In this episode of EPIC: Begins with 1 Step Forward, host Zander Sprague welcomes John Diggs, a former pro football player turned mind mapping expert. John shares his extraordinary journey from the NFL to building a multimillion-dollar mortgage business—only to lose it all in the Great Recession. Discover how mind mapping became the key to his comeback, helping him rebuild, refocus, and thrive. Learn how this powerful tool can bring clarity, structure, and direction to your own epic journey.
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Mind Mapping For Success: John Diggs On Overcoming Setbacks And Thriving
I am so honored to be joined by John Diggs. John, tell us who you are and what you do.
The Inspiring Journey From Football To Mind Mapping
Thank you so much for having me. I’m John Diggs. I’m known as the world’s Mappineering Mentor. I’m originally from Los Angeles. A quick story, I was born and raised in Los Angeles. I went to Washington State University. Go Cougs. I got a chance to play several years of professional football until that ended, I got into the mortgage industry in Los Angeles, built one of the largest mortgage companies in Southern California in the early 2000s, and then abruptly lost everything in a mortgage meltdown in the great recession going from successful football to successful businessman to homeless.
It was a very dramatic experience where I lost everything, career, business, family, and wife. Everything was gone. I was forced to go back to my mother’s house and reset myself. One of the things that I took with me to reset was my mountain bike, gym clothes, and a big box that was full of motivational tapes, CDs, and books that I’ve accumulated over the years. I started digging through that box. One book stood out to me and it was called The Mind Map Book by Tony Buzan. I read it from cover to cover.
It changed my perspective and caused me to make a decision and mind map everything that was in that box. What mind mapping has done was truly remarkable because it enabled me to go from broke living at my mother’s house to making a nice figure income living on the beach at Marina Del Rey, California within eight months. It was all because of what mind mapping had just transformed my life in so many different ways.
Since 2020, when we had the pandemic, before then, mind mapping caused me to reset my life and do some incredible things in my life, travel the world, social dance with my kids, and do a lot of awesome things. When 2020 came, I decided to start writing books and sharing the power of mind mapping with the world. Since then, I’ve written ten books and became an international bestselling author. I did a TEDx talk that talks more about my story and this mind mapping journey. I’m very passionate about helping people love and live their best lives by sharing everything that I’ve learned about what I call the most powerful thinking tool in the universe, which is mind maps.
I want to get into mind mapping in just a moment, but I’m all about the epic journeys that we’ve taken and the ones that we want to take. It’s pretty cool that you got to play professional football. I wanted to take a moment and if you don’t mind indulge me. Talk a little about playing professional football. What is it like to be on the field in a stadium? I’m going to guess people are cheering you.
As a child, my dream was to play college football and not pro football. It was because when I was young, my dad took me to the Cleveland Browns and Los Angeles Rams games. I was ten years old and it was hot. It was boring and a terrible game. Weeks later, I went to the USC UCLA football game and it was all this energy. As a kid, I visualized myself playing college football.
There’s a story I’ll share fast. It was my junior year at Washington State. We were playing against Stanford. It was on national TV back in the ‘80s when every game wasn’t on TV, so it was a big deal to be on TV. I remember being in our tunnel getting ready to run out onto the field and I’m ready to play. I think my dad was in the stands. As I started running out and hearing the band and the crowds cheering, I looked around and I started balling.
I was crying. Tears are coming down my face. I stopped and all my teammates and everybody was running by me. I stopped and cried and looked around because that was the first realization that I was living the dream of what I had as a kid all of those days to play in that circumstance. It was mind-blowing for me. I had several experiences like that as a college player.
By the time I got to the pros, it was a different experience because it was no longer going to practice. You were now going to work. The fun of the game was taken out of it for me. I played with the Raiders. We talked about that. I played up in Canada for three years, but it wasn’t the same experience.
It is a business. My understanding is there are a lot of rules. They’re paying you money.
A lot of expectations.
The expectation is, “Here’s how you’re going to act here. You cannot do this,” even though you’re like, “John, let’s go play some pickup basketball.” “No, I cannot do that.” I was fortunate. In my first job out of college, I worked at the front desk of a hotel in San Francisco and we had lots of National League baseball teams stay with us. Eventually, we had American League baseball teams, but they would come in a couple of times a year to play the San Francisco Giants.
I worked there for a few years. I got to know some of the people that came in and some were nice and some weren’t as nice. I had a moment to talk to some of them. What was amazing is, this is people like David Justice and people from the Atlanta Braves. He’s the only one I can pull, but there was that early ‘90s. It was a good team.
I asked them, “What is it like to play professional baseball?” What was funny is they said, “I cannot believe I get paid. I would pay to play. I love the game this much.” I go, “What about the 160 games, doesn’t that get burned out?” They’re like, “I love it. The fact that I get paid to play this.” David Justice said, “I would go play in a dirt lot and a sandlot. I just love the game so much.” He’s putting a good thing. I’m sure, for you, part of it was, “Look at this. I’m getting paid to play football. I love it.” It’s not all sunshine, daisies, and roses.
No, it’s not. I was, by the grace of God, made a good decision to get my California real estate license. I had listings on the market while I was playing with the Raiders in LA. I knew I was going to be doing some things after football afterward, which was a good thing for me because it was easy for me to parlay when my career was over versus some of these other athletes who struggled trying to find their new way.
The Devastating Impact Of The 2008 Financial Crisis
Moving a little further down your life road, you mentioned that you had a successful mortgage business and 2008 comes to say that the bottom dropped out. In my book, I talk about epic unexpected. Those things that happen in our life that you’re like, “Now, what do I do?” Clearly, your story that was huge.
That was a big one for me. The mortgage industry was out of control in the early 2000s and I was a part of that experience of making tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars a month as an owner in my company and not having the foresight of what could possibly happen. You’re throwing money around. I was doing a lot of crazy stuff and life was great. It was fabulous. One day one of my sales reps called me in when I was talking to him. I was like, “We got those loans that are funding.”
He was like, “I’m on my way to the office to fund those loans,” and probably $30,000 to $40,000 worth of business. He called me two hours later and said he just got off a national call with his company and the owner of the company said, “Effective immediately, we are no longer in business.” That was the beginning of the end where companies started dominoing having $30,000 to $40,000 of monthly expenses with 90% of your income gone.
Sometimes when we look back, those are the places that we grow the most and learn the most about. Daniel Coyle’s, The Talent Code is a great book. If you haven’t read it, I suggest it. It’s great. Basically, what he’s saying goes along the, “In order to master something, you need 10,000 hours.” More importantly, when we’re trying to learn something new, we learn the most when we struggle versus having it come easy. The more you struggle, the more miles you build to make whatever you’re doing easier.
I like to break it down for people and John, I’m sure you’ll appreciate this. You think back to when you were in kindergarten or first grade, you were learning how to write. It took all kinds of effort to learn how to write an A, B, C, S, and Z. Any of those. Now, there’s no conscious part of how I make an A or whatever. Why? It’s because you built that super highway of how to do it like playing football. At first, trying to catch a football or block someone or whatever, took a lot of thinking and driving. Think about driving. Remember when you first got your license? I know I did. I was exhausted because I was concentrating so hard.
You think about when you first ride a bike and you’re like, “How do I break?” All of that, but we struggled to learn how to do it. Therefore, if you got on a bike and just instantly knew how to ride it. You probably wouldn’t be as good a bike rider. Tell me a little about mind mapping. What is it? How do we do it? What do you teach people?
When I was jaded, homeless, and going through that and started mind mapping the contents of those boxes, I read books like Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends & Influence People, Unlimited Power, and all of the big self-help books collected. Mind mapping was my first introduction of visual thinking, meaning that a mind map is essentially a way to take everything that you’re thinking and put it in a structured format so you can see things.
When I started mind mapping the contents of those books and starting to see information that Tony Robbins and Eckhart Tolle and all these people were saying created a couple of things. That active learning to where I was engaged with what I was learning, versus just passive learning, reading things, and underlining things but it’s not connecting to me in a meaningful way. Where mind mapping caused me to go deep. As I was reading, I was thinking about, “What is the true subject matter of this paragraph or chapter that I can extract the keywords and phrases and put it on my mind map?”
I did not know that this was impacting me on a deeper level than ever before because I started to understand things. After that process of four months of going through that big ass box, I realized two big things from them thought leaders. The first thing is that ultimately life is meant to be loved. All of them were basically talking about their purpose of life is strictly to love it. They all had their various perspectives, strategies, systems, and thought on how to do it.
Another common thing that mind mapping allowed me to see amongst these leaders was that in order to truly love life, you have to get clear on who you are and what you want from life. After those first four months of going through that box, I spent the next four months developing what is now known as my I am mind map where I took a piece of paper in the middle and put I am. I started deeply thinking about what are the key components of who I am and what I want my life to be about.
That transformed me in such a way where I consciously decided now who I am and what my core values and my core beliefs are, and what my life is going to be about, which empowered me to start thinking, feeling, and behave differently which I truly believe was the way I attracted that six-figure job and obtained that six-figure that because I was a completely different person from when I first moved into my mom’s to going through this mind mapping process.
I was clear and certain about who I am and what I wanted, which again, the universe works in ways that when you get clear about anything and you visualize in yourself successfully being, doing, and having what you want seems like these opportunities start coming in your life. That’s what I’ve been practicing since 2009 when this all happened all the way up to now.
When you get clear on what you want and visualize yourself achieving it, opportunities seem to appear in your life.
Essentially, this is what I am very passionate about showing people on how to create their own I am my map to get clear about who they are. Not what society says, what their title is, and what their job is, but what are your core beliefs, your core values and what is your life about. It’s a very powerful, Zander when people can see it. They can think it here, but seeing it is a different game.
The Importance Of Self-Discovery And Clarity
That goes along with stuff I talk about in my book. I just did on my vision board for 2025. That’s a little mind mapping. What do I want? Let me see it every day to remind myself that I want that. There’s something to be said about, “As we get older, write it down.” The process of writing it down helps us to remember and not just, “I need to remember to call John.” I write down, “Call John.” Now, I’m much more likely to do it.
You talk about the I am and putting all these things. I try and remind people all the time that we are multifaceted. As a mental health professional, I’m like, “We are not just one thing.” If you have anxiety, you’re not just anxiety. You’re, I’m a son, a father, a brother, an uncle, a boyfriend, a best friend, a friend, and a speaker. I’m not just one thing. You’re right, you’re not just your title.
That idea of doing that and my take on it is reminding people that they have a choice in their life. Choice is so powerful. The fact of the matter is, and you’re a great example, there you are in your mom’s house on the couch. You had a choice. Your choices were perhaps crap and crappier. That does happen. Sometimes we wish we had a third choice or had something better, but we don’t. There is so much power in saying, “I am consciously choosing this.” It’s not, “I acknowledge it’s not what I want, but I’m choosing,” because life is a participatory sport, folks.
If you don’t participate, your life is still going on or you’re still going to be a day older. Things are still going to happen but when you are making choices, there’s so much power. I think that’s what we’re both saying together, the power of understanding and that clarity of where I would like to get. Sometimes, we set a destination and we don’t make it. That happens, but at least I tried.
How I like to think about it and share it with folks is that I believe that in all God’s creations, he blessed us as humans with one distinction and that’s the power of choice, the power of decide. We can decide how we experience our lives whereas other living beings don’t necessarily have that conscious choice. A lot of people forget that and those that know it don’t realize that a lot of that choice must start with thought.
Choosing what you want to think about or what you want to focus on is very powerful to determine how you feel. Your feelings will determine your behavior. I like to tell people a lot, you got to get clear on choosing the right thoughts to have the experience that you want to have to love and live your best life. Mind mapping helps clarify what it is you should be thinking about when you should be thinking about it most of the time to attract that what you want to experience.
You have to get clear on choosing the right thoughts to have the experience that you want to have to love and live your best life.
Years ago, I was reading a book and it was talking about Buddhism and business. It’s funny how you could read a 200 or 300-page book and there’s just one concept that you walk away with and for the rest of it, you are like, “It was good but I cannot tell you.” What I walked away was in Buddhism, there’s this concept, and I like this. Things are not inherently good or bad. It’s how we as human beings interpret it. Let me take something that’s very relevant. I’m going to date this show, but that’s okay. It’s raining in Northern California. It’s also raining down in LA.
Some people may see the rain as a great thing. Other people are like, “No, it’s a bad thing because there’s going to be mudslides and there were all those horrible fires.” The fact of the matter is, the rain in and of itself was not good or bad. It just is. Maybe I think it’s great. “It’s going to help extinguish all the hot spots and we need the rain for the water table and all of that.” I might have thought, “This is terrible because now there’s going to be washouts.” Both of these are true. It’s not that one is more true than the other. It’s just, how do I interpret what’s happening? The sun is out and it’s a great thing. If I’m a farmer and there’s a drought, it’s not a good thing.
One of my mentors told me something that was very poignant that I’ll share very quick. He was saying, “John, do you realize everyone on the planet has two different perceptions of what reality is? Not all people see reality the same way. Even if they’re Siamese twins conjoined at the head, there are two perceptions of reality.” I remember he asked me like, “How many people are on the planet?” I was like, “7 or 8 billion.”
It was ironic that he went down to the actual number, 7.9 or 7.3, whatever he said. He also said, “That’s almost 8 billion different perceptions of what reality is. Do you understand that?” I was like, “Yes.” He said, “If that is true, how can anyone have the audacity to argue that their one perception is the right one?” It was an a-ha moment for me and since then, I no longer fight to be right. I’m always open to say, “You could be right. I don’t think you are, but you could be. I’m not going to argue with you.” You’re entitlement to your perception.
I was a History Major in college and I learned. I was like, “It changed the way I thought about history,” which was that you and I could both witness the same historical event. I have two different perspectives of what happened and what occurred. If you write it down and it gets published, later generations go, “This is how this happened.” The way that we read history and stuff, is one person’s interpretation or their experience of what happened. Although, they’re not lying about it, your own bias and your own perception. We take it as, that’s how this happened. There are all kinds of stuff. There was a lot of controversy.
That happens a lot with religion. That’s how it happened with the 1400 or 2000 years ago.
How do we know?
That happens a lot. I agree with that point, but that’s one thing that I hope. Again, my mind mapping message helps people clarify their thoughts and what they’re making things mean. I do a lot of work with people in this area, especially with completing things in their past, where we would put that out on a mind map and I’d ask them some questions, what else could this mean? What could else could it mean? What else could that mean? It unlocks that tension they may have had with something in the past, realizing that it could have meant a whole bunch of different things other than what they were making it mean that was causing them to feel miserable in the present.
The Significance Of Closure And Moving Forward
I’m going to do two non-sequiturs things, but they do tie in here, John. One is in my work as a mental health provider, I’m a big proponent that what brings people into therapy a lot of the time is that they need closure on something. There’s the Gestalt theory of closure. Gestalt was a psychologist and he did this experiment with ten circles and asked people how many were complete circles.
It turns out there’s only one, but there are four that are close. In our mind’s eye, because we want completeness, we see it as being closed. For people talking about their past, sometimes they’re stuck on something because they don’t have closure. Once they have closure, they’re able to move on with their life. The other thing I wanted to say is what I call my green grass analogy. You and I are neighbors.
I look over at your lawn. It’s beautiful lush and green and I say, “John’s lawn is so green. I’m so envious.” You look out and go, “There’s a lot of dog poop on that lawn.” It’s green, but there’s something fertilizing my lawn and I’m not happy. The same green lawn. It’s a perception of what it is. We as people tend to be the meanest person in our own life. You and I were joking about our fabulous pates, our beautiful bald heads. We embrace that. Other people are like, “I cannot believe I lost my head.”
It’s funny you said that because my dad used to tell me, “Son, the grass may be greener on the other side, but it’s just as hard to mow.” That always rang true with me.
We don’t know what’s going on with someone else. We don’t know the things that one person sees and says, “They have a beautiful bald head. Look at how beautiful their head is.” I might look at it and go, “It’s so ugly. It’s the part of my body I hate or whatever.” It’s funny if we get curious and talk to people, we find out that maybe the thing we think is so awesome about it is the thing that they’re like, “I don’t like that trade. I don’t like that physical quality in me.” You’re like, “Are you serious?”
You hear that about jokes all the time. Some people think the joke is as funny as ever and everybody else is like, “Really?”
I know lots of jokes that I cannot tell anymore.
That’s one of the things that again, what I’d try to help people see by way of mind mapping is just what they’re thinking. That’s one of the powerful things about mind mapping. It’s being able to take whatever you’re thinking about and look at it from a third-person perception. You can analyze to see if you’re not being flexible enough or having enough empathy or compassion or things in these natures when you are thinking about things. It’s hard to see what you’re thinking when it’s in here. I’ve yet to find a better tool than a mind map to get it out of here, so you can be like, “This is the decision, or all of the perspectives of the decision I need to make or the problem I’m trying to solve or the issue I am faced with.”
The Value Of Structure And Organization In Life
It comes down to creating structure because I believe that people like structure. Structure makes us feel comfortable.
Organized, predictable, accountable, and reliable.
If you think back to when you were in high school, were you particularly stressed after the first week of school about how to get from your first-period class to your second-period class? No. You might be stressed about an exam. The first week, maybe you’re having to learn how to get there, but once you learn how to get there, you don’t have a lot of stress. When you go to the supermarket, you don’t have a lot of stress of, how do I get to the supermarket?
It becomes a comfortable experience.
It’s because there’s structure. I know I have to go out, take a left, and take a right. Whatever. If we have structure, that’s where the mind map comes in. It helps to create the structure to be able to see it and go, “Now I see the steps that aren’t working for me.”
I see connections, the bigger picture, how it all ties in, and my next best step. I see the things that I need to focus more on or maybe less on. That’s a lot of the stuff that where I’m passionate about sharing this with the tool because I’m sure in your experience in your career, many people are mentally stressed and confused and have a lot of mental angst. It’s a lot because of the lack of structure in their thought process.
I couldn’t agree more with that, and I talked to people about creating structure and how much easier. It doesn’t need to be difficult. You put some structure in, and all of a sudden, you understand how to do it. I was doing my internship. I was working with high school students and a lot of them were having academic challenges.
I came up with the idea that I used my cellphone throughout my whole academic career, where I did my homework in the same exact order every single night. I started with the thing that I didn’t like, my least favorite subject, and went to the one that I liked most and it worked. The students that I got to use it reported back to me that homework got easier because they understood what they were doing, when they were going to do it, and all of that.
You as a football player understood that there was structure to your practice. You weren’t stressed about, “What’s going to happen?” You understood there was probably some warm-up, some stretching, and then you go off and you do your thing. All of that helps people to mentally feel more at ease. Yes, there are unpredictable things, but we’re much better equipped if we’re like, “I feel comfortable because I understood the structure.”
One of the key structures that I teach students for like problem-solving or decision-making, which could be a very stressful situation, depending on the degree and the level. It’s something called a five Ws and H mind map process where you put the title of the problem in the center, then around you put who, what, where, when, why, and how. You start asking yourself thought-provoking who questions about that problem, who’s involved, who shouldn’t be involved, what’s occurring, when is it happening, where is it happening, why is it happening, and how can I resolve it.
You ask yourself and brainstorm each one of those subtopics around your central problem theme. After you go through this exercise, which I would lead a lot of people to do. They step back and the emotional angst that they had is no longer there. Now they’re open because they see all of the key components of their problems that they never saw when it was here, which gives them structure and a system on how to solve it or make that decision and bring them the piece that they’re looking for. That’s the five W’s and H’s mind map that’s powerful.
Connect With John Diggs And Learn More About Mind Mapping
That is powerful. I like that. Now, John, this is fascinating. How can people find you? How can they do mind mapping?
I’m all-over social media but you can go to JohnDiggs.com and you’ll find all of the various mind mapping templates that I offer for free for students, professionals, and student-athletes. I do a lot of work with student-athletes with helping them mind map and crystallize their vision. My website is the best way. If anybody has any direct questions or excited about it, you can always email me. I like to spend time with folks to see if what my systems are offering is valuable for someone.
I normally like to do fifteen-minute free consultations with folks who are interested about how mind mapping can impact their lives. If anybody’s interested in that, please just email me. I’m always available because this is what I believe is my divine purpose in life. The way it came into my life and impacted in my life. I truly believe that I’ve been chosen to take leadership and share this powerful tool with the world. For anybody who needs help, I’m always here to try to figure out or show them ways that mind mapping can help them love and live their best life.
That is awesome. Thank you so much. This has been a fascinating conversation. It’s got me thinking, John, which is always a good thing.
That’s a good thing. Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
No problem. I want to remind people that if you’re ready to begin your epic journey, go to EpicBegins.com. As always, remember, Epic choices lead to the epic life that you want.
Important Links
- John Diggs Website
- The Mind Map Book
- The Talent Code
- Think and Grow Rich
- How to Win Friends & Influence People
- Unlimited Power
- John Diggs on Facebook
- John Diggs on YouTube
- Epic Begins
About John Diggs
John Diggs, known as the world’s MAPE Mentor, is a former professional football player turned entrepreneur, author, and mind mapping expert. After a successful career in the NFL and building a multimillion-dollar mortgage business, John faced financial ruin during the Great Recession.
Determined to rebuild, he discovered the transformative power of mind mapping, which helped him regain success and clarity. Now a TEDx speaker and bestselling author, John is dedicated to teaching others how to unlock their potential and design the life they truly want. Learn more at JohnDiggs.com.