a family, and that's just for November. And then we get into December and I do several things there. Seeing some lights, going to see the holiday train. We've got Christmas Eve, we've got Christmas Day. And just many times of gathering with family and, you know, being intentional about these things.

So holidays were the third thing that I was incredibly grateful for and again, didn't always used to be the case. So if it's not for, you know, that it doesn't always have to be that way. We can get back to that childhood feeling and then all that gratitude we used to have for the holidays if we did. So those are, you know, just a few ways that I create gratitude again. We can do those long lists and run those things out for a couple weeks and we will see a change. We can make a list of people that we're incredibly grateful for and actually turn that into action, let them know that we're grateful, why we're grateful.

That's an incredibly powerful exercise. And then three things every morning, it's very simple. What are three things that come to mind? For me, a lot of those show up on repeat, but, you know, it just starts my mind there and I can think about why, what are those things do for me? Why do I feel grateful for them? And I can explain in my own head the way that I just did with you. So it really lifts me up and brings me to a good place. And yes, Kathy, the breaths of joy, love that whisper of a memory, murmur of a creek and the hush after a deep conversation.

Those are experiences, sounds, feelings, and absolutely love those. Thank you for sharing those. And hopefully you can grab some of these. You can grab the three things. Maybe try that for the next week. I know it's not always an easy time of year, but it is Thanksgiving. It is a reason to express a little more gratitude. And I just find these different tools very beneficial for me. And hopefully you can find something in there as well. So look forward to seeing you next Sunday. It'll be right on the tail of the Christmas opera I told you about.

So I'll be feeling some things there and being grateful for time with family. But until then, I hope you all have wonderful weeks and get time with your families and loved ones to reflect. Talk soon.