Today we’d like to introduce you to Jonas Royster.
Hi Jonas, so excited to have you on the platform. So, before we get into questions about your work-life, maybe you can bring our readers up to speed on your story and how you got to where you are today?
Being in the “street life” is not always a choice for everyone however for me it was and for 25 consecutive years, I chose to give that lifestyle and my sandbox friends everything I had. Even with my parents in the household by the age of twenty-three, I found myself along with twelve other co-defendants standing in front of a judge listening to him deny each of our bails as we all faced life sentences for conspiracy to commit murder.
The only thing that kept me from fainting on the courtroom floor in front of the judge and all my friends was the fact that 7 years earlier I made a choice to stand on four underlying values that in turn became the foundation of what has helped me shift my life 180 degrees. Commitment, loyalty, integrity, and discipline were and still are the foundational bricks that I continue to stand on today.
Each one of these values helped me quit a 23-year criminal activity habit, a 22-year drinking habit, and a 15-year nicotine habit, and helped me turn my life experiences into a 3-time award-winning author of the Young Adult Fiction Book Bangin’ the Making of a Y.G.
I believe everyone has a set of values that if identified can shift and transform their lives into whatever they desire if they are willing to take risks for positive change.
We all face challenges, but looking back would you describe it as a relatively smooth road?
The road is typically paved whichever way we see it, be it smooth or be it bumpy. For the greater part of my life, I saw the road as a bumpy one, one that wasn’t meant for me to travel down because of society’s views on young black men which kept me on the sideline scared to obtain a better future for myself because I believed the narrative that I was going to be dead or in jail by the age of twenty-three. However, I began to understand in my later years that if I changed the way I looked at things the things I looked at changed. With that realization, that same road I was traveling down started to eventually smoothen out for me and has led me to where I’m at now.
Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
As a speaker and author, I help the formerly and currently incarcerated shift their mindset by teaching transferable values of commitment, loyalty, integrity, and discipline so they can redesign their lives for a better future.
Other than my wife and two beautiful children what I am most proud of is the ability to harness the willpower to remain disciplined and committed to my sobriety of not only drugs and alcohol but towards a lifestyle that I thought I would never leave unless it was in a coffin.
What sets me apart from others is the uncanny ability to see both sides of the fence and apply a unique street perspective to help people gain a better understanding of how to redesign their lives.
What was your favorite childhood memory?
A favorite childhood memory of mine was when my father would take me and my younger brother to the Mission Bay Playground by Fiesta Island and watch the giant kites standstill in the skies as the men holding them below lived out their childhood memories. Then my dad would push us on the swings and allow us to climb on the monkey bars than would walk with us to the famous Visitor Center, look around, and enjoy the beauty that it and San Diego had to offer. Until now I never thought about it but I believe that memory has stuck with me because I didn’t have a care in the world and it was the last time, I felt the innocence in my life.
Contact Info:
- Email: jonasroyster@hoodproverbz.com
- Website: www.jonasroyster.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/jonasroyster/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jonas.royster
Image Credits
@kalmdown369_fedha
