Sunday Serenity: The Power Of Intention

Good evening everyone in the Cadre sphere. I am Jason Lennox, coming at you with Sunday serenity. And just like to introduce myself as resident recovery champion for you. And all that means is simply that I am a champion for recovery in recovery, with recovery, all things recovery. It is my life and passion to be working in this space, to be sharing in this space, to be leading in this space all the things. And excited to be coming at you here as we're winding down the year. I've got the last Sunday serenity here before Christmas and give you a little picture of the old tree.

Oh, there's a, there's an addition to the tree picture this week. I don't even know how many gifts are on there. I know I ran out of a 36 pack of tags, so there must be 40 some in there, something like that. Hey, good evening. Speak wonder. So it's one of my favorite things. This is my favorite, second favorite moment of the year when I get all those wrapped and put under the tree and can stare at them. First is of course, watching a lot of the folks in my family and my loved ones open them. So excited to be coming at you.

And again, last one before a holiday. Many, many people celebrate here this week. Christmas. I schedule out my day by the outside of meetings, before work, after work. All the things doesn't always go that way. Oftentimes things shift around. But it gives me a framework for the day and it tends to lead me in the right direction. So as it relates to time being very intentional about what I am doing, what I'm not doing, you know, mapping out what that looks like instead of just rolling into the day sideways and just watching the calendar going here and here.

And sometimes that happens. But being very intentional with time helps me manage all the things. Personal work, business, colleagues, friendships, recovery, everything in between. So that's where I look at intentionality as it relates to time. Then there's something I've been thinking about a lot. Because when I got back from this 500 mile walk in October across six states, I had been running all year, spent the first quarter of the year back and forth. My brother, my aunt, two people were very near and dear to me, one on hospice and the other with a stage four cancer diagnosis.

New and that was the first quarter and then the next quarter I ended up taking a few trips to one to Ireland, Hawaii, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, I'm sorry. And then a trip across the mountain west and then third quarter, geared up for this 500 mile walk and planning and a couple Weddings and just all things life. And ended up going on the walk. And so I said for November and December I'd be very intentional about the entire season and staying home and not traveling a ton. And that's, that's what's happened.

And getting myself into the Christmas spirit is something I try to do each year. And every year I say, this is the year I'm going to do all things Christmas. And once you know it, I don't really get intentional about it. The season comes and goes. Life gets so busy, and here we are, it's the beginning of the next year. So this year I decided to plan out every single week, weekend I would do something and you know, it was different music shows, Pentatonix with actually one of you on here and a few others.

And that was a blast. And then took a trip to Stillwater. I went to a big store that sells a lot of Christmas stuff. I watched Home alone, Home Alone 2 doing the wrapping. So every night now in the last week or so, just really gearing up for Christmas, I've been being very intentional about something and getting it on the calendar. And that's made a real, real different. So that's intentionally as it relates to seasons, I guess, activities, things like that. And the last thing, probably most important, the power of intentionality as it relates to kind of bigger goals and dreams and passions and things of that nature.

I told you I met with someone this afternoon, Luke, and we just talked about goals 20, 26. And I learned that even if I throw those things down on paper and don't always get back to them, don't always review them, as the year goes on, they tend to happen. And I think my biggest problem and interesting take on this is I was thinking a lot about intentionality and the goals and how that really drives, drives us in the right direction. I don't think I had bad intentions in the old days. I just think I lacked intention, period.

I was just out there surviving and I was just out there thinking about all the things that were going wrong and how did that all happen to me. And when I spend all my time thinking about what's not working for Jason, it's. It's a very self centered place to be and tends to keep me looking again to the external things. The drugs, the alcohol, the money, the, the food, all the things to make me feel better. Because I have no intention, I have no path, I have no purpose. I'm not really looking forward to anything.

Instead, I'm just trying to mask the pain, drown the Pain, hide the pain, all the things. So being very intentional with goals, when it comes to business, when it comes to friendships, when it comes to personal relationships and family and just nutrition and wellness, all those things are very, very important and make such a difference. And again, if I can master some of those, and I don't, I don't hit all of them, not by a long shot. But putting those things down, keeping my head down, understanding this is what I'm aiming for, this is my purpose, this is my passion, these are my goals.

And they're all rooted in either becoming a better version of me or helping others become better versions of themselves. I got a much better chance of making this thing in recovery because, again, I'm not thinking about all the things that aren't working. I'm not wondering what's going wrong in Jason's life. And I'm not, you know, over here creating my little story about everything. Instead, I'm out there thinking about what I can do for other people and what I can do for Jason that puts Jason in the best place, the best position to be that person for other people, to lead businesses, to lead initiatives and to lead movements and change and things to that sort.

So I think the power of intention is so underestimated. I did a lot of studying early on in my recovery and the law of attraction and just the things that we know when we put things down on paper, when we set them out in front of us, we're much more likely to get to them. I don't have all those statistics, but I've seen some 10, 10x, maybe 15 times. Just more likely to accomplish things if we get them out and we get them down on paper, somewhere out there, we talk about them with our close ones.

So the power of intention as it relates to our bigger pictures in life is something that's been so valuable to me and kept me from going back to that old life. Because when I'm thinking about my goals of building a bigger recovery road, building a bigger business, supporting Cadre, creating better friendships, becoming better in the world of nutrition, wellness, and just all those mindful practices when I can do that, there's so much more to get up and go for, so much more to live for. There's so much more to be happy and satisfied about.

And as Luke was sitting across from me today, asked me, are you genuinely happy? Because he shared an experience about being in the room with eight people. And the person said, look, when there's a room of eight, seven people are just not really that happy. They're not. They can't completely say they're satisfied with where they're at and what they're doing. Be the one person and that was the message you got. And I thought about that and I thought long and hard. And I think at the end of the day I'm very satisfied with life, with what I have.

I'm grateful. There's a ton of beauty in life and there's a lot of pain. There's a lot of hard stuff too. We carry this weight of this industry and mental health and those things as leaders, as champions, as people who want to advance this work. It gets hard, but there's so much meaning and beauty behind it. And I just wouldn't have it any other way. But that all starts with these little get togethers like a Sunday afternoon when I just didn't want to really be out and about. But that's what we do.

We get it down, we speak it out into the world, we share it with people that we're accountable to and we just continue to press forward. So there's so much more behind intention, but that's a little snapshot in the power of intention. Intention with time being very particular about how my time is spent and documenting that well and understanding what I'm going into on a day to day basis. Being intentional about seasons and about activities and time with family and holiday events, things like that, and then being very intentional about the bigger picture of life.

Those are three ways in which I use intention and we'll continue to and hopefully you can do the same again. I hope you all have wonderful holiday plans and you've good time with family or that you just have peace wherever you might be on the journey with family, without family. I'm not entirely sure if I'll be on next Sunday. I head out to Vietnam on Friday, the day after Christmas and I'm spending 15 days there with nine of my closest people. So we're going to have a blast over there and in Thailand and creating those memories 13 hours ahead.

So you may or may not see me. Maybe I can pop on in the morning over there, which should still be Sunday night here, but I will keep everyone posted there just in terms of how that goes, how the time change plays out. But hope you all have wonderful, wonderful weeks and time with family and we will talk to you very, very soon. Thank you.