You’re listening to the transform your life from the inside out podcast. This episode is titled shaman’s tips for an amazing 2026 part five. And the topic this week is titled the illusion that keeps you powerless. Now, the last episode, we talked about different factors and facets of connecting with the divine. We talked about noise. We talked about being powerless. We talked about silence of the mind. And in this episode, I want to talk. 
 
about all of that, but in a different way. And I want to talk about stopping the world because I’d mentioned that in the other episode. So if you’d like to talk more and listen more about stopping the world, keep listening. Hi, I’m Jim Fortin and you’re about to start transforming your life from the inside out with this podcast. I’m widely considered the leader in subconscious transformation and I’ve coached super achievers all around the world for over 25 years. 
 
Here you’re going to find no rah rah motivation and no hype because this podcast is a combination of brain science, transformational psychology, and ancient wisdom all rolled into one to take your life to levels you’ve never thought possible. If you’re wanting a lot more in life, to feel better, to heal, to have peace of mind, to feel powerful and alive, and to bring more abundance and prosperity into your life, then this podcast is for you. 
 
because you’re going to start learning how to master your mind and evolve your consciousness. And when you do that, anything you want then becomes possible for you. I’m glad you’re here. Okay, so stopping the world. I remember I was sitting in the living room of Don Javier probably in 2016 or thereabouts 10 years ago while time flies. And he said, so many people want a different and better life. 
 
they won’t change, maybe changing themselves, changing the world. And here’s what he said. And I found this so simple and so powerful. I’ve said it on an episode before, but I’ll say it again and then we’ll dig into it. Here’s the quote, to change my world, I have to change myself. To change myself, I have to stop my world. When I stop my world, I can change myself. 
 
Jim Fortin (02:25.55) 
And when I can change myself, I can change my world. Now there’s those words again, stop my world. And that’s where transformation begins is when you stop your world. You’re listening to this episode because at some point in some way, even if you think you’re an information gatherer, you want some kind of change, healing, peace of mind. 
 
money, whatever it is, but you want some kind of change in some way. Now this won’t apply to everyone listening, but it’ll apply to many people listening. Here’s the truth, is most people want change, yet they refuse to change themself. And you know, to give you a real life example of that, let’s say that somebody said they wanted to leave their day job. 
 
And they want to become, I’m just making this up as an example, but they want to become a day trader. Okay. So I want to learn to day trade. Now what I will not do though, is I will not pay someone to teach me how to do this. I will not find a mentor. I will invest no money in my professional skillset, but I want my life to change, which is why I want to be a day trader. Do you see the glitch in that? 
 
is that they’re still saying, I’m trying to change my external circumstances, but I refuse to change my internal circumstances. And my internal circumstances might be, well, I’m not a person who spends money from internal coaching. So then that’s our internal circumstance. Therefore we never do anything externally. And though we are trying to do things because we want change, it just never happens. So the reason that 
 
many people don’t change is because the fear and the safety that they find in the illusion of not changing. People want more, yet they won’t move, so to speak. They won’t do things. Why? Fear. And for most people, it’s fear of the unknown. For many people also, when they’re stuck, they say they want change and they don’t like being stuck. But it’s fear that keeps on being stuck. 
 
Jim Fortin (04:45.481) 
And the thing is this, that very fear that keeps them stuck, they won’t transcend the fear or go through the fear because they’re afraid of it. But now they’re even more stuck. They cling to the illusions. And I’m going to be talking about that word in this episode. They cling to their illusions because illusions feel safer to them than creating the freedom. And the tragedy is, is that most people are more 
 
comfortable being uncomfortable than being uncomfortable enough to evolve their lives. I’ll say it again. Most people are more comfortable being uncomfortable than they are being uncomfortable enough to evolve their lives. Let’s go into some points from a conversation I had of Don Javier that pertained to the last episode. So the first step. 
 
We talk about stopping your world before you can change yourself, which is what I just said that he said before you can change yourself. You’ve got to stop your world, but here’s the challenge. You can’t see the illusion when you’re still spinning it inside your head. Stopping the world is akin to silence. And I talked about being in the now in the last episode. means stopping your world and pausing long enough. 
 
to see how we’re going to go a deeper level here to see how you’re giving up your power. Now you might’ve not thought about it in this way. When I finally got this, I went through a bit of a, a bit of crisis, a bit of a regret, a bit of powerlessness. It hit me hard emotionally when I came to understand what I’m going to share with you here. What I just said was is 
 
stopping your world means pausing long enough to see how you’re giving your power away. But here’s where we go deeper away to who? Away to what? And this is where it really hit me because we give our power away to the opinions of other people. We give our power away and we sacrifice who we are at a soulful level because we want to belong. We want to be accepted and 
 
Jim Fortin (07:13.675) 
That’s what I call, humans are tribal animals. That’s what I call the tribe. We give our power away to the endless and mind boggling noise of the tribe. But here’s something a lot of people don’t think about. And when this was shared with me, it hit me very hard. Because I never realized it in this way. 
 
And I saw how I allowed this as I’m telling you right now, listening to this, you probably do too. You know, you’re not judging me. I’m not judging you. We’re all learning our experiences, all learning our lessons or having our experiences and learning our lessons. But here’s the part that knocked me over. Everything on the planet wants your power. Everything wants your power, but what is your power? Your power. 
 
meaning you listening right now, your power is your thoughts and your intentions and your desires. But everywhere you turn, someone is trying to siphon that power away from you. So I said that your power is your thoughts and your intentions and your desires. Now in your heart right now, at a soulful level, you know what your thoughts, intentions, 
 
and desires are. But what I did for many years, because just being transparent here, I tend to be, and I’ve dug into this a lot, I tend to be a, with boundaries and limits, but a people pleaser, meaning I want you to be happy. I want people in my life to be happy. And I would tend to a certain degree acquiesce. I would sacrifice things that I wanted 
 
so that I could help make you happy. But what I didn’t recognize, and it could be a myriad of things that I did, going where I want to go, owning what I want to own in terms of physical things. Here’s a big one for me, living where I want to live in a way that I want to live. And I sacrificed a lot of that in me. Why? Because I was giving away my deeper thoughts and intentions and desires 
 
Jim Fortin (09:36.257) 
that I wanted, I was giving that power away to the opinions of other people. Marketing, politics, religion, social structures, family, friends, and not so much for me, but of course it affects me or used to affect me, social media. Because see all these things, the marketing and the politics and the religion, the social media, 
 
And the family and a lot of you that applies to you, your families guilt you because they want you to do something in a way they want you to do it. You can’t be an artist. You have to be a doctor. You can’t be a dancer. You’ve got to be a lawyer. You can’t be an artist of any kind, a musician, because how are you going to make money at that? You have to be a successful business person. And so we have all these illusions. And I’ll talk about that in the moment. The illusions of buy this. 
 
do this, look at this, go here, go there, be this, don’t go there, don’t go here. And what we learned from the illusions is if we do what they say, if we buy this and do this and look at this and go here and don’t go there and be this and don’t be that, in that moment we learn that we’re okay and we’re good enough. We’re good enough in that moment, why? 
 
because we acquiesce and basically we’ve sold our soul, our soulful energy to the external illusions around us of what people think they want from us. And without even realizing it, you say yes over and over and over. I’m gonna take my time with what I’m going to say. And without even realizing it, you say yes over and over and over until your life becomes a collage 
 
of other people’s expectations. And if you’re anything like me, then you wonder why you feel so empty. You wonder why when you might seemingly have many things in your life, physical things, but you’re still unhappy. You’ve given away part of your soul to the illusions of what other people want from you. You know, in the last episode, 
 
Jim Fortin (11:59.239) 
I said that many things traffic and red lights and arguments and delays and all these things steal your power. Now, of course, all these things are day to day activities. But Don Javier said, you know what? Every time one of these happens, that’s an invitation to stop your world and return to your power. Listen very carefully to what I said. OK, and I’m going to say this again. 
 
because I can emotionally feel this because I was this person and I’ve coached, don’t know how many thousands of people and I see it in their energy. I see it in their eyes. So many people, they’ve said yes to other people and the illusions of other people because the illusions are if you live your life in a certain way, then you were loved and you were accepted and you’re good enough. So if you live your life by 
 
Those illusions, guess what? You’re a good boy, you’re a good girl, you’re a good son, you’re a good father. We love you because you live by what are illusions of what the world should be. And then as I was saying, what happens? Your own frickin’ becomes a collage of other people’s expectations for your life, and then you wonder why you feel so empty. 
 
or why you’re not happy. And then Don Javier wanted to say, when that’s happening to you and you’re feeling that, that is your invitation to stop your world because that’s the external world, the illusions, and return to your power. I mentioned the tribe and I’ve talked about this a little bit, so I won’t say too much about this. I want to keep this episode short. 
 
But what I’m sharing with you in this episode, it’s part of my own journey. I’m 60 years of age. And when I look back at all the places where I traded my heart, my soulful direction and desire just to be, and I didn’t even know that I was doing it. And by the way, neither do you. That’s why we don’t feel bad about it. We just recognize the behavior. But in all the years, 
 
Jim Fortin (14:25.928) 
that I traded my soulful me at a soulful level because I wanted to be safe. I wanted to fit in. I wanted to be like, I wanted friends and family to approve of me. I wanted to make money. I came to find one day that, I did all these things for other people. And I thought I was happy doing it because I like helping people. But as I was doing all that bit, 
 
bit by bit, I was giving myself away at a soulful level. So I want to share something with you. And this makes sense as I share it, because Don Javier was telling me, and he is, by the way, the Wikipedia definition is incorrect, a n’wal, N-A-G-U-A-L. Wikipedia paints on the wall as only dark. Well, yin and yang, dark and light. There are n’wals that are dark and n’wals that are light. 
 
Don Javier works only in the light, only for the goodness of people. But he told me one time, he said, historically, the walls are not allowed to live around people. And he said, I don’t know why he goes, but in my lifetime, I’m allowed to live around people. But that being said, even though he’s around people, he’s almost never around people. I mean, he’s my family and I might have seen him. It’s been a very challenging year energetically. 
 
on the planet and the more energetically and chaotically and cosmologically disturbing the planet is or disturbed the planet is the more he hibernates because he’s managing many things energetically on the planet. He’s family but I’ve seen him only a few times in a year like four times or whatever but I understand why because we used to joke over the years he’s a hermit but I understand why he’s a hermit. 
 
Because I talk about the tribe, the noise and the marketing and the politics and the CNN and the Fox and the Reuters and the social media. Excuse my language, but I say this a lot. This shit will fucking drain you. The tribe will drain you. But what I’ve learned over the last several years is every moment is a test of whether or not you will hold your power or you will hand over your power to the tribe. 
 
Jim Fortin (16:52.106) 
to the illusions of other people. I see it all the time. You know, if someone says something to you and you feel bad about it, oh, what an ugly blouse you’re wearing, or I can’t believe you did that, or that was a really dumb decision you made, what happens most times is people buy into that illusion. And in that moment, they have given away their power. And we think, well, they took my power. That person took my power. No, they didn’t take your power. You gave them your power. 
 
by simply caving in to their illusions. Before I go to the next thought, I want to share this thought to wrap up at least this section. If you want something in life and you think you can’t have it, I don’t care what it is, a brand new home, a car, a job, living in a new place, whatever it is. If you want something and you think you can’t have it, that desire just revealed why you’re still enslaved. 
 
meaning that thought you had the desire, but the thought was, I can’t have it. You are enslaved in the illusion of other people. Okay, so let’s talk about illusions, okay? Illusions are thoughts. So whatever your parents think about what you should do with your life, your family, friends, society, here, you buy this makeup, you’ll be prettier. You live in this town, you’ll be thought of high at a higher level. 
 
You drive this car and people are going to say X, Y, Z about you. Notice the simplicity of this. It’s all thoughts. Illusions are thoughts and thoughts are air. They’re nothing more than air. And I’ll share that in just a moment or how to look at that. They’re invisible. They’re made up. And you know what? Even though they’re invisible and they’re made up, get this. They run your life. They control your life. 
 
So to show you how they’re not tangible and they’re in the mind and how strongly they can be in the mind, any illusion, think of someone that you love, someone that you love deeply and dearly. And if I ask you, how do you know you love them? And you know what you might be able to describe? Well, this is how I feel when I’m around them. But you know what? The way you think, because if I said, tell me, 
 
Jim Fortin (19:19.709) 
When you think about love, show me, show it to me. Well, notice this again, it’s all made up words and illusions in your mind because this love that you have as real as it may seem to you or as real as it may be is simply an experience that exists only in your mind. And just like every other thing in life, you assign a meaning to it, but that meaning 
 
is an illusion because it’s simply air. Let me show you something else here. How we place our illusions on the world and we let other people place their illusions on us. So let’s say that someone yells at you and you say, that’s really mean. They were really a jerk for yelling at me. Well, you have to look at where did you learn that’s really mean of them. So that’s your illusion. Okay. But where did you learn that illusion? 
 
Maybe when you were a child, mom and dad said, it’s mean when you yell at people and you you shouldn’t do that as a kid on the playground. You shouldn’t do that. So mom and dad pass on their illusion. We learned the illusion and then we live in encapsulated in the illusion. But on the flip side, if someone was yelled at, they could say, that’s great. That means they care about me. Now I had a friend many years ago when I lived in New York City. 
 
Rob and he used to be kind of loud. He had an amazing heart and a really good guy. And he used to talk a little loud and be very animated. Almost sometimes would yell without recognizing he’s yelling. And he’s like, hey, that’s what we do. We’re Italian. We’re loud. Is that true? Are all Italians loud? He learned the illusion. Okay. What we do is we have these illusions of the world. 
 
And then we make interpretations about those illusions and we make them as if this is reality, but it’s not reality. And then I think back to what Don Juan said many, many years ago, the world is as you think it is. The world is as you think it is. Now Don Javier said something that actually I like even better than that. 
 
Jim Fortin (21:41.45) 
The world is this way or that way because I tell myself the world is this way or that way. If you got that one sentence right now of all, many freaking episodes I have here, I don’t know, 350, whatever, you get that one sentence and you get it at a soulful level, your life will change dramatically. The world is this way or that way because I tell myself it is this way or that way. 
 
And then if you want someone more contemporary beside Don Juan, Anais and then we don’t see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. The question is, okay, all these illusions, all these things that I get into, how come? Well, when you’re a child, you don’t have the capacity of choice when you’re an infant. Okay. But as an, as an adult, you do. And right now, 
 
You know, many people will say that love is the greatest power in the universe. And I do agree with that to an extent, and it doesn’t matter what I agree with or don’t agree with. But I believe that love is divine force, divine mind. That’s not, it’s not a human sentiment. It’s not a human emotion. But the reason we have the illusions, and especially as adults, is because we choose 
 
to have the illusions. Now that being said, and I say this over and over, and as a matter of fact, in TCP, we do an entire week on it, or actually we do it one week in homework, but we work on it for an additional like seven weeks. The single most powerful tool you have is choice, because I mentioned love. And you know what? Even though love is in you and exists in the world, you have the choice as to whether or not you want to be loving. Choice 
 
precedes, which choice is free will, choice precedes love. But what we do is we constantly make the choice to give our power away to our fears, to our stories, and as I’ve said a lot of this episode, to the illusions of other people. You know, the irony is many people will say they want freedom and they chase the freedom, but you know what? 
 
Jim Fortin (24:07.761) 
You will never have any more freedom than what you have right now. This moment to not recognize that you have freedom is an illusion, an illusion of your thinking. And the reason you have freedom right now and you don’t have to chase it anymore is because as long as you have choice, you will have freedom. You know, you may or may not have read Victor Frankel’s book, Man’s Meaning of Life. He wrote that as a prisoner of war. 
 
during World War II. Now he says you have choice. Don Javier said to me, you are choice. That’s your life. You made the ultimate choice to incarnate on this planet. But this is what you have to understand. And this is a hard lump for a lot of people to take that you’re exactly where you are today because of the choices that you have made. And many of these choices come from the illusions either consciously or unconsciously. And the moment that you remember that 
 
The moment that you accept and remember that I am where I am today because of the choices that I made, whether they be conscious or unconscious or me and the illusions of other people, I am there because I chose to be there. And in that exact moment, you stop being a victim of the world and you start being a creator of the world. So the point of this episode and the last episode, 
 
Question, where in your life are you still giving your power away to someone’s opinion of you, story of you, a fear that you have, a label, an old identity, or the illusion of buying into the thoughts of other people? You have to stop your world long enough. 
 
stop your world long enough to see the illusion. Because then once you see through it, you can’t unsee it. You know that all this out here in the external world is you operating from or through illusion and choice. And then from that place, you can finally choose differently. And to simplify that, 
 
Jim Fortin (26:31.942) 
Let’s say you want that brand new shiny car. Then you say, I can’t afford it. Well, listen to what I just said this episode and last you’re living in both the illusion of what you can or cannot afford and specifically who and what you are and what you can and cannot do. And then finally you’re making a choice. And if you want the brand new car, you have to recognize you’re looking and you think you can’t have it. You’re seeing that through the illusion of 
 
other people’s stories and identities and opinions and whatever. And you’re living, as I said in the last episode, you’re living in their illusions of life. And by the way, most people will never know or ever hear what you’re hearing here. Why? Because they’re so stuck in life. They don’t even listen to stuff like this. But the way out, plain and simple, is slow the world down. Sit with yourself. Here’s an assignment. 
 
It’s a choice whether or not you do it. Every day, just take five minutes, that’s it, just five minutes, and get 100 % quiet. No note taking, no phone scrolling, just sit idle, nothing, five minutes. You do this, you’re gonna start training the brain and nervous system to settle down. And when you do that, you’ll be able to start hearing again. 
 
I’m not saying that’s going to happen as a result of sitting down for just five minutes. But in that five minutes, like I talked about a little bit in the last episode is when we connect with divine mind. When we connect, it’s finally like in that five minutes, let’s say you’re playing really loud music and you shut the music off and you’re like, what were you saying? I could hear you now. 
 
But imagine you’re talking to God, divine mind, quantum field, quantum force, whatever you want to call it. But when you go into that five minutes and you get quiet, now and only now are you in a space to be able to receive the divine universal guidance. So a practical tip for you here before we wrap up, a great place for you to start, because I’ve talked about escaping the illusion. 
 
Jim Fortin (29:00.153) 
So the silence, talked about that, but a great place to start escaping the illusion is pay attention to your internal dialogue. Pay attention to your internal talk because you have learned your internal dialogue and your talk from your friends and your family and culture and the media and CNN and Maybelline and Apple and all the world around you has reinforced your illusion. 
 
So your transformational takeaway is this. To change my world, I have to change myself. To change myself, I have to stop my world. When I stop my world, I can change myself. And when I can change myself, I can change my world. So the way to stop yourself, that five minutes that I talked about, and then digging into your self-talk as well. Okay. 
 
Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye bye.