Sunday Serenity

Good evening, Happy Monday. This is Jason Lennox. I am coming at you with Sunday Serenity on Monday. So we could call it Monday Serenity, but it just won't be the same. So Sunday Serenity it is again. I'm Jason Lennox and I like to say I'm a resident recovery champion here at Cadre, which just means I'm here to talk about all things recovery. I'm a champion for this work, in this work with this work, for all the things we do. And that comes from my own experience, lived experience, suffering through the pains of substance use, addiction, mental health.

Many, many years of struggling with those things landed me in recovery. And so I'm just here to share tips, tricks, all the things about what works, about what I've learned and about just day to day stuff that's happening. I want to talk a little bit. I was in New Orleans here this weekend, went down Friday, got back today, had a conference. It's an annual conference that I attend the speakers association. One of my favorite events when I went to this thing five years ago, it was one of the, I'll call it the top seven weekends of life that just in terms of impact and how it changed the way I thought, the way I felt, who I was, my trajectory of professional career, etc.

I've gone every year, with the exception of last year. They actually have two in the one in the winter, one in the summer, and I've gone to all of them except one, which was last winter. I had an aunt who is on her last days, so I opted to stay with her and, and I've loved almost all of them. And this year I just found myself thinking a little bit differently and it's a thing. I think they're probably saying the same thing for years, but maybe it's just we get into different places and my mindset was just a little bit different.

So one of the things I kept hearing was about how everybody in the room was really just looking to take the next step, really break through the wall and just become this person that's known, become the next this name, become the next this name. Hang out with this person, be like that person. And we did a lot of interactive exercises at our table where we talked and again, the same conversation was coming out. I want to be like this. And so we shared a little bit about what we do, what our biggest challenges are, and then we got feedback.

And a lot of the feedback for me was really, again along these lines of how to position as, you know, this person, the go to the etcetera And I just had a hard time aligning with it. And the reason why is because so much of what I heard this weekend and what people were trying to do felt more like it was about visibility, about the spotlight, about the Persona, about the, you know, just being the person that everybody knows and less about what matters to me, which is the impact. So for me, I just.

This fundamental question in my head, do I care more about spotlight and influence while I'm here? Do I care more about the impact? And for me, the answer is always impact. And I get that the spotlight, the influence, the things like that can actually lead to more impact. So there's definitely a little bit of both that have to happen. But in all we do, I was taught this early in recovery, my life wasn't about me anymore. It wasn't about what I was going to do. It was about how I could pack into this world.

And I took that quite literally when I had early, early mentors saying, you just. You got to get out there and you got to serve people. You got to figure out how to give back. You've been given this gift. Now it's about giving it away. And I really took that to heart, and I really dedicated life to being about what that impact is. And so I was thinking about this, if you want to call it influence, spotlight, whatever, where people just kind of know that dies when we do. And impact is something that can last.

I mean, look, last month, we celebrated a guy who's been gone for 60 years, Martin Luther King. You know, every month of the year, there's. We just went to President's Day originally for George Washington. That guy's been gone for, you know, centuries. And so just thinking about what. What impact means that can last long after we're gone. And that's what I'm out to do. And I frankly don't even care if that has my name on it. But how can I do things in my life? And this is, you know, for recovery, personally, professionally, how can I do things that make difference for the long run, for the most people, long after I'm gone and independent of me?

And I think if. If we could all hold on to some version of that, I think our world would be a little bit better, and we'd be a little bit happier. And, you know, in the end, the more people would be impacted. Again, for me, these strategies that everybody's trying to figure out this weekend were about getting my name out there, doing the next hot thing, gaming the social media system, all these things. And frankly, again, to some extent, some of that's necessary, some of it's necessary evil to play the game.

But the reality is I'm about figuring out how we can have the biggest impact. Because I think when we can work in impact, work and trust, build something that's based on how we do something better, I think naturally we become the experts in our own lives and professional lives. And because of that, that's what people are attracted to. The Amazons of the world, these football teams, if you're talking some of the products like Tesla, a lot of these things people didn't try to figure out first how to just be in the spotlight and to go around and win that game.

It was really about how do we build products and how do we think about long term ways to change this world. And again, the Abraham Lincolns, the George Washingtons, the Martin Luther Kings sacrificed, you know, popularity and being the popular one in the name of long term impact. And I just think so much of that applies to recovery. We put on the show, we were out there drinking, we were out there using drugs, we were the best. We pretended like we had it all together, we did all those things. The reality was for me, deep down, I was suffering the whole time.

And it was not leaving an impact. It was, I take that back, it was, it was leaving a very negative impact, but lasting legacy, positive impact. All those things really come from doing the right thing. I talked about that a couple weeks ago or last week. It's just about doing the right thing. And the last thing I'll end with, there's a guy I met this weekend and he was 25 years old, just visited all 195 countries. Youngest person to do it. Blew my mind. I mean, I had gone to call it six states by the time I was 25.

I just did my first apartment, for crying out loud. And this guy's seen the entire world, all 195 countries. And I said, you gotta tell me, man, what's the one thing, the one thing that you come back and that just stood out, that you remember that will just stick with you forever? And he said, you know, universally I think when you do good by people, they do good by you back. And when you're good to people, they'll be good in return. Respect is universal. So that's kind of how I summed it up in my head.

And I just thought, right in line with what I was talking about, we do the next right thing. We be good to people. We do this work both personally and professionally just to make a difference and do that for other people and the long term impact that we can have. And I think things tend to work out. So that's what I got. I think we're good to people, we do the right thing and we think about the actions we take being rooted in impact versus, you know, temporary spotlight, visibility, whatever it might have.

Because again the reality is when, when my time's up on this planet, what I'm able to do in that spotlight is gone. But what I was able to accomplish that made a difference for people that made a lasting impact that can live on for a really long time. And so that's where, that's where I like to spend my time. I hope you all have had wonderful starts to your week and look forward to doing this again next week. Until then, I hope again you all have good weeks. We'll see you soon. Six days. Bye Bye.