Sunday Serenity

Good evening, everybody in the cadre sphere. Hope you can hear me. I'm doing the earbuds tonight. I think it drowns out the echo a little bit more. I am Jason Lennox and I'm here with Sunday Serenity. Happy to be back, Sharon. Again, Jason Lennox and I like to say I'm your resident recovery champion, just here to talk about all things recovery. For me, that's from substances, alcohol, mental health. So just across the board and really the angle on Sunday Serenity is to think about creating a life that's full of serenity, peace, whatever you want to call it, that doesn't have us go back to the old lives that we once lived.

Because I believe that addiction and the way that my life turned out was a product of lack of serenity, a lack of peace in my life and just always seeking that somewhere else out there. So that's what I'm here to talk about. I want to talk today about just the exercise of doing it. What I mean by that is, when I got into recovery, I didn't really know what that was going to, what it was going to be like. And frankly, I didn't feel like there was even a chance that I could get well. And certainly I didn't have a playbook.

I didn't have something that just made me believe that this is how life could be. I just had to do it. I said to wake up and figure out how one day, even if I was in treatment, to continue to stay in treatment, to do what they said, to move to the 12 steps, etc. So it's really just all about doing it. But I want to give a couple examples of this that maybe pointed out a little more relevant, a little more recent. Today I went to a gym. I'm training for a high rocks. It's a fitness competition. that I'm doing at the end of the month, actually the beginning of May in Portugal.

And I've been training in my home, the gym at my apartment building for quite some time and a couple months call it. So it's stations, 8 stations of different kinds of really endurance exercises. And then there's a 1K run, so about 2/3 of a mile before every station. And I've been training with the running. The problem is I only have five of the exercises available at my apartment building, so I've been missing the three that are actually the first three. Anyway, long way of saying so for two months I've just been training bits and pieces trying to figure this thing out.

Today I went to a gym that I bought a membership at that I could actually set up the entire High Rocks competition and do a simulation, actually do it beginning to end. And I'm telling you, compared to what I was training for and what I was thinking and just piecing it together. This thing was nothing close to that. It absolutely destroyed me in many ways, knocked me down harder than I thought it would. So it got me and I've been planning to do one and then try to do another one before this event.

My point is this. all the preparation, all the running that I wanted to do, doing the other exercises, the five that I can, reading all the tips, the tricks, doing everything that I've been looking at online, that is not going to do the trick. I actually just need to get out and do the thing. And then I need to do it again and then I need to do it again. And I don't know how many times I'll do this because it's just a lot of running and I've got some trouble with some knees. So That's one example.

I was never going to understand what it was like until I just went and did it. Again, it applies to recovery, to mental health. Sometimes it's not a fitness competition. It's just getting on a bed and trying to figure out how to be grateful for the day. I talked about that two weeks ago, gratitude, and this is about making that list. So I want you to think about as I'm sharing these examples of something in your lives that you're really looking to do, if it's trying to eat better, if it's trying to exercise more, if it's trying to, relationship things, kids, family, travel, whatever the case is, think about how this applies because again, there's only one way to really get better and to learn how to do these things and it's just by going out and doing it.

I can't get from the couch doing no exercise to running 5Ks to doing that until I actually get out there and just start running, right, build my way up. So That's the one example. The other example I'll give is my dear friend Luke, who's the founder of Cadre, also has Monday motivation. So if you get up early on Monday mornings, you can watch him in the 8 o'clock hour. Check him out. You'll love all of his stuff too. We went on a 500 mile walk last summer across there, last fall I should say, across the Appalachian states, six of them.

in the name of substance use, mental health, drugs, alcohol, and suicide, all the people that we lost. And we walked 500 miles over, call it, 3 1/2 weeks. And I remember when I was leaving, we had a media guy who essentially said, how do you prepare for this kind of thing? And my response was, you don't. I don't want anyone. I don't know how to because this takes 8, 9, 10 hours a day to do. and who has 8, 9, 10 hours a day to just go out and walk 20, 25 miles. So the point was there was really no training, but we got out there and we just did it.

You can only do it by doing it. So we get out there and Luke's line that I absolutely love is so true in all of these things I've been talking about. It's only hard until it's not. There was a point through that walk called the first week. I've got blisters everywhere on my feet, like a dozen of them. Just not good. It hurt to walk. Every day sucked getting up. The body is just not used to that. And then all of a sudden we forgot about it. was like week two. It just nothing. I wasn't feeling those things.

Still had some things, you know, sore here and there, but just generally it was got easier. It wasn't hard all of a sudden. And by the end it was like, yeah, just get up and walk 5 miles. We'd grab a little water and have a little snack, walk another five, do it again, do it again. 20 miles done. Here we go. It's only hard until it's not. Again, just getting out there and doing it. And so this summer we're going to do the entire perimeter of Minnesota, which is just shy of 1,800 miles. It's going to be a 3 1/2 month journey.

And the only way to get out there and figure out how to do it is just to get out there and do it. So again, I want you to think about where in life some of these things seem so much bigger. We're in the middle of them, again, like a gratitude list of 100. That seems like a lot, but there's only one way to figure out if that works, if I can do that. There's only one way to get practice, and it's just to go and do it. And again, if it's getting to meetings, if it's figuring out how to find another day of sobriety, if it's working with the therapist, the relationships, exercise and nutrition are always good ones.

We read all the things, we have all the intentions, we have all the desires. But until we actually just go and start doing it, will not matter. We will accomplish nothing. There is no way to get through it, to get to the other side without just doing the thing. So we gotta do it. That's the way to make this happen, to live this kind of life, to do big things, starting businesses, if it's better eating habits, if it's exercise, doing these competitions, like I said, I'm doing, there's only one way that I'm ever gonna get out there and figure that out.

and do it well and that's just by doing it. And I learned that very important lesson today as I suffered through nearly two hours of that exercise regimen and wanted to give up several times in there. So we got to do it. We just have to do it. That's the way that we get from point A to point B and there's no other way around it. If I want to go from here to there, I need to do the things that it's going to take to get there. There is no magic pill, unfortunately. Maybe they'll create one. I don't know.

But I think the journey is just as important. So let's get there and do it. Pick one thing. What's that one thing that you've been thinking about that's been up here that I really want to do? I want to do this. I want to accomplish this. I want to change this. Put it down on paper. What's the thing? What's it going to take to get there? It's probably just going to be practicing. It's going to be doing it a little more. And I promise you, it's only hard until it's not. The exercises I was doing leading up to this simulation, they sucked in the beginning.

They still kind of do, but they got easier. I got a little faster, I got a little better, but I actually had to get out and do the thing. I couldn't take the bits and pieces and try to put them together. I actually have to go do the thing to understand how I'm going to perform. So that's what I have on Sunday Serenity. I think on the note of Serenity, it also lends well to knowing as we try to internalize and think about the things that we want to do in life, that sits with us. So if I say I want to eat better, I want to exercise better, we make the New Year's resolutions, whatever the case might be, and I don't do that, there's an integrity out there, and I'm going to feel that, and I might not recognize it and think about it, but it's going to sit within me, and it's not going to feel great.

And so just getting out and doing it, taking the step, and maybe it's not for us. Maybe you don't want to change the eating habits after all. You don't try it, but we got to do it. We got to stick with it. We got to see what the results are. Give it a try for a few months. And you know, again, we're not out of integrity, out of alignment internally with who we know we want to be versus who we are and kind of how we're acting and behaving. So it applies across the board. I think integrity, keeping the slate clean and living up to who we could, would and should be.

is such a massive part of recovery and keeping us well. So hopefully you got that one thing, the thing up here that you've been thinking about and you can go take notes, you can write that down and you can go, this is what it's gonna take, this is what I need to do to do it and then just go and try it. Do it one day, do it a couple days later, do it the next day and then before you know it, it's not hard anymore. So go do the thing, that's the only way to do the thing and it's only hard until it's not.

I will leave you with those two things And look forward to seeing you again soon. Have great weeks, everyone. Bye bye.