I Know Something You Don’t Know with Adrian Jones

george grombacher 0:02
Well, hello, this is George G. And the time is right welcome today’s guest strong apparel for Adrian Jones. Adrian, you’re ready to do this.

Adrian Jones 0:08
I’m ready. Let’s go.

george grombacher 0:10
Let’s go. Adrian is founder and podcast host of profound awesomeness. He’s a heart attack survivor exploring what it is to survive trauma and commit and calamity and come out the other side. Adrian, I’m excited to have you on Tulsans wait personal lives more about your work, why you do what you do?

Adrian Jones 0:30
Well, thank you so much for again, for having me here and giving me the opportunity to speak with you and your listeners today. So for me, a lot of what I do is driven by what you alluded to right there at the top, my heart attack.

I’m 53 years old, and about six, seven years ago, I was mountain biking with some friends of mine. here locally in Northern California, when I suffered major Widowmaker heart attack, my left anterior descending artery had become 100% blocked. And I’m very lucky to be here. When I got to the hospital, they had to use angioplasty to open up that artery and put in a stent. And it’s a great day, every day is a great day now. And I will tell you to answer your question and why I do what I do is I used to lay in bed after my heart attack, and wonder why I survived. You know, not many get to survive the Widowmaker heart attack. And I would lay in bed and stare at the ceiling go, why did I survive? Why do I have this second chance in life? What am I supposed to do with it? And I sent this question out to the universe, oh, my God, whatever. Listen to me. And the answer that came back to me pretty clearly, pretty succinctly was use your story to help inspire other people. And I did not know how to do that are how I was going to manifest that. But I took that calling and say, ran with it, if you will. How have I done that? Well, I didn’t quite know what to do upon hearing those words in that directive. To lead my life in this way. What I did do is I decided I’d get out of corporate America and begin to start the transition of my my career into more of the personal transformation and helping and inspiring other people space. I started to blog, I started to write articles, started to do public talks, like for example, got done a few talks for the American Heart Association. And about May 2021, I launched my podcast called profound awesomeness, which is a tragedy to try a podcast about people who’ve been through difficult times. And I’ve come out the other side living with more meaning intent and purpose and is my goal that these stories will help and inspire and motivate other people to live their best lives and to see that there is profound awesomeness within each of us, regardless of our personal situations. So I think that really gets to like why I do what I do. I was really shaken by what happened to me six years ago. Well, it was October 2016. So you were coming on seven years. But that really shook me to my core, and, um, had me reevaluate what I do, where I do it, who I do these things with. And, and I think I’m still going through that transition as we speak, as I’m working on, I got a few tricks up my sleeve in the proverbial lab, so to speak, but nothing that I can go public with just yet. But some of the things that we plan to roll out, in addition to the podcast that I’ll be very excited to talk about, probably in the next by the end of summer.

george grombacher 3:38
Yeah, well, I certainly appreciate that. Pretty heart attack. Were you somebody who prayed or meditated or was in touch with the universe?

Adrian Jones 3:49
No, I mean, I shouldn’t be so so quick and potentially callous? In my research. I didn’t mean it that way. Yes, I’d say I do have an element of faithfulness. To me. I’m somewhat religious. But no, did I pray regularly? No. That I meditate, hardly ever. This was a true awakening. In so many levels, and um, you know, there’s a whole lot to the story. And I will just add on a tiny little bit here, in that. After my heart attack, I’m still in the hospital. I had another awakening moment where a voice a voice spoke to me in my ear and said, find your biological family. So I’m a I’m adopted, and I went out as a result of a heart attack. I went out and found my biological family. And they have embraced me and acknowledged me and welcomed me into their lives. In fact, where I live today, I’m about a 50 minute drive from my biological parents and three sisters. Yeah, and it’s been incredible. So all On one hand, I have what I like to call survivor superpowers. These, these are capabilities that came with a heart attack with being able to live with more meaning more intent, more purpose in my life and more presence. I didn’t know that I could be more present than I was prior to the heart attack, which has been a wonderful offshoot of of being a survivor. And I couple that with the discovery of finding my biological family and having them welcomed me and embrace me into their lives, and I realized as an adoptee I had holes within me, I never knew needed filling, they got filled in that process. So it’s a very, very powerful place to be that I found myself in. And I, I call it the world of profound OS. This just because that’s all I could come up if it seemed to work. For me. This is how I describe the sensation and I hope to help people find their profound awesomeness.

george grombacher 5:52
Yeah, I love it. I think it’s a wonderful and perfect term, and what an experience and they’re so close, amazing.

Adrian Jones 5:59
There isn’t one without the other. And I’ve had people I mean, things, it’s just been such, so many good things have happened to me. And I guess I share all this, like, there have been coincident coincidences upon coincidences upon coincidences in my heart attack and the search for my biological family. So much. So I used to laugh, and, and make fun of the expression, everything happens for a reason. And what I have found is that things do happen for a reason. And I have become awakened to that. And I embrace it now. And maybe for another show at another time, I could go into like all these coincidences, I know today, we don’t have the time. But that has got me rethinking about how I think about the greater power around us. And how things are operating? And is, is there a God or the universe in control of something for us and trying to make sense of that. But the heart attack, strangely, might have been the best thing that ever happened to me, which sounds crazy to say, but given how much I learned about myself, how much I’ve changed what I’ve been doing, and how it led me to this whole new family of mine has been nothing short of remarkable. Truly. Yeah. So

george grombacher 7:20
how old were you when you had the heart attack?

Adrian Jones 7:23
I was two days before my 47th birthday. So just at the end of my 46 year, yeah.

george grombacher 7:30
So 45 year old Adrian Jones, if you were to tell him about all this stuff, you’ve learned what what what what would he have said, But he told you to get lost? Or what he said, you know, this is interesting telling more

Adrian Jones 7:46
45 year old me. Yeah, yeah, he would have he probably would have said get lost. You know, I hate to say it, I think looking back at myself, I I don’t I wasn’t in that, that headspace to embrace this massive undercurrent and change that I’ve been watch myself into that was triggered by the this heart attack. So I think younger me or at age 45 year old me would have said, I don’t know what you’re talking about. That’s, that’s not part of my life. I’ve got I’m dialed in and what I’m doing, I’ve got a career, I’ve got a job, I got married with kids. I like everything’s great. Now I want to go, I really want to go back to younger me and be like, You have no idea what you’re missing out on. You know, how plugged into life you can be you think you’re present now? Oh, just wait, you’re gonna get real presidents really quickly here. And I think that would have been, if I if younger me would have been listening, that would have been incredibly eye opening. I don’t think I would have been listening.

george grombacher 8:49
Yeah. That’s that’s kind of the trick, right? It’s is when the student is ready, the teacher appears there’s all these different sayings for it. Like you just said, Everything happens for a reason. And that your younger self would have laughed at that. And today, you appreciate that. It’s the truest thing in the world.

Adrian Jones 9:10
That’s right. Yeah, absolutely. There’s, there’s no doubt about it. And, you know, my, my, I have a lot of friends who asked me, or come up to me and say, in fact, I had a friend the other day, it’s graduation season for high schools. We were at a graduation party. And a friend came up and just wanted to check in on me and she said to me, she goes, you know, Adrian, you know, something we don’t, which I thought was really powerful. I wasn’t trying to sort of come off as someone who knows a lot of things that other people don’t we were just having a conversation, but she was alluding to the fact that I had beaten a very close brush with death. And thereby I must know something. And I don’t know, I suppose I potentially do. I would say it’d be my survivor superpowers that that I was able to when I was gifted as a result of surviving, that, I think is what I know more of that I wish I could share with other people. And that’s something that I’m, I’m working on that I hope to be able to roll out here before Labor Day of this year.

george grombacher 10:12
Yeah. You know, something we don’t I love that. And I could just see her walking up and saying that and and just, in fact, I would have loved to have seen that. And I love the term survivor superpower because it’s a real thing. And I’m super excited to see what what you roll out. Because if you can help people to not have to go through a Widowmaker or some form of rock bottom to get to the place where you are, how valuable that is.

Adrian Jones 10:49
Yeah, I mean, my life purpose now is going back to me laying on the, on the bed after the heart attack is how can I help and inspire other people to live their lives to the fullest to live their best selves and become their best selves. And so I that’s what I hope to do with the time I have left.

george grombacher 11:10
So you mentioned writing, speaking, podcasting, all these things? How is that process Ben? Kind of finding your voice?

Adrian Jones 11:24
Yeah, it’s evolutionary, I’ll tell you that much. It took me a while. But not that long, I guess I should say. With my voice on the survivorship, it was understanding what it means to become an adoptee just fully embracing being an adoptee II. And knowing what it means to be an adoptee and some of the challenges we have as adoptees I’ve never really understood that before. And so once I’ve started looking for my biological family, I found them I waded into this whole world of adoptee advocacy. That was where I had to do some real work in terms of like, Where do I stand on adoption? And, and it’s a very complicated situation. I mean, it’s just complex, though, any way you look at it, and to, to be able to establish where I stand on things was really important. I mean, I don’t know if people know this. But adoptees are four times more likely to attempt suicide than the general population. We are overrepresented in addiction treatment settings. And so why is that and peeling that back, but just, again, thanks for another conversation. But there, it did take me some time to establish my voice and to put things out there into the public domain on on adoption. But I’m all about advocating for people finding their true self being genuinely true to who they are, and following their single unique foot fingerprint that they have in their life.

george grombacher 13:06
And that is a process that is certainly easier said than done. And I’m grateful that there are people out there like you who are working on helping people to engage in that process and follow the steps. Yeah, that’s hard.

Adrian Jones 13:21
It’s really hard. It’s really, it’s really, really hard. And, and when you think about all the complexities of all the priorities and our lives and all the noise and just taking that, giving yourself the permission and the grace to have the space to do the, what I like to call the soul work, to discover who you really are, what your purpose is what really gets you excited. That passion that can can really be can drive your life in such a richly rewarding way, I believe. And so if I can help people get there. I’ll just be so happy.

george grombacher 14:02
I love it. Well, Adrian, thank you so much for coming on. Where can people learn more about you? How can they engage with you? How can they kind of keep keep in touch?

Adrian Jones 14:11
Yeah, thank you so much for that. Well, we talked about it at the top of the conversation. I am the host of the profound awesomeness podcast. I guess the best way for people to reach out to me you can go to my my website profound awesomeness.com which is in full disclosure, we’re working on it behind the scenes. It’s a little rudimentary, but you can get in touch with me that way. And I’d love to hear from you if you have a story to share or just want to get in touch I’d be happy to hear from people.

george grombacher 14:39
Excellent. Well, if you enjoyed as much as I did show Adrian your appreciation and share today’s show with a friend who also appreciates good ideas go to profound awesomeness.com It’s a great website and great podcast and Adrian and check it out and stay in touch and we’ll have you back on as soon as you are ready to roll out and announce you Your further plans to the world Adrian so thank you again

Adrian Jones 15:04
thank you so much for having me it was great to be here today till next

george grombacher 15:07
time remember do your part by doing your best

Transcribed by https://otter.ai