Heather Jones’s Stories, Lessons & Insights

Heather Jones shared their story and experiences with us recently and you can find our conversation below.

Hi Heather, thank you so much for taking time out of your busy day to share your story, experiences and insights with our readers. Let’s jump right in with an interesting one: What is something outside of work that is bringing you joy lately?
I’m a huge animal lover; always have been. Over the past year I’ve started foster house rabbits. Many people don’t know that an outrageous number of pet bunnies are dumped every day. People figure they’ll just adapt an go wild.

Unfortunately, house rabbits can’t adapt to living outside and they’ll suffer. When I learned about this just over a year ago, I immediately filled out paperwork to be a foster. Giving these furry cuties a safe home until their forever comes along brings me so much joy!

Can you briefly introduce yourself and share what makes you or your brand unique?
For me some of the most important things in my life are that I’m a mom to two and I’m happily married to a wonderful husband I’ve been with for 20 years now. That leads me to how we met which is a huge part of why I do what I do today in my business.

My husband and I were serving in the army together when we met. While I got out after six years and four months (but who’s counting), he went on to serve 20 years. After I got out of the army, and before he decided he wanted to make his military service a full career, I had a full-time job with the federal government. Ultimately I had to leave that job behind as the military moved us and when I got to the next duty station the government was on a hiring freeze. I share that to show how, even though I had a career of my own, our military life didn’t allow me to continue to grow in that.

I eventually decided to entrepreneurship was a fabulous path for our lifestyle and for my personality. I explored several endeavors, but eventually landed on coaching which is what I do today. I know firsthand the struggles of being a military spouse and trying to have a career of your own. Even those of us who choose the entrepreneurial route experience challenges others just don’t understand. I’m glad others don’t have to understand that to be clear, but I know it takes a level of support beyond what may be typical for an entrepreneur. That is why I serve military wives in business through my coaching.

Amazing, so let’s take a moment to go back in time. What part of you has served its purpose and must now be released?
I absolutely love this question. I have a lifelong relationship with perfectionism. Growing up I wore that as a badge of honor. It meant I was detail oriented and I was a hard worker. That led to good grades throughout all of grade school and even through my college years. That attention to detail also served me well in the Army.

What I didn’t know, though, was that perfectionism is actually a fear response. There’s fear of not getting it just right, of people seeing your imperfections, or making a mistake and having people judge you. When you strive for perfectionism you’re striving for something that is unattainable. There is an enormous level of stress associated with that. When I finally learned that, I saw that I could be detail oriented, I could work hard when it was called for, and I could put forth my best effort without the added stress of it having to be “perfect”.

I learned that I could do well and be proud of my best efforts even with its imperfections. I learned that when people saw my mistakes, they didn’t judge me in the way that my assumptions had always told me they would. I had been judging myself on other people’s behalf. I also learned that I am more relatable when people see my humanness.

Perfection doesn’t best serve me, and I’m a much better person for letting it go.

What did suffering teach you that success never could?
Suffering has taught me what I suspect it teaches most of us. It taught me what I’m made of. It showed me my strengths as well as weaknesses. Through suffering I learned what I’m capable of sustaining.

The thing that’s really important for me to recognize, though, is it taught me how to view it as a learning opportunity and how to grow from it. Suffering sucks, yes. In the moment it can feel horrible and I’m not one to Pollyanna my way through it and pretend everything is sunshine and rainbow all of the time. But on the other side of the thing that caused suffering, when I can look at the situation objectively, I can take the lessons from it and grow where I see there’s space for it.

So a lot of these questions go deep, but if you are open to it, we’ve got a few more questions that we’d love to get your take on. What would your closest friends say really matters to you?
I think they would say caring for animals, as I mentioned earlier on in the interview, but also that my care for others runs deeper and so much further. I genuinely care for other’s well being and I’ll do what I can to help another person thrive. That’s true for my family and closest friends, but it’s also true for strangers.

I believe in leaving people better than I found them and I believe anyone who truly knows me would say that’s something they know matters to me.

Thank you so much for all of your openness so far. Maybe we can close with a future oriented question. What do you understand deeply that most people don’t?
We create our own reality.

I think people hear that, and scoff at it. Or it makes them wonder about all of the perceived negatives in their lives and causes them to think “I wouldn’t choose this reality”. I’m certainly not saying people intentionally or consciously invite negativity, but what I’m saying is, it becomes very obvious how we are inviting negativity into our lives when we start to get familiar with our own thoughts.

So much of the time, our thoughts just run consistently without us really stopping to check them. We don’t ask ourselves frequently enough questions like: Is that true? Does that thought really serve me? What thought would better serve me?

When we make a habit of managing our thoughts, we get more intentional about choosing to keep thoughts that better serve us. Instead of allowing things like, “I always struggle. I never have enough time in the day. I’m just destined to be unhealthy/broke…” we start to catch ourselves before the thought cycles and spirals out of control. We start hearing the “negative” thoughts come up and replace them with, “This thing is super challenging, but I got this. I’ll make the time today for the things that matter to me. I’m in control of my eating habits, exercise habits, spending habits…”

I used to recite the phrase, “I’m just a high-stress individual,” like it was an ultimate truth for me. I realized the impact that “high-stress” was having on my life and the relationships with people I love. When I’m stressed, I’m short-tempered, irritable, and impatient. I don’t like that version of me, and I didn’t like who it made me as a wife and as a mom. I stopped saying that and took back control of what I say to and about myself and my situations. Everything changes when we take back control of our own thoughts and what we choose as truth.

Today, I like the less-stressed version of me so much more. I like that if I don’t like something in my life, I get to choose to change it—and how. We all do!

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