Magic Man: Believing in possibility w/ Curtis Tyrone Jones – She Leads She Thrives Podcast Ep 48

Shannon Dunn  01:45

A fabulous hello, everybody. I am very, very excited today to share our new guest with you on She Leads She Thrives, I’m Shannon Dunn in case you haven’t listened to the show before. A business and leadership coach with a long term history in coaching. I absolutely love hosting these conversations. But we have something a little bit new for you today. So I never said when I launch She Leads She Thrives that we would only have female guests. But I never kind of…I did know who I wanted to have on in terms of the kind of individual I wanted to invite. And I knew and trusted that the right male would have appear as you have done Curtis. And just stand out as the individual to hold the mantle of the first male guest on She Leads She Thrives, so no pressure my friend. Yes. Let me tell you, as I always do, about how I know the guest and why I’ve invited them to come and join us. 

Shannon Dunn  02:58

So Curtis and I met – we just timelined this didn’t we – it was kind of about that March April time of 2021. And I said you were like, oh, was it 2020 2021? I know I can timeline this, because I vividly remember, we were in a group together with a coach we’ve both done some work with over kind of a couple of years. And it was probably your intro post in that group. And you were sharing a bit about your family and probably a picture of you and your family and you were talking about doing things differently in your business. And the fact that you had an impending new arrival, like your second son was about to be born not long after that. And that’s why I vividly remember. 

Shannon Dunn  03:38

So this has been our timeline, we knew it was 2021 because he’s two and a bit now. Right? Yeah, it was great. But over the time that I’ve got to know you, one of the things I have loved so much, and I’ve shared this with you, is that you’ve come into a space in the online business world that is predominantly full of women. Yeah. Which you don’t often see. Anyone who’s listening to this that is in business, whether you’re male or female, you’ll know that when you tend to spend time in online groups in online communities, they are often dominant in terms of gender, right. You know, women in business kind of groups and men in business. And it’s not that we have co-ed groups as well. We have groups wherever one goes but in a lot of the women in business groups,  they don’t exclude but they don’t tend to attract men to come into them. 

Shannon Dunn  04:33

And you just kind of showed up and like yeah, here I am. And I want to learn and I think at one point I said to you, I just love who you are like there’s no pretending to be anything  – not that you need to be – that you’re like, why would I not be in a space like this? I’ve got so much to learn.  And you’ve said you just stood out to me someone who was different and you have a different vision and then when I found more about your story, which I’m going to ask you about today Yeah, he’s a genuine guy. He’s really here to make a difference. So let me share your professional bio as a little bit of introducing you and then we’ll get stuck into some questions and see what kind of conversation we create today for this episode. 

Shannon Dunn  05:17

So, Curtis Tyrone Jones is a nine year depression survivor, a veteran and emotional alignment life coach, motivational speaker, author of Guru in the Glass and has been featured by – just wait for it everybody –  Oprah, Calm, Goalcast, Yahoo Finance, Parade Magazine, Power of Positivity, Yahoo News and Cosmos Top 100 Quotes. How’s that for a list? I love that you’ve included all that in your bio, because some people wouldn’t. They kind of shy away from claiming all of that. So I love it. But let’s start right with the questions. And let’s go right into your experience of depression. As you say nine years. That’s a long time. I know for some people that depression is a lifetime experience. But nine years is a big big time. So tell us a bit about your story.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  06:10

I think it all started for me, I was leaving for I was leaving home for college. And I was on the track team at James Madison University. And I was running close to four minutes in the mile. And I was trying to go pro. And what ended up happening was, you know, I ended up getting three stress fractures in my shin. And my whole life, my whole world was built on sports, I was an Olympic development soccer player.  I was, you know, second in the state for track and, and all this stuff. And back then people weren’t talking about depression they weren’t talking about, you know, this was all the way back in 1998. Right now, it’s a buzzword, even if you’ve never been depressed, you know someone who has or you’ve heard about it on social media or TV or whatever, but back then no one was talking about it unless you had a psychologist or a psychiatrist, or a therapist or something like that. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  07:02

And so I had no idea what was happening to me, I just knew that I left home with these big dreams and high expectations. And a couple of months later, I could barely get out of bed. Had no clue what’s happening to me. And it just completely knocked me off my feet, and it wasn’t just like some minor depression.  I ended up  dropping out of school. I think I had a 1.8 GPA, went home, I’m staying with my parents, my Dad’s asking me if he needs to put me into a psychiatric home because I couldn’t function in society anymore. I would sleep all day, like 15 hours a day, couldn’t keep a job. It was just very, a very hard time. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  07:47

But through that experience, I ended up getting some coaching that radically changed the way that I relate to myself, the way that I relate to others. And thankfully, I found my way out of it. And I can still remember the day that I came out of this depression. I had worked with my counselor for two years, he was an amazing, amazing coach. He was not a therapist, but he had helped a lot of people out of depression. Kind of like what I do now and so he would always tell me, Curtis, you got the self love stuff, you have it with your head, you’ve got to get it in your heart. And you have to get it way down deep in your guts. And I really didn’t know what he was talking about. But I knew that I wanted what what he was what he was talking about. I just didn’t know how to embody it. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  08:43

And I was back in school on the west coast out in California. And I was walking home from class one day, and this girl comes up to me and she says to me, she says Curtis, I just saw you like 45 minutes ago and you looked like you were on top of the world. Like what could have possibly happened in the last 30 or 40 minutes. Like now you look like someone shot your dog, like what could have possibly happened in the last 30 minutes that you’ve gone from being up here to being like this. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  09:12

And I honestly didn’t know what had happened. Now I know that I was just having a highs and lows day. And those can be very normal for people who have depression. And on the outside, nothing had changed. But on the inside my depression had come back. It was that simple. And I was walking home from class that day, and I got to the parking lot and I was getting ready to go up to my dorm. And I was having this argument, this internal argument with myself. And I said, man, I know there’s a way out of this. I don’t know how I’m going to find it. But I know that I’ve had all this good counseling, and I know that there’s a way out of it. In this thought just came into my head. Why don’t you try not judging yourself simply for 24 hours? Wow. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  09:59

Not for a year, not for a month, not for a week, just for one day. And I thought to myself, you know, because let’s say I was having a conversation with you, what would be going on in my mind is I would say, I would think everything is fine, I’m having this conversation with you. And then I walk away from the conversation. And then my mind starts saying, Oh, why did you say that to Shannon, you shouldn’t have said that. You should have said this, right. So I’m constantly beating myself up for a week or a month, right? Until whenever I see you again. And then when I see you again, I say the very thing that my mind told me to say, and then my mind says, I think everything’s fine. And I walk away. And my mind says, Oh, why did you use that tone of voice, you shouldn’t have said it like that, you should have said it like this. And so no matter what I did, the bar was always getting pushed up just a little bit higher and out of reach. And so I constantly felt this putting myself down and beating myself up and self condemnation and criticism, criticism and all these things that you know. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  11:05

And so I said, Okay, I’m going to do this little experiment, to see if I can just go for a day without, if a thought comes to me where I’m putting myself down or beating myself up, I’m just gonna let it come. And I’m gonna let it go. I’m gonna say not today, Curtis, maybe I’ll get back to beating myself up tomorrow. But for today, my mind is going to be a judgment free zone. And so I did this experiment, I woke up the next day feeling so good that I said, okay, another 24 hours, or, you know, just for one more day, I’m gonna do this for one more day. And I’m not going to judge myself. And that experiment worked so effectively for me that the first day of that experiment became the last day of my nine years of depression.

Shannon Dunn  11:53

That’s incredible Curtis. So I love that as you share that, it’s actually can be that simple.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  11:59

It can be that simple. 

Shannon Dunn  12:01

But you also gave yourself goals that feel like, to me listening, were achievable. Yes, stretching, like 24 hours, rather than I’m never going to judge myself again. Like, I think so many of us put ourselves in a space of self sabotage, failure, all those kinds of things, because we have such big goals that are way out of reach when our reality has been so different. Right?

Curtis Tyrone Jones  12:28

Exactly, exactly. That’s huge. That’s huge. Like we set up these things, and we’re a glutton for punishment, or we’re really, you know, buying into a lot of disappointment, because most likely, we’re not going to reach that right at this point. So this was something bite size for me, and something small. And even today, you know, if I were to go back and do it again, it wasn’t about the 24 hours, it was really just about giving myself a break any kind, even if it had just been five minutes, that would have been a massive break for me, because I was in this perpetual cycle of constantly beating myself up on the inside. And a lot of people wouldn’t have known. Some people who were more perceptive like that girl, but a lot of people wouldn’t have even known that I was doing this to myself.

Shannon Dunn  13:17

And I think that in my experience of working with people for a very long time, you may or may not be aware, my background includes counseling and therapy, as well as coaching and lots of kinds of things. And also my own experience with friends and loved ones that on the outside so many people that have a variety of mental health experiences and challenges, issues, whatever words you want to use, no one would ever know. Yep, the silent suffering, you know, the silent pushing through, the silent putting a brave face on and showing up while on the inside a whole other narrative is playing out like you’ve shared.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  13:53

However, because I’m aware of these conversations that are going on inside of people, I’ll get right into the midst of these things and start untangling all of these things that they don’t even know that are happening. Right. And so I let them know that even though it might not happen overnight, like it did for me because really, it didn’t happen overnight. It took nine years for me to get to that point, but you know, it can happen very, very quickly once you get a framework for what you’re supposed to be doing in order to relieve yourself from a lot of these inner conversations that are that are playing out in this kind of a way.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  13:53

Yes, yes. And a lot of times, we don’t even recognize ourselves that this conversation is going on until someone awakens us to it because we’ve been swimming in it for so long, that we just think that this is just how it is. Right. But once once you know you get with somebody who is very perceptive, and who understands the internal conversation, and that the internal conversation can definitely change for the better over. It doesn’t have to be overnight. It happened, like I tell my clients, you know, just because it happened like that, for me, doesn’t mean that it’s going to happen like that for you. 

Shannon Dunn  15:13

And I do want to ask you about some of the things people can do, because we’re all about like, let’s be practical here. But before we do that. At what point then did this… sounds like this too then set you up for what you ended up doing from a career perspective, and then now led to you being in business?  Aside from the track stuff and the athlete, what did you think you’re going to do? Was it different to what you ended up doing then?

Curtis Tyrone Jones  15:38

Wow, that’s a great question. Yeah. I never. So nce the sports things was off the table, I was sitting on the couch one day, and now that I had dropped out of school with a 1.8 GPA, knew I wasn’t going back. I’m sitting on the couch. And I’m thinking to myself, Okay, what in the world am I going to do now? Because, I don’t have school anymore. I don’t have sports, I don’t have any of these things. And I’m like, I have nothing like, I don’t know what I’m going to do. So I’m sitting on the couch. And then I just happen to turn on the TV. And the commercial comes on, “let the journey begin with the Navy.” 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  16:21

And so and so I didn’t even ask my parents,  I took it as a sign from the universe. I jumped straight in my car, I went straight to the to the recruiting office, I said, What do you got for me? They said, you could travel around the world with us. If you ever want to go back to school, we’ll help you pay for school. And we will teach you some kind of trade. I ended up becoming an X ray Tech and a medic with the Marines, even though I was in the Navy. And so I just said, “Okay, where do I sign?” so I just signed up, I was probably the easiest, easiest recruit they’ve ever had. They didn’t have to do any convincing. I felt like it was my only way out at that time. And so two months later, my Dad calls me up. He says, Hey, are you still going into the Navy? And I’m thinking to myself, Dad, you were in the military? Like, why would I not be? Like I signed up two months ago, I already signed on the line. The recruiters are on their way over to the house right now. Like, of course, I’m still going into the Navy. He says, Well, why don’t you turn on the TV? And I was like, alright, so I turned on the TV. That was the day that the planes hit the towers. 

Shannon Dunn  17:22

Oh, wow. Okay. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  17:24

Right. And so I had no idea no one did. They just told me Hey, your day to go, I signed on the line that said, Hey, your day to go in is gonna be September 11. You know, like, which was like two or three months away. And I was like, alright, you know, so this is this is great. And then on that day, that happened. And then the when the planes hit the Pentagon, which was only about 15-20 minutes from my house, the recruiters called me up, they said, obviously, we can’t come today, all deployments are down. We’ll be back tomorrow to put everybody on buses, and then they put us all on buses. And we went to boot camp the very next day. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  18:08

But to get back to your question, that’s a long way of saying, you know, I thought that I was going to be a career military person at that point, before that I had no plans of going into the military. But once I got that sign from the universe, I was like, This is it. This is what I’m doing. This is how I’m going to start over and get some traction, and stuff like that. So I thought that I was going to be a career military man. But then  I just started getting a vision to go back to school. And then once I got to school, I started thinking, you know, I definitely want to help people and once I came through my depression, that’s when it was like, I really want to help people with this.

Shannon Dunn  18:53

Yeah. And that makes sense to me. Yeah. And it was such a profound experience for you. I think, in many ways, the phrase that’s coming to mind is that would have been a waste if you hadn’t. Yeah, use that experience. Because there’s so much richness, when you can support people, when you’ve had your own lived experience. It’s not necessary to successfully help people. But yeah, it’s powerful. The relatability the, you know, your clients getting to understand you do know, when they say, this is how I feel, this is what’s going on, this is my inner dialogue, because you actually have had your own lived experience of that.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  19:31

Yeah, yeah. And when I share the story of what I shared earlier about the inner conversations that I was having, that clicks in with them so quickly, because they’re like, that’s my life. I’ve been living that for 15 years, 20 years, like, however, like you’re telling me that I can turn that around? And I just say, Look at look at what I did, you know, like my Dad was gonna put me in a psychiatric home. And here it is that now, I’ve been able to turn that round turn got around. It’s that transparency and that connection, that allows me to really connect with people and let them know it gives them hope. It gives them a lot of hope. 

Shannon Dunn  20:09

Yeah, definitely. I find, I don’t know if you’ve had the same observation, but more so in the more recent years in business, I’m seeing a lot more of us in this business space, sharing some of their mental health experiences more than I had ever seen previously. And as we both shared, and you highlighted earlier on, we talk about mental health and mental well being so much more than we used to, thank goodness. It’s part of our everyday narrative globally  now for so many of us.  I think that can only benefit the world. 

Shannon Dunn  20:42

But it’s been interesting to me sitting in a kind of a seat of observation, seeing so much more talked about, through from through those who are in the business space. And also, then we talk about mindset, we talk about our self talk, we talk about self love, imposter syndrome, comparison, you know, all of those things, right? And there’s many similarities in terms of what does go on in the belief systems. Yeah. So with that in mind and the fact that we’d likely to have mostly business owners listening to this, if someone’s sitting there, and they’re having that kind of judgment that party that can go on and be really noisy, getting in the way of what they’re trying to do…. your tips, what are some things that people that you would share with people that can get them back into the emotional alignment, and also tell us what emotional alignment is too because I think some people might not be familiar with that term.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  21:38

Yeah. So the way that I use emotional alignment, we hear the word alignment in so many different ways. And I think it’s such a great word, because you know, it’s really something that’s very visual, you know, like, I’m going to a chiropractor, and the chiropractor is getting me into alignment, getting my spine into alignment, and it really stacks up in that way. And I feel like emotional alignment for me, the way that I use it, it doesn’t mean that everything is perfect, or that we never get sad, or that we never get angry. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  22:08

What it is, for me,  is that is that being in a place where we have the tools and the resources in order to be able to navigate back from the place of any unwanted emotion, from wherever we might be. So it doesn’t mean I’m never gonna get sad, again, doesn’t mean I’m never gonna get upset or angry, or any of these things. It’s not about that. We have all of these emotions, all of these things are very good. The problem is, is that when we get stuck in certain emotions, and we feel like we can’t get out of those. A lot of times people ask me, what are some quick tips and obviously, we know that this is not a quick process. But it can be relatively quick once you get a framework. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  23:01

And what I tell people is there’s this three tiered framework, basically, of radical acceptance of self, radical acceptance of situation, and radical acceptance of others. So as you know, with my own story, I needed radical acceptance of self because I was beating myself up so much and criticizing myself and fighting myself so much that I needed to get to a place where I could radically accept myself with – as my mentor would say – with warts in all right. The good, the bad, the ugly, and everything in between, right. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  23:38

That’s unconditional love that I learned on that day, when my mentor would say, hey, you’ve got this with your head, you got to get in your heart and way  down deep in your guts on that day when my intuition spoke to me. And intuition can mean “to be taught from within” like we pay for teaching, we’re paying tuition, right. Intuition can mean to be taught from within. I think I got that from Florence Scovel Shinn, right. The manifester, you know. 

Shannon Dunn  24:05

I’ve heard that before. And I’m very familiar with Byron Katie. I love it. As I’m listening to you talking about radical acceptance of situation Curtis is making me think of a lot of the work that I do around the self leadership space, and a lot about choice. And what I say with regards to that is that we may not have an actual choice about the situation we find ourselves in, but we all have a choice about how we respond to or feel about that situation.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  24:05

But my intuition spoke to me and that’s where I learned how to love myself unconditionally. I wasn’t just not judging myself, I was learning how to love myself unconditionally. Right. So that’s that radical acceptance of self. Then the second one is radical acceptance of situations. Sometimes we get into these places where maybe we’re unwilling or unhappy with the job that we’re in, or we’re unhappy with the relationship that we’re in or whatever it might be. And there’s always things that we can change but then there’s also things that are completely out of our control that we might not be able to change like right now at this moment. And that’s when we need this bit of radical acceptance of situation right. And one of my favorite teachers, her name is Byron Katie, she has this book called “Loving What Is”. Just think about the title of that book, “Loving What Is”. Most of us spend so much time fighting against what is. And she says, about reality, she says, Whenever you get into a fight with reality, you always lose.toggl

Curtis Tyrone Jones  25:56

Yes, exactly. Exactly. And that reminds me of something that I constantly share with people that brings them back into alignment very quickly. There’s a quote from Epictetus, philosopher from 1000s of years ago. But he basically has this line where he says it’s not what happens to us that disturbs us most, it’s our thoughts about what happens to us, that disturbs us most, right? And what I hear from that, is that you can have 10 people who have gone through the same traumatic experience, right, and five out of those 10 come out, more loving, come out more resilient, come out more time, come out more positive, come out more encouraging, and all these things, while the other five come out, like I was in the early part of my life, come out more depressed, come out less resilient, less loving, less time, you know, all these different things. And so what Epictetus is saying is that if five people could actually get better from this experience, then it can’t be the event itself, that’s disturbing us the most, it has to be the way that we’re thinking about the event that’s disturbing us Right?

Shannon Dunn  27:14

That’s the second.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  27:17

That’s the second one – is radical acceptance of situation. And then the third one is radical acceptance of others. And this radical acceptance of others has two tiers because if all you do is accept people, like there’s two tiers here, because there’s people who love you, and respect you, and who are not trying to walk all over you, and all these things, but they’re just do things a bit different from you. And if you can practice this radical acceptance of others, what ends up happening is it takes a ton of stress off of you or off of me, because I’m not constantly having to police these other people in my life and trying to fix them all the time. Right, it takes a ton of pressure off of them, because they don’t feel like they’re constantly being judged. They don’t feel like they’re constantly being repulsed, by my judgments in all these things. And, and then it takes a ton of pressure off the relationship so that the relationship can thrive, right. A lot of times, we feel like you’ve been in situations where you felt like somebody was constantly picking at you or constantly judging you. Right? What did it make you do?

Shannon Dunn  28:27

No one. I don’t think anyone could say they have it. But yeah, to answer your question. What’s wrong with me? is one thing that comes up. And then it’s like, why are they being nasty to me? Like all of these questions? Me, me, right, we focus on self.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  28:42

Yep, yeah, it puts us into fight or flight mode. And nobody can really have a good relationship with us while they’re running away from us or trying to fight us, right. So when we relieve the other person of all of our pain, trying to constantly fix them and stuff like that, it just frees up so much space for the relationship to be what it what it could be. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  29:07

So those are for people who love us, but are just a little bit different. But then if that’s all we do, the other people, people who would either abuse us or don’t have the ability or the willingness or the desire to treat us, right? Those people, they’ll just walk all over us, right? And so for those people, we have to accept them in a different way. We have to accept them from a distance. And this is where you know, Maya Angelou spoke to Oprah and she said when people show you who they are, believe them the first time, right? Yes. Yeah. So, you know, this is this opportunity for us to say, you know, I’m going to allow you to do what you’re doing, but I’m not going to allow you to do it here. I’m going to put up a physical boundary to say you’re going to have to do that over there, I’m going to accept that that’s who you are, not going to try and change you, I’m just going to let you do it over there and not over here. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  30:05

And then we got to put up an emotional boundary around our mind. And this is where I have very strong language. But I basically tell people, don’t let people who f**k with your mind, enter into the door of your mind. Because they could be far removed from our life.  It does no good putting up a physical boundary to separate people from our life if we’re just going to let them live in our mind.

Shannon Dunn  30:35

Right? Yeah, because they’re living internally within us.  May as well be with us in the physical space. And this is making me think of the number of conversations I’ve had, the things I’ve observed, the things I’ve listened to over the years around comparison. And how many, particularly in the business space, I think I see it accelerated far more than in the general world, you know, with friends and connections I have that are not in business. A huge impact that comparison can have that lead to self judgment, to self criticism, to so many other things that I often would refer to as the unhealthy way of trying to exist in the world. Yes. And that’s that letting others live inside you, right? Living inside, living in your voice, embodying what you think is going on for them. Or what you think they mean by what they say or share. Yes, then judging yourself often way too harshly and inappropriately,  against what you think somebody else has benchmark is.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  31:41

yeah, yeah. And Byron, Katie has an incredible tool on that very thing. Because she says, there’s three kinds of business; there’s my business, which is anything that I think, say or do, there’s other people’s business, which is anything that they think, say or do. And then there’s the Universe’s business, which is anything that’s out of human control, right. And what she’s saying is, we can eliminate two thirds – because we got three kinds of business – we can eliminate two thirds of all of our mental stress, if we simply choose to focus on the only business that is actually in our control, which is my business.  Imagine if we could wake up tomorrow, and two thirds of all of the comparison – to use your words, right – all the comparison, or all of the mental baggage around the the Universes business or around other people’s business was just gone.

Shannon Dunn  32:43

The world would literally transform, and yet we have the answer, like you’ve just shared it. There’s so many  incredible teachers out there who are sharing this in a simple way that we can all grasp. And yet many of us are caught up in so much of the other businesses that we can’t see. Like the light is not shining bright enough on the clear here’s the answer, its this simple. Because so much of the other stuff getting in the way. Right. Exactly. Exactly. So interesting. So interesting. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  33:17

Yes, yes. Because you because I saw your title, She Leads She Thrives, Yeah, and it just hit me. It was like, I’ve written a book around that title, you know, that is very much in congruence with that title, you know, and I said, I want to send this book to Shannon. And you know,  it was women’s month. And you know, I’ve just got,  I’ve got a handful of inspiring coaches like you that I’ve been following for years. And I just said, You know what, I’m gonna send a couple of these books out. And you were one of the people and I just said, I’m gonna send Shannon a book. 

Shannon Dunn  33:17

Now, we need to talk about your book of which, because you are such a beautiful, generous soul, I have a copy. I have read it, but I read it very fast. And I’m coming back to this to really digest it in a different way. So that is coming up for me. I’ve got a little bit of time off coming up soon. Okay. Is it Oh, you sent it to me? How can I not read it!? So grateful, getting a parcel in the post all the way from the US. When Curtis of sent this to me a little while ago I don’t think you told me exactly what you’re sending, you just like I’ve got something I want to send you. And it’ll kind of make sense when it arrives.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  34:35

You know that title, She Leads She Thrives, it’s so much in alignment with my book, because my book is about this guy who is so depressed, that he’s on his way to the bridge  to take his life when the book opens. And as he’s on his way, he quits his job and he’s written this letter to his family and all these things and as he’s on his way to the bridge, all these mysterious things start happening to him that he just can’t explain. And he doesn’t know, and these things start leading him on this journey of self discovery. But he bumps into this mysterious gypsy woman. And  she’s very “live and let live”. She’s not trying to keep him from going to the bridge or anything like that. But she really just wants to connect with him. She connects with him very well, she understands what he’s going through. And she just wants to show him how the world works, and how he can follow his how he can follow his dream. In a way that is not that is not overwhelming for him. Because right now his dream is so big, he feels so out of touch with it that he just doesn’t feel like it’s at all possible. And it’s become a source of putting himself down really. He just does not know how to live out what what he wants to do. And all these things, you see what I’m saying?

Shannon Dunn  36:04

Yeah, totally, I love it. So the book is entitled “Guru in the Glass”. So what led you to decide you were going to write a book? I know what my author story was, I kind of knew from little, like, I used to make books when I was a child. So becoming an author felt inevitable. But you know, at what point did you go, I’ve got a book here, and I’m going to create this and publish it.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  36:26

And I have no idea. I have no idea why. But when I was depressed at school the first time, I didn’t have any direction in my life. But I had started writing some poetry that really intrigued me and stuff like that. And I told my friend, I don’t know why I told my friends this, but I had told them, you know what, I’m not ready yet. But maybe 10 years from now, I would love to write a book one day. And then I dropped out of school, and  then I went into the military and, and there was this guy out on the ship. And he shared a like a slam poem with me. And it really inspired me. I said, Man, why did I ever stop writing? So I just started writing again. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  37:08

And before you know it, like people were inviting me to come and speak and all these different things. And people started saying, Hey, you should you should compile some of your writings and put them in a book. And I was like, Yeah, I didn’t think anything of it. But then eventually I did. Eventually, I did. And I got a couple of artists and things like that. But as I was preparing for my first book signing, I was thinking about what I was going to write. And I thought that oh my God, 10 years ago, I told my friends that I was going to write a book 10 years from now. Right. And so that was the first book and then this book right here. I said, almost the same thing. I said, you know, I’m not ready to write a novel. But I really want to write a novel, kind of like in the spirit of the alchemist. Kind of like with a mentor and a guru who understands manifestation, and all of these things. And I said, I’m not ready yet, but I would love to do that. So fast forward. This is crazy. Shannon, are you ready for this?

Shannon Dunn  38:16

I am. I love your stories. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  38:19

This is what happened. I had just read The Secret. And I was in California, I was working in a hospital, coaching people through emotional issues all over the hospital. And I read The Secret and in The Secret, it said, if you want to do something that seems impossible to you, you need to visualize your goal as if it’s already been achieved. And they said, you know, come up with what it is that you want to do in the world. And if it seems impossible, then this is what you need to do. And I told my wife, I said, you know, I want to be a coach, I want to be an author, and I want to be a speaker, right? And she’s like, just thinking rationally, and she’s like, we’ve just finished school, we just got these jobs, and all this, like, that’s not going to happen. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  39:05

So what she actually said to me was, she said, Well, when we hit the lottery, you can do that. And I’m thinking to myself, you know, she’s just being practical. She’s wasn’t trying to be mean or anything like that, right? So I said, Okay, this is my time that I’m going to try The Secret. I’ve done it with small things, but I want to manifest something big. So I started visualizing myself sitting down with my boss and having a conversation while I was handing her my resignation papers. And I was giving myself six months to do this, right. And so it wasn’t about the resignation. I could have quit my job at any time. It wasn’t about that. It was about our family having enough money for me to be able to quit my job, right. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  39:50

So I visualized this scene for about two months. And then I said, Okay, that’s enough. I don’t want to do that anymore. Like I put in the time. I don’t need to fret about it, I’m ready to release this and let it go and just do my life. Things started changing so fast, because I was supposed to go back in to the Navy with a six figure position. And I was having some changes around that. That got pushed off of the table , even though I had been working on that for 10 years, and all that and I’m like, man, what is going on? I know I didn’t do anything wrong, like, what’s happening. And that was in the fall of 2016, six months later in the  spring of 2017 in May, I had a dream one night that I was on this massive navy ship. And I was being asked to leap off of the ship. This was probably like, you know, let’s say four storeys high, into the water. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  40:46

In the dream, I knew that I was going to make this leap. But there was something in the water, like a big piece of metal, and I didn’t want to hit that on the way down. And so when I woke up from this dream, I woke up so electrified from this dream that I said to my wife, I said, Hannah, we have a massive shift coming. And the first thing she says to me because she knows how idealistic I can be. She says to me, please don’t quit your job. And I said to her, Listen, I will never do anything that will put our family in jeopardy. I’m just saying, I’ve had dreams like this before. And I know that something awesome is about to happen. She says to me, okay, well, we’ll see. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  41:24

Two weeks later, she gets a job opportunity on the other side of the country. In Virginia Beach, we were in Long Beach, California, in Virginia Beach gets a job on the other side of the country, making double anything that she could have made in California. Right. And because the cost of living was so much lower in Virginia Beach than where we were, it was like we had hit the lottery. So I said, Listen, if you don’t want this job, you don’t have to take it, of course, I want you to take it because it will give me an opportunity to work on my business and all that. But if it’s not a good fit for you, then don’t take it,  you got to do what’s best for you for your career. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  42:13

And she comes back to me and she says, Let me go think about it. And then whatever, right? So a week or two later, she comes back to me, she says Curtis, had you not told me about your dream and been so solid on your intuition, than I would have said, There’s no way that we’re moving across the country, while I’m seven months pregnant? However, because you told me about your dream. And because you were so solid on your intuition, not only am I going to take this job, but if you would like to use this time to build your business, and write your book, I’m going to give you two years off of working so that you can do that. Because another thing that they had said was they were going to give her paid maternity leave, right, which a lot of women don’t get until they’ve been at a certain place for a certain time. They were paying for us to move across the country, they took took care of everything, everything right. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  43:12

As we were driving across the country, we stopped that her brother in law’s house in New Mexico. And I had another dream that night. And that dream, I woke up so electrified from that dream that I said, This is amazing. It was the exact dream that Skylar had in the book. Right, and so I didn’t know. So I didn’t know that I was going to be writing this book, I was writing a self help book on manifestation. And when I got to the end of the book, I said, Okay, let me go back to the beginning to put a little five minute story on this to show my readers what I’m talking about. When I started writing this five minute introduction, I couldn’t stop writing. And I got to the point where I was like, hold on, is this going to be a self help book? Or is this going to be a novel, and I said, I’m gonna turn this into a novel, this is gonna be my first novel. That was almost 10 years to the day that I had said, I want to write a novel in 10 years. 

Shannon Dunn  44:19

There you go.  So with all that in mind, I love these stories. And for any of you that are listening in if you’re not already following Curtis, just follow him for the stories he shares like this. One of the manifesting stories that come to life in your family, it’s not just you, it’s extended to your wife and the kids, which I love as well. But every time I invite someone to go come and be a guest on the show, I ask them to share if I were to ask someone who knows you well, to kind of tell me a bit about you, what would they say, what would they share? And your answer to this, which I love and just kind of reinforces what you’ve already talked about is manifesting magic. Yeah, that thats what people say about you. And then you went on to say that this got me on Oprah’s website and Cosmos Top 100 Quotes. So tell us how that came to be. Because I think it’s only more recently that I’ve seen you sharing the examples of where you’ve popped up on quite significant platforms, right? I’m on the other side of the world going, how did he do that? Like, I’ve been writing, I’ve been publishing books, I’ve been creating content for years, I don’t get quoted like that, like what?! Tell us a little about those stories to manifesting magic.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  45:41

Yes. So with a lot of the manifesting magic stuff, a lot of that’s what people would definitely say about me, because like these things just come up in my life that I just can’t explain. I mean, I’ll give you one example with my daughter. So my daughter was about five years old. She was sleeping in another room with a sound machine on. My wife had just taken a pregnancy test. Okay, my wife’s just taken a pregnancy test. And we found out that my wife was pregnant. We both said whispering to each other. We’re not going to tell Jayda about this. Because once a Jayda knows everyone’s gonna know. So she’s sleeping in another room with the sound machine, and there’s no way that she could hear us, right. The very next day, we’re sitting in Panda Express eating lunch, and my daughter is sitting on my wife’s lap. And she turns around, and she says, Mommy, I can feel the baby in your tummy.

Shannon Dunn  46:49

That’s crazy. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  46:50

There’s no baby to feel at that point. Its about the size of a tip of a ballpoint pen. There’s no baby there. And she didn’t reach out her hand, and she wasn’t being playful or anything like that. She just said it. And she went back to eating her lunch. And we didn’t even tell her that she was right. Because we had already said we’re not telling her. And so a couple of days later, I was talking to my mom about what happened in Panda Express. And obviously my Mum’s really excited. And my daughter overheard the conversation. And she looked up at Hannah. And she says, Mommy, I told you.

Shannon Dunn  47:33

I love it. That’s gorgeous. Thing you don’t necessarily expect from a five year old either.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  47:39

Right? And you know, my wife chalks it up to, you know, they haven’t been socialized yet, so they’re really in tune with who they are. They haven’t been socialized not to say things like that. So you know, they just speak from their intuition. And they speak from their heart, and they speak from their gut. And that’s what she did. And this was the third time that my daughter had done something like this, where it was just so mind boggling. And it was like, how could she possibly know that? There’s no way that she can know that, but we have these stories happen around us all the time. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  48:11

So to get to the next point, which is the quotes, um, there was a time in my life where I felt like, Okay, I’ve written one or two books. And I felt like I needed to have a greater impact. And so  I wasn’t really into a ton of manifesting, but there were some things that had really stood out to me. And so I started saying this mantra to myself, where I said, the Universe is peppering the Earth with my words. And I just started saying that over and over, started saying, the Universe is peppering the Earth with my words, right? It’s peppering the Earth with my words. And I did that for I don’t remember how long I did it. But within time, I would just check up on Google and I would check up on different social media sites. I would just put in my name, or I’m putting my name in quotes, or like on the internet, and then in social media, I would just put in my name, and people that I had no idea who these people were, but these people just started quoting me. And I’m wondering, like, what is going on and all these different things? And then who got it first? Like the first big company was like Cosmo, I think. And then when they quoted me, then Yahoo News took their same article and then posted it as their own. Okay. And then I don’t remember you named all of them, but you know, there’s like Goalcast now. Like a month ago, Oprah, Parade Magazine and Goalcast – all within the span of like three weeks. 

Shannon Dunn  50:07

I think I saw you share that you’re like, I don’t know what’s going on. But clearly, you had put a clear intention out into the Universe and repeated that. Yes.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  50:20

Now. Now, there’s 1000s of them. I can’t even keep up with them. There’s so many quotes, like every day, I would say, across all platforms, another five to 10 to 15 quotes every single day are popping up. There’s so many. Like when I found out about the Goalcast one, it was from 2020. I just found that out a month ago. And that was from all the way back in 2020. I had no idea because there’s so many of them. I can’t even keep up with them.

Shannon Dunn  50:54

I love that. I think there’s two things that jumped to mind here. Firstly, we all do it but I think don’t ever not share it Google yourself and see what’s out there for you. Still do that just to get curious, but definitely want to look for your website and things like as Curtis said, put it your own quote or quotes as well and so  what comes up. And dare to believe in whatever, whatever word you want to use. You have seen me share a lot about the Thrive Factor Framework, which is the Archetype framework that I created 14 or so years ago now that I use in my work with women and there is one of the 12 Archetypes that we call the Shapeshifter Alchemist, which would makes sense to you I think. She’s also the Archetype that is the what I refer to her as the master manifester. 

Shannon Dunn  51:45

And I’m always talking to the women that have that Archetype, because it’s a female centric firm, it still would apply. Men would still have these Archetypes. I just only use them in females.  I’m always saying to them be very conscious and considered about your thoughts, your words, your feelings and your actions because they will become your reality, like lightning speed. And every Shapeshifter Alchemist says to me, yeah, I know that. And they often will regale the stories of where things they’ve manifested that they didn’t actually want. Yeah, but a lot of again, mental attention, feelings attention, you know, right through to embodying what they didn’t want. And of course, that’s the reality. So you’re just in a different kind of way, but I would suggest that you have the Shapeshifter Alchemist. To clear the stories I’ve heard you share about your daughter, Jayda, I think because that would be highly likely one of the Archetypes she would have as well. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  52:40

yes, absolutely. It’s just natural for her. 

Shannon Dunn  52:45

For some people it just is. And when I teach the Archetypes, there’s 12 of them on a bigger platform to a larger audience, usually just introduce them at very high level, the Shapeshifter Alchemist is the one that when women don’t recognize that in themselves they want that’s like the one Archetype that has envy because they hear about the manifesting ability, and they can’t ever conceive that that could also mean manifesting things that perhaps you don’t want to have.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  53:14

Talk to me a little bit about the Shapeshifter.

Shannon Dunn  53:16

So the Shapeshifter talks to the reality that this is an Archetype that is very fluid and flexible. It’s a chameleon energy of being able to go with the flow, chop and change. And if I again I think about you, and all the different kinds of iterations of who you’ve been over the years, that’s very Shapeshifter.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  53:32

Yeah, very much, very much so.

Shannon Dunn  53:34

Yeah, you get the Alchemist bit. Being able to turn things of seemingly or perceived little to no value into incredible value or wealth. We’re not just talking money wealth, either. Yes, yes. Yeah. But that’s manifesting really. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  53:52

This leads back again to Xenith in my book, she’s very much a Shapeshifter, Manifester. And she wants to coach Skylar, and how to use his manifesting abilities, because they’re really dormant in him. And they’re there because, you know, he’s dreaming, but he doesn’t know how to manage them. And I know, when I was really depressed, some of these little things would start happening like this, that I would say that is extremely odd. And it would just scare the shit out of me. Like, I just didn’t know. Like, now it excites me and it’s beautiful. But back then I didn’t know what was happening. And I was like, there’s no way that’s a coincidence. That is amazing. But I don’t understand how that happened. And it was really scary for me. So to be able to get into a place where I can now embrace, embrace my gifts and embrace kind of this, you know, this kind of magical side of me. You know, it’s really been a transformation to be able to get to this place.

Shannon Dunn  54:56

I’m not surprised at all. I want to get to some questions to wrap up. But again at the same time, I want to keep going with that conversation. One other Archetype that stands out for me that 100%, you have it, it’s very clear in your energy Curtis. And it also shows up in your book in both characters is the Mentor Teacher,  which is one Archetype –  I’ve got four Archetypes in my Thrive Factor profile -and that’s one of mine. It’s the individual that thrives on gathering knowledge on learning, from a learned experience, but also values their lived experience, and can understand the gift, the value,  the magic, if you like – to use that where we’ve been using – of wisdom, which just as useful as our learned experience.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  55:40

It’s such a beautiful concept. I have one of these lines that says, sometimes we need a wise guy to peel back the ceilings of our lives, to remind us that infinity never places any limits on our skies. Right, it’s sort of like sometimes we feel very caged in, and we need someone that can who understands what it feels like to be caged in like, there’s a famous poet. He’s a mystical poet named Hafiz. And Hafiz  has this poem, where he talks about, it’s called Dropping Keys. And he basically says, the small man builds cages for everyone he knows, or she knows, right. But the sage who has to duck his head, or who has to duck her head when the moon is low, like this person is not small at all. They’re so big that they might bump their head on the moon, you know, when the moon is low, right? And so he says, This person keeps dropping keys all night long for all of the beautiful rowdy prisoners, right? And this beautiful, yeah, that’s beautiful, right? 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  57:00

It’s this picture of this comparison of the small man who’s constantly putting people in cages and making people feel small, because probably he’s been made to feel small throughout his life, hurt people hurt people. But then that’s contrasted with this other part of humanity, who is very big, and who’s very large and very expressive, and wants to do nothing else but give people the keys and the wisdom and the mentorship and all of these things to liberate themselves. And so that’s why I say sometimes we need a wise guy to peel back the ceilings of our lives to remind us that infinity never places any limits on our skies.

Shannon Dunn  57:43

Love it, we might have to use that quote. So many things we can quote. Okay, I have a couple of questions. I’m going to ask you now that I asked every one of our guests that come on, just to bring it back into the focus of leadership and thriving. We’ve talked a lot of those things anyway,  those realities. So Curtis in a succinct way you can share with us what role leadership plays in your life and business.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  58:09

Wow, that is powerful. What role leadership plays in my life and business? Well, one of my favorite leadership quotes is by Lao Tzu, who wrote The Tao. And he has this line where he says all streams flow to the sea, because it is below them. If you want to lead the people, you must learn how to follow the people. If you want to govern the people, you must learn how to put yourself below them. Right? 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  58:43

And so my form of leadership, a lot of times people look at me and they say, Oh, this guy’s a natural leader. When I was in the military, they looked at me, they completely judged me said, Oh, this guy is a natural leader. And all these things they put me in this place. I said, Listen, you don’t want to do that. Because that’s not the kind of leader that I am. By the end of the day, Shannon, they had me out of that role. Because my leadership is not authoritative at all. It’s very much like Lao Tzu said, it is one that comes from below and encourages people and lifts them up, identifies with people where they’re at and then lifts them up. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  59:21

A doctor came to me when I was still working in the hospital. I was working on the addictions unit in the psychiatric unit at that time. And he came to me and he said, Curtis, I’d like to speak with you. And I thought, Oh, what did I do? What’s going on? Right? And he said to me – I had just gotten done talking with someone who had come in with a very bad addiction problem – And he says to me I’m Curtis, I just want you to know keep doing what you’re doing because you’re getting through to a lot of the patients that we’re having a very hard time getting through to. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  59:57

Shannon on that day, I decided that I was going to start my own business. Because it was the validation that I needed from somebody who knew what they were talking about that said,  you know what you’re doing. My wife is a psychologist and I had always, even when I got in business, I always had this shadow thought about, you know, I’m not a psychologist. So do I have the right to be doing these things that I’m doing? But yeah, this is the leadership that is made for me is the kind that comes from below, and then lifts people up.

Shannon Dunn  1:00:35

Yeah, beautiful. I love it. I thinking that by the time we come to our one year, in, which will be early October 2023, which hopefully this will be before that, we’re going to do a mash up of all the answers to these questions, to get them the variety, the similarities, but variety of all the answers, so amazing. So the next question I’d love to know your answer to now is, how do you know when you’re thriving?

Curtis Tyrone Jones  1:01:02

Oh, that is a great question. I think we know when we’re thriving, when we feel I’ll use Abraham Hicks language here, when we feel tapped in, tuned in and turned on, right? And that can be in any area of our lives. In some areas, we might feel more tapped in and tuned in. But the reality is, and one thing that I’ve been learning is that we have access, what whatever area it’s in, whether it’s in our personal life, whether it’s in our professional life, whether it’s in family, friendships, parenting, all these all these different roles. There’s a place inside of us where we have to go to thrive first. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  1:01:54

And obviously, you know, we can learn from mentors, they’re obviously very helpful. They’re obviously very helpful. But I think a mentors job is to teach us how to access these powers, and this magic in these things inside of us. But that I think that’s where it starts is learning how to tune in to this feeling of being tuned in,  tapped in and turned on. In all of these various aspects in our life. When I’m thriving – I’m all lit up. I’m all lit up. Yeah, I’m all lit up, right? Like and the best way I can say it is, we light up around anyone who makes us feel screwed in to the universe, just like a light bulb. Like when we feel tapped into the Universe, we light up like the sun. Right? So yeah,  that’s the best I can say about that. Awesome.

Shannon Dunn  1:02:51

Okay, couple more things before we wrap up. How can people connect with you the easiest like where’s the place to go and find you, we will share any links that you share with us in our show notes. But if you can tell everyone. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  1:03:04

Yeah, the best place to link up with me is on Facebook. That’s where I’m that’s where I’m most active. If you just put in Curtis Tyrone Jones, that’s the easiest way to find me, there’s not a lot of Curtis Tyrone Jones’s out there. So and then on Instagram as well. Those are the places that I’m most active, but definitely Facebook,  I’m most active.

Shannon Dunn  1:03:25

Thank you and I can attest to that. I see all of your amazing stories. And you may have picked this up listening to Curtis today. He’s a natural cheerleader. Like that’s something else that I really appreciate about you is how genuine you are in supporting others and being appreciative when others support you. It’s like a beautiful flow that I see. Again, sometimes you see people cheering others on and saying thank you. But with you when I see you doing it and read you doing that Curtis, it feels different, it feels more genuine. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  1:04:01

In what way? 

Shannon Dunn  1:04:02

I don’t know. It’s not that I feel like others are doing it superficially. But it just feels like you’re there’s more heart and soul and you know, when you’re doing it. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  1:04:13

yeah, I think that probably taps back into what I said about Lao Tzu. I love coming from beneath people and lifting them up and just cheering them on. First of all, I love people seeing people do awesome things. And people’s stories where they blowing my mind with something awesome that they’re doing. I’m gonna celebrate them because it’s powerful.

Shannon Dunn  1:04:36

Yes. You do abundantly,  which is so appreciated. And okay, last question. Put you in the spot here. What’s one final piece of wisdom to share with the ambitious souls,  the kind of people that I imagine are listening and we created this podcast and it’s conversations for. They’re ambitious, they’re wise. They want to make an impact in the world. They want to do it with heart and soul. So whats one final piece of wisdom based on your incredible lifetime that you could share with them to take away today.

Curtis Tyrone Jones  1:05:07

Whatever you do. Okay. Oh, you know, I love my quotes, so I’m gonna share it. Don’t ask what the world this is by Howard Thurman, it says, Don’t ask what the world needs. Ask yourself, what makes me come alive? And then go and do that. Because what the world needs are people who have come alive. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  1:05:40

 And so what I would say is really don’t put off your emotional well being. Don’t put off your happiness. Don’t give into other people’s pressures about what you should do with your life, societal pressures, family pressures, all of those things. What are the things that light your soul up and make you come alive? What are the things that make you happy, make you feel tuned in, make you feel alive, and make you feel empowered? Do those things. Because we’ll see it and will love it. And it will light us up.

Shannon Dunn  1:06:19

You can feel it, can’t you like it’s a thing that – I know for me – I can’t help but respond to that kind of energy from people love it. I could talk to you for a lot longer. Maybe we’ll do this again another time. But for today, we’ll wrap up for now. So thank you so much Curtis for saying yes, when I reached out and said do you want to come on the podcast, I think you’re a bit shocked weren’t you are at first. 

Curtis Tyrone Jones  1:06:42

I was I was definitely shocked. Thank you so much for having me. I mean, to be the first and the only male so far to be invited on the show. It’s a beautiful thing. I don’t take it for granted. A thousand thanks to you for having me here. I feel honored to be here.

Shannon Dunn  1:06:59

My pleasure. And this is why, because it’s so genuine how you feel. Like feel honored and appreciative was the thing for me to reach out, say Curtis come and have a chat with me when She Leads She Thrives. 

Shannon Dunn  1:07:09

So listeners, thank you for tuning in today. And I hope that you have got, I’m sure one, but many pieces of inspiration you can take from listening to what Curtis has shared with us today and the conversation we’ve created for you. If you have been interested, go and follow him. LIke I’ve said like I kind of like what’s Curtis  going to share with us today what story,  what magic story. And again, if you’re someone who doesn’t believe in magic you will after you spend time in Curtis’s world. I love it. So thank you everyone. Thank you again, Curtis. I look forward to being back with a new episode in your ears very soon. Have an amazing day wherever you are in the world.