04: The Mindset to Create An Extraordinary Life with JJ Virgin

[00:00:00] So much of what happens in our life is really about the relationships that we have. And when you realize that that has been a choice that you have, you choose your relationships. So choose wisely, those relationships can either lift you up or they can hold you back. They can be, you know, the crabs and the crab pot pulling you back.

And when you’re trying to climb out.

Hi there. Welcome to the field better now, podcast. I’m your host, Jackie Balca. And if you’ve arrived here, no, there is something in here to spark yourself to create a better future in your health, in your career, in your relationships for both yourself and for those around you, it’s just one small action.

Step at a time with so much love.[00:01:00] 

Hey everyone, Jackie Valki here. And today, my guest is none other than the JJ Virgin four time, New York times, best selling author and celebrity nutritionist, triple board, certified nutrition, expert and fitness, whole. By EMA. JJ is going to be talking about one of the top things that people do to make them powerless in their lives that prevents them from building the life of their dreams and creating relationships that truly serve them.

You might be doing this. I know we all need to check in on this. JJ is so uniquely brilliant. It’s a privilege to interview her today. Stay tuned to find out what it is. Well, JD, it’s such an honor to be here with you today. Welcome to the field, but in our podcast, Thank you for having me, JD, you have such a living legacy.

And so I want to know what’s your story. [00:02:00] How did you get here? How far back do we go, Jackie? You know, it’s, it’s funny, there’s a personality test that I took years ago. And the whole premise of this personality test is that we really don’t change. And so you’re supposed to go back and answer it as if you were a kid.

And I remember I was in a room with a bunch of people doing this, and people were just having so much trouble wrapping their brain around that. And they’re like, of course I’ve changed. Of course, you know, but the reality is as I started to go back and play back my life, all the things that I’m doing now, it was a very bizarre, twisted path to get here.

But like all of the things that I love, I’ve used them all to get to where I am. You know, growing up, I wanted to be an actress. I went to UCLA on a theater scholarship. I then wanted to go to culinary Institute. I love to cook. I had multiple catering company. I was an English major in college when I dropped out in the theater department.

So I was writing, even though I don’t like to write, I was obsessed with marketing and [00:03:00] business, and I always loved from the time I was a little kid to throw a party. And to get groups together. And so it’s like all of a sudden you look and you go, okay. You know, cooking, writing, speaking parties. Oh, and I, I taught fitness and I started teaching calisthenics when I was in high school and dance.

So it’s not about you. Yeah. So I was a tap dancer. It’s weird. How all of a sudden you go, wow, you might look like this convoluted path. One of my. Business coaches early on said it’s all research and development, but you know, it’s crazy how, all of the things that you can, that you learned to do, you can kind of mush them together into some kind of cool stew, right?

That is so beautiful. I totally agree. And I love, I love thinking about you and what I know of you, which is throwing these huge parties with entertainment. Even last year, [00:04:00] when we were in a lockdown situation, you still manage to have huge virtual parties. So you just took the party online and GRI created that experience, which is really a fusion of art and science.

Kudos to you day, day. Why is it so important to you to create these incredible experiences where you bring people together? Like w w what’s driving you to do so? I am an adopted kid. And I think one of the things that happens when you’re adopted is you kind of get permission. We all have this, we just don’t realize it.

But you know, you have the family of choice where you can kind of create your family. And so I’ve always been kind of pulling in family because the reality is. I have a very small family adopted family. I don’t have, you know, the big, the cousins and the, all the siblings and everything else. And so I’ve always been just creating this family of choice, you know, this community [00:05:00] and you look at what’s happened over the past year, and there’s a couple interesting statistics all tie back to wait because my world is weight loss and stopping weight regain.

And, you know, when the whole thing went down with the pandemic, to me, the scariest part of all of this was the social isolation part of it. And I think we’re going to be seeing the ramifications of social isolation for years in our children. It’s so scary to me, you know, the loss of the ability to have that, how you communicate, how you have social interactions, all of that stuff.

But you look at the, there was a Ted talk where they likened social isolation. To smoking. Like it was, it was something like the equivalent of smoking, 15 packs of 15 cigarettes a day. I mean, that is just crazy stuff. And then you look at how critical relationships are. The other interesting phrase Jim Rohn said was that your income was the average of the five people you hang out with.

I heard this in a business seminar 30 years [00:06:00] ago and, you know, It’s actually way more than income. It is your attitude. It’s your fitness level. We know a couple of years ago they found that obesity was contagious. That if your closest friends were overweight or obese, you tended to be too. Even if those people lived across the country from you and didn’t want to be your next door neighbor.

And so, so much of what happens in our life is really about the relationships that we have. And when you realize that that has been a choice that you have, you choose your relationship. So choose wisely, those relationships can either lift you up or they can hold you back. They can be, you know, the crabs and the crab pot pulling you back in when you’re trying to climb out.

So that’s why I love to get amazing people together and put them into situations where it’s easy to collaborate and then get out of the way and watch the crazy, amazing magic that happens in the weight loss industry. And just one of the key things that I do to make sure programs are successful [00:07:00] is create communities where people support each other and hold each other accountable.

I saw early on in the gym industry, where if you had a small group of people who came to class every day, if someone didn’t show up, people pinged them, right? They’re like, where are you? So it’s the same in these online communities where people show up, if they don’t show up, people will start to reach out.

So it’s a super key, important element that I think is a, you know, big missing element in most of what we do. I couldn’t agree more. I couldn’t agree more. And so you’re really well known for saying it’s so important to own your health. And I love that you talk about, you know, it’s your choice. So talk about.

How we need to take responsibility for our own actions and not sit in victim mode. Yeah. I remember I was going in to teach a workshop. And it was a war. It was a workshop on mindset. And I walk into this room and there’s a sign up that apparently the last group [00:08:00] who’d been in this hotel had left this sign behind and the sign said there are no victims, only volunteers.

I’m like, that is so crazy, right. There are no accidents. And, you know, This is an important thing is while it might sound harsh, it’s actually like really, you know, it’s given you a lot of permission. It’s like, okay, you have the choice here to decide. Is this going to be the worst thing that ever happened to me or the best thing that ever happened to me?

A lot of people know my story of when my first big book was coming out, the Virgin diet, my son was hit by a car while out walking and literally left for dead in the street. And you know, I was sitting next to him, bedside he’s in a coma. I’m not leaving. I’ve got a book coming out and I’m sitting there thinking, all right, what the heck do I do here?

I’m not leaving my son. This is a single most important thing in my life is to make sure that my son not only survives, but is better than he was before. And I’m the financial support for my family. And if I don’t make this book go, I won’t be able to support him on his [00:09:00] healing journey. What the heck am I going to do?

And you know, you could’ve had a total pity party or you or I turned around after I freaked out. Don’t think I didn’t sit there and go my God and like freak out some, but once I got over that stood there and went, what am I going to do to get my son to be 110%? How am I going to do that? How do I need to show up?

What do I need to do? And ultimately. It’s a choice. I can decide that this will be the best thing for our family, or I could sit and cry and have a pity party, which isn’t going to help anyone anywhere. And so much of what we do is, is a choice is a decision. Our reaction to anything is a choice or decision.

Our reaction to this past year, right. You know, is a, is a choice so bad stuff’s going to happen. I mean, that’s, we know that one for sure are our opportunities. How we show up when. You know, such wise words, JJ, and I’m so fascinated. So you’re in that situation, in that [00:10:00] traumatic event, how, and, you know, you know that you you’ve just made the decision that you’re going to take control of the situation and, and, and make it work for you both from a business perspective and for your son.

Do you recall how you reached for that next thing? Like the turning point where you were able to get out of the, I suppose the stress and the trauma. Yeah. So. Here’s what’s fantastic about all of this. And Carol Dweck talks about this she’s Stanford psychiatrist or psychologist, and she talks about the growth mindset.

She’s the one that really put that on the map and there’s the people with the fixed mindset. There’s the people who believe that life happens to you. So therefore you are powering. That’s a horrible way to think. Like, you know, you’ve got no control over anything. And then the growth mindset of life happens for you through you, you know, and you can grow from it and you can grow your mindset.

And if you believe that, then you then realize [00:11:00] that mindset to muscle. And so if mindset’s a muscle, each time you step outside of your comfort zone, Your mindset then expands and you’re able to handle bigger things when you were able to handle before that. And so fortunately for me, when I was standing in the hospital, looking at my son in a coma with this major financial situation, you know, and my other son who now was at home traumatized having seen my, you know, his, his brother.

This was not my first rodeo. I had dealt with so many traumatic situations in my life and I’d gotten better because of them. I built up, you know, a resilience muscle. And so, and I’d done a lot of work on my mindset and so much work on my mindset that when I stood there, the PT party was brief. The real thing was, what do I need to do to get my son to be like, when the doctor said he has a 0.2, [00:12:00] 5% chance of making it my younger son who was 15 and I, we looked at the doctor and, you know, The only thing I ever thought was okay.

So he’s got a point, two, 5% chance of making it. My son goes, that’s not zero. We’ll take those odds. We purely looked at all. We needed was less, you know, all we needed was something and we grabbed a hold of that. And I think that’s the key thing is the more that you train yourself to do that, where you just look and go, okay, all right.

How do I, what do I do in this situation, standing in that situation? And what do I do here? I’m going to help my son be better than before the accident. That’s what I’m going. Do. I, I will call in everybody. I know and see who they know who can help me. So I’ve got a plan and then. I’ve got to show up strong to do this.

What do I need to do? Well, I’ve got to take care of myself and put that first, which is counterintuitive for most people. And so I’ve got a plan. So I just put the plan together and made sure I had Lifeline’s call when I started to freak out and get scared. Cause life can be [00:13:00] scary. Right. But you don’t need to go it alone.

But again, I’ve been through this so many times before that it was familiar, the situation itself wasn’t familiar, but you know, just like year and a half ago, when all the pandemic stuff started showing up and it was like all this fear that I still see today, like the new variant, all this fear. And I’m like, all right, you know, take a break.

What do we know? And what can we do? Like, what can you do? What can you do yourself? How can, how can you help yourself be as resilient as possible? What can you do to support other people? And there’s so many things. And so there might be a whole lot of stuff you can’t control. What can you control? Right.

And how can you be better? Because we know that we’re going to be going through challenges. It’s the, it’s the obvious thing that we’re all going to do is face challenging things. Life, you know, do hard things. And so how do you train yourself to be able to handle those things? You go through hard things [00:14:00] and you get back up dust off, do it again, right?

Absolutely. Absolutely. And it’s that feel asleep? Failing. Isn’t it? One of the guests that we have on this podcast, a Lola Barry’s she’s, she’s got a podcast and we’ll feel asleep, piling, and she wrote a book called Pelosi piling. And it’s great. I think to talk about what you can learn and how you can grow.

So I love everything that you’re saying there, and I especially love it. When you talk about. Looking at your, in that situation. And then you thought to very clever, you thought to think about yourself and how to look about your, how to look after yourself. You know, JJ, I’m blown away by the latest stat I’ve read is that 75% of people are burned out or have reported burned out of being burnt out.

And so. You know, it’s difficult to even think about things rationally when you’re in that situation. So how can we help people [00:15:00] to recognize that looking after yourself, and I’m not talking about, you know, a pedicure or a facial, but really, truly nourishing yourself is the thing that we need to do for.

Yeah. Yeah. I was not getting pedicures and manicures and massages when I was in the hospital. That was not what I was talking about with self care, you know, in the hierarchy I went, all right, I’m going to make sure my sleep is prioritized. That is the single most important thing. And I’m going to make sure that I’m eating well.

Supplementing because I’m under enormous stress. And that was happening because I reached out to my friends and said, Hey, this is going on. And people literally came with supplements. Hyla Cass came with all of these amazing stress supplements, and people started bringing me healthy food in the hospital.

And then it went now, how do I keep moving? Cause I need to blow off this, like, you know, the anxiety piece of it. And so there was that I was doing tapping. Uh, shout out to Nick Ortner, tapping solution, like tapping to get through it. Now I’m [00:16:00] deep into meditation, but something like that. So, yeah, I think when we talk about self care, I’m glad you brought that up, Jackie, because I think people think, oh, Manny petty, spotty.

I’m like, yeah, no, that’s not what I’m talking about. Like, that’s, that’s fun and nice, but that’s not self care. Self care. Are things like, you know, mindful activities, moving more eating, right. Exercise supplements. And one key part of self-care is also your support system and a big part of your, you know, like asking for help, hanging out with people, getting hugs.

It’s been another thing with this pandemic we’re supposed to hug. We’re supposed to have that oxytocin. Oh my gosh. Like that’s just gone. People are afraid to do that now. So, you know, those are all the key important things that I made sure that I was doing. And I know when the pandemic hit, I kind of went straight back into [00:17:00] that.

Okay. I knew when my kids, my son was in the hospital, I could not get sick. Cause you can’t go visit your son when he’s in the ICU. If you have a sniffle. And so what did I do then to optimize my health? And let’s just do that. And shouldn’t, we just be doing that all the time anyway, really? Right. I mean like, you know, should it take a pandemic for us to go, oh shoot.

Like we need to take care of our health. I know if not now when right. And so it’s, so I love this concept to talk about. Often I’m talking to, it seems to be more women and eight. Shocked by the number of times a woman will say to me, you know, we’ve decided, I’ve decided I don’t want to invest that, that money in myself.

And so I thought about, I think about that and the old me would have been like, I understand, you know, you’ve got expenses and the new me. And this is work I’ve done on myself is that know like, you’ve matter. And don’t, you matter enough, you are worth it. You are [00:18:00] lovable. And is it, is it not the most important thing that you invest in your own health, especially as head of health and nutrition in your.

Which a lot of women are, it is your responsibility to know this stuff. So how can we spread that message? And, you know, I do lean on, on women more than men because men seem to recognize something’s wrong, implement a plan and just go forth and do it. And there seems to be agenda difference that I’ve picked up anyway in my practice.

Well, I, so back when I did a lot of one-on-one work, half my clients were men and half were women. And what you just said is absolutely true. I would, for a man, I’d say, okay, here’s what we need to do. We’d lay out the plan. They would get the team that they needed to support and they’d get like, delegated all, get it all done.

And I’m like, all right, this is easy. They would not. Here’s what didn’t happen. I’m not good enough to do this. I’m not worried. [00:19:00] I can’t, you know, all this emotional stuff that would come up where the woman would have all these things, all these reasons. Why not? So it, th that’s interesting. I’d rarely, I’m not gonna say I never saw that in men, but very rarely compared to what would happen with.

So that’s the first part, but I think here’s the thing, like it’s a, it’s part of it is a scarcity versus abundance thing where if you look and you go can only have so much money in my household. And so I could spend it on me or I could spend it on my kids. I’m going to choose spending on my kids. Not realizing that if you can’t take care of your kids, that’s a way worse situation to be in.

Right. And also that if you take care of yourself, probably you won’t have a scarcity issue in the household because you can create abundance. So, you know, I always look at, it’s not a matter of can I afford it? It’s a matter of, can I, you know, can I afford not to, like, I look at this and I go, can you afford not to take care of your.

Because if you, all of a sudden [00:20:00] are not healthy and something happens like diabetes or an autoimmune disease, because these things don’t happen overnight. There’s not a switch that gets flipped overnight and you’re diabetic, or you have a heart attack and I’ve just had multiple friends, have heart attacks.

People get diagnosed with different auto-immune diseases. This happens and you know what? It didn’t happen on Tuesday. It happened years ago. And there’s been warning signs all along the way, but you kept saying I’m not worth it. I’m not important enough. I’ll do it for my kids. Not realizing that the single most important thing to your kids is you being there for them, with all of the energy that you possibly can.

So the single most important thing in your household, I’m willing to bet. You, so you got to prioritize this so you can’t really afford not to. And if you don’t do it now, you’re going to end up paying it at some point. So it’s way cheaper just to spend the time and energy. Now, when you really look at it and amortize, it it’s [00:21:00] really the best cost effective.

Like to me, the best investment you could possibly make. And, you know, you know, I split my time between business. And consumer businesses. And what’s interesting is you can sell a twenty-five thousand dollar package in business with no problem in health. They’re like $200. Really? Wow. I’m like, you’re going to spend this on.

Advertising campaign over here, but you won’t like spend a couple hundred bucks on some coaching to shift your diet, which is going to change everything in your life and probably change the path of any kind of disease progression forever. So it just it’s. It is a head-scratcher. We’ve got it. Reversed.

Right. You know, totally. I was having this conversation with my parents and I’ve been trying to get them to do some testing, some DNA stool testing for quite some time. My mom’s got some gut issues and she’s really good. She follows my protocols, [00:22:00] but there’s a, there’s an unresolved issue. And the stool test is $380.

And. I normally, you know, I’d be more than happy to cover it, but I want, I want them to take responsibility for it. So I said, I’ll, I cover all of your supplements. You know, we ship them whatever they need, but I want you to pay for these tests and it’s been 12 months and it took her doing a. I hope I’m not going to get in trouble, mommy for saying this, but it’s a mom plug your ears right now.

It’s okay to do the government screening tests for bowel cancer, which is, you know, and now actually I won’t say that, which is, you know, not as sophisticated test as what we can do to show that there was blood in the stool. You know, she went and got called, you know, put the fear into her, got called straight into the doctor’s surgery to book her for an emergency colonoscopy.

And I was talking to her about this and I was like, you know, this whole thing is going to cost you thousands and thousands and [00:23:00] thousands of dollars. And that’s, I love what you said about these imbalances. You know, I started having started decades before. I mean, look what we know about Alzheimer’s being related to blood sugar, dysregulation and all these sorts of things.

But JJ, I think what’s also really interesting is, and I know you have the most incredible supplement rein. Supplements as well. One of my teachers many years ago before I never used to take any supplements, I was actually quite proud of myself that I never supported my ironic now. Right. And oh, go figure my health.

Fill up quickly fit. I was in bed for almost two years and now guess what? I support myself really well with supplements and I’m in the best health have been in 20 years and people are like, I don’t want to take anything. And one of my. Favorite teachers said to me, once, many years ago, supplements are like a weapon.

And if you really use them, you know, which we do need in today’s in today’s, you know, chronically, polluted and stressed world. Talk, talk to people. Talk to me, teach [00:24:00] me about why supplements are so critical. Yeah. It’s, it’s so funny. It’s like I not going to have expensive urine. I want expensive urine.

That’s what I want. Hey, if it was a hundred years ago, you know, had animals outside and you could fish and you were growing your own stuff and we didn’t have all the pollution and you weren’t like having all the EMS and you weren’t waking up throughout the night and all the ridiculous stuff. It’s a very different world.

Like you look at what’s going on now just between the stress, the chronic stress. And the toxic overload. Right? And then you couple, this it’s like a perfect storm with soil demineralization and food transport and process food that, that, I think it’s, I, you know how you can’t call juice juice? If it’s, if it’s, if it’s like colored water, they [00:25:00] have to call it like, like juice cocktail.

Wow. We should have to do the same thing with all this process food. Like we should not be able to call processed food food, because it’s like pseudo food, right? So we’re eating pseudo food demeanor. We have soiled a mineralization. We have food that’s been transported so that now the vitamins and minerals are going, the vitamins are going down rather.

And then you have the toxins and the stress, you got all that stuff. So we need more nutrients than we did before because of the toxins and the stress. And we’re getting less nutrients than we were before because of all of those factors, the process, the transport, the soil mineralization. So it’s a double whammy.

Either one of those sides of the scale was imbalanced and say, you’d need more, but we got both. So we’re really in trouble. And here’s the thing. I was doing a lot of nutrient testing for years. That was one of, I used to work with the lab company. I go around and [00:26:00] teach doctors how to look at nutrient levels through lab.

To assess. And you know, one of the things we would always do is test all the doctors and nutritionists before we would do the talks. So I got to see everybody’s stuff and I never saw someone who wasn’t supplementing, who was Optum. Never not one time, zero never, ever, ever. So if you are not supplementing, even if you’re eating a perfect diet, you’re gonna, you’re going to have nutrient issues.

And this to me is the easiest of all of the things that we’re going to ask you to do, you know, eat more vegetables, move more meditate, get your sleep. Taking supplements is the easiest one. Like that’s the simple one. I mean, why wouldn’t you do that? And, yeah, what I mean, think of just in the last year and a half, if all we done and said, you know what we’re going to do with everybody, we’re going to give you some vitamin D we’ll give you some vitamin D some vitamin [00:27:00] C, some zinc and some queers atten that’s all we’re going to do.

Let’s make sure that you’re optimizing all of those things. Could you imagine, like what a difference we would be seeing right now with just that alone. So it is the least sexy thing to say, but the first thing that you should do, you know, your sleep change what’s at the end of your fork, move from dirty process to clean process and whole foods, and then take a good multivitamin mineral antioxidant formula with essential fatty acids.

That’s that’s that’s step one. Then you can get fancy with all the extras. And I mean, I literally take, I have a limit, Jackie. I have a Dixie cup, a little, like, I think it’s like a three ounce Dixie cup and I’m allowed to fill that sucker up, but I mean, why would I take better care of my car than myself?

Yes. Right. We go do all that for our car. Why would we take better care of that than [00:28:00] ourselves? Why would we do all this stuff that we do for everything else in our life, except for ourselves. Oh, absolutely. And I think it’s the same conversation I have with my mostly women about, you know, investing in themselves and investing in supplements.

I want my, I love that my kids see me taking supplements. I love that they see it in, you know, getting fancy that they, they saw me buy an infrared sauna. I, you know, I love that. They see me sitting in there. Sweating it out and that, you know, we’re, we’re doing our sort of running high knees, the four of us together in the lounge room pool.

First thing in the morning, you know, this is modeling behavior for a future generation. So what are our children seeing? You know, we know that most of our beliefs were like a sponge, a computer up to the age of seven years old. So that’s what they’re absorbing. So what do we want our children of the future to be absorbing from our behavior?

It’s so good. I remember I had a client who was a smoker. And I said to her, I go, [00:29:00] she had kids. I go, do you want your kids to smoke? Like if I can get you to smoke, stop smoking just for your own health, like let’s do it. That she was, my kids are going to smoke. Of course your kids are going to smoke. You know, it doesn’t matter if you tell them not to smoke, you’ve given them total permission.

They’re following everything you do. People ask me, how do you get your kids to eat healthy? I go, well, first of all, exposure equals preference. Like keep the enemy out of the house. Keep exposing them, get them involved in cooking, but eat healthy. You know, I mean, like my kids are amazingly healthy eaters at 24 and 25.

I never shoved it down their throat. I just ate healthy. That’s what they knew. So good. Isn’t it. Oh, and I, you know, I, it’s so interesting to me. The smoking story is really fascinating when I was pregnant with my, or my mother-in-law was a, was a smoker. And then the. We had my first [00:30:00] son, she stopped smoking that day and she was completely addicted.

And I, you know, that whole story about, you know, are you worth it? Are you mad? So she did it for him. She did it for honey, but she didn’t do it for herself. Like, yeah. Mindblowing, wherever you are. You’re so incredible and influential and you’re you’re you’re wise beyond your years. Is there a special someone that’s really made a difference in your life?

There are a couple special someones, the first special summer. Was a woman who I met in my twenties, I’d moved to Fort Lauderdale. I was going to grad school and she was a self-made multimillionaire. And I was her personal trainer. And so it was funny. I was walking down the beach, but there, and she goes, why are you in school?

And I go, oh, because I want to be more successful and help more people. She goes, ah huh. And what do you do when you graduate from grad school? I go, I’m going to go [00:31:00] get my PhD. She goes, huh? You know, you don’t have to do that to be more successful. And I’m like, well, of course you do. Like, I just, that’s what I knew.

You went to school and you know, here she was a high school graduate who was impacting millions of people, but I, I didn’t connect the dots. And then at 30, she, she helped me. She became my business card. And turns out that her biggest thing that she did was be a, she was a mindset coach. So I lived with her for like a year and she trained me.

So she, I mean, my son’s alive today because of this woman, all the stuff. When I was writing warrior mom and people like, how did you know how to do this? And I’m like, I don’t know. And I wrote the whole book, wrote all the mindset lessons in that book. I thinking, gosh, that’s so crazy. I just picked them up along the way.

And I was doing an interview and they’re like, where did you learn this? And all of a sudden I went, oh my gosh, I learned it from case Smith. I just forgot. And in fact, Jackie sitting [00:32:00] right near me are these. I just found my, you know, moving, I moved across the country. I was unpacking boxes and I found these old VHS tapes that I’ve literally been dragging around for 30 years.

And well, 25 years and I was like, I’m going to get them now digitized so that I can watch them. But you know of her teaching this mindset training. So she’s been amazing. And then kind of my modern, my modern day, K Smith is Mary Morrissey. Who’s one of my closest friends who has something called DreamBuilder and she is a law of attraction trainer.

She was a pastor at the time. Big country’s largest non-denominational church and just amazing study with the Dalai Lama. I mean, just has done all sorts of incredible stuff. In fact, brought back these Dalai Lama, Tibetan bells for me from the Dalai Lama. So, I mean, I’ve had amazing mentors and I’m a big, big fan of mentors.

I think in whatever you’re trying to achieve in life, you go find the person who’s the very best at it. Just spend time with [00:33:00] them, hire them. You know, just do what you need to do to be near them. Read their books, listen to their podcast, spend time with them. Success leaves, clues. Right. And it’s so easy.

Nowadays has, if you find someone you’re obsessed with, you can watch them, listen to them, everything. Another great one to listen to. If you’re looking for mindset is one of my best girlfriends. Lisa Nichols. He’s fabulous. Yeah, she’s got amazing mindset training. So there’s, there’s so many resources out there it’s really, you know, choosing one.

Because otherwise it’s overwhelming and, and taking action. Oh, absolutely. And do you know, so I’m a student of Abraham Hicks, so I just love the law of attraction and Dido two years. Funny story about the law of attraction, cute about, you know, stalking someone and making them, your friends. So years ago, I’ve been following you for many years before becoming a student of JD Virgin.

And I saw a photo of you and [00:34:00] Betty rocker on her Instagram page. And I was like, wow, I have to, that is going to be me one day. I’m going to be standing there with JJ. So funny, I met Bree. I met Bree in an elevator. At a business. We were both in the same business coaching group. We just went to different times, but she came to that one and we’re riding in an elevator and she’s, she’s like, you’re JJ Virgin.

And I’m looking at her. I have no idea who this person is. And then she said who she was and I recognized her name is B and I recognized Betty rocker. Anyway, she became a really close friend. I have mine. So, and she even moved to Florida because when I moved to Florida, so we even lived next to each other for awhile, lived in San Diego together, Florida together.

Then she that’s awesome. Well, when, um, it soon it’ll be the three of us. Yeah. You just got to get, got to get over here to Florida. Yeah, absolutely. Hey, so J D Phi was your [00:35:00] daughter, what would a, what would a lesson be that you would want to teach me and instill in? You know, it’s interesting. If you look at the line, apparently this is the most open subject line of all emails and it’s the subject line that says you are not.

And I think, especially with women, we tend to try to go it alone. But if you look back, you know, hundreds of years, women are very communal by nature and we would not have survived if we weren’t, you know, like, like takes a village to have to raise babies and do all of that. But yet we’ve gotten so far away from that.

And so getting back into community is so key important. And that can be as simple as just getting on zoom right now with your girlfriends, whatever you need to do. But I went for years, especially when my kids were young, but like most, most of my twenties and thirties until about my mid [00:36:00] forties, I really didn’t have girlfriends because I was doing a lot of business and it seemed like everyone there were.

And I just, you know, it was very difficult to find girlfriends and I just made a decision. I was going to go search for them and join more female focused business groups, et cetera. And now I have some amazing girlfriends because I did that, that have been the game changer for my life. So. If you’re feeling lonely right now, like you don’t have the community.

My gosh, it’s never been easier to kind of find your tribe, find those people that you connect well with and, and have common interests. But that is probably one of the single most important things you can do for your health and your life and your sanity. Oh, absolutely. And I love that where it’s sort of ending on that point because we’ve talked about mindset and really attracting what your, you want your reality to be.

And we’ve talked about looking after yourself, what’s on the end of your before [00:37:00] removing inflammation from the body, all of that sort of side of things, meditating movement. And then now, you know, talking about closing that loop on taking action. And, you know, like what you said, you know, if you want something, you can’t just think about it.

You’ve got to take steps and make that happen. So what a, what a beautiful story and that yes. You have the most amazing group of girlfriends. Yes, I do. I’m so lucky. JC, what adventure are you embarking on next? Busy baby. I know I’ve been resisting it. You know, it was interesting. My agent last year, it was like time for a new book and I’m like, no, because there’s a lot of work.

You know, a book is about a three-year project and then. And then it’s really like when you, when you do a book and I say to a book, because there’s a whole process with writing. It it’s really, it’s a lot like to me having a baby. So first thing is like my books. I work with an [00:38:00] amazing. Editor writer because my voice comes out when I speak, but not when I write, so I have to speak and then she tweaks it and she writes it and we edit it and the whole thing.

So I have to, to outline in speak, and then she does, it’s like a whole thing, but I also wanted to do something that was different. And what I’ve really been looking at is, you know, the whole world out there right now. I think that we’ve taken our eye off of wait. And weight loss and weight regain. And, you know, I look at weight as another vital sign.

I think that we should using the scale as a tool, not as a way of shaming people. And I’m amazed at how much emotion is involved in the scale. We need to look at a scale like we do a blood pressure cuff or a glucose monitor. You would never take your blood pressure and start all the shame around yourself, but yet you step on a scale and all this ridiculous self-talk starts.

So. What I realized was, you know, we talked all the time and you hear the diets don’t work and the failure rate and blah, blah, blah. And the reality is that diets actually do work. [00:39:00] We just been using them wrong. And what I’m against is dieting. Dieting. Shouldn’t be a hobby, but what I am for is using diets differently.

So my next book is the Virgin antidiuretic cause it’s really about how do you take the information that you get from a diet and pull what works for you? Like swapping out foods to figure out which foods work that shoots down so that you can put that into your everyday life. And it will work for you so that you don’t think about your weight.

It’s not an issue. And if you do see your weight, go up on your scale, a couple of pounds one day, cause we should be weighing in every day. And if your scale goes up a couple of pounds, it’s not a food issue. It’s a food intolerance issue because you did not gain three pounds over. Like, it’s not, it’s not possible.

Calorie-wise, I mean, it is possible, but boy, you would, you would be like lying on the floor in pain feeling so, right. What happens when something like that happens is you ate a food that didn’t work for you and you created [00:40:00] intolerance and you need that information that the scale can give you one and put it combined with a food journal.

So that’s what I’m really working on is a way to rethink diets. And couch. It is like an anti diet in that it’s not about restriction, it’s about swapping and learning and bringing things in so that you get off this whole hobby of dieting and just learn how to not ever have to have weight regain again, and just how to feel great all the time and how to reframe all that.

So that’s what I’m working on. The main part of the book’s done now, we’re working on all the other stuff. Which is a lot. Yes. The marketing engine. Yeah. The marketing engine. And then, you know, you raise your kids. So it’s been nine years since the Virgin diet. And I did the complimentary sugar impact diet because everyone asks about sugar and, you know, it was time for a refresh.

In fact, there was just a whole bunch of talk on my, in my Facebook group about like she said this, but now it’s this. And I’m like, yeah, I will always update. Yeah. And yes, there was something in that book [00:41:00] that we’ve updated since cause new information came out. So it’s really the update of all of that and how you can put it into practice.

And I’m very practical. Like I like to be very tactical and practical and give you things that are easy to do so that you can be successful on them. Right. Oh, queen of the worksheets. Absolutely. Well, JD, I’m super excited about the update update. The new book that’s going to come out is that, will that be hit land in about 12 months?

It should be. We’re still deciding if it’s going to be November or December 20, 22 or January 20, 23. Most likely January 20, 23. We will see somewhere, somewhere in that timeframe. So to be TBD. Super excited. JD, you are an example of a living legacy, such assignee light. You know, you touched, you’ve touched my heart for so many years now.

It’s really a true honor and a privilege to have you [00:42:00] spreading your message to the world. And I really thank you for your time today. Thanks for coming on the show. Thank you for having.

Thank you so much for listening to our show. We are so thankful you are here and we can’t do this show without you. And if you made it to the end of this episode, celebrate yourself because it means you are truly dedicated to feeling better in your health, in your career, in your relationships. And I am so proud of you.

And if you want more of. I get it now. So tune in every Monday and Wednesday for new episodes and you can subscribe. So you don’t miss out on all the guidance and any special bonus episodes. You could follow me on social media at Jackie Belker. And if you want the chance to have your question answered or be on a coaching call with me live, you can sign up at feel better.

institute.com/signup. Again, that’s feel better. institute.com/signup. [00:43:00] And see you next week, Jackie Bubba.