Before you can even think of sharing your story, you need to make sure you find your truth. It can sound challenging, but with a simple change in mindset, you’ll be able to see constant little changes happening around you. Media sensation and author of Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life, Garrain Jones, shares the lowest points in his life in detail and the encounter that ultimately shifted his mindset to be a better version of himself. Being on the other side of the spectrum, he embraces his experiences and uses it to relate with people and provide positive impacts. Learn what it’s like to go on a journey of finding your own truth in an effort to share it with the world, and be a voice for the voiceless.
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Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life With Garrain Jones
In this episode, I’m interviewing Garrain Jones, the author of Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life. Welcome, Garrain.
Thank you for having me on the show. It’s my first book and I’m super excited about this process.
You should be. It’s been a long time coming.
I could write a book on how to write a book, the process, and the man that I became through the process.
Let’s get started with the beginning. Why did you write a book?
Since social media wasn’t popular, I always documented my journey. Since I started back in 2005 on Myspace, I would always hear subtle things because I’ve always been drawn to self-development. I would hear people suddenly say, “Maybe one day you’ll write a book.” Sometimes, raindrops start and then all of a sudden, you have a storm. As I started to transform my life when I was living in my car, I went through so much transformation. I’ve always been open and vulnerable to the public. Many people would say, “You should write a book.” When you hear it 1,000 times, at some point, you’ve got to catch the sign where I feel God has said, “I’m trying to give you what you’ve been praying for.” One day, I said, “I don’t know how but I’m going to write a book.”
They say God speaks to you through other people. I call it the rules of three. If I hear something three times, I get to investigate it.
I probably heard that over 500 times. I’m not exaggerating.
Why did you write your book, especially Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life?
In 2011, I had $250,000 in debt. I was wavering in and out of life and I tried to kill myself twice. I was living in my car for two and a half years. I knew I needed to change but I didn’t understand how. I’m like, “How are these people making money? How are these people doing these things, but I’m as if not even more talented than them?” I remember sitting in my car, the window busted out because someone had broken into my car. I remember yelling to the top of my lungs and I said, “I’m tired of fighting. I don’t want to fight anymore. I want to be healthy. I want to be happy. I want to be surrounded by nothing but positive people. I want to make a bunch of money, but I want the money to represent something that I passionately believe in and that I would do for free. Show me a sign.”
A week later, I’m at the gas station and this “homeless guy” comes up to me asking me for money. I said, “You have more money than me.” He said, “Change your mindset. Change your life.” I’ve always heard people say motivational things or say certain things but it never got to me. I don’t know what it was about the homeless guy but the way he looked at me and the energy that I felt, my whole life stopped in its tracks and made me think about my whole life flashing before my eyes. I’m like, “Am I living a lie? If I do different things with the same circumstance, will my life change? Change your mindset. Change your life.” I started with things that were feasible for me to do. I would normally come to the escalator, “Change your mindset. Change your life,” so I take the stairs. I normally take gel soap, “Change your mindset. Change your life,” so I do bar soap. On a small subconscious level, I was rewiring my thought habit to do the opposite. An object in motion stays in motion but I kept doing that and we’re habitual creatures by nature. I’m eight years removed from that person. On the other side of everything I would never do, I attracted the life I always wanted and it was from the opposite.
Change happens in your life without you even realizing it happened. Click To Tweet
Almost on a cellular level, you’re a different person.
The only thing that’s not different is the energy. I just transfer the energy to focus on things more positively.
I personally believe that we all vibrate at certain energy levels and certain frequencies. When you’re vibrating a certain frequency, you will attract those experiences at that frequency. I’m definitely at the belief that when you’re vibrating a certain frequency, people will either straighten their tie and match up to you or they naturally fall away. It’s a beautiful thing in life. You almost don’t have to set boundaries, even though boundaries are important. You can almost vibrate at a certain level and people were like, “We know that this won’t fly with her.”
It’s almost like spiritual coordination. If you’re trying to get on a merry-go-round when it’s still, anybody can get on and it goes faster. You need certain coordination. When it goes fast, only a few people can get on there. The higher you vibrate, the different people won’t match up to that level. I learned this connecting the dots looking backward, but during that time, I had no idea I was doing the opposite. These new things were coming into my life. I kept saying, “Change your mindset. Change your life.”
That’s your mantra.
That’s my mantra, the name of my company. People get paid with those checks. It’s the name of the book. Maybe that wasn’t a homeless guy, maybe that was my angel.
Speaking to you and setting you forth on a new journey. The journey of writing a book, you started the show saying, “I could write a book on writing a book.” Educate us a little bit about what you’ve learned.
I’m writing a book called Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life. It was about the forever evolving change that shaped and cultivated me into the man that I am and all the principles and lessons that I’ve learned. Here was the unfortunate and fortunate thing that I had going on. I never stopped changing. I will write a book. I would take a course or a ten-day silent retreat or go and do transformation deal and I would emerge into a different person. I’ll go back and read and I’m like, “I don’t think like that no more.” I’ll go back and change the book. I had will that change your mindset, change your life and this book kept growing and changing. I’m like, “I’m never going to get this book done. It’s never going to get done my way so I’m just going to pay somebody to do it.”
I heard that people pay ghostwriters. I paid $15,000 for a ghostwriter to write a book, who other people loved, except for Garrain. I’m known for being real, raw and authentic. I read it and I’m like, “This isn’t me.” Energetically it’s not me. It had no makeup of what people know me for. It was a huge misalignment. It’s not taking away from the person who did it. She got paid and I was out of money. However, it taught me a lesson through that process, which was I need to find another way that I’m going to get this book done, but I kept changing even through that.
Being a ghostwriter has been making a living for years. Authors are writing their books that way and when you know it’s not your voice, it doesn’t feel right.
I couldn’t do anything about it. A friend of mine says, “Put it out.” I’m like, “No, I can’t for the integrity of the art. I can, but I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.” That’s like if you are a guy and you borrowed my clothes, and somebody came up to you and be like, “I love your outfit,” and I’m standing right next to you. You in your right mind wouldn’t be able to say thank you without feeling something inside knowing that they’re somebody else’s clothes.
It’s misalignment. The best way to say it is, “Thank you. They’re Garrain’s clothes.” That’s why if you write a book with a ghostwriter, that ghostwriter’s name should be on that book somewhere in the acknowledgments or on the front cover.
I couldn’t do it so I had to go back to the drawing boards. I was taking more courses and I was learning. I was developing my relationship back with my daughter, my mom and my friends. Through that, I came back to the book again and I’m like, “I can’t put this out because I don’t even think like this no more.” It kept changing without me even realizing it.
Many iterations and that’s just the beginning.
That was just the beginning because this was a five-year process.
For five years, you wanted to write a book. What was the next part of that?
In five years, I wanted to write a book and I tried a ghostwriter that didn’t work, then I had writer’s block and it’s not coming out. I went to go and do 1,000 other things and then I would go at it a little bit. I did some research online on how to write a book the simple way. I was researching how to write a book 101, 102, 103, 104, 105. All I need is the structure because I was a songwriter, and I never could figure out how to write the song until I figured out the structure. Once I figure out the structure of the song, first verse, hook, second verse, hook, bridge, outro. Once I figured it out, I wrote hundreds of songs that got placed. I was always trying to figure it out. I said, “What’s the structure?” I can’t get it and I felt like I was in this holding pattern for about another two years. We had something and I’m like, “That’s not it. It sounds like someone else. I’m not going to do it. It’s got to have Garrain’s voice. It has to have every makeup of Garrain.”
I want to acknowledge you and I’m much this way. You are someone who, if something isn’t misaligned or if it’s not the truth, it feels wrong. It’s interesting because you live life, you meet people and there are classes, transformation, friends and all the things that you do in life. If it’s not true to your soul, it feels wrong.
I’m like that in my marriage, too. I told my wife one time and I was like, “I feel bad.” She said, “Why?” I was like, “I saw a cute girl,” and that was it. I felt bad seeing a beautiful woman when I know that you’re it but I didn’t talk to her and act on it. It didn’t go anything. I was like, “That girl is pretty but I love my wife and my message so much. It would feel wrong to put out a different message.”
Sharing your story can feel scary at first, and yet elevating. Click To Tweet
Have you heard of the book Radical Honesty?
No, but that’s awesome. I get that.
It’s a fantastic book. When you create intimacy with someone you want to share like, “I felt this thing, I practice it myself.” Sometimes, it feels scary to share because you don’t know how the person is going to respond. When they respond, it’s a deeper sense of connection and intimacy with them. That’s wonderful.
That was the same way I felt about having someone else write my book. There was a developmental editor. When I went over it again, I’m like, “This doesn’t sound like me. I’ve got a fine-tooth comb.” You don’t hear from me for a while then one day, I’ll pop up and it’s done exactly how I want it done.
Ghostwriters are good for a purpose for people who can’t get their word out. The model that I like to use is recording the author using their voice. Do you remember the day we hunker down in your house, record your book and stories, and then that’s the beginning. There are developmental editors and writers, and also book doctors that take the verbal word and turn it into a book. There are several reiterations.
Through that process, it taught me how to do that for myself. Even when my wife, she’ll be like, “Can you look over this for me?” I’ve become all these people through this process. I wasn’t even trying to. I always stray away from it and then I find myself writing in the same context. When you guys handed me back the book, I was like, “This is not bad.” This whole process has taught me how to use Google Docs, PDF, editing, and using commas and stuff because I never would look at any of those things. I cheated my way through high school. When I got to the microcomputer, I never did the grammar. Up until a few years ago, if you read anything that I posted, the grammar was horrible. People are like, “Your spelling has changed a lot.”
You had a crash course in book writing and not just that, because of technology like Google Docs. You had a huge learning curve and I could see it in your face sometimes because you don’t have a poker face. I’ve been explaining something to you and I’m like, “I don’t think he likes me right now.”
I like her but not really. She reminds me of a coach and she’s going fast but then she’s motherly. There are all these different things. I’m like, “This is my process.” I wouldn’t talk to you for a couple of days and then I would get back because I needed to. It has shaped me as a man and as a father because it’s structured. I didn’t realize how much people listen in a structured format. My daughter, my wife, people on my team and my health and nutrition company, all these different things all structure. It’s something I never want to look at. Through this process, my wife is standing for me because she’s structured and all these other different facets put me into so much discomfort to the point where I’m like, “If I was a baby, this is the same process that it took to walk and ride a bike.” You never know when the click is going to happen and then one day, I woke up and the click happened.
Balance happens differently. You can line up 100 people and it will be 100 different clicks that happen like, “Something just clicked and it happened.” You’ve got to do it over and over and put yourself into that meat grinder. Your developmental bones will eventually shape in a way to where the balance will happen and when that click happens for me in my brain, all of a sudden, that’s when I call you and say, “It’s done.” My wife is always big in the health and nutrition world. In her organization, she’s always asking them, “What’s missing?” I asked myself, “What’s missing? What am I trying to do?” I said, “I want to reach the maximum amount of people.” All of a sudden, it hit me. I’m like, “The biggest part of my story is not even in the story, which is how spiritual I am and my relationship with God.”
What I was trying to do is meet everybody’s needs. They got books on knitting, how to dress, how to pack. There’s a niche for everyone and here I am, trying to meet every niche in culture, religion, country, and age. In turn, I completely try to block out the fact that the spiritual aspect is the biggest aspect of my story because I know what it’s like when I try to control, force and do life myself. When I went to church and I started reading some words that I connected to, which happened to be words from the Bible that led me to be a follower of Christ. I needed to find a way to relate it in the way I want to relate it. I’ve run the streets so I’m going to talk how I talk but then be driven by the spirit. Once that’s connected, it was a wrap. The book was done because what was missing was the inner linings of the spiritual aspect that flows through my life. It needed to flow through the book.
There was a hole and you filled it. I wanted to be spiritual and the structure because what I love about this is you learn how to write a book. No one could take that away from you. What I find is when my clients write a book and they learn the process, and then when they’re working on their second and third books, what a beautiful thing to be able to have a skill that no one can take away. That’s powerful. Also, the good news about the structure is that you can duplicate it and create systems. What you’re finding is giving back to you in terms of your business, your wife’s business and your life like, “I have some structure now that I can duplicate and reach more people.” When you have a structure, you can create systems. When we have systems, you can create a scale. Let’s fast forward back to the spiritual aspect. Writing a book that was about other people and leaving out that part of yourself, your belief in God.
It was in but I was trying to figure out a creative way not to offend anybody. It’s misaligned because some of my best friends are Muslim and they are proud Muslims. They don’t shy away from it. My best friend Sharif and some of them are Jewish.
When you’re hiding, you know something is up. When you’re scared to say something and live your truth, you know something is up. It’s a little intuitive hit like, “I don’t want to say that word. I don’t want to offend anyone.” You are going to offend someone by doing the work. Do we play small? I did a spiritual retreat one time and one of the reverends from Agape co-facilitated with me. There’s a song about removing the past out of your future. We listened to it and some other spiritual songs about running away from your past. It’s always going to be behind you. To be fully in the truth and to acknowledge all the secrets, to say loud and clear from the mountaintops, “This is my belief.” That’s going to be from a vibrational level. People are either going to fall away or they’re going to be like, “Tell me more.”
You deserve to be happy. Unless you seek and allow that in, you won't be happy. Click To Tweet
When it hit me, I was like, “That was the click. That’s what’s missing.” I left you a voicemail and I was like, “It’s the spiritual aspect.” All of a sudden, I went to write because I knew the context of what I was writing. I’m like, “How can I not talk about this? This is my truth.”
You had a post on Facebook and someone said, “I’m excited about your book, Garrain. I hope you don’t talk about God.”
Typically, I would get defensive and try to defend, but I was like, “Maybe he didn’t know. Why is that?” He’s like, “I’m not into that but I love your words and everything.” I shared with them and I was like, “Everything that I write is from something that I learned and that was the biggest aspect of my story.” I learned a few philosophies that were in books and I realized that those books derived from a few chapters that came from the Bible. I started studying the Bible and then I got connected. I’m like, “I can relate to Jesus Christ.” I became a follower and I developed my relationship with God.
However, how can I make this make sense for me? I’m going to talk about how I talk, but I’ll always come from the spirit. He was used to people yamming it down and vomiting on him. For me, I’m not like, “Wherefore art, thane and thou,” and things like that. The way I talk is the way I talk. When I told it to him like that, it made him interested. By the end of our conversation, he was like, “In our conversation, I feel different.” He showed confirmation of why I’m here to wake up souls so they can be elevated and truly be able to receive their life, even if they’re not aware of what that is yet. The baby doesn’t know what a ball is, but it can go gaga, goo-goo. You’ve got to get people to gaga goo-goo first before you can lead them to the ball, to sentences, to paragraphs and things of that nature. My book is going to lead millions of people to understand the power that lives inside of them and will give them a little direction in a way where it doesn’t keep people just wandering a spirit-led life.
When I teach my courses, you want your book to perhaps bust a myth or disrupt the status quo or some thought process out there. Maybe there are a lot of people who’ve been harmed by religion. The ruffling of the feathers is starting a conversation and that’s what I get interested in. It’s like, “What does it look like to start a conversation?” If you offend someone, that means that you pushed a thorn. One of my favorite books is The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer. He talks about having a thorn. We, as humans, are more callused and it’s like, “Don’t touch that thorn.” Instead of getting that thorn out, we get more callus. When you are offended by someone, they’ve touched your thorn. Get to the root of that. What’s the root of that? Is it some religious trauma or you don’t want to talk about it? Whatever it is, what it does is start a conversation, and it sounds like you had a wonderful conversation with that person.
He said, “Thank you so much.” Sometimes, people leave you a message and you can tell the tone just by the way in which they wrote. You could tell that he left the conversation with more questions and thoughts about his life.
It’s like, “I might not have all the answers, but I’m not afraid of the questions.” The more we can evoke this critical thinking, questioning and being in curiosity.
I’m not here to put people in a box or even to be in a box. I had somebody reach out to me and they’re like, “Why do you use words like God is love and things like that? It’s new agey. You need to stay away from that.” I said, “First off, I don’t need to do anything. You’re not going to put me in a box. I talk how I talk. The message is getting to whoever it needs to get.” “You need to do it as this scripture says.” I’m like, “You don’t talk to me like this. This is how I’m choosing to talk. These blessings aren’t accidentally coming. I know exactly why they’re coming.” I try to stay away, try not to put people in a box and tell them they need to do this. This is my life. This is what happened. I lived in my car and I tried to kill myself. Let’s celebrate that. What about the kid who tried to kill himself? Could you acknowledge it? I’m bypassing that. You’re not going to bypass my journey and my resurrection.
How does it feel to share your story?
It feels elevating. I was scared at first, but it’s that same thing that didn’t have me put out that book because it had to be authentic. I would share with people, “Everything is great.” There was something inside like, “You’re living a lie.” One day, I went on social media and I remember I took my right hand and put the pen in my left hand. I wrote a letter from little Garrain to big Garrain. He was cursing him out and all these different things. I wrote one from big Garrain to little Garrain like, “I forgive you. I didn’t forget about you.” After that, I was like, “I’m just going to be me. I’ve tried to be everyone else but me.” I went on social media and I was like, “Do you think you know me? You have no idea. You know this. I live in my car. I’ve been a womanizer,” and then I told it. When I told it, I had about twenty pages of Gmail people saying, “How did you do that? I’m going through the same thing. I put the gun down after you told your story.”
Once I saw all of that feedback come to my Gmail, I knew that my greatest gift wasn’t singing, running, and dancing. My greatest gift was my testimony. The more I told it, the more people who are going through something deep would reach out to me and say, “Thank you so much because of you, I didn’t kill myself. I’m about to go into jail, but I’m hopeful because of you.” I was reaching the people and I became the voice of the voiceless. That’s where my story was etched into human stone because I was willing to tell it, be vulnerable and put myself out there because most people are not. I’ll tell you what you want to hear. I’ll tell the whole thing without any fear.
What message do you have to your readers, Garrain?
For the book or in life?
Whatever speaks to your heart.
You guys deserve to be happy. When you look in that mirror and nobody’s around, not your spouse, kids or friends, and the truth shows up, that person deserves to be happy unless you seek that and allowed that in, you won’t be happy.
How can people find more about you?
My website is GarrainJones.com. On Instagram, Garrain.Jones, Snapchat and Facebook is Garrain Jones. It’s answering all the emails. I don’t answer everything because there are a lot more people than before. However, I’m doing all the posts and I truly love engaging with people.
Garrain, thank you so much for being here sharing your truth and your story.
Thank you for having me on. I look forward to creating several bestsellers.
Take care.
Important Links:
- Change Your Mindset, Change Your Life
- Radical Honesty
- The Untethered Soul
- GarrainJones.com
- Garrain.Jones – Instagram
- Snapchat – Garrain Jones
- Garrain Jones – Facebook
About Garrain Jones
Garrain dealt with homelessness for 2 ½ years, living out of his car and feeling like he was drowning in misery, as well as being sent to prison for 2 ½ years. Yet, going through both of those difficulties, and more, he found a way to turn his life around. Garrain’s story is a perfect example of how you can go through so many difficult things in life, but that it doesn’t mean you’ll never find success.
In a place of difficulty, Garrain developed the strength to rescue himself. Health and fitness play such a big role in his life because he grew up thinking success was in material things. It wasn’t until he got healthy that he started to feel different. Once he started to feel different he then started to think, speak, and act differently. His actions changed based on how he was feeling. “You can only reach a certain level of happiness when you’re not healthy. There’s no way you can be happy if your heart isn’t healthy!”
6 ½ years after being homeless, Garrain is now a serial entrepreneur who motivates and inspires thousands. The knowledge he gained while being shaped and molded sent him down the pathway to become a Transformation Coach. He is an advocate for living a healthy life, business coach, speaker, and author of the soon-to-be-released book, “Change Your Mindset Change Your Life.”