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Transcript
- 05:12 About JJ Virgin
- 08:54 The Miracle Mindset
- 14:17 Why mindset matters
- 18:17 Beyond health miracles
- 21:38 The mindset shift
- 26:37 Diet and Nutrition and the Miracle Mindset
- 30:05 Facing adversity
- 32:33 Where to start
- 35:11 You are stronger than you think
- 39:46 The most pressing health issue in the world today
- 41:43 Where to find JJ Virgin and the Miracle Mindset Academy
Wendy Myers: Hello! Welcome to the Live to 110 Podcast. Thank you so much for joining us today. I’m your host, Wendy Myers. I just had such a terrific week. I cannot even tell you.
I have my book up on Amazon. It’s going to be published on April 29th, but it’s available for pre-order on Amazon.
I also joined the Genius Network. It’s Joe Polish’s Genius Network where entrepreneurs come together to help elevate each other and help each other out and increase and improve their business and just learn how to do all the things that you need to do to improve your business.
So I’m just really honored. It’s really been a dream of mine to join that group. And I finally have! It’s very exciting.
But today on the show, we have JJ Virgin. I’m really an admirer of hers. I just love her work. I read her book, The Virgin Diet, several years ago when it first came out. It’s a food elimination diet essentially. I really learned a lot about the importance of eliminating foods, certain foods, from your diet that can cause inflammation and weight gain. It’s a really good book. I highly recommend it. A lot of impeccable research behind it.
But today, we’re going to be talking about her new book, Miracle Mindset. When I first heard her on Sean Croxton’s podcast, I heard her relay her story, just her heart-wrenching story of a hit-and-run accident that she endured with her son—her son is suffering a traumatic brain injury as a result—and all the lessons that that taught her.
It’s such a good podcast. It just talks about the lessons that she learned and how she decided to put that into a memoir called Miracle Mindset and help other people rise to the challenges in their life with grace and with reduced stress and just live a more satisfying and happy life and meeting their goals.
So, I’m thrilled to have her on the show.
But before we get started, please keep in mind that this podcast is not intended to diagnose or treat any disease or health condition and is not a substitute for professional medical advice.
The Live to 110 Podcast is for informational purposes only and educational purposes. So please consult your healthcare practitioner before engaging in anything that we suggest today on this show.
As I’ve mentioned before, my book is coming out. It’s called Limitless Energy: How to Detox Toxic Metals to End Exhaustion and Chronic Fatigue. I know so many of you out there are so tired and you’re guzzling coffee and you’re taking 5-hour Energy or prescription Adderall or Ritalin or other stimulants in a desperate attempt to get energy because there’s so many things working against us today in our environment for energy production.
And so I talk about the things that interfere with our energy production in the book—mainly toxic metals, arsenic, aluminum, tin, thallium, cesium—that poison enzymes that transport nutrients into our mitochondria.
A lot of you guys that have been a regular listener have heard me talk about these things quite a bit. It’s ingrained in your brain. But I talk about, in the book, solutions like taking certain supplements and doing certain detox protocols, the most effective ones, so that you can remove these metals interfering in your body’s maximum capability to produce energy.
And I’ll talk about some other interesting concepts in the book as well like bioenergetics and a lot of other interesting things that you can do that are really non-conventional that will help you to boost your energy, so that you’re not depending and living on stimulants.
I’ve been on that road myself where I’ve been taking stimulants and drinking coffee. I’ve taken phentramin diet pills before and stimulants. It’s just this rollercoaster that many of us find ourselves on, and it’s not necessary.
I want to help you to get real energy, true energy, so that you don’t need stimulants anymore.
I’m actually at a point in my life now where I can’t tolerate coffee. It’s too strong. I have so much natural energy in my body that coffee just sends me through the roof. It’s just too much (unless I’m doing a coffee enema. I make an exception for coffee enemas).
But anyways, you can get my book on Amazon. Check it out! It’s called Limitless Energy. You can get it right now. It will be available on Kindle and paperback April 29th.
Our guest today is JJ Virgin. She’s a celebrity nutrition and fitness expert. She teaches clients how to lose weight and master their mindset, so they can lead bigger and better lives.
She’s the author of four New York Times bestsellers: The Virgin Diet, The Virgin Diet Cookbook, JJ Virgin’s Sugar Impact Diet and JJ Virgin’s Sugar Impact Diet Cookbook. Her memoir, Miracle Mindset: a Mother, Her Son and Life’s Hardest Lessons explores the powerful lessons and strength and positivity that she learned after her son, Grant, was a victim of a brutal hit-and-run accident.
JJ hosts the popular JJ Virgin Lifestyle Show Podcast and regularly writes for the Huffington Post, Rodeo Wellness and other major blogs and magazines.
She’s also a frequent guest on TV and radio and speaks at major events.
In addition to her work with nutrition and fitness, JJ is also a business coach and founded the premiere health entrepreneur event and community, The Mindshare Summit. I went last year, I’m going this year. I can’t wait! It’s fantastic! I highly recommend it.
JJ, thank you so much for coming on the show.
JJ Virgin: Oh, I’m so glad to be here.
Wendy Myers: So, why don’t you tell the listeners a little bit about your background and how you came to do the work that you do?
JJ Virgin: So, my background, I’ve always been into nutrition and fitness back from when I was a teenager. But somehow, I went off to college on a theatre scholarship—a little diversion. But it’s amazing how everything kind of pulls together. And then, I ended up being an English major.
But I sort of started teaching aerobics in college. And then, I became a personal trainer. It was being invited by Jake way back when. So, I went off to grad school in Exercise Science. And then, I kept studying nutrition, doctoral school and functional medicine.
But what was interesting—and it’s amazing how all of these things that you do in your life all kind of coalesce. You never know when you’re going to need to have to pull them all out.
Along the way of doing all these graduate school and being a nutritionist and being a fitness expert, I also have been a big student of personal development. I had a mentor early on. My first real mentor in business and life was a big mindset mentor. That’s what she did. I kept wanting her to coach me on business and how to have a successful business, and she kept going back to mindset.
And now, I get that if you’re going to run a business or actually do anything well in your life, it’s all going to come down to your mindset. But at the time, I was like, “Just show me what strategy I should use.”
It’s so clear that whether it’s your health or your career or your relationships, there’s definitely not a shortage of strategies out there. We never kind of outgrow our mindset.
So, that’s the framework. I’ve been doing health for a couple of decades now. And I always look at things and figure out how to take someone through their own personal discovery process. I’m super left brain, so I’d always start with some way of self-identifying and then going through a process, so that you can connect the dots and create a workable solution for yourself.
And so that was the set-up for this book coming next. A lot of people look at what I’m into, this next book of the Miracle Mindset and go, “That seems kind of off-subject,” they go. Actually, it’s really the third pillar of health when you look at it, right?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, absolutely, because your emotional IQ is so important. It’s just as important as working on your health. It has a huge impact on your health.
Wendy Myers: So, you have your new book coming out. It’s called the Miracle Mindset. And it is, like you said, a bit of a departure from your diet and nutrition books that were both New York Times bestsellers. So, can you tell me what inspired your book, Miracle Mindset?
JJ Virgin: Yeah, it was interesting. I’ve always written books based on what people asked me about. I used to go around the country, teaching a course called Weight Loss Resistence. And everyone would always ask about the food allergies. Back then, we weren’t even calling them an intolerance. I’m like, “It’s not really an allergy.” And so that was the Virgin Diet.
And then, after I wrote that, people, they couldn’t get over their sugar cravings. I’m like, “Alright! Well, we’ve been looking at that wrong.” So I wrote the Sugar Impact Diet.
But when the Virgin Diet was getting ready to come out—like literally, a couple of weeks before the book was coming out—and just to set it up, I had invested all of the book advance into getting the book out to the market. I had borrowed money so I could do a public television show. So I was like totally in deep. And I’m the total financial support for my family. And I had kids, 15 and 16.
It’s a couple of weeks before pub day, and this is the craziest time in an author’s life. My 16-year old is out on a walk and gets hit crossing the street. We don’t know for sure, but we estimate maybe 40 miles an hour. And literally, he was left for dead in the street.
This woman got out of her car, looked at him, gasped and drove off.
So, he was air-lifted to the local hospital. And we had him air-lifted again to another hospital. But basically, I had to launch this book and be in the hospital with my son of course—I’m not going anywhere while he’s in a coma—and do all of these at the same time.
And so I kept getting asked. It’s like the next question after the sugar one was like, “How did you manage to do all of that? How did you manage to be there for your son while he was in a coma and help him be 110%?”
It was my commitment to him standing there in the coma. I was like, “Grant, you’re going to be 110%, you’ll see. This is your warrior.”
I really kind of reflected back on how I’ve manage to pull the last 4 ½ years out because traumatic brain injuries are an amazing thing to work through. And I realized it really—first, I thought, “Oh, it’s because I was so healthy and he was healthy. That’s how we did it.” And it’s like, “No, that’s not really it at all.”
The first night in the hospital, they told us to let my son go, that he’d never survive another air-lift and we just had to let him go. We overruled the doctors.
And then, the next day in the hospital, I looked at Grant and I said, “You know, you’re going to be 110%,” which was a ridiculous statement—first of all, because 110% doesn’t exist, and second of all, because they didn’t even think he was going to wake up.
So, I really realized that it was the mindset that I have built over the year (because your mindset is a muscle). It was what was working through in the hospital that allowed my son to survive.
So, that’s why I wrote the book. Once you realize that, you realize that those lessons, even though the story is super specific, the lessons that helped me get through all of it are massively universal and, heck, they helped my people in the weight loss world that they’re stuck, so they can pretty much help anyone any part of their life.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, I’ve heard you tell that story before when I first heard you on a podcast. I’ve been following you ever since, your story. I just can’t even imagine what you went through, having that happen to my own child. I just want to commend you for pulling through that. It’s just mind-boggling.
JJ Virgin: It’s been a long struggle. And you know what? I still remember the day before it happened. I was at a workshop and they were teaching the Hero’s Journey. I was thinking the story of like, “What’s your big struggle in life and your big hero’s journey?” and I’m like, “I don’t have one.” Well, I got one.
And I think that’s a really key point. I’ve heard so many people say, “Oh, my gosh! I can’t imagine going through what she went through.” I actually don’t want anyone ever to imagine it. It’s really a parent’s worst nightmare. But on the flipside, we know that we are going to be facing challenges. There’s no questions that we’re going to have to handle stuff.
The fortuitous thing in all these was that I had gone through stuff before. So it’s like I’ve been in training for it.
That’s really my key mission now with this book. Whether someone is just stuck—I hear so many people going on, “I’m just stuck. I feel stuck”—or they feel like they can’t handle the stuff coming up, they’re in overwhelm or just fear or they’re what I call “comfortably uncomfortable,” they know they could have a bigger life, that’s all mindset. It can be developed.
And actually, it’s not easy. But it’s a lot simpler than people realize to do.
Wendy Myers: When you have terrible tragedies that happen in your life, you rise to the occasion. You don’t have any choice. So it’s better if you have a skill set in place to help you do that, be maximally successful.
Wendy Myers: So, tell us what exactly is the Miracle Mindset? What does our mindset matter so much?
JJ Virgin: I’ve been now kind of obsessed with this one as I started to look at it because, again, it came from this question, people were like, “How did you do that?” And I’m like, “How did I do that?” I was in autopilot as you can imagine.
And you said an important thing. These things happen and you step up. We’re never better than when we’re challenged. It’s an important thing for parents to hear. I think we need to really make sure we’re letting our kids be challenged and not make it too easy on them.
But I started to really look at people around me who I admire, who inspire me, and I realized that every person you meet who’s really doing cool stuff out there in the world has gone through some serious struggles. They’ve gone through it. And so I always think success leaves clues, so I was like, “Okay, what are the common factors?”
Once you accept that your mindset is a muscle—because there are two mindsets that psychologist, Carole Dweck, from Stanford did the work on. She said you either have a fixed mindset, which means you’re a victim, life happens to you, there’s nothing you can do, so once we chose that that’s not what we want, then you have a growth mindset, what I call then a “miracle mindset,” this mindset that you can develop.
And so what I did was look at all the different people who I am inspired by and I’m like, “What are their key attributes that everyone seems to share?”
And that’s what I built the book and the documentary around. That’s what the lessons are all about and exercises.
And so it’s being courageous. And this is a big one because I feel like there’s this emphasis on being fearless. You could be fearless. That means you’re avoiding fear. We’re going to feel fear. I feel fear every single day, gosh! Putting this book and documentary out in the world and pulling the kimono back on my whole life where I talk about fear, what was I thinking?
So, it’s being courageous. It’s thinking abundantly which is really being open to possibilities.
I love that line: “Your limitations will become your life.” And so, really, when Grant was in the hospital, looking at him and saying, “No, he’s going to be 110%,” and then taking action—
Especially in our world of health practitioners, you hear so many people going, “Oh, I need another degree. I need to take another workshop, blah-blah-blah,” it’s like, “No, no. Just get into action. Just do.”
Living in the present, being able to really recognize the great things that happen every day. One of the things that I’ve realized from all these is that there are little miracles going on all day long. We just don’t see them. We’re just too busy. That’s a hugely important one.
Being resilient. The studies show now that people who are resilient are happier and more successful. You can develop it (which is super cool).
Asking for help and really being collaborative, having a great community that you’re surrounded with, that has made a massive difference for me in my life for years and years and years. I call it “the family you choose.” They all rallied around me during this time.
And then, being able to forgive. That’s what I classify the Miracle Mindset is, the sum of those attributes which really basically make you unstoppable.
Wendy Myers: I love that you talk about resilience because I think so many people can get stuck and can become inflexible, “We have to do it my way” or “I’m right.” It’s so important to be flexible and to be able to go with the flow.
When you have a business or relationship, it never quite goes as planned and you have to be resilient and make changes very, very quickly.
Wendy Myers: Now, you obviously learned these lessons as a result of this tragic accident that happened in your life. What about people who are facing problems that aren’t about their health? Does the miracle mindset apply to their challenges as well?
JJ Virgin: You know, it’s been interesting. When I’m putting a program together, I kind of create a hypothesis, right? And then, I test it.
Once I was going to do this, I thought, “You know, I’m going to create a program to be able to teach people how to develop their own miracle mindset with the hypothesis that when you up-level your mindset, it will impact every area of your life.”
And the converse is true too. If you accept that your mindset is muscle, if you’re not growing it, it’s shrinking, that will impact every area of your life. That would be your money and your business and your relationships and your health.
So, I got 150 people to go through this with me the first time. I’m like, “I’m not sure what it’s going to be.” Brave souls! And I had them rate their happiness in those four areas and write down their big goals in those four areas before we started. Then we put them away.
I said, “All I want you to do now is we’re going to work on exercises on each of those areas, things to build you courage and build you resilience and help you learn how to forgive.” And then, we went back and we rated how they were in those four categories, their level of satisfaction. And we re-did their goals.
What I had hypothesized absolutely came true—it’s so cool—that even though they weren’t working on things over there and they haven’t set goals, all of a sudden, their levels of satisfaction in all areas of their life go up and their goals get bigger.
They are now open to bigger possibilities. They see a bigger life for themselves. They’re not stopped by fear or their beliefs that they’re not good enough.
So, really, I’ve been putting this into my health programs for years. I always start people with “What’s your why? What’s your big purpose?” But I’d say this needs to really go on top of anything you’re doing in your life because you can’t out-run your mindset.
I think the biggest challenge out there is—I couldn’t find a way to quantify it, so I created this score card and assessment for it. I had very specific exercises that were—
Everything, to me, I always have to have some science behind things, I have to be able to measure it. And then, I have to have ways that you can improve it that are easy, time efficient because that’s our life. I see a lot of these things, they’re like, “Okay. Well, you’re going to go into a quiet, silent meditation retreat for a week,” and I’m like, “No, I’m not. I won’t do that.”
Wendy Myers: That would be suicide for me.
JJ Virgin: Can you imagine? I went to one and they’re like, “Okay, you can’t have your phones, your this…” I’m like, “I can’t! No, I’m not doing that… for a week?” But can I add in something every single day for a couple of minutes? Sure! If that’s going to move the needle, yes, I’ll do that. So that’s what I set out to do.
And it’s interesting. Just in my health community, I saw people who have gotten stuck and are starting to get their weight back. And all of a sudden, it’s just not an issue anymore. It’s like lose the weight, go to the next level on their health, but they didn’t even focus on it. So it’s pretty crazy.
Wendy Myers: So, is there a specific time that you can point to when you feel like your mindset really made the difference that literally changed the outcome for you and your son?
JJ Virgin: I believe in life that you get what you expect. And one of the things that I’ve done my whole adult life is I’d create a big, scary goal that always seems like a big stretch to me, that I can’t see how I’m going to get to, and then I write it down, and I tell everybody because then I figure I’m committed, right? I can’t go back on my word.
So, with this one, it was the second day—let’s see, really, the first morning in the ICU and he had gotten through surgery. He made it through the air-lift. He made it through the surgery. Of course now, the neurosurgeons told us he was never going to wake up. So there was that. But I was not listening to them.
I was holding on to his one hand. Everything else was bandaged. He had road rash down one side and glass and gravel sticking out and tubes. I’m holding on his one hand. I said, “Grant, you’re going to be 110%. This is going to be the best thing that ever happened to you. We’ve got this. We’re all together in this. I’m pulling all the best resources in and we will fight for you. You’re a warrior. And we are going to do this.”
From that moment on, I was like, “What do we need to do to get him to 110%?”
Here’s the thing. He’s in a coma. The neurosurgeons are like, “We don’t think he’ll wake up. We don’t know if he’s going to ever wake up or live” because a lot of people with traumatic brain injuries are going to die especially right there in that coma. He had lacerated kidneys, 13 fractures. He had massive problems going on.
But I also knew that he was still alive, so I had hope. That’s all I was paying attention to.
And so what I did was I started looking for every little, tinee bit of proof that he was progressing, which it was as simple as things like his eyelids fluttered.
One of the things that happened was we had one of my doctor friends from Cedar Sinai’s Brain Trauma Unit came in with some essential oils because it was like one of the first things that he could respond to. So, even though he’s in a coma, he’s wiggling his nose and toes and fluttering his eyelids when we bring these essential oils in.
So, anything like that, I’m like, “Okay, we’ve got that. Now, what do I need to do next?” I would just build on these things, little 1% by 1%. Just the attitude.
I mean, think of the difference between “Okay, I want my son to live” versus “I want my son to live an extraordinary life better than before the accident. He’s going to be 110%.”
And I will tell you. It’s been 4 ½ years. And up until two or three months ago, I was like—every once in a while, I kind of go, “Huh…” because it wasn’t looking like we’re getting to 110% which, in a lot of ways, we’re there. But you just got to ask that question and stick with it. There’s always a way.
Wendy Myers: So, how is he doing today?
JJ Virgin: I told him, “You’re going to be the poster child for recovering from a traumatic brain injury.” There are 17 million of them a year in the U.S. and they’re the silent epidemic because you can’t tell. You’d see my son and go, “Oh, he looks great.” You wouldn’t know unless you knew. We’re determined to get that information out there.
What we were told at the hospital was the brain has its own timetable, so now we wait. I’m like, “We wait?” I’ve never been patient.
And that’s totally wrong information. It is absolutely wrong. You can totally facilitate healing in the brain. You can facilitate healing in the brain decades after injury.
So, we did some things in the hospitals—some, the doctors approved of; some, they didn’t know about. And that was that. I had a bunch of doctors helping me with this. So, we did progesterone and high dose fish oil there. And then, since he’s gotten home, we’ve been doing a lot of things like neurofeedback, hyperbaric.
But the latest thing, we’ve been injecting his own stem cells that have been grown straight into his spine.
Unbelievable! Unbelievable. So I’m very excited about the potential of stem cells for everybody. I think this is going to be a game-changer out there for so many, so many diseases.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, stem cells are going to give hope to so many people for so many different kinds of health issues.
At the Bulletproof Conference—I was there last year—we had a lot of different speakers talking about stem cells and what they can do. It’s just fascinating!
Wendy Myers: So, obviously, you didn’t leave your focus of fitness and nutrition behind when you wrote the Miracle Mindset. So, how is that part of the Miracle Mindset? Is there anything about fitness or nutrition or diet in that book?
JJ Virgin: There is some because here’s what I did that I think people are like, “What?!” I realized when I was in the hospital with Grant, “Here I am and I am not leaving my son”—if you look at what happens in hospitals, this is a teaching hospital and I’m going to be with him. And so this was 4 ½ months he was in the hospital. So, unless I was out on the road for the media tours—when my ex-husband came in, I was there. So I’m not leaving the hospital, but I pay the bills and I’m looking at this. And things like stem cell therapy, insurance is not covering these things. So, I’m like, “This book really has to go now. Now, it’s not optional. Success is not optional here. And I’ve got to be here for my son.”
I knew that in order to pull that off, in order to be a high performer and operate at that level, I couldn’t get sick. You cannot walk into the ICU sick, you can’t. They won’t let you in. So, I couldn’t get sick. I was making life-and-death decisions. I had to do interviews. In the UCLA, they set up a little room for me to do my book interviews. So I was like full on every day all day. I went, “You know what? My self-care is going on top.”
So, at the top of everything I did, I did what I call “extreme self-care.” I was eating perfectly. I was running the hospital stairs for exercise. I was getting eight hours of sleep. Friends were bringing me in supplements for stress.
Hyla Cass walked in with like a purse-ful up here. I’m like, “Thank you.” And she made me home-made, organic chicken soup. I mean, come on! And Daniel and Tana Amen walked in, they cooked all these food.
So, I just made sure I took absolutely amazing care of myself because I knew it was the only way that I was going to be able to do this.
And so I talk about that. Heck, if I could do that there, anybody can use these techniques everywhere. I was in a hospital, the least healthy place really on the planet.
Wendy Myers: Yeah. It’s funny how hospitals are so not healthy.
JJ Virgin: Isn’t that funny? One of Grant’s first words when he woke up was—they gave him a hospital tray of food. I had a NutriBullet in there. I was blending up stuff for him. I was bringing in my own food. Vital Choice was sending Salmon Burgers over. He looks at this hospital food—because I had a big sign up that said, “[…] No hospital food.” And he’s like disgusting.
Wendy Myers: Yeah! When my dad was in the hospital (he had esophageal cancer), there was a McDonald’s in the hospital. I’m like, “This is what got him in the hospital in the first place.” It’s just mind-blowing to me.
JJ Virgin: Yeah. Well, there was one at the children’s hospital in LA too, a McDonald’s. It was crazy!
Wendy Myers: That’s two blocks from me.
JJ Virgin: Oh, really? Yeah. I have fond memories of that place though. They were amazing. And they also had two Starbucks. The one hall pass I gave myself for my health was I’m like, “You can have as much coffee as you want, baby.”
Wendy Myers: So, what would you say to people who feel like they could never do what you did, they could never face that kind of adversity or who feel like they don’t have what it takes to get through a major crisis in their lives?
JJ Virgin: You know, it’s interesting because I know I would’ve said the same thing. Looking at this, if a friend was going through it, I’m like, “I can never do that.” It’s amazing what you can do when you have to, when your back is against the wall.
But early on, my son, Grant, is bipolar. And when he was six, I took him to a psychologist and he was explaining Grant’s situation, what I would need to do. I looked at him and I go, “Gosh! I’m not strong enough to do this.” He said, “Well, you better get strong enough because this is what you’re facing.” I’m like, “Oh!”
I think that’s really the answer. Well, you better get strong enough because the one thing we know for sure is life is going to throw challenges at you. And the differentiator between people I see who are loving their lives and living extraordinary lives and those who aren’t is their ability to step up and face those challenges because we know for sure they’re going to happen.
When you look at it, I can’t think of one thing in my life that’s happened where I can look at it—like one amazing thing, one beautiful thing—and go, “Wow! That beautiful, amazing thing that happened to me, I learned so much from that.” We don’t learn that way.
We go through adversity, and we step up, we get stronger, we build resilience and we’re better because of it—and not when we’re in the middle of it. I’m not going to tell you that when I was going through the middle of this with Grant, I’m like, “Oh, boy! I’m getting stronger and more resilient.” That is not how it happened.
I was in action just like one foot after the next and doing what I needed to do to keep myself together. But the reality is when you go through these things and when you step up, it is amazing what it will do for your life.
And Grant, I interviewed him the other day, and I asked him, “Grant, let’s go back 4 ½ years and you have the option. You can cross the street or not. What would you do?”
And Grant said, “I would cross the street because I’m better because of it.”
I’m like, “Wow!”
Wendy Myers: Wow!
Wendy Myers: So, where do people start? What can they do to start changing their mindset today and get on this road to improving their mindsets so they can face adversities and face challenges with less stress and grace that is inevitably going to happen in their life at some point?
JJ Virgin: Grace is a great word, I love that, because that’s really what it is. It’s not about avoiding these things; it’s about handling them. They’re still going to be there, but you’ll learn how to handle them.
And I’ve always loved—in all of my books, I have these simple shifts, little shifts, little hinges that swing big doors.
It’s the same with Miracle Mindset.
What I see that’s one of the simplest things that you can do—it’s one of the things that I did when Grant was in the hospital that literally saved me. And after the fact, I was looking through all the science on resilience and gratitude and forgiveness and I’m like, “Ah, no wonder this saved me. I get it now.”
I had a habit that my very first mentor that I talked about who taught me mindset had taught me. She taught me to pull out a journal every single day and write down at least three things or people I was grateful for.
I like to journal and write a bunch of stuff. But some mornings, I don’t have 15 minutes to write everything, but I can always get a minute and write three things down. You can do this. And especially when my son was in the hospital and I was getting over there between 5:30 and 6:00 a.m., I wasn’t going to write a book every morning, but I could write three things.
It’s the act of putting your pen to paper that I’d wake up first thing in this hotel room, remember what the heck was going on, have a little fear seizure, and then I grab out the journal and write these three things, and it would just be like that gratitude just went whoosh and shoved out the fear.
That saved me.
And it’s interesting because we’ve got people now in the Miracle Mindset Academy. And within a week, everything is starting to shift for them just by doing that, that simple little thing of a minute a day. I call it like it’s burst training for your mindset.
Wendy Myers: It’s such a simple thing to do. There’s a lot of people recommending that you do this because it’s such a simple and effective tool that anybody can do. It really does. It’s shown in research. It just completely change the way you think and change your mindset. Exactly!
Wendy Myers: Do you have any last words of encouragement for the listeners or advice?
JJ Virgin: You know, we call the documentary You Are Stronger Than You Think. And I think we’re really never better than when we’re challenged.
People have said, “Oh, my gosh! You’re like Superwoman,” I go, “I’m scared every day. I still am scared every day.”
But actually, now I know that being scared is a good thing. That fear goes away quickly when you lean into it. It doesn’t last long. It’s like a 90-second feeling. And any time you do that, you build that resilience so you can handle things. And the bottomline is as you do that, you’re going to discover (like we all do) that you can handle these things and that you are stronger than you think.
Wendy Myers: I love that you say that your mindset is like a muscle and you have to work on that. I think our brains are trained to look for problems in our environment. That’s just how we survive. And you have to re-train that monkey mind to be thinking about gratitude and positive things and redirect it or it’s just going to take over.
JJ Virgin: Well, I have to put in too the metaphor—you know, I look at everything from a nutrition and fitness person’s background, so I was like, “Okay, let me make sense of this.” So I came up with this metaphor.
Your mindset is a muscle which means you’ve got to be exercising it regularly. You would never say, “Oh, you know what? I think I’m just going to not like do anything for my heart or my brain. I’m just going to leave my heart out of things.” You’ve got to keep these things moving and exercising or they’re done.
So, once you accept that your mindset is a muscle, I looked at it and I went, “Okay, I’m going to create CPR for your mindset,” but you can do it on yourself. That would be how you develop that courage so that you can handle anything (because we know you’re going to be having to handle things), how to get that purpose dialed in so that you get unstuck in your life (I see so many people who are just comfortable dissatisfied), and then how to build the resilience so that you’ll be able to have that bigger life.
The bottomline is the people who are playing the bigger life, they’re having a bigger impact out there, they just have developed higher stress tolerance. They’ve just had that resilience. It’s not that things have been easy. In fact, usually, they’ve had even more challenges than the average person.
Wendy Myers: Well, thank you so much for coming on the podcast. I really appreciate it. I wish you all the luck with your book launch. I know that it’s going to help so, so many people.
I’m excited that you did this documentary as well. Can you tell us something about that?
JJ Virgin: I always do public television shows with my books. And so as I was writing this book, I’m like, “I should do a documentary on this.” Public television shows are usually stand-up and do a lecture. I’m like, “Well, that would be kind of strange.” And what I didn’t think about was: “Wow! If I did this book in a documentary, I get to re-live the entire thing over and over and over.” I still watch the documentary and cry (and I know the outcome).
But the documentary, it’s kind of like—did you ever see the movie, Rudy?
Wendy Myers: Yeah, mm-hmmm…
JJ Virgin: It’s like Rudy meets The Secret meets ER (the series, ER), all those things put together. It’s my specific story, but we’ve woven those lessons in. Of course, we go deeper in the book with them. And that all leads into the Miracle Mindset Academy.
What was really interesting to me—someone asked me the other day, they said, “Oh, it must have been really healing to do the movie,” I go, “No, it wasn’t healing to do the movie. It actually was not healing at all. It actually kept bringing up all my stuff.”
And it wasn’t until—and this is such a great lesson for all of us –it wasn’t until I started teaching other people how to build their own miracle mindset. The minute I started shifting into that focus, it healed me. It was like [snap]. I could handle watching the movie and talking about it and doing the book.
And so that’s been interesting. It just shows, so often, if you’re in a challenging place, just reach out and help someone else. It’s amazing how that gets you out of your own thing.
Wendy Myers: Yeah, [00:39:34] suffer from depression for many years. I kept reading all the depression books, self-help books. Just go and help somebody else. Get out of your mind. Extend that to someone else and change your focus, very simple.
Wendy Myers: So, I have a question I like to ask all of my guests. What do you think is the most pressing health issue in the world today?
JJ Virgin: Isolation. Brain injury has obviously become a big focus of mine. And one of the biggest challenges Grant faced coming out of his brain injury was that he lost his community. He lost his friends. He was a junior in highschool. You come out of a brain injury, you can’t really talk, he had to learn everything all over again—who he was, how to tie his shoes, everything. Highschool kids aren’t hanging out for that.
So, basically, all his friends left and went off to college. He has me and my ex-husband and his dog and our other son. That has really crushed me.
And so that’s one that I’m really committed to helping with, helping with this whole issue of social isolation. I think it is one of the biggest challenges we’re going to face.
And we can fix it fairly easily. Even with a lot of the online communities, they make a big difference.
So, I’ve been supporting a foundation Kevin Pearce started. Kevin Pearce was that snowboarder who had a massive TBI. They started a retreat. And also, yoga. They’re teaching yoga instructors how to deal with brain injuries so they can bring brain injured people together in classes and have them do yoga and connect with each other. I’m like, “That is so cool!”
So, that is my big concern. I think that I’ve always made an effort to have a great community around me and also mentor people. If we can all reach out like that and look for those people who seem to be alone will really help change things. It’s like eating your vegetables for your mindset.
Wendy Myers: Hmmm… yes. Yeah, I love that.
Wendy Myers: Why don’t you tell the listeners where they can learn more about you and the Mindset Academy and all the other things you have going on?
JJ Virgin: Well, my home page will have everything, JJVirgin.com. We are launching the premiere of the movie. We’re doing it online to start with before it goes to some of the other channels. And then, with that, you’ll also learn more about the book and the Academy. We’re doing a live training for that as well.
The biggest thing I’ve realized again is you can train your mindset. And when you do, it will impact everything in your life.
So, it’s JJVirgin.com. And if you have show notes, we can put links in for you as well.
Wendy Myers: Yes, we’ll do that for sure. Anyone listening, go to the blog post. You’ll see all the links to everything that JJ offers at the bottom of the post, her social media and all that stuff.
Alright! JJ, thank you so much for coming on the show. I so appreciate it. I was honored to have you on the podcast.
I’ve been wanting to have a conversation with you for a long time, so I’m really glad that you came on.
JJ Virgin: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Wendy Myers: And listeners, if you want to learn more about me, go to myersdetox.com. You can check out my healing and detox program, MineralPower.com.
Thank you so much for listening to the Live to 110 Podcast.
