Meet Jeffrey Byrd

We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Jeffrey Byrd. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Jeffrey below.

Jeffrey, we’re thrilled to have you sharing your thoughts and lessons with our community. So, for folks who are at a stage in their life or career where they are trying to be more resilient, can you share where you get your resilience from?

My resilience comes as I trade in my automatic negative thoughts for much higher and more accurate thoughts. I find that both discouragement (not thinking that I can successfully move forward) and resilience (believing that I can successfully move forward) are a result of which thoughts I embrace.
As a spiritual person (not a religious one, which I tried to be for many years and found it caused me lots of trauma), I believe that there is a much higher reality than my thinking. It is a reality that tells me I am loved, complete, empowered and forgiven of every negative thought and action, and that my higher reality (which I call God) is working all things for my good so that I can become just like his son, with a perfect mind and actions, just like him.
This mindset causes me to believe that when I cannot see the way in front of me, it simply means there is a way that I haven’t seen yet. My goal then becomes not to understand the entirety of my journey but simply to take the next step towards my goal, believing that the next step after that one will appear as I seek it, ask for it, and keep moving forward.
To illustrate this, I’ll share a recent story. In March of 2024, I received a letter from our homeowner’s insurance informing me that they would not renew our insurance unless we replaced our roof. We didn’t have funds to replace the roof, so I simply asked for wisdom. It occurred to me to contact our mortgage company. We were able to refinance, consolidate debt, get a new lifetime roof, redo our downstairs bathroom, and ended up with a lesser monthly payment than we had before!
My thoughts told me that we were ruined, that it wasn’t possible to successfully move forward, but a higher thought told me to believe this would work out for our good and to follow the “prompts” in my heart when I asked for wisdom. The process felt hard, but the result was beyond what I would have believed at the outset.
As Byron Katie once said, “When I believed my thoughts, I suffered. When I didn’t believe my thoughts, I didn’t suffer”. I find that to be an accurate description of embracing the thoughts that produce resilience.

Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?

Plain and simple, I build people. I build people in teams, in groups, and as individuals (myself included!). My goal is to enhance thinking, leadership (influence), understanding of others, empathy toward others, and in doing so, to help create healthier organizations, communities, families, and lives. After all, who doesn’t want understanding and empathy from others?
I am certified with John Maxwell leadership, where my journey in training, speaking, and coaching began in 2014. Since then I have become a Maxwell DISC personality trainer and consultant, a Global Priority Solutions specialist in value-based living, and a Licensed Brain Health Trainer with Dr. Amen. My business, Jeffrey Byrd Coaching, combines these elements to help people to move forward toward greater well-being and influence, be that in a personal or corporate setting.
In this hour on the earth, it seems we are at a deficit of leaders who exemplify healthy values, look on others with empathy and compassion, understand the stories of others, and choose the most healthy thinking and decisions possible.
Several of the trainings I am now offering for groups are:
– Staying Positive in a Challenging World
– The Power of Personal Stories in Lives of Purpose
– Eliminating Your Automatic Negative Thoughts (ANTs) and Igniting Your Brain with Gratitude
– How to Truly Celebrate and Value Those around You
and Memory Rescue.

I am bringing back the Empowered Networking group, which I began before the pandemic and am now restarting. Tickets are available on Eventbrite at no charge. We will be covering a different value essential to our lives and organizational/personal well-being each month. Group discussion will be highly encouraged.
Eventbrite link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/empowered-networking-tickets-1008684712127?aff=oddtdtcreator

Looking back, what do you think were the three qualities, skills, or areas of knowledge that were most impactful in your journey? What advice do you have for folks who are early in their journey in terms of how they can best develop or improve on these?

Compassion has been an integral part of my journey, shaping my interactions and understanding of others. From recognizing the needs of my colleagues in food service to working with people with disabilities in medical equipment, I’ve come to appreciate the bravery and resilience others exhibit every day. Their stories have inspired me and improved my life in ways they may not even realize. Exposure to diverse individuals around the world has further deepened my compassion and appreciation for the unique stories of others, which have impacted and deepened my own.

Understanding the movements of our hearts has been a transformative realization for me. It’s not merely about what we see on the surface but delving deeper to comprehend the underlying stories, reasons, and motivations that inform behavior visible on the surface. This understanding holds the key to meaningful interactions and lasting impact. When the underlying stories and emotions step into the light, transformation becomes possible, both in beliefs and actions, benefiting everyone.

Relationships hold the key to the most meaningful life possible. Engaging contacts from many years past has opened the doors to some of the greatest opportunities in my life and work. One free training I did for a friend opened the doors for thousands of dollars of work!
People aren’t something to just tolerate while we are on the way to “better things”. They are the “better things”! Recognizing that the future we desire may well be opened to us by someone in our life today, places a new perspective on the significance of the present and those in it. I’m learning the wisdom of a friend’s question, “Why is this person in front of me?”, no matter who crosses his path. Everyone has something to teach us, if we but slow down and receive.

My advice to someone early on their journey is to not be in a hurry to get where you think you want to be.
Savoring those around you and up-leveling gratitude for the things you have been given at the moment is a far better way to live than heaving yourself at the things you believe will bring you fulfillment. That mindset is an endless and exhausting treadmill that constantly has you looking to the future for fulfillment, rather than receiving and appreciating all you have in the present. Quietness and peace will set you apart in a world full of striving and enable you to be a beautiful influence.

What do you do when you feel overwhelmed? Any advice or strategies?

When I feel overwhelmed, which is very easy to be in today’s world, I work to identify the thought that is causing the overwhelm. Often, the essential thought causing the overwhelm is something like, “I’m not going to be ok” or “I don’t have the resources (either personally or materially) to meet this challenge.”
Next, I question the thought, using questions that I learned from Dr. Amen, which he learned from Byron Katie.
Question one is: “Are you sure”?
Question two is: “Are you 100% sure”?
Question three is: “Who are you with this thought”?
And question four is: “Who would you be with a different thought”?

As I work to replace the troubling thought, I often find a very different thought. For me, the thoughts I get from the Bible play an indispensable role. Thoughts like, “All I need will be provided,” “God’s grace in Christ is sufficient for me (and my need of the moment),” or “I have been given all I need for this challenge ahead of me.”
I also love other quotes, such as Churchill’s quote, “This is not the end, it is not even the beginning of the end. But it may be the end of the beginning.”

As I put thoughts like this in my mind, the overwhelming and often automatic negative thoughts begin to lose their hold on me, and I become increasingly confident and encouraged. I find it to be very true that what I think on the inside determines what I become on the outside.

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Image Credits

Jeffrey Byrd, Angela Byrd, Nia McLeod

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