To have tremendous life is to be the hero of your story. Discover that everyone goes through adversity and anxiety. Everyone should be able to stay strong so that they can be an influence on others. These are the things Dr. Tracey Jones learned from her father and her time in the military. Listen to Tracey as she is joined by Ken Gerber of Your Amazing Life podcast on how to live to the fullest. Tracey is a speaker, author, veteran, and President of Tremendous Leadership. She believes that everyone can live a tremendous life, it just takes time. Learn the importance of books, how to fight anxiety, the difference between power and influence, and more.
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Thursday Exchange With Dr. Tracey Jones On Building A Tremendous Life
We have Dr. Tracey Jones, who is an author, speaker, veteran publisher, podcaster and international leadership expert, who is currently serving as the President of Tremendous Leadership. She is a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy, a decorated veteran who served in the first Gulf War and the Bosnian War. Tracey is the author of ten titles, five of which are children's books. One of them SPARK is an Amazon new release. You have been reading personal development books, most of your life, Tracey. What difference do you think that's made for you?
It made all the difference in the world it can and I have to tell you, my father was a bookaholic. He was a book pusher. He flunked out of school in the eighth grade. His mother left him and abused him. He came out of the depression era, born in the South, everything was against my father. Charlie "Tremendous" Jones said when I was a young girl, “You're going to be the same person that you are today five years ago, except for two things. The people you meet and the books you read.” He was a living embodiment of that. I tell people I picked up How to Win Friends & Influence People before The Poky Little Puppy.
He was very much, "You're going to read good content. You're going to fill your brain with great stuff." Trash in, trash out. Good in, good out. That's how we earned our allowance too. We all had jobs and we worked and volunteered, but we would do read personal development books, autobiographies. As I said, How to Win Friends & Influence People, The Power of Positive Thinking and Pilgrim’s Progress. All this great foundational literature can, in the end, taught me that no matter how I feel or how I act, everything begins in your mind, As a Man Thinketh.
I did not like that growing up because I wanted to play and goof around and watch stupid stuff on TV, the Boob Tube. He took the TVs out of the house while we were growing up and he's like, "You don't need to watch this stuff." I'm so thankful for it now. I was like, "Why can't you just be normal? Why do you have to be so weird with us?" Thank God for that bizarre upbringing, because in the end, it built this awareness, resiliency and willingness that I don't have to fear failure because I've read that great people all went through the really tough stuff. Way tougher stuff than I'm ever going to go through.
Can it help me understand that adversity is my friend? It's there to teach me and I control through my habits, how I feel and how I process with this beautiful frontal lobe of the cortex. I can always say I hated that all the time because there were times where I was in different careers where I was on a need-to-know basis, not a need to grow. Eventually, the pain got so severe, I said, "I got to get back to my roots." It made all the difference in the world.
Tell me about the goal of changing the world one book at a time.
In my research and what I am most fascinated about is what I call the Imago Dei, “What God calls, the God sees in all of us.” I exist in this world to serve others by helping them liberate the greatness within them. A lot of people may feel like, "Tracey, you had this upbringing where you sat under the tutelage of all these different people,” and that was an incredible blessing. Other people have been around great people and they have not absorbed it.
There are two things. You have to have this enabling context, but the person has to be open to be willing to accept it. Books are the one thing, especially now with these things in our hand, that you can podcast. Back in the day, you'd have to order and wait until your book got here through snail mail or go to the library. There was always this resource and so we want to let people know that all it takes is that one book right at the right time where transforms your life.
Some people have come into my life at the right moment for such a time as this and I was willing to hear it and it changed my life. A book can do the same thing. That's what my father was, an unbelievable speaker and a presence that made you feel like you were the most wonderful person on the planet. He also let you know, "I'm going to leave and you're going to go back into the trenches. You need these books because the more you read, the more you reprogram up here and then you reprogram in here and then you go out into the world a different person."
I've been thinking about this a lot in the last couple of days. I'm a veteran also and I have lots of veteran friends. There are many of them who do not like the title of hero. I think that everyone should embrace this hero and find out how they can be the hero to the world.
Remember, what you went through in life it's like, “Can some people say, ‘I'm not a leader.’” Yes, you are. If you woke up now, you have successfully navigated 100% of the challenges that came your way. For the people out there, thank you for your service and people say to me, "Did you go there?" I said, "It was an honor." Anybody that works to develop themselves is a leader, even if you're only leading yourself.
Anybody that goes out there and puts something higher than themselves before themselves, which we in the military did when we took that oath. It's no longer my life. It's Uncle Sam's. You are truly a hero. Parents are heroes. They give up whatever for the dreams of their kids. People in nonprofits and people in organizations that slave all night so that they can work hard and get the paycheck for other people to be able to draw on income.
These are all things that make people heroes. When you are showing up to be the most good that you can be and pouring that back into the world, that is the true definition of a hero. We know it and we see it, but we're our own worst enemy and until you can get rid of that stinking thinking or a Zig Ziglar would say, "You need a checkup from the neck up." I want to shake them and say, "You are a hero."
When was the first time you said, "Reading this really helped me through the situation?"
Tremendous Life: All it takes is one book, at the right time, to transform your life. Just like people who come in and transform your life, books can do that too.
As a little girl, of course, but then I got away from it. I'll tell you about the topic that you're talking about. It was in 2014 and I had lost my soul dog, Mr. Blue. I lost my once-in-a-lifetime dog. I've had many dogs since Mr. Blue. If God had a dog, it would have been Mr. Blue. He was it. I had come through a divorce and I left the military. Everything that I thought was going to be in my world forever was gone. I had this loss of him and in 2015, I had a lawsuit and in 2016 I lost my brother to addiction. I was falling apart, physically, mentally, professionally, spiritually and financially. I almost ran the business into the ground.
I was like, "How can I sit here and say life is tremendous. I don't think it's very tremendous." Do you know what I did? I went back to school because I thought, "If I can't interact with people right now, I've got to get in my headspace," and that's when I went back for my PhD. It was the best thing I could've done because I had to get out of my own way and I had to relearn my horrible habits and get on the path. I see other people on the path. Why can't I be on the path? I know I can get on the path, but I've got to do the work. I read a book called The Power of the Other by Dr. Henry Cloud. He's one of my favorite authors, Safe People, Necessary Endings and Boundaries. Necessary Endings, I give out to everybody and they're like, "Thank you so much for giving me that." Because there's bad out there, I'm sorry, folks. It's not Utopia. We live in a fallen world, but you put up the boundaries and you only allow in the good, and that's not selfish. That's the way it needs to be.
In his book The Power of the Other, I realized that I had all these people in my life. I had all these thoughts. I had all these things, all this stuff, all these habits but these were not good habits. They weren't necessarily bad, but in keeping them in my space, I had to get rid of them to prune away the dead disease or non-value-added, so I could open it up to the wonderful people that were my true advocates. Not my fairweather friends are not an acquaintance, but I realized, "I got to get very intentional about dialing in my health, my finances and that means I need to seek out the wisdom of these people and the rest of the stuff.”
I need the time sucks, the emotional vampires and the sugar. The buying stuff because it was high. I went crazy for the next four years. Crazy as far as, people would say, "Don't do it all at once," but I was in such a state of duress. For about three years after Mr. Blue had passed, I was in a low-grade state of depression. That took a physical toll on my body. My adrenal gland was shot and I would sleep probably fifteen hours a day. I had no joy and I was like, "Something's wrong?" They're like, "All your medical stuff is good," and I'm like, "Something's wrong. I cannot be this profoundly sad and tired all the time."
I went and I had a hormone panel done of eighteen vials and found out that pain and that stress and angst. Norman Vincent Peale said, "Anxiety has killed more people on the planet than anything else." I am not talking about if you have a diagnosed mental illness. My brother had that. I'm talking about when we let the world sink us and we need to be strong and adaptive and say, "No," and robust and regenerative. That was when I read that book. I had my 30-minute pity party and I'm like, "What are you going to do, Tracey? Are you going to quit? You can't quit. Get back in there," this little still voice said. It wasn't like I woke up and the birds were chirping and like Snow White, the deer were coming in and the customers were calling, but it was about a five-year process.
I'm telling to our readers out there, it was well worth it because little by little, I felt better. I got stuff under control. I had the right people and I had these wonderful affirmations that, "Yes, Tracey, you're on the right path." I pulled myself out of the valley. The beautiful part of the valley is there's rock bottom. Valleys only go so deep. They're not a bottomless pit. Once you hit it, but you got to suit up and get your right traveling partners, right knowledge, the right mindset and begin that upward climb. I did it by asking for help, by asking for the right advocates. Henry Cloud's book is all about advocates and an advocate is somebody that wants your success more than even you want it.
They were all out there, but I and my ego, pride, my fear were like, "I can do this." I've been to war. Can I run a little publishing company? None of us has meant to go through life alone. A lone sheep is a dead sheep and we are coded for attachment and to be in community and fellowship. That's why this past year was so hard on people and we still had to work at it. Books can be your community. Because if you can't get out or you have health compromise issues, I'm not asking you to put it on the line for that. When I realized the advocates, I went out and I had to be very intentional and they were all there. They didn't scold me like, "We were watching you go off the rails. What took you so long?" They were like, "What can we do for you? Who do you want me to connect you with?"
Everybody's like, "You had those people." I'm like, "You have them too. You'll find them." I call them Sherpas and they're all over scattered throughout your life, but you can't see them until you're ready to see them. You're ready to ask for help and authorize them and then you're going to activate what they've told you and do it. Because even though they tell me to do stuff, if I don't do the work, there's a term in the military, we say, "Peeing in the wind." Don't do that.
We are back with Tracey Jones and we were talking about mind space and getting that right and reading books that help us through these hard times now. You were in the Air Force and you're a Gulf War veteran. What did you earn through that?
The first thing I learned was we went out there and we were in our base X. We were out in the Emirates, which was a really cool place to see. What I love most of all about the Gulf War was number one, we went over there with a clear plan of attack. In other words, we let them know and we all landed early. We sat there for about four months. We went over in August and we sat there until January. I think it was the 16th the deadline. We all sat there and we built everything up and we gave him time and said, "You have until this time to go." I was a young Second Lieutenant and I'm like, "This is very cool." We went over. We were singular in our focus and we gave him a timeline. We hoped for the best, but we expected the worst.
Meaning that in those four months, we got more and more collaborations. It was like NATO. We had all these different people that are based and I would go hang out with the Italians and all the different people. It was such a collective thing where the world stood together and said, "This isn't a right thing. We need to stand together." That's what I remember most was the fact that it was so collaborative and it was so focused and then when we were done, we're off. We're done. It was a great thing to see as a young officer, but it also ruined me because not everything was that clear and nonpolitical. I was like, "I'll never see anything like this again." I was right, but it was wonderful.
The other thing was when we got the call, I went to New Mexico Military Institute and the Air Force Academy. I had five years of military school. I can remember, I told my mom, I said, "We're going to get the call. We're going to go away." My Colonel called me in and he's like, "Are you ready to go?" I said, "If you go without me, I'm going to be very upset." He's like, "Okay." Meaning that you know it. It's not that I'm a Warhawk. It's not that I love death, but when I go to serve, it's like people that are doctors. I want to serve.
How could I say, "No, don't go. I'm scared." I wouldn't be a very good officer. If you ever saw the movie Hacksaw Ridge about the gentleman that was a conscientious objector, he still wanted to serve as a medic even though he didn't want to pick up a gun. I was most inspired that what I had gone to school for and what I had given my life to such as the military, I was getting to be in the higher purpose. That's what I remember of it and it was a glorious time. It was a wonderful learning experience.
What is the difference between influence and power?
Tremendous Life: When you are showing up to be the best that you can be and you're pouring that back into the world. That is the true definition of a hero.
Power is a directed-down thing. The military is very much like that. Not that there aren't great leaders there. It's a DVO, it's a Direct Verbal Order. You get Article 15, court-martial. Even if you talk to somebody with a sarcastic attitude, that's conduct unbecoming or insubordination. There's no, “I don't want to or I don't feel like it.” There are no feelings in the military and nor should there be because you're there to protect, not to feel. Protect and defend against all enemies foreign and domestic.
When I left the military, then I went into project management with applied materials in Austin, Texas, whereas a project manager, anybody out there has done that. You're responsible for everything as far as timeline and budget, but nobody works directly for you. You have no direct reports. You have to get it done through influence, meaning that you've got to build trust and social capital. You've got to be seen as credible. You've got to have this future vision that you can look ahead to.
You've got to be a great politician in a field that you're able to work among different silos and bring them together to create this finished product and put it out there, so the company can draw revenue in. Influence taught me and I always loved influence. Because I grew up with my father, who was in life insurance and in personal development, you don't get people to develop by hammering them. That was the military and that was cool.
I always had this strong influence streak, but it was cool to go into the civilian sector then and go, “Now you to do this,” while also understanding the beautiful processes, boundaries and rules of the military, which also have a good place. Henry Cloud’s Boundaries. Leadership is poetry and plumbing. You have the very esoteric, "I want you to feel me as a leader. I want this social capital. I want you to trust me," but the plumbing is, "If we don't get results, nobody's getting paid," and the lights go off and the doors get locked.
I love this soft and hard side of everything and I think my experiences in both those worlds were a nice way for me to see the importance of both. There are times where you tip more to your influence side, and there are times where you have the tip to your power side. If it's a crisis, you better tip to your power side. If it's not, if it's better to be relational than right, then you tip to your influence side. It all depends.
What do you think is an amazing life?
I think an amazing life is where you have dialed in your purpose. You and your purpose, not what you think you should be and this is tough because we've got our imprinting. We've got our genetic coding. We've got our influences, which are the things that some good, some bad. All of us here, what we grew up with and then we've got our aspirations. Where do we want to go? Life after ten starts layering this nonsense on you. Your mother will make a friend on because it's something you said. You'll have a bad teacher that if you fail a test makes you feel terrible. You have a friend that betrays you or a lover and you don't trust anybody again. Life is about peeling that off. I think your purest tremendous life is you get clear that you have everything in you.
You need to unlock the Imago Dei and I am a person of faith. If I can have the mind of Christ, the strength of Christ and the power of Christ, bring it on. Why would I not want that? When you really dial this in, then you can say, "It's not just me because I got my feeble little broken mind," but boom, you get infused with the greatest advocate. I can see things because things are being shown to me and you get this God nods. People start coming into your life, and before, I'd be like, "Yeah, whatever." Finally, I was so broken. I had to try it because I'm like, "I have nothing left in my quiver to try." I went to war. I'm not weak and I'm not a quitter, but I was done. It was over. There was nothing else I could do.
My tremendous life was when I finally stepped back and I let go. I let God and I stop blocking my own blessings, and I started getting intentional with my habits, my thoughts and my people. Every day I get a little bit clear on my purpose but when you dial in your purpose and purpose should be two words. I exist on this planet to serve. Kevin McCarthy taught me this, a verb and a noun. Mine is liberating greatness. I want other people to realize that if you're 1 or 100, the best is yet to come. I want to work to help people get that infusion and that spark.
Really dialing that in and in whatever way that manifests itself, be it in podcasting, books, writing or publishing, it all goes up to my mothership of why I'm put on this planet and what I'm going to be doing for the rest of my life and have it. Once you dial that in, it doesn't matter what the naysayers say. You can feel like quitting but you're not going to quit, because you may not feel it, but you know it.
Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich. You know your thoughts and your purpose. Once you dial those two things in, everything else clicks in and you are unstoppable. You may have some detours, you may have some setbacks, but nothing's going to stop you because you're going to be able to keep moving. Because you're doing your destiny, The Blues Brothers, “We're on a mission from God.” Nothing's going to stop you from getting there.
If you only had three ideas that you could leave for this world and your posterity, what three ideas would you leave for them?
Three ideas that I would leave is number one, write a book about your experiences because your experience is your expertise. My father always told me that things don't happen to us to break us down. Things happen to us to build us up so that we can become a mentor and more empathetic for somebody else. I would want everybody to realize, whatever you've been through, good, bad or ugly. Nobody likes the good stuff, because that doesn't happen that often.
Write your stuff down, share it with people. You went through this and you were victorious. Somebody needs your input. I also would commit to at least fifteen minutes a day of just reading great stuff. That's all you need and gradually, you'll see you want more and more, but make a commitment. The other thing is, every night before you go to bed, I want you to do a divine door experience where you imagined if tomorrow was the greatest day of your life, what would it look like?
Tremendous Life: Power is something that is directed down at others. While influence is about being trustworthy and credible towards others.
As you were falling asleep, rather than thinking about what you didn't get done, what you're stressed about, “It's 2:00.” No. Your subconscious is waiting to catapult you higher than Bezos and those guys ever went. Let your subconscious do the work, but you've got to get the conscious out of the way. I would say every night before you go to bed thinking you're most blessed day tomorrow. Dream off, drift off and you will start to see, as you develop this habit, your subconscious is finally going to go, "Now we get to take the lead and start getting these things there."
How do my readers connect with you?
There are two ways. You can go to TremendousLeadership.com or you can go to TraceyCJones.com. Tracey C. Jones is more my speaking and my courses. Tremendous Leadership is all our books, our publishing. If you sign up for email, you get two free weeks of eBook downloads. You can start in fifteen minutes and they're these sweet little books. You go, "I don't like to read." "Look at these. We sell thousands of these every year. Here's my newest one coming out, just a little sample one." You can read those.
You can reach out there. Our podcast is on there. If you want to publish, you can reach out on our LinkedIn. To our readers out there, please do connect and send me an email. I'd love to be an advocate or resource for you. Somebody once told me, "You don't have to know everything, but you have to know everybody." Since I woke up with Henry Cloud's book, I have a very robust connection network and that friend is 90% of the battle. I'd love to extend that to everybody out there. That's what we're here for because somebody did it to me. You're doing it for me, Ken, and I want to do it for you and your readers.
Thank you.
You're welcome.