In this solo talk, JJ Virgin shares a comprehensive, purpose‑driven roadmap for people aged 50 and older who want to thrive well into their 70s, 80s, and beyond. She begins by emphasizing mindset, citing women mentors such as Mary Morrissey, Sam Horn, and Sheri Salata, and outlines how purpose‑driven career and personal goals keep her excited about her work in wellness after 40 years. Virgin then details concrete fitness strategies to counteract age‑related muscle loss (1% per year after 40, doubling after 60), including a DEXA body composition scan, heavy resistance training, agility and plyometric work, rucking, and even trying goat yoga. She stresses the importance of relationship and spiritual goals, describing joint activities with her husband like Dr. Joe Dispenza events and shared reading. Recognizing that nervous‑system health and sleep become critical in midlife, she describes her sleep‑hygiene regimen—reducing wine, using eye masks, earplugs, and light‑blocking stickers, and acknowledging her genetic predisposition to light sleep. To overcome the guilt often associated with self‑care, Virgin gamifies her routine, assigning “self‑care points” for activities such as cold plunges, meditation, workouts, journaling, reading, Epsom‑salt baths, red‑light therapy, sauna, and evening walks, aiming for at least three points daily (21 per week). Throughout, she frames each habit as a way to stay out of comfort‑zone ruts, encouraging viewers to adopt similar practices for lasting body‑brain resilience.
Chapters
So I am focused now on making sure that I can play full out in my 70s, my 80s, my 90s, and beyond. And then I'm doing this daily to ensure that my body and brain are built to last. So here's what I'm up to, and my hope is, is that if you are 50+, you use this as an inspiration and motivation to make your 50s and beyond your best years. Okay, so first, since mindset is everything, I have amazing role models to help me here. Now, first, mindset and mindfulness. So I have amazing women that I learn from and hang out with. Mary Morrissey, Sam Horn, Sheri Salata. These are women who've gone before me and are living purpose-driven, driven lives. And I also have career goals that stretch and excite me. I'm actually more excited about my career now than ever. And I've been working in the wellness world in one form or another for 40-plus years. I set some experience goals over the next decade of what I want to do, where I want to travel to. And then I also set some goals on fitness. And this is a big one. I think one of the biggest challenges that happens with us is we get into these ruts. And the thing is, is as you're aging, if you're not continuing to progress in your fitness, you are going to be declining. You know, at the age of 40, we start losing 1% of our muscle a year, up to that, and up to 2-4% of our strength. And then at the age 60, that doubles. So what I decided was I'm going to put some really cool new fitness goals in and do things that take me out of my comfort zone. Like, I will tell you, in 2 days I'm going to do goat yoga. Yes, stay tuned on that. We've been doing all sorts of stuff. I took up rucking. I've been lifting way heavier weights. So that was one. And then I really set some relationship goals of who, you know, when you start to look at this, you go, who are the people that I really want to spend time with? You know, who and how do I get to make sure that I'm spending more time with my family? And how do I make sure I'm getting to spend that really good quality time with my hubby? Now I also set spiritual goals and think about what you would love to to continue, you know, how would you like to continue to grow? Someone asked me the other day, like, what was my— how are things working so well with my husband? What would I give for my, you know, relationship success? And I say because we're always working on new personal development goals and doing cool new things like going to a Dr. Joe Dispenza event. We go to a Transformation Leadership Council. We're always working, reading a book together. So what can you do for spiritual goals to continue to push you out of your comfort zone? And by the way, all of these things All these new experiences are focused on getting me out of my comfort zone. Now, I had that pleasure of hearing Stephen Kotler talk about this recently in his new book, "Nar Country," and he talks about pushing yourself in new activities. And, and again, it can be so easy to get into a rut, right? I mean, that is, that is the thing that I'm fighting against, is getting into a rut. So I've been really working on these new activities. So I'm going to walk through some of the things that I've done to see if the inspire you as well, because I really doubled down on wellness and self-care. And I think one of the things that happens when we're 40-plus is we have to really take care of our nervous system. And so I actually started to gamify my self-care, and I got over this whole guilty feeling of like, oh my gosh, I'm taking a hot bath and I'm not working. I got over that. Okay, so the first thing that I did, and I'm actually going to do another one in a week, is I did a deep dive assessment on— by using a DEXA so that I could look at my skeletal muscle, I could look at my bones and my bone mineral density, and then I could look at my fat mass, my vat fat, and my— and again, what I really want to make sure is that right now I'm focused on putting on as much muscle as humanly possible. Now at home I have a bioimpedance scale and a tape measure, but what I did was I set some really ambitious goals for myself in terms of resistance resistance training and lifting really heavy weights, and even adding in some things like agility training and plyometric stuff. Not fun, I will tell you, not fun at all. But boy, I'm really seeing the benefits of it. It's fun to start challenging again. The other thing that I've been focusing on is sleep. And I will tell you that I genetically am not a good deep sleeper. It's a big challenge for me. And when I like did 23andMe and every genetic test comes out and goes, you're not a good deep sleeper, I'm like, no kidding. What I have to do to really help with that, because any little thing— wine before bed messed up deep sleep, you know, any kind of tech before bed messed up deep sleep. So, um, one of the things that I stopped doing in preparation for all this was I was— got into a habit of drinking more wine than I should have, and now I drink 1 to 3 glasses a week. I really cut it way back and save it for special, like if we're going out to dinner or we're with friends. But I've really been focusing on my sleep and working on You know, I travel now with always with an eye mask, earplugs, and those little stickers to cover all the lights because that's a problem. So that's the next thing. Now, one of the other things that I've been working on, and I think this is a shift that happens in your 40s or 50s, is that realization that you're going to need more self-care. Like, to get to the place where it was easy in the 20s or 30s, need more self-care. And I had to get over some of the guilt of like taking that time for myself. So what I've done to do it is gamified it and gotten into some routines. But I found at night that my routine was— I didn't have a specific routine. So what I did instead was give myself self-care points. So I want to earn at least 3 self-care points a day. Here's what counts as a self-care: the cold plunge, meditation, working out, journaling, reading a positive book, a personal development book, taking a hot Epsom salts bath, doing my red lights, using my sunlight and sauna, going for a walk after dinner. So all of those things count. And when I do it now, I just say I have to— I'm— my goal is to get 3 a day or 21 a week. So if I miss a day, then I can back it up onto the next. But I'm finding I'm getting more like 4 or 5 because I tend to be an overachiever. So try that one if you're having trouble like getting that stable routine.
