High Performance Mindset | Learn from World-Class Leaders, Consultants, Athletes & Coaches about Mindset - 110: How to Develop a Miracle Mindset with JJ Virgin, NY Times Bestselling Author, Podcaster & Fitness Expert

Episode Date: May 21, 2017

Celebrity nutrition and fitness expert JJ Virgin teaches clients how to lose weight and master their mindset so they can lead bigger, better lives. She is author of 4 NY 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, & Life’s Hardest Lessons explores the powerful lessons in strength and positivity that she learned after her son Grant was the victim of a brutal hit-and-run accident. JJ hosts the popular JJ Virgin Lifestyle Show podcast and regularly writes for Huffington Post, Rodale Wellness, and other major blogs and magazines. In addition to her work with nutrition and fitness, JJ is also a business coach and founded the premier health entrepreneur event and community, The Mindshare Summit. In this interview, JJ Virgin reveals how one life-altering event taught her to tap into an indomitable mindset, trust her instincts and defy the odds, ultimately saving her son’s life…and her own. She also discusses: How to develop your own Miracle Mindset 7 Mindsets of the Miracle Mindset The Mindset Score Card and how you can get it Why taking imperfect action is essential for your success How she discovered why mindset is important You can find JJ on Twitter @jjvirgin, on Facebook HERE, and at www.jjvirgin.com. You can also find the Miracle Mindset Score Card HERE. Get a description and summary at cindrakamphoff.com/jjvirgin.

Welcome to High Performance Mindset with Dr. Sindra Kampoff. Do you want to reach your full potential, live a life of passion, go after your dreams? Each week we bring you strategies and interviews to help you ignite your mindset. Let's bring on Sindra. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. I'm grateful that you're here, ready to listen to an interview with JJ Virgin, episode 109. Now, the goal of these interviews is to learn from the world's best leaders, athletes, coaches, and consultants, all about the topic of mindset to help us reach our potential or be high performers in our field or sport.

Now today I'm going to start with an iTunes review and comment. This is from Amanda Marburg from A-Game Sports Psych. She said, I love the High Performance Mindset podcast. The high performance professionals, Dr. Kampoff, interviews are top notch. I agree. And these interviews are a great learning experience and they give a listener insight into the mind of these professionals.

In order to be the best, you have to learn from the best. And that is what Dr. Kampoff brings to every podcast episode. I can't wait for her book to drop soon. Thank you so much, Amanda. I really appreciate your comment and your rating over on iTunes. And I will for sure let you know when the book is ready,

but it is to the publisher. So it's coming soon. A few weeks ago, I shared with you the goal that I wanted to double the downloads of this podcast in 100 days. You know, these interviews are gems. So I'm wondering if you could help me spread the word. You could do one of three things. You could post a podcast episode that you found useful on social media, maybe on Twitter, Instagram, or Facebook. You could also head over to iTunes and provide a rating and comment like Amanda did. Or you could tell a friend about the podcast. That would be incredible.

So thank you so much for helping out there. Now let's get into today's interview. JJ Virgin is a celebrity nutrition and fitness expert where she teaches her clients to lose weight but also how to master their mindset so they can lead bigger and better lives. She's the author of four New York Times bestselling books including The Virgin Diet, The Miracle Mindset, A Mother, Her Son, and Life's Hardest Lessons, explores the powerful lessons in strength and positivity that she learned after her son Grant was the victim of a brutal hit-and-run accident. Now in today's interview, she talks about how this one life-altering event, what it taught her about how to tap into her mindset and defy the odds, while ultimately saving her son's life and her own. Now gems that JJ provides in this interview,

she talks about how to develop your own miracle mindset, the seven mindsets of the miracle mindset, the mindset scorecard and how you can get it, and why taking imperfect action is essential for your success. Now, my favorite quote from today's interview is this, a big question, how will you show up in this world when things aren't easy? Without further ado, let's bring on JJ Virgin. So JJ, I'm looking forward to talking with you today. Welcome to the High Performance Mindset Podcast. Thank you for having me here. To get us started, tell us a little bit about your passion and what you do. Oh my gosh. Can I just run or can I have multiples? I'm sure everyone can relate to that. For sure. I am a serial entrepreneur, always in the area of health and wellness and kind of obsessed

with science and marketing. And I'm a mom. So first position, entrepreneurial position, because it's the ultimate job is being a mom, right? Absolutely. I don't know if you're a mom, but ma'am, where was the instruction manual for that? Wow. Isn't that so true?

I know. I still am amazed. I keep thinking, how did they let me out of the hospital like this? That's awesome. Didn't anyone say, she has no clue what she's doing? So yeah, a mom, serial entrepreneur. I've always been really passionate about anything in the health and wellness space. And then, you know, I love, I actually, my, one of my favorite things of all

is helping other docs and health entrepreneurs build their businesses. That sounds great. You know, I actually first learned about your work from attending Brendan Burchard's Expert Academy. One of the things I really want to talk to you about is your new book, your memoir, Miracle Mindset, A Mother, Her Sons, and Life's Hard Lessons. So maybe you could just kind of get us started with that and tell us a little bit about kind of what inspired you to write that book. Yeah, so I actually was working with Brendan at the time. It's funny you brought him up. And I had my first really big book coming out called Virgin Diet. And I'd started working with Brendan because I wanted to get it out into the world.

And he's a master at that. And so I had invested everything into this book. I'd done a public television special. I just went all in. I really felt like this was going to be, you know, this, this work that really helped the world. Maybe a little lofty, but I go big. And I'm also the primary financial support for my kids. I pretty much pay for everything. Okay. And that's just important for setting the stage. And a couple weeks before the book is getting ready to come out my son was out walking across

the street and he was hit by a car going 40 miles an hour they estimate no one knows for sure because no one saw the car and you know we have the two people who know it something about it one now is my son and the other is the woman who drove off. And so my son was literally left for dead in the street. He was airlifted to the local hospital. We rushed over there. And when we got there, the doctors told us that he had a torn aorta, which turns out kills 90% of people on the scene. And they said his was hanging on by an onion skin, it would rupture sometime in the next 24 hours. And unless it was repaired, but they said, you know, the type of repair he has to have because he has

multiple brain bleeds is something we don't do at this hospital. So he'd have to be airlifted, but he'll never survive another airlift. And even if he were to survive another airlift, he wouldn't survive that surgery. And even if that he were to survive both of those things, he'd be so brain damaged, it wouldn't be worth it. So my younger son, who was 15 at the time, because this was my 16-year-old, looked at that doctor and said, so maybe a 0.25% chance he could make it. And the doctor said, yeah, that sounds about right. And Bryce looked at him and said, well, we'll take those odds. And Bryce later said to me, he goes, it wasn't zero. It's like, exactly, it wasn't zero. So we had him airlifted to the next hospital and, you know, drove up there in the middle

of the night, not knowing what to expect. And he survived the airlift with an amazing surgical team there, five incredible surgical teams working on him. He survived that, but then he was in a deep coma that they never, they didn't know for sure if he'd come out of that or not. And I remember standing there that next day, holding his hand saying, Grant, you're going to be 110%. I was scared to death, but I knew that he could always feel me. I'm thinking, I'm not letting on that anything's really wrong here. Grant, you're going

to be fine. He had 13 fractures, bones sticking through his skin. You'll be better than before. We've got this. I just need you to fight. And so I spent the next four and a half months with him in the hospital. I literally launched the Virgin Diet, New York Times bestselling book from the hospital. I think I'm a, you know, Guinness book of world records on bat, which is not one I wanted to win for doing that. But yep, that's, so I was with him in the hospital and helping him come through this over the last four years. And what happened over the last four years is people kept asking me how did you do that and to be honest I at first first couple times I was like I don't know you know but you keep getting

asked enough and I'm like I should probably figure this out and so I started asking around to other people who I think are just amazing in what they do who I admire and you know it's just like Napoleon Hill when he wrote Think and Grow Rich. And he went and looked at all the successful people and said, what do they have in common? Oh, it's their mindset. I looked around and I said, what do they have in common? And I went, well, everyone I know who's really out there doing incredible work in the world, who I aspire to be, has gone through really challenging times. And they've developed resilience they're stronger

because of it and they're doing amazing work and so that's really what I started to look at and I went okay so what is this and can you learn it like you know if this is a mindset how do we quantify it because you can only manage what you can measure and then can you develop this so that is the whole premise of the miracle mindset Mindset. It's my story, but it's really talking about how you identify these key attributes and how you develop them in your own self so you can show up bigger in your life. That's so good. Yeah. Hopefully not in what I had to do, but you know, we all have our trials, everybody. Absolutely. I couldn't agree more with what you said, JJ. Tell us a little bit about how you would define the miracle mindset,

and then what you think is included in that. So what you were saying about, you know, the different components that you can measure, tell us a little bit about that and how that can help us. Yes. So again, what I did was I started to look through and actually have a business coach who created this whole concept of mindset scorecards. And I said, that's exactly what I needed here. So I started to look at what did I go through? What did I have to like harness in order to pull this off? And then again, I started to interview friends of mine and went, everybody's success leaves clues. Everyone seems to have the same common things. And then again, I started to interview friends of mine and went, everybody, success leaves clues.

Everyone seems to have the same common things. And then as I started to dig into the science, I went, wow, there's science behind all of this. So gratitude, that practice of gratitude is huge for building resilience, forgiveness, the ability to forgive and not hold grudges. Oh my gosh. Big one. Big one my gosh. Big one. Big one. Huge.

Big one. Big one. Big one. Wow. Being courageous and not being fearless. I actually think being fearless and courageous are very different things. It's not about, you know, not feeling fear. It's about feeling fear and stepping into it and becoming more resilient because you've done that. Being open to possibility. You know, they kept telling us what Grant wouldn't be able to do. And I kept saying, no, no, he's going to be 110%. And, you know, they're like, she's crazy,

but okay. And then taking action and really not sitting back and going, okay, I'll do this one. I've got everything right when I, you know, when I know enough, which I see happening a lot, being able to forgive, which I thought actually I had done because I wasn't focused on this woman, but I didn't understand at the time that forgiveness is actually a process and it's active. And then asking for help and helping others, you know, this circle of generosity. So those are the key attributes that I saw that I created a measurable chart for and then exercises behind so that you can develop them because the real premise of all

of this is this work from Carol Dweck at Stanford where she showed that mindset's a muscle mindset is there's either a fixed mindset which is I'm sure no one listening to this podcast has because they'd be repelled by what we're talking about right right but the fixed mindset are those victims. Life happens to me. There's nothing I can do about that. And if you accept that, then you're done. You know, it's over.

Or there's the people who believe that in the growth mindset, who know that life happens through us, by us, and for us, and that, you know, we play the starring role in all of it, and that you can build this, that truly mindset's a muscle you can develop. But if you're not developing it, the other side of it is what happens when you don't build a muscle? It becomes pretty weak. It shrinks. Yes.

Yeah. Excellent. Well, tell us a little bit about JJ, like where, if people are listening, I'm sure they're like, okay, how can I get this mindset scorecard? And tell us about that, how we can get a hold of that and a little bit more about that. Yeah. So if you go to miraclemindset.com forward slash quiz, I have the scorecard there. And then if you do that, it will actually works with the book to walk you through how to build your own miracle mindset. And you know, there's such simple things that you can do on a daily basis. And that's what everything I've done in all my nutrition world, health world has always been, okay, what are the little hinges that swing the big doors? What are the little things that I can do every single day that'll make a big difference. And one of the ones that saved

me in the hospital was just having this practice of gratitude every single morning. Yeah. And tell us a little bit about that practice. What are you doing in such a difficult time? Yeah. And this is why, you know, and I know this from the health world, boy, is it hard to sell prevention and being proactive. But had I not had these things in place when this happened, I don't know where I would have been because it was so frightening that the gratitude I'd wake up in the morning, like and realize where I was in this little crappy hotel down the street from the hospital.

And, and I just grab a journal and write down three things I was grateful for. And that literally would shove the fear out of the way. And, you know, that's, that is a huge thing because gosh, I mean, I could have been paralyzed from the fear. Absolutely. And it's pretty impossible to feel gratitude and fear at the same time. So I think that's a really strong practice. And you know, what's cool is, yeah, you could, you could journal for for half an hour every morning, but you can also do this one in a couple minutes.

And so it's just the simple process of grabbing a journal, pulling it out, opening it up, and thinking of at least three things or people you're grateful for. That's it. I mean, you can go deeper, but we can all, I always like to go, okay, we can start with that. Yeah, it's easy to do. It's easy to do. It's easy to do. It makes such a difference. It's amazing.

What did you see in terms of when you did it, when you were there in the hospital with your son, what difference did it make just by writing down those three things you're grateful for? So I can't go back and do the whole thing again without it, nor would I want to, nor would I ever want to go back through that. But I will tell you that like there were three things besides that. I also, every day, if I was getting into this phase, I would just connect with someone every day, even if it was by text.

Now I do it as a state shift. I'll text someone and tell them what I appreciate about them, because that's a great way to get out of your own way. And you know, when you're having your own little pity party, or you're mad, just text someone, tell them what you appreciate about them, it will just shift you. But at night, when I was leaving the hospital, it was the challenging part. And another big piece of this mindset is the ability to be present. And you know, what gets you into anxiety is thinking about the future. And what gets you depressed is thinking about the past. So I would just every night think about what went well today, what were the little wins, the little miracles that happened at that hospital. And, you know, all I can think about is I was managing my mood and my mindset so much during

that time. There was so much fear going on. And I was using these strategies without even thinking about it to manage them. It wasn't until I reflected, I went, oh, I had these in place. This was how I taught myself to live. I really surrounded myself with people who are positive and supportive. I was doing gratitude. I was looking for the little wins. That was just who I was.

But gosh, if the little signs of the fear that I felt that I managed to crowd out of the way with this if that's I'm sure that would have been amplified by 10 I don't know how I would have gotten anything done I don't know how I would have moved absolutely would have been crippling you know well JJ you kind of said all right the mindset scorecard what a great idea that people can go to and complete that and then use that while they're completing the book and going through the book. Can you give us a few other examples, just a taste of some other things that you might have?

You kind of talked about gratitude so far. What about topics like courageousness and possibility? Those are great topics that lead to us being at our best and lead to high performance. Yes. And in fact, we have in our core values for my company, one of our key core values in our company is being open to possibility. And so when Grant was in the hospital, and this is our first full day in, and I'm standing there, he's in a coma.

He's got 13 fractures. He's on life support. I'm holding a couple fingers on one hand that were the only thing on his body that weren't bandaged got those couple fingers and I am telling him honey you're gonna be 110 percent this is gonna be the best thing that ever happened to you this is you know and and seeing where we could go with this and during this whole time coming out of it you know that was the first thing and it turns out that being open to possibility, asking the right

questions, your brain starts to go, how do I get to be 110%? Which, let's face it, there isn't even such a thing. So it's ridiculous from the outstart. But, you know, my brain was like, well, how do we get there? How do we get there? How do we get there? Right? So because of that, we've done all sorts of amazing things for Grant. He is better right now than he was before the accident. But being open to possibility is a way to build resilience. And we can check in every single day because you'll tend to, I know me, like before I started to really focus on being open to possibility, if someone brought, bring an idea, I would naturally tell you why I wasn't going to do it or why it wouldn't work

instead of being open to possibility. So that's been a huge one to help me shift. The other one that I'm going to bring up is, and I know you said courageousness, but I think actually it takes a lot of courage to forgive. And the one that shocked me the most about all of this was forgiveness. Because when I was younger, I used to be one of those grudge holders. And I always said to myself, I'm not going to do that anymore. But I didn't realize that forgiveness is not just not holding a grudge. You actually have to actively forgive. And one of the key components of that is being empathetic to the other person's situation. When you do that, I mean, when you're holding a grudge with someone, it is not them that's damaged. It's hurting you.

And when you go through this process and really can do that, it's amazing how healing it is. Absolutely. Well, you know what? I like what you said, JJ, is like you had a standard of 110%. I mean, most people kind of going through their situation with their son, you know, might have the standard of maybe can we get you back to 50% or 70%. So you had this really, really high standard. And then you're continuously asking yourself how, how, how, how, how, right? You need to continue to always be looking for possibilities instead

of the difficulties and the hardships that you and your family were experiencing. I figured if I was going to miss, you know, and it's kind of the way that I've always lived is set big goals, because if you don't quite make them it's better than making little goals right sure so that's why I've always worked on this is like how do I set some really big big goals and if I fall a little short it's better than you know some little wimpy thing that I actually hit out of the park absolutely well when you think about you know the skills that you had developed before that time in the hospital with Grant, you had developed some of these skills. You were able to rely on the gratitude and the practice of writing in your journal. And you already had these mental skills that you already had within you. So tell us a little bit about how you developed them. so you know what's so interesting is I wrote this whole book, went through all the process, and didn't even think about where it all came from, because it becomes such a part of me,

in fact, I went back and I started to look at the programs I built in the health space, all of them have mindset as a key component, and someone was asking me about it, and I'm like, huh, you know, I started to think about where I got them from. And, and I realized that I had a coach in my, like right when I turned 30 and she had taken me under her wing to teach me business. Okay. And so I was in, I was living in Florida and I was in graduate school and I'm, and I was a personal trainer paying my way through graduate school. Now I'd been, this was like my third graduate school. Right. And I kept a personal trainer paying my way through graduate school. Now I'd been, this was like my third graduate school, right? And I kept jumping graduate schools to go to different subjects, all in nutrition and fitness and functional medicine.

But, you know, I just kept, I was seeking. And this was like 40 classes in. I mean, this was a ridiculous amount of grad school classes. I think many of us can relate to that. I was like quadruple PhD. My mom's like, what are you doing? I go, I just need to know more. And, and it was so funny because she goes, what, you know, why are you in grad school? I go, because I want to be more successful. I want to help more people. And she goes, but that school is actually not what's going to get you there.

And I said, it's not. And she said, no, that's not what's going to get you there you need to learn business now this woman was a self-made multi-millionaire I mean grew up in a trailer park and now it's a self-made multi-millionaire so I'm like my ears perked up and I go okay and she goes I'll teach you and I said awesome I actually ended up moving into her house and she had me you know so I think I'm going to learn all this business skills. I'm going to become a business mogul, blah, blah, blah. And she has me put on this bracelet, these rubber bands around my wrist. This is one of the starting things that we do. Okay. And, um, anytime I say anything negative, limited, any limiting belief, I have to stamp myself.

And I'm going, when am I going to learn business? Right? And then she has me listen to every Brian Tracy. Back then they were tapes. I have a Walkman. I'm listening to Brian Tracy tapes. And, you know, she's like, you manage your environment. You don't listen to negativity.

You don't read the news. You only listen to these tapes. You surround yourself with positive people. And I'm like, all right. I thought she's a little nutty, but okay, I'll go along with it. And I kept saying, when am I going to learn business? She goes, you know, you'll never get where you want to be in business if your mindset's limited. It will stop you every time. And so literally six months of massive mindset training, where I learned to really carefully manage my environment, to make sure I was around people who are, you know, growth mindset oriented and supported me to my success.

And I supported them that I had, you know, was setting big goals that I woke up in gratitude that I was constantly expanding my comfort zone. All these things she taught me. That's awesome. And they became such a way of life that I never even thought about it. But honestly, and I wish I could tell her now she passed. I was like, Oh my gosh, you saved. I mean, not only have you helped me become, you know, successful in business, but ultimately you saved my son's life. You know, and that's the thing that we don't realize with what we do. You know, here's my 15 year old son looking at the doctors and telling them that he's overruling them and we're going to airlift my son out of there. What 15 year old

does that? Wow. But he'd been around this type of mindset. My six-year-old is now 20 and I said honey you know you have the choice let's go back four and a half years and you have the choice whether you want to uh walk across that street again or not what would you do and he goes I'd still cross the street mom because I'm better because of it he goes you know in life you can't have the big joy without going through the struggles I'm like going going, okay, you know, it's like, so this stuff, it transfers over to your, to your peers, to your employees, to your friends, to your family. And it changes everything. It's how you show up in the world.

And, you know, you look at it and go, it's not how you show up when things are easy. I've never, I've never had an easy time of something and went, wow, I grew a lot today. That's not like, just think about what it means to be high performance. You wouldn't go to the gym and do an easy workout. Absolutely. Right. You know, if you're trying to do, if you're, if you're trying to, to make yourself a better speaker, you're not going to go and do some simple stuff. You're going to go do some challenging things. I mean, it's just how it is. Absolutely. Yeah. You know, JJ, I completely agree with you. I think that the best of the best have coaches and they're continuously pushing themselves out of their comfort zone and

a coach can help you do that. And I think you provided a great example of how your coach did that for you. Tell us a little bit about how that mindset helped you become a successful entrepreneur and, you know, four-time New York Times bestseller. How do you think that foundation in your 30s helped you build a successful business? Because it taught me that failure is necessary. I think one of the greatest gifts we can give our children is that, is push them out of their comfort zones, let them fall, help them get back up, dust them off, push them back outside their comfort zone, let them fall. You know, one of the key things that we can do is be willing to fail.

As I've gotten more successful, I've had bigger failures. It's kind of the way it goes. And you can't continue to really grow and be a bigger person without being willing to fall along the way. Absolutely. And sometime they're going to be big crash and burns. Yeah. But you know, JJ, this is a perfect segue.

One of the questions I always ask people on the podcast is tell us about a time you failed and what you learned from it and how it can help us learn something perhaps about mindset. So tell us one of those stories. One of them. And you know what? It's so interesting because there are so many of them. And that's what I look at is I've made a practice of talking about them because I think people will tend to look at someone and go, oh, you know, it's so, it was so easy for them, right? Yeah. It was so easy. Instead of realizing that they just went through the same difficulties and failures that we have. Right. And we've, that's such a critical thing because I think when the, my mentor told me early on, whenever you start to hear that, oh, I could never do what she did. The next thing

you're going to hear right after that is, so I don't have to. Right. And so, you know, that's, that's the one I went, okay, I'm never doing that. Cancel, cancel. So early on in my, in my writing career, before I'd written any books, my first book, I wrote with my then boyfriend. And I still remember the lights should have gone off, like all the warning bells should have gone off in my head. He was watching a TV show that I'd done. He goes, Oh, my gosh, I can sell this. Okay. And I think he wanted to be my Alan Hamill to, you know, the Alan Hamill to my Suzanne Summers, because we should write a book. And I go, okay, not knowing, right? So we, he said, he got a contract. And he, and he said, Okay, let's sign the contract. So there's never any issues. And it was a 5050

contract, which was stupid at the first part, because no one's in control. But I didn't really pay attention to the contract. Because you know, this was my boyfriend. I just didn't think anything. Well, the contract actually gave him rights to anything I did for the rest of my life, 50%. Okay. Okay. So we write the book and I find out he's absolutely unstable and slightly crazy, which is why he was so good at writing and the things that he did. The more creative, you tend to be a little more crazy. And he was super talented, but super would fly off the rails. And so we break up. But before we break up, we get a book offer with a publishing

company, but he doesn't want to do it. He wants to self-publish. And so we have to turn that down. And now we've got this book and we've broken up and the book's just sitting out there and I'm just going to leave it be. Okay. I get my first real book deal with Simon and Schuster. And this is for, is this for the Virgin Diet? Nope. It's for the book before that. Okay. Okay. And I'm still like pretty, pretty relatively unknown. I'd done years of TV, but, you know, I hadn't really hit anything yet, which was fortunate. So I get this book contract, and it wasn't for a lot of money for a book contract. It was for $50,000. To me, that was like I just got offered $10 million. But, you know, it was a really starting advance. And he emails me and he says, I see

that you got, I saw on social media that you've got a book deal and half of that's mine. And unless you figure out it, cause he kept trying to buy this to get me to pay him for the other book. He goes, unless you pay me for it now, I'm going to call Simon & Schuster and I'm going to stop this whole thing from happening. And I'm like, oh my gosh. So I had to hire an attorney, pay him a ridiculous amount of money that I didn't have to get out of this whole thing. And I learned very early on that attorneys seem expensive, but they're worth it. That's awesome. So what do you feel like the lesson was besides the attorney? You know, what do you, what did you feel? What did you take from that,

that really helped you build your mindset later on? You know what? I had a gut feeling and I have ignored this gut feeling several times throughout my life. And this gut feeling has never been wrong. And you know, that whole trust your gut, there's a reason they say it. You know, we have so much of our emotions in our gut, but I think, you know, that I just, I just remember feeling, oh, I should check on this and just being impulsive. And I am in the Colby assessment, I'm a quick start. So I tend to be impulsive and a quick start. So what I've done since I know that about myself is I've put a wall around me of people to protect me from myself because I'll want to jump right into things. That's great. Let's go. So I have a wall of people who now I

can't just go make a silly decision like that. It has to be reviewed to save me from myself. So you really learned a lot about you and how, you know, how, how to make better decisions about surrounding yourself with powerful people that are going to help you get to where you want to go, but also that are, that you can rely on when you have big decisions to make, like a book deal. Like a book deal and even just hiring. I know myself that I, I instantly look at what's good about someone and it's And I always believe they're going to be loyal and honest and high integrity. So I am not allowed to do the hiring. I can only do the final stage of it because I like everyone.

I want them all to get along. Let's all come in. You should all work here. It'll be fantastic. How can I help you? You know, I'm like, stop it. Stop it. Yeah, JJ, I have this list of my top 10 traits of high performers and it's focused on my new book coming out in August. And the fourth trait is that they have high self-awareness. So that's kind of what it sounds like you really learn from that story. Like you learn more about yourself, how you best work and then, you know, how to help you surround yourself with people that are really good. And I think that's so key. I love that you're writing that book is that it's not about not doing that

thing. Like if I know that I'm a quick start, Hey, there's some really amazing benefits to that. You know, we'll never be procrastinating here on my team. If I'm procrastinating something, it means I shouldn't do it, but you need to amplify those things. And then where the negative side of it is get people in to help you. So, right. It's not about not, it is, get people in to help you. That's good. Right?

It's not about trying to change who you are. Right. Yeah. You know? Yeah, you need to accept who you are and not judge who you are because I think that holds you back. Yes. No judgy judgy. No judgy judgy.

So, you know, I'm thinking, JJ, about your book, Miracle Mindset, and how you've written so many other books about health. Tell us how you see mindset connecting to health. We've been talking a little bit about, you know, business and entrepreneur said, if you're not where you want to be in your health, why not? And honestly, you know, thinking about what I write about sugar impact, virgin diet. So I figured it'd be something about bread or ice cream or sugar or something. And the number one reason people weren't where they wanted to be in their health was because they didn't feel good enough. Ah. I was like, wow, you don't feel good enough. And so that was pretty mind blowing to me. Now I start every single one of my programs

with mindset work, because I know that if someone doesn't believe they can, they won't. And that if they don't have a big enough why to drive them through, they won't. So to me, it's pretty obvious. Like I look at health and I think it's mindset, it's movement, it's diet, you know, it's all of these things where people tend to put mindset off to the side, like it's a thing over here. And I'm like, no, they're all absolutely attached. But mindset really is at the top of being, you know, of where you're going to be with your health, of where you're going to be with your business, where you're going to be with your relationships, that will always be your limiter. So it's really your starting point with any of these things has to start with elevating your mindset. And you know, what would you, what would you say, JJ, for those people who are like, wow,

you know, I can't do that. I can't overcome kind of this life difficulty that you've experienced. I agree. I don't believe that I'm enough. Where would you tell them to start? Yeah, it's interesting, because I've had people say to me, of course, I could never do that. And I said, you know, if you said, if you told me that you'd done what I'd done, I'd look at you and say, I could never do that, too. And you're never better than when you're challenged in the middle of it. But I'll tell you when your kid's life's on the line, you don't have a choice. Right. And I think that for a lot of us, like I look at the Virgin diet and how successful it's been. And I wonder if some of that's because I didn't have a choice. Okay. You know, I think that for a lot of us, what happens is we get into

these circumstances, but we don't burn all the boats. You know, that saying, if you want to take the island, burn all the boats. Absolutely. We don't burn all the boats. And my personality type is a boat burner. I tend to, it takes me a lot to get me to get excited about something. So, you know, my kid's life's on the line. I'm a, I'm burning the boats. I'm going to do whatever it takes to do it. But I'd burned the boats with the book too. I'd gone all in for it. So I think for a lot of things when people are like, they feel like they're just stuck, you're never stuck, you know? And as I was writing this book about, about the miracle mindset,

people thought it was really about my son and my son surviving. And I said, you know, I had to get really clear as I was writing this book about the miracle mindset, people thought it was really about my son and my son surviving. And I said, you know, I had to get really clear as I was writing this book that my son may not make it. Because there were multiple times throughout the process of me writing the book where he was in a life and death situation. And I went, the book was not about his fantastic outcome. It was about how we went through all of the situations that went, that were along the way. And for someone who feels like they can't do something, I'll tell you what, you can't think your way out of that. You can do your way out of that. So the first thing that you do when you feel like you can't do anything is do something, something. And for Grant, when he got out of

the hospital and he was just really depressed, as people with brain injuries, 25% of them have suicidal ideations, depression's a massive problem, and he was super depressed. And so what I did was I took him back to the second hospital at Christmas time to give out gifts. Fastest way to shift yourself if you're having your own little pity party, if you're frozen, if you're paralyzed, is go help somebody else. There is always someone that's in worse shape than you are. And that's what we did. We went and helped these kids at Children's Hospital and there were kids in worse shape than Grant. So, you know, if you need to get, if you need to get moving and you feel stuck, get moving by going to help someone else. And think how our lives would change if we all did that.

Wouldn't it? Because we would be service mindset. We'd be wanting to help others instead of being so focused on ourselves. So JJ, are you kind of saying that, you know, sometimes we're not fully all into our goals or whatever we're trying to do. And so we might have a plan B instead of just all in. Do you think that makes a difference in terms of someone's mindset? If you have a fallback, doesn't it? You know,

it's like, if you have a fallback, if you had no choice, if you knew that, you know, you had to, you had to make $10,000 in the next week, or your kid's life was on the line yeah you make ten thousand dollars i mean that's the bottom line so it's like we just don't operate at that level of import most of the time we kind of do it we i hear it i come from the diet space and my books are all about weight loss and what do people say in the weight loss world they say i'll try it the minute someone tells me they're going to try it i know that it's not going to work yeah there is no trying. It's making a commitment. It's making decisions, burning the boats and saying, I'm going to do this. I'm going to make it work. How do I make it work? And then getting yourself into action, taking imperfect action, little steps along the way. And even better if

they really scare you, because the minute someone tells me that they're not afraid, I know that they're just not pushing out of their comfort zone. They are not playing big enough. Are there any other ways that you think that we can create that urgency in us? I think we can make decisions to, you know, be all in. But do you have any other advice on how to create that? Because I think you're right that some people are just lacking that urgency. They have a plan B and they're not all in.

Right. You know, the biggest thing that I would tell you, I think works really well is to get a, an accountability partner. Okay. So I look at, and again, I come from the place of like, one of the toughest things to be successful in is the diet. Like a view look of like successful things in life. That is the one people fail and fail and fail. So, and fail and fail So and and you know if it works in one thing it works another what works there a supportive community and accountability partner writing things down

So things that I have people do it's like decide what that big goal is that scares you write it down every single day Every single day every single day, every single day, every single day. Take the small action steps you're going to do that day. Make sure you do them. Tell them to your accountability partner so that you have to report in and make sure that you do them or post them on Facebook. One of the things that I've always made a habit of doing is when I'm going for a big hairy goal, I tell as many people as possible. Me too.

Yeah, because then they'll hold you to it. Yeah. And I feel like then I'm just like putting it out there in the universe and exactly it's going to come back to me yep absolutely energetic energetic so as people are listening they're probably like okay what happened with Grant so tell us just about his recovery now and where is he where is he at okay so it has been the most challenging thing the tough time wasn't the four and a half months in the hospital. The tough time has been the four years since.

I will tell you that my ex-husband should be a saint. He should be an honorary saint. He is super, super patient and has been helping him through this because they don't really tell you anything. When we left the first hospital, I remember as he was coming out of the coma, and by the way, people do not come out of comas by waking up, looking at you and saying, I love you, which they show in the movies. That's not how it works at all. They come out of comas over time. And it was for Grant. It was months and months and months and months. You know, at first

he didn't know who he was, where he was, who I was, how to eat. He had to learn everything over again. And then he would forget a minute later, you know, he'd say, when can I go home? We'd tell him he'd forget. You go, when can we go home? So it was super challenging, but I kept looking every day for what had improved, what had improved, what had improved. And I started querying. All my friends are docs. So I got amazing help to help him progress. We've had him, the things that have made the biggest difference for him, high dose fish oil, CBD oil, and then we've done stem cells straight into his spine. Okay. And it has been amazing what that has done. He has now created a whole hydroponic garden outside our house, which he didn't even know anything about.

He studied how to do it and created it, studied the pH, how to set it up, everything, created the ponds, you know, all the stuff to grow. He's become an artist. He has created this Tesla coil setup to help with modifying, monitoring and modulating his brainwave activity. I mean, just wild stuff, you know, he's been inventing. His grandfather was an inventor. So I'm watching him going, there he goes. So he is doing amazing. And he's just started coming on some tv shows and doing some talks with me and he's starting to see because he had a near-death experience and uh he actually had a

couple a couple near-death experiences while he was in his coma and so people are just as of course i always was too i was always like so fascinated with this whole near-death thing this to me is like unbelievable but you know he describes what it was like to be on the other side. He saw his grandfather who he'd never met in life. I mean, it was pretty amazing stuff. Wow. And how do you see him changed because of that experience? I could only imagine what that was like to have that. He was not, so I have two kids, two boys, and I had one who's the sweet boy and Grant was the one he was bipolar disorder growing up and he was my challenging kid. Everything was an argument, everything, you know, he was always the one I was like, oh my gosh.

And, you know, would fight me on everything, wasn't grateful. He is so grateful now. He's never once been a victim. He's been hugely grateful and appreciative. There are bad times and dark times in there, but for the most part, he is grateful, helpful, wants to help other people, looking for his purpose in life now, what he can do to help people. It's, yeah, it's quite stunning. Well, I think that's kind of what you meant at the beginning when you said that he's changed for the better and perhaps, you know, this accident happened for him, not to him. Well, you know, you can always look at things one of two ways. And what's been incredible is, you know, here he is, he looks like a zipper with

all of the different, he had 13 fractures. He had, he's had multiple surgeries and he's got rods in his steam or a stent. I mean, all the stuff. And he could look at that and be so angry and bitter. He's never been angry and bitter. He's never been mad at this woman who hit him. And he's always been so positive about everything. And so it's like he could be angry and bitter, and that could be ruin the rest of his life, or he could decide this is, you know, the thing that's going to give him his purpose in life, and he can show other people that they can come out of a brain injury and be better than before. And, you know, so that's what he's chosen, which I'm super proud of. Yeah, so it sounds like he's really leading a purposeful life where, you know, he's choosing the positive perspective. That's incredibly inspiring to not only, you know, hear about your own experiences as a mother and helping him through that, but also think, you know, all week actually, and it was supposed to be two segments.

It was going to be one segment. Then we get there and they said, we want to have Grant on. I said, okay, well, I brought Grant. I brought his dad. I brought my son, Bryce. We'll all go and they can see, you know, kind of things that I do. So it was going to be me and Grant. They said, you know, because you guys are all here, we're going to put everybody on

and we're going to make it two segments. Well, Grant starts talking and they decide it's going to be three segments because they want to hear all this stuff about the near-death experience and what it's like on the other side and everyone in the set's like leaning in no one's talking i was like and grant walked out and he said wow i think he's finally starting to realize you know because i kept saying grant you've got a bigger purpose than you know here now and i think he's starting to see it you know, because I kept saying, Grant, you've got a bigger purpose than you know here now. And I think he's starting to see it. That's incredible. Well, I look forward to having you on the podcast again in the future. We can even talk about, you know, where he is at with that, a little bit more about his experiences, because I'm sure people are intrigued just as

they're listening. It is an intriguing, inspiring story. And I think it just shows what happens when you ask the right questions. Absolutely. Well, JJ, you have given us so much incredible information and lessons, advice, some really important components about mindset. What advice do you have for those high performers who are listening? And to me, what high performance means is just, you know, people who are listening, who really want to be at their best more often, and who want to work to master the six inches between their ears. Yeah, because that's ultimately whatever else you're looking at your health or your career. It all starts with mindset. And honestly, it really starts with having tools in place. Just like you would if you were going to the gym, tools in place for your mindset. So the thing that I do every day that just keeps me going is having these tools. I call it it's just, I always write, I want to connect my, up my neurons. And then throughout the day,

if I start to go sideways, if I need a state shift, then I send someone some appreciation because sending something to someone else really makes all the difference. And then at night, it's the little wins. It's one of those little miracles that happened during the day that so often we're not present enough in our own life to even see. We'll think, oh my gosh, today was a crappy day and you totally forgot some amazing things, even the smallest things that happened that were so awesome. So that's my simple little formula. And just that alone, that in a week can make a massive shift. Awesome. Awesome. Well, JJ, I so appreciate your time and your energy. I just want to thank you so much for all the positive energy that you're sending out into

the world and the work that you're doing on mindset is incredibly important. There's a few things that I want to kind of repeat back to you that I really got from this interview. I liked the idea of your mindset scorecard. So again, people can get that at miraclemindset.com slash quiz. And the components of the miracle mindset, gratitude, forgiveness, courageousness, open to possibilities, taking action, and then asking for help. And I really liked what you said about, you know,

that sometimes when we're kind of in our own head and we're maybe concerned what other people are thinking or that, you know, we're stuck that just by appreciating something about somebody else can shift our state. You also talked about how failure is necessary, super important, and I just really incredibly appreciated your story that you shared with us, your personal story about your son Grant. So I want to thank you so much for being on the podcast. How can the listeners reach out to you more if they're interested? What are the ways that we can follow you or connect with you and learn more about your work? So I'd say the best, I've got a

website that where everything kind of comes off of. So JJVirgin.com is a great starting point for then finding about my podcast and my social media. I'm super active on Facebook. That's like my social media of choice is Facebook. That's where I spend a lot of my time. I do Facebook Live a couple times a week. So that's where I engage the most with people. So it'd be fun to see people there. Awesome. And tell us your podcast name so people can go onto iTunes and search for that right away. JJ Virgin Lifestyle Show. Nice.

JJ Virgin Lifestyle. I'm very creative. I love it. I love it. Well, JJ, thank you so much for your time and your energy and for being with us here today. Thank you. Thank you for listening to High Performance Mindset. If you like today's podcast, make a comment, share it with a friend, and join the conversation on Twitter at Mentally Underscore Strong.

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