How to Be in Charge of Your Life with Mary Morrissey

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Hey, it's JJ Virgin. And welcome to the JJ Virgin Lifestyle show, where we'll connect with some of the coolest people in the world. Plus, I give you tips that you can put into fast action to uplevel your health and your life. Now, today's show is all about how to be stronger than circumstance and how to create the life of your dream, how to be in charge of your results. Sound good? I have got the perfect person to share all of this with you. It's actually the person. Gosh, a couple weeks ago I was doing an interview and I was asked, who is the person who inspires you most? Who is that leader out there, who you are following or mentor? And I didn't even have to think about it. Mary Morrissey's name was the one that jumped out at me. Let me tell you a little bit about Mary. If you're not familiar with her, she's a transformational speaker, author, executive coach, and corporate consultant. And here's what I love. I mean, there's so many things I love about Mary. I'm going to be like a gushing person here. But one thing that's amazing is that this woman has been through more challenges in her life. Bankruptcy, divorce, losing businesses. I mean, just amazing things. And she is just the queen of resilience and also the queen of recreating herself and continuing to build on her success and create a business she loves, loves. And that has helped. Gosh, I think at this point now she's in the hundreds of thousands of people helped. She's a sought after expert on the invisible side of success. She's spoken three times the UN and worked with his holiness, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela. She has a master's degree in counseling psychology and honorary doctorate in human letters and is the author of two best selling books, no less than greatness and Building your field of dreams, which was also a PBS special. And she really is, as I've gone through and really looked at, like what, what makes people the people who inspire me the most, the people who I just look at and go, wow, they're incredible because I see the impact they're making out in the world. The common factor I've seen with all of those people is that they have gone through challenges and they are better because of it. And what she's going to share with you today is. Is a little behind the scenes on that and how you do choose your results and how you can wake up in the morning and change your day. So, without further ado, today's guest is Mary Morrissey. All right, let's do it. Mary Morrissey, welcome to the show. I'm so glad you're here with me today.

Me, too. Thank you.

Well, I just love what you're about, because one of the things that I have as my core mission is to help people take responsibility for their life and understand that they can create the change. They can create who they want to be. And one of the big things that you go out there and teach people how is how to be in charge of their results. So I'd love to just dive into this and talk about your work. And one of the things that you talk about that I think is really interesting is what you teach people in terms of. You say you have a spiritual principle, super powerful principle that you teach people for creating new results.

First of all, is to recognize that we, every one of us, has an imagination, and we're using this imaging faculty. We have the ability to use it in our behalf or at our detriment. And most of us, when we were little kids, we put on imaginal futures all the time. We're going to be a ballerina, we're going to be an astronaut, whatever it was. And everybody around us that we respected said, oh, isn't that cute? And by the time we were five, we were told to stop doing that, stop daydreaming, pay attention to what's coming at you, repeat what we already know, and we're gonna call you educated. And I, like many of us, spent 16 years, 18, really, for me, with graduate school, investing in systems of learning that were coming from the outside in, and missed the piece about the gifts that are inside each one of us for literally being able to create results that we're in love with, not results that are just a little bit better or just dissolving a bit of the pain we have, but actually to design and then live from a frequency that's a match for a life we're absolutely in love with. And that occurs through this superpower. First stage of it is this superpower called imagination. We use it. Most of us have been trained to use imagination as adults, actually to terrorize ourselves.

Ooh, to terrorize. I might have done that a little bit. So, again, it's all about this shift where you've got the control. You can Manage those thoughts you can imagine in the right direction. And you talk about two signals from our soul that help us uncover our dream. What are those?

Well, first, let's just bring in the premise that when you woke up this morning, each one of us, when we woke up this morning, we didn't wake up by ourselves. We don't have the personal power to wake ourselves up. If, if spirit or if life weren't moving through us, the alarm would ring all day long and nobody's home to hear it. Life woke us up this morning. Life is beating our heart right now. Give it any name you're familiar with that life actually speaks to us through. Call it a still, small voice, call it a hunch, call it intuition, but it is speaking to us of a larger, freer, fuller life that is seeking to emerge by means of each one of us. And that life is pressing through a blade of grass today to be a better blade of grass. It'll press right through some meant seeking the like. And the same life energy is seeking expansion by means of each one of us. So it speaks to us through longing and discontent. When you find ourselves saying, oh, I wish I could, or if only I could, that, that sense of longing for freedom, or when we're thwarting the flow of life in us through fear or doubt or insecurity or procrastination, it speaks to us through discontent. It turns the volume up on stuckness. We feel more and more discontented with. This is just going to go on forever. And we're. And what happens with the river of light or the river of life that pours through us? You're not one of us. Our ego is not strong enough to stop its flow. We direct its flow through our mindset. We direct our flow through how we interact with it. But when we don't express it in a creative, uplifting, expansive way, it mutates. It forms a version of itself, a symptom of unlived life. And it will get our attention. It'll knock us down. It'll. It's dis ease in some form. It'll show relationships and money and health and all different versions of unlived life. So longing and discontent are sacred signals from the soul.

You know, I think when as you're talking about this, one of the things that happen, one of the attributes in Miracle Mindset is to live in the present. And when my kids were little, right before Grant's accident, for months before Grant's accident, I'd made this decision that I wanted to be more present for My kids. And I was writing it in my journal. Every day I am more present for my kids. But, Mary, I was not doing anything about it. And all these opportunities, of course, kept showing up, right? They were there every day. The more I said, I want to be more present for my kids and didn't do it, the louder those opportunities became.

And.

And I still didn't pay attention to them until the ultimate one came, and that was Grant getting hit by the car, which nothing snaps you into the present like that. And so do you see that happening with people where they're just not attuned to these signals? I mean, I think about so many of the things I can come from, the health perspective, where someone's sick and they just mask it with, you know, prescription medications, and they just try to avoid the. The information that their body's trying to tell them.

Oh, yeah, it's. When we talk about information, your energy, you know, it speaks through the body. It speaks really through. Through this information system called our soul. So it comes through, you know, longing, discontent, and people. If you don't, every one of us, it starts out almost like a. Like a feather on the cheek. It's like, I would really love to. And then. So if we will just pay attention to what we would really love, most of us, we don't entertain that question, what would I love? We entertain the question, what do I think? What do I think I can do? What do you think I can do? What does the economy say I can do? What does my history say I can do? And so we live small, muted versions of ourselves. If you'll just ask. If money weren't. If money didn't stop me, if time didn't stop me, if my history, if my education, what would I love? And the first doorway, the first really entrance into a new doorway of living is to let yourself know what you would really love. And then, jj, as you said, nothing snaps you into the present like a bolt of lightning because some circumstance grabbed you and said, here it is a version of a greater life seeking you. And if it turns out to be what looks like a big problem, then you want to take the steps that JJ teaches, because you can navigate anything with awareness. And she's downloaded a very clear set of awarenesses around how to navigate in extremely difficult times, time. And use that experience rather than to bury you or destroy things, actually to become the very thing that you live from that actually not only helps you and your family, but many, many, many others. So there's nothing that can happen that can stop Any one of us, except by our consent. So it's often just taking a step, just taking a step. And that first step could be just really documenting, writing for seven days. Any idea of what you would really love in your life, what you would love to change in your life, but then saying, I want no more pain in my life. If I'm not having pain, what am I having? So you write the creative version of it versus the negative version of it. So I would love. I move freely, I get out of bed with energy. I am in an amazing relationship. We share, we care, we support whatever it is that you want in your life. But pay attention to what you would love.

And I love that you said write it down, because I think that is one of the single most powerful things that you can do is just write it down. Physically write it down. Not on a computer. Write it down, pen to paper.

Absolutely. It activates, see your imaginal center, what we would call a right brain activity. The literal center is a left brain activity. So the act of writing it down brings coherence between both sides of your brain. It actually creates neuronal pathways with an amplitude moves up and down your nervous system. You are 10 times research shows out of Penn State, Edwin locke, who did 20 years of goal setting theory research. You are 10 times more likely, a minimum of 10 times more likely to produce the result. If you do exactly what JJ just said, have an expansive thought, turn it into a goal, write it down.

Now, someone wants to increase their success and you talk about a big challenge being an upper limit problem. What's that?

Well, we all. If you think about your house right now, the temperature in your house is governed by a thermostat and you set the temperature. So you set the thermostat and say you set it for 72 degrees. It's a cybernetic system. It measures variance. So when the temperature goes up 2 or 3 degrees, depending on its setting, it kicks in cool air to bring it back down to its normal setting. If it goes down, if it gets too cold, it'll kick in some warm air so that the thermostatic inst. It's a cybernetic system. Its job is to notice and correct variants. It's the same thing with an autopilot. How we got to the moon and back. It's this is. We use this, this kind of instrumentation all the time without being aware we have it ourselves. Our self image is our thermostat. It has a set point for how much love, how much money, how much freedom how much fun, how much we can of good we can allow in our lives. So when you set a goal that is a greater goal than you're used to experiencing, when you achieve a measure of more in your life, the thermostat kicks in and it's going to try very hard to pull you back down to your normal. If you don't know what's going on, it will win over you with thoughts like, this is too good to last. When will the other shoe drop? I mean, humans use these kinds of words to describe the upper limit, but we have to move that new freedom, that new whether it's money or love or any of it, and recognize that when thoughts of contraction come to us, it's just the thermostat trying to kick us back down to less good. And we breathe into it and make it out. We're generating a new normal. It takes awareness and then some simple things that you can do to actually generate a new set point. That's why your mindset work is so powerful, because you're actually creating a new thermostat that allows for a whole lot more freedom in life.

Yeah. And it actually, it applies to everything. I think back of, you know, working in health and weight loss for 30 years. And you see it so often, people get to where they want to be and then they go and they sabotage themselves because they're not comfortable there. They have to get the, you know, they've reached that upper limit and they go back and self correct where they believe they should be. Yep. Incredible. So one last thing, because, you know, I am so inspired by you. I've known you now for a couple of years, but I've known of your work for years and years and you continue to reinvent yourself, face challenges. When I look at someone who I view as just the queen of resilience, it is you. You face, face some of the biggest life challenges from divorce to bankruptcy to losing your business. And you just keep. You come through it and you're bigger and better than ever. Now. How have you done this? What do you see? Because I see you not just sustaining your success over decades, but just continuing to build on that success. Is there a secret in here, Mary?

In 1971, I became interested in how results occur and I became interested in transformation and then applying that into a vision. And so my first work that I built for 23 years that I did lose and go through that really difficult, horrible time in my life and then took the learning from that, I harvested what the learning was and one day I realized, well, I could lose the business, but I haven't lost the awareness that built the business. Only now I'm a smarter businesswoman because I can see what I did that allowed for somebody to come in and manipulate that business and ultimately be part of why I would lose it. I let that happen. I won't do that again. And I take that learning and apply it and apply it. And the other thing is, I think any of us who want to build something, you have to be in love with it. You know, Steve Jobs said, find what you love. It's as true for not just in your lovers, it's true in your life. If you love what you're doing and you then you and you have a failure or it doesn't work out and you're still in love with it, then you find a new way to express that. And the business I've built over the last decade, the 15 years now, is not only replaced the success I had before, it's 10 times the success. And that's evidence of taking awareness. And for any of us, when you want to start something fresh or you want to start something new, the most important thing is study. That's why I'm so thrilled about your Mindset Academy and your mindset program. Because if people will just study how to have a mindset and then practice these simple tools and turn them into habits, there's not one thing you could want that you can't bring into your life.

And you've got a great ebook that you're going to be giving all the listeners to that I'm super excited about. And thank you for talking about the Academy. I am in love with your work and I want everyone to know more about you and and experience your work. And of course they can go to marianmoressy.com but that in the show notes. I will have this link to your ebook Stronger than circumstance@jjvirgin.com Mary Mary, can you tell us a little bit about what they will get from this ebook?

Right. Most of us think we all have circumstances and if we're not careful, circumstances have us and we try to change our lives at the level of circumstance. And so Stronger Than Circumstances gives you some very simple but highly effective tools for how you could have a circumstance without the circumstance having you. And then as you work with that, you come to find that that circumstance was actually the leverage for a forward momentum that is in the direct relationship to the life that you would really love living as you dream it.

Now I'm going to throw a Curve ball at you. And thank you again for providing that for everybody. That's just fantastic. And again, I want. This is someone who you want to have in your life. For everyone listening, you want to have Mary in your life. Sometimes I just, you know, hear your voice and it's like I just feel better. I feel like I can take on more. So thank you so much for providing that. Now, here's the curve ball. Mary, what's one thing you do every day that makes the biggest difference in your life?

This is going to sound deceptively simple. I realized many years ago that when I wake up in the morning, I don't get to enter into the day without a mindset. It's a matter of being aware of my mindset for the day. So I installed a practice that I do to this day, and I do it every day. Some days I wake up and it's easy. Some days I wake up and there's been something on my mind as I went to sleep. And I have to cause myself to do this. I do this when I feel like doing it, and I do this when I don't feel like doing it because of the difference it makes. And that's when I come to awareness that I'm waking up. There's a moment for every one of us when we begin to wake up and thoughts begin to flow. So when I notice that I'm waking up, I consciously cause myself to realize I'm waking up to this day. This is a brand new day. This is a day that has never been lived before. It's a remarkable, unrepeatable, irreplaceable gift of this human life that I am being given. Not everyone is waking up today. My friend Wayne Dyer, a couple years ago, we've been friends since 1987, went to sleep on a Saturday night. His calendar was packed for the next three years. He just didn't wake up the next morning. So as I'm waking up, I'm saying, this is a brand new day. It's given unto me. It's the greatest gift life has to give me is a day of my life I want to be awake to that I am. It's an unrepeatable, irreplaceable, remarkable. I say those same words every time. Gift in my life. Nobody gets to think my thoughts today but me. Nobody gets to choose my actions today but me. So may I walk through this day awake at the helm of the power that's given to me. This is not just another day. This is the one day I get to live. We're only ever living in the present moment. So this is way before I ever put my feet on the floor. I have done a minute or so of this and it just creates an energy from which I then move into my day. So I don't start my day with a to do list. I start my day day with how I'm going to be and I'm going to be in gratitude for this day.

I love it. And it is that honestly, starting the day in gratitude is what pulled me through the darkest times with Grant, finding that gratitude every day. So thank you for that. Truly works. And I love the way that you do it. I've been. I've been getting up and writing, but now I've been working just like you've just said on my self talk before I even reach over and grab the journal, which is the next thing I do. So that is fantastic. Now I want to remind everybody to grab Stronger than circumstance@jjvirgin.com Mary and Mary, thank you so much for joining me today.

Thank you, jj.

So appreciate it. Now, after the break, I'll be answering a listener's question, so stay with me.

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Welcome back. Now, this is the time where I answer a listener's question. And today's question comes from Darren in Costa Mesa, and he writes on my Facebook page. Jj, I'm curious, what would you consider your top three health habits that keep you fit and healthy? All right, that was one I had to stop and think about for a second, but I didn't want to think too much because I really wanted to give you the top three things that come to mind. So here they are. Number one, I get up every morning and the first thing I do is pull out my journal and I write down three things that I'm grateful for. So I'd say the number one thing for being healthier is to have a mindset, a miracle mindset, an expansive, growth, inspired mindset. And the best way to start that and to become more resilient is to start the day. And gratitude, it starts your day off right. So again, grab your journal, write it down. Physically write it down. Three things, three people you are grateful for. Next thing, get a good night's sleep. My gosh, if I could just pick one thing I see, I see so many people stealing from sleep in an effort to get more done, and it really is counterproductive. The most important thing you can do to really achieve hormonal balance, have better insulin sensitivity, better stress hormone responses, all of that is to get a good night's sleep. It's when you heal, it's when you repair. Super important. And that means eight to nine hours of uninterrupted sleep, quality sleep during the normal circadian rhythm, waking up without an alarm, feeling rested and cheerful and ready to take on the day. You're probably going, yeah, right, jj, it is possible. And I've done a lot of podcasts now and blog posts, et cetera, on sleep. You can look for my podcast with Ariana Huffington and with Sean Stevenson specifically, where I talk about these. So you can do this. And then finally, now. You knew I was going to say this one. If you've been around my community at all. I start every day. The meal I start the day with is my shake. And the reason I am going to preach this is I see so many people start the day with dessert. Oh, my gosh. They do a gluten dairy, sugar carb slam overload and just starts them off on a roller coaster. Blood sugar roller coaster. They'll never get off. So do me a favor, start the day with a shake. I use my all in one protein powder, some coconut or almond or cashew milk, a little avocado, a little spinach, sometimes some berries. I throw my extra fiber. It is easy. And then I spin it all up in my nutribullet and away I go. I travel with this. I used this in the hospital. When Grant was in the hospital, I was making him smoothies. I actually had a nutribullet in the hospital with me. So you can do this. This is easy. It's one of the simplest things you can do. It'll save you time, save you money, and start your day off right. So remember, if you start the day with gratitude, have an amazing shake, and you'll feel well rested and wide awake because you had your good sleep. There you go. You are golden. There are my top three health habits. All right, if you would like to submit a question, pop on over to my Facebook page at JJ Virgin official look for the one with the little blue check mark. And I need a little help here. If you could jump over to Stitcher or itunes and leave a review for me. Ooh, a five star review would be even better. And while you're there, subscribe and share the show with your friends. Oh my gosh. I was so appreciate that. Thank you. It helps so much. All right, this is JJ Virgin signing off and reminding you to live courageously. Show up, step up. You are stronger than you think.

Hello listeners, this is Anne Bogle, author, blogger, and creator of the podcast what Should I Read next? Since 2016, I've been helping readers bring more joy and delight into their reading lives. Every week I tag all things books and reading with a guest and guide them in discovering their next read. They share three books they love, one book they don't, and what they've been reading lately, and I recommend three titles they may enjoy reading Next. Guests have said our conversations are like therapy, troubleshooting issues that have plagued their reading lives for years and possibly the rest of their lives as well. And of course, recommending books that meet the moment. Whether they are looking for deep introspection to spur or encourage a life change, or a frothy page turner to help them escape the stresses of work, school, everything, you'll learn something about yourself as a reader and you'll definitely walk away confident to choose your next read, with a whole list of new books and authors to try. So join us each Tuesday for what Should I Read Next? Subscribe now wherever you're listening to this podcast and Visit our website whatshouldireadnextpodcast.com to find out more.