You’re listening to the transform your life from the inside out podcast. This episode is titled, if you serve two masters, you’ll be lost and stuck in life. You know, when I look at my own life and you know, the hundreds of thousands of people that I interact with, I find that most people don’t fail in life because life is hard or life is stacked against them or whatever thought they might have about life. And you know, many people think that 
 
they’re not good looking enough, or they’re not this, or they’re not that, or whatever it might be. And that’s not why we fail in life. The reason we fail, and I use that word reluctantly, meaning we’re not creating what we want. Personally, I don’t believe there’s no such thing as failure only outcomes, and that’s all 3D anyway. But the reason we fail slash don’t get what we want is because we have divided attention. Now you’ve heard me say before, you are where your attention is and 
 
Attention is everything. It’s the platinum key to life. And in this episode, we’re going to talk about managing your attention and where you want to keep your attention because this is huge. And when you get this, everything changes for you in life very quickly. 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 your attention, you know, I work with, would say predominantly spiritualist. had a friend call me this morning. Actually, they texted me. I’ve known this friend for probably 15 years. They would consider themselves to be a spiritualist. No question about it. 
 
Jim Fortin (02:28.866) 
And my friend texted me this morning and generally we talk every couple of days texting that is, and my friend said, I’m not doing good. Now I had speculated what he meant by that. He went through a divorce recently, his business, even though he’s made millions of dollars, his business is not doing well. And he was literally in a lot of fear. He was a lot of fear about all the revenue he had going out. 
 
all the child support, and he’s a wonderful father, alimony payments, and this money rolling out and money not coming back in. And if you ask him, are you a spiritualist? He would say, absolutely. And I know him to be a spiritualist as well. But see, people, they give a lot of lip service to spirituality. And if you ask him if he trusted spirit, he would say yes. But you know what? 
 
His nervous system and his ego doesn’t serve spirit. His ego serves the world of 3d appearances, meaning the world of what you can see, the bank account, the divorce papers, all these different kinds of 3d physical things. What I want to drive home in this episode is attention. And I want to talk about where you place your 
 
attention because divided attention creates divided results in life. Now, the question is, do you place your attention predominantly or exclusively on the divinity and you and divine consciousness, or do you place your attention on the world of appearances? Even from a brain based perspective, it’s called the reticular activating system. 
 
It’s a part of the brain that actually brings to your awareness things that you put your attention on. And you might’ve heard this before. You buy, let’s say you buy a burgundy colored car and you love the color. You drive off the lot and you start seeing all these other burgundy color cars. Why? Because that’s where your attention is. So it’s not only energetic and spiritual, it’s also brain-based, but also like my friend this morning, and I believe I helped him out of this, all of his, 
 
Jim Fortin (04:52.69) 
Attention energetically and brain-based was on the problem. And the problem is I don’t have any money. The money’s not coming in. I don’t know what to do. My business is stuck. Everything I try is not working. Jim, help me, help me. I just don’t know what to do anymore. As I listened to that, I’m very close to this person emotionally, but I listened to it and I’m like, okay, all of your attention though is not on the solution. 
 
It’s on the problem. And the problem with putting your attention on the problem is that you have a problem in the first place and you don’t have enough information to solve the problem. If you had enough information to solve the problem, you wouldn’t have the problem. And I told him something I’ve said before on the podcast is no one has ever stuck in life. You’re simply out of creativity, meaning what am I going to do? What are new ways that I can approach this? 
 
And we love to stay in our old patterns because I said to him, where you are right now is like the Titanic as a metaphor. And the Titanic is going down and you want to stop the Titanic from going down. But what you’re doing is you’re rearranging all the furniture on the deck. You’re just moving the furniture around thinking that’s going to stop the Titanic from going down. You need to completely reinvent a new ship. 
 
Now, when I mentioned we don’t like change and we think that we often are changing when we’re not, he said, yes, but I’m already doing all that. I changed this program and I changed that and I’m not doing this. And I’m like, no, dig deeper, dig deeper, look at this at a place that you hadn’t even thought about looking at it before. Maybe you start doing something in a way that you hadn’t even thought about doing, but you’ve got to become more creative and dig deeper. And what I’m sharing with you about consciousness and attention, this isn’t theology. 
 
It’s not psychobabble. Spiritually speaking, it’s what I call and what others call the law of consciousness. You might’ve heard me say before that we work primarily from the 3D and we completely ignore consciousness. Most of the planet’s not even conscious of being conscious. I want to interject here for a moment. I know that I’d said last year and I’ve said it, you know, last couple of weeks, I will start bringing guests on. 
 
Jim Fortin (07:16.894) 
But I felt really compelled when I started thinking about this episode this week. I felt really compelled to bring this episode to you. This is something that I struggled with for a lot of years was my divided attention. And I kept having my attention on the wrong things. And because I had my attention on the wrong things, I had my consciousness tethered to the wrong things. And because I had my consciousness tethered to the wrong things, 
 
externally and through observation and experience, I was creating air quote the wrong things in my life. So let’s talk about a couple of points here to create clarity for you. All right. Number one is your life is governed by how you respond to adversity. Think about that for a moment. Your life is governed by how you respond to adversity. 
 
Now this morning, my friend, they’re experiencing in their mind what they define as adversity, and they were collapsing. That’s how they’re experiencing it. And as they were collapsing, they were literally vicariously creating that consciousness in them. And because we create through consciousness, wherever you hold your attention is your consciousness, and wherever your consciousness is, is what you create and manifest. By placing his attention 
 
on the external world, he literally was collapsing by what I call the world of appearances. So what drives you and what rules you is not what you say you believe, because I could ask this person, as I mentioned earlier, are you a spiritualist? Do you believe in spirit, know, divine mind, whatever you want to call it, quanta feel, quanta force, and he would say absolutely. However, he believes in that at a 3D ego level. 
 
but he doesn’t work from the knowing level of that. So what he’s doing, which is what I did for many years and many people do, is we react, we think, and we respond when fear shows up. That’s all 3D. So I think you’re starting to get where we’re going here, is wherever your attention is, as I said earlier, is where your consciousness is. So let me give you some demonstrations here. And I’ve been through every one of these in my life. 
 
Jim Fortin (09:45.221) 
Okay? Number one is when pain or sickness shows up, do you literally consult the symptoms or the truth? Now, the symptom is a person that could say, I have X, Y, Z ailment, and they put all their consciousness into that ailment. Or they could go to the truth and recognize that the only God in the universe is consciousness. 
 
The only truth in the universe is consciousness. The foundation of all creation is consciousness. I remember talking to Bruce Lipton a few years ago. He said, and I fully subscribe and I understand this because I’ve been there. I’ve been very sick before. And Bruce said, medicine doesn’t heal people. Consciousness heals people. 
 
Now, if you need medical care, go get it. I’m not telling you not to get medical care. What I’m telling you is even if you’re pursuing medical care, simultaneously recognize that you have to live from the consciousness within you and you have to manage your attention relative to that consciousness. But what many people do, and I’ve done before, when they’re physically sick, their attention goes to, I am sick. 
 
I am sick. I don’t feel good. What’s going to happen to me? my gosh, today is a really bad day. And then they dwell on the fear related to that consciousness. And that’s where their attention is because that’s where their attention is on that consciousness. They create more of that. And that’s why I understand Anita Morgani who wrote the book, Dying to be Me, when she said the surest way to heal 
 
And she literally had a near death experience much more significantly than I did back in 2020 was mine. But she said to heal is to need no healing because if you feel like you don’t need any healing, then where is your consciousness? It’s not on being sick. It’s on being well. The only time you think you need healing is when you think you’re sick. So that’s the world of appearances because the body is sick in your mind. So we place all of our attention, all of our consciousness on being sick. 
 
Jim Fortin (12:11.123) 
And we perpetuate being sick, been there, done that. Now here’s another one. And I did this one for decades. When your money tightens and money is scarce, do you consult consciousness and go inside and recognize that you’re a conscious creator and live from that? Or do you actually respond to conditions? Now, truthfully said, for most of you guys, you respond to conditions. My friend this morning, 
 
was not literally responding and consulting consciousness and engaging in managing the consciousness and attention. My friend was caught in condition, condition, circumstance, no money, business is slow, child support, alimony payments, two mortgages, et cetera. He was completely in a tailspin. I felt really bad for him. I love my friend, but he was completely caught in the world of conditions. 
 
been there, done that. So as I’m going through these examples, think about, okay, where do I place my attention? Do I place my attention on the divine consciousness in me knowing that I am a conscious creator or do I place my attention on the external world of conditions? What about relationships? I’ve been in a 22 year relationship. My partner and I 
 
are soulfully connected doesn’t mean we have the perfect relationship. We’ve been up, we’ve been down in the relationship. We’ve had times that are really good, times that are not so good. There are times that we’ve talked about maybe we should go our different directions and we’ll stay friends, but maybe we’ve outgrown each other, the relationship, been there, done that. So we can look at the external world and we can evaluate the external world from the external world 
 
Or we can look at what is the soulful connection and how do we nurture that consciousness? The whole point was I talked about health, wellness, money, relationships. The question is, when adversity comes in your life, what do you defer to? I mean that very pointedly. What do you defer to? Do you defer to the world of conditions or do you defer to the world of being a conscious creator? 
 
Jim Fortin (14:40.499) 
knowing that you have to manage your attention, correspondent with being a conscious creator. But most of us, as I said, we do not do that. All of our attention, boom, just like that automatically goes to, shit, holy fuck, my world is coming apart. I’m afraid. What do I do? What do I do? What do I do? I need money. I need this. And that’s what we’re consciously creating because 
 
We create, as I said, everything is created through consciousness. And this is why it’s vital to manage your attention. In the past, you’ve heard me talking about managing your attention. And perhaps I said it in a more simplistic or more generic way, but this is exactly what I’m talking about. 
 
Point number two, your world of circumstances and appearances are not the enemy. They, meaning your environment, is your test. Okay, think about that. So your environment is your test. Now I don’t know about you, but the money won that test. Holy crap. I failed that test until my 30s. I struggled, and again, we talk about identity. 
 
I grew up with the identity as a poor Texas farm boy. By the way, as I mentioned before, we have a new group coming called Soul Forge. The doors open February the 10th, and I’m going to help you transform both your spiritual and your conscious identity, your 3D identity. You can go to jimforton.com slash soul to get on the wait list. jimforton.com slash soul. Okay. So when we have this world of appearances, 
 
Many of us like my friend this morning, we fight the world and we get into a lot of fear and it’s exhausting. Let me ask you this and let me share this first. Symptoms, aches, pains, ailments, bank accounts, people, circumstances, everything in life, they are not the problem. But see, that’s what we make the problem. I will say it again. 
 
Jim Fortin (16:52.131) 
your physical health, your circumstances, your symptoms, your ailments, your pains, your bank account numbers, people, relationships, all of these circumstances we think we have problems with, but they are not the problem. They are the effects of our consciousness. So the biggest mistake is not seeing them as effects. We don’t see them as effects. 
 
They literally, we are the cause of that effect, the cause and effect universe. And we focus on the problem, not even recognizing there is a cause to the problem. And the cause of the problem is that we are ineffectively managing our attention. And because we’re ineffectively managing our attention, which is the cause, it causes some shitty effects. So the mistake is that we give authority and power to the circumstances. 
 
Think about that. We give all of our power and authority over to our circumstances. And that, that my friend is a very deep, toxic black hole. As I said, and I’ve said like two or three times in this episode, I’ve been there. And that’s why when I thought about the episode this week, somebody asked me last week, Jim, how did you turn everything around in your life? 
 
It’s exactly what I’m sharing right now. Literally verbatim almost in my thinking, because everything I’m sharing about where I came from, meaning where I held my attention, I struggled with life. mean, it was a fricking challenge until my thirties, especially for me at that point. It was never health. was money. When we let appearances and circumstances dictate our peace. And you’ve heard me say before, the most important thing we can have is peace of mind. 
 
When we let appearances and circumstances dictate our internal peace, now what we’re doing is we are serving the external illusion of circumstances. We are serving the effect and completely missing the cause. We’re serving the world of appearances. And it’s ridiculous that we serve the world of appearances because we’re the ones causing the appearances. 
 
Jim Fortin (19:16.218) 
So think about that for a moment. You look at your life right now, and as you’re looking at your life, how much of your external world are you fighting? And so then what we do is we get all wrapped up in that. And like my friend this morning, all of our attention goes to the world of appearances, the external world. And we fight and we fight and we fight. Instead of breathing and recognizing, wait, I am being the cause. And you’ve heard me talk about B. 
 
do have, how do I be? And the way you be is you be pure consciousness. So we have to look at, okay, I don’t like these circumstances. So what we try to do is we try to air quote, fix the circumstances through 3D behavior. When we are the ones that create the person that created the circumstances, if you try to fix the circumstances, you’re only going to heighten and worsen the circumstances. 
 
What you air quote fix is the consciousness that is the cause of the circumstances. When you can see the effects, and here’s PowerPoint. When you can see the causes and effects, and you can see that they control you, that’s when your power starts to come back to you. Let me reiterate that and say it maybe in a different way, maybe just tweaking it a little bit. When you fully recognize 
 
that the external world and all the negative things that you think you might have in your world, whether it be negative health, a lack of money, relationship challenges, whatever. When we recognize that those are all effects and we do not let the effect control us like my friend was this morning, then and only then does our power return. OK, the next point is 
 
And I see this a lot, especially with spiritualists. And again, third time, I’m not tossing stones. I’ve been there is most people try to use spirit to fix a world. They still wallow in. And I’ll explain what I mean. So we create this because of our attention. We cause this world of circumstances we do not enjoy. We’re out of money or ill health or whatever. So then what we do 
 
Jim Fortin (21:43.868) 
This is like a person that has had all their attention. They discover they’re physically ill and they have all their attention on, okay, I need to get well. I’m sick. I’m sick. I’m sick. I’m sick. I’m sick. I feel like shit. I’m sick. I’m sick. I’m sick. God, please help me. You’re talking to two different levels of consciousness here. It doesn’t work. And this is basically sabotage at its best. 
 
And I see, because that’s my community, that’s my tribe, that’s my peeps, I see so many people that are spiritual seekers that totally collapse into, like my friend, totally collapse into the world of appearances, but yet, out of the other side of their mouth, they will say that, yes, absolutely, I’m a spiritualist. Now, I do believe that they believe they are a spiritualist. 
 
But I’ve also said before there’s a difference between understanding spiritualism and knowing spiritualism. Another way to say this might be there’s a difference between understanding the path and walking the path. And if you’re going to walk the path of spiritualism, that means living from the world first of consciousness, not from the world of illusions. 
 
not from the world of externals, not from the world of effects, because that’s the lunacy is we say, yes, I love the spirituality and that’s where I want to live from. But they live in the world of the 3D and then they want consciousness to fix the body and the bank account and their relationships. And they still believe those things literally define their reality. 
 
And that’s not true. That is the effect. The reality is the effect. The only thing that defines your reality is this. And I’m going to use this word, attach any kind of non-religious meaning to the word that you want, the word God. The only way to fix, air quote, fix anything in your life that’s not working is to work from consciousness. 
 
Jim Fortin (24:08.578) 
and to concretize that, to work from attention. Where is your attention? And at the end of this episode, I’ll give you two questions to ask yourself. These are two questions that I use for myself, and they work for me. Doesn’t mean they’ll work for you, but I suppose they would. I expect they would. They’re very simple questions, and it helps me gauge where my attention is. 
 
So to synopsize this particular section, how this divergence shows up in life. And it shows up when someone says, I am a spiritualist, and they preach spirituality, but then they complain about how tough money is, how their clients have dried up, how they don’t have any money. So they’re working from two different worlds. In your life, if you’re not creating what you want with your health, 
 
your money and your relationships, what you really want to look at is, okay, where is my attention? Is my attention on the world of being a conscious and aware creator, or is my attention on the world of external outcomes, the world of external measures? Okay, number four and the final point, and then I’ll synopsize this and give you a couple of questions. 
 
Working in the personal development field for so many years, we often think that we want to improve our life so we can have more things in life, better health, home, cars, whatever it is. I remember being told many years ago that the most important thing that we can have is peace of mind. And I was told decades ago, and I got it cerebrally and analytically, 
 
These days I get it emotionally and consciously, but I was told, this is exactly what was said to me and I have it written down in the journal. I was told you can’t do anything without peace of mind. Maybe better said is you can’t do anything well without peace of mind. So many times when we’re wanting to grow and evolve, we’re looking at progress as, okay, I made 200,000 last year. 
 
Jim Fortin (26:30.325) 
and I made 225 this year, or 300 or whatever it is. Or physically, we could say, I couldn’t lift 50 pounds, and now I can lift 75. Or, you know what, I kept going through relationships and they kept hitting snags and falling apart. I’m finally in a good long-term relationship. So we tend to look at the world of circumstances to evaluate our progress. But that’s not progress, so to speak. 
 
Progress, the real measure of progress is one thing and one thing only, peace of mind. So if you wanna look at your level of progress, and of course we all wanna create more things in life, that’s why you’re listening to the podcast, but progress is not predominantly your conditions improving, the world of externals. Progress is conditions losing authority over you. 
 
which is why I created this episode. I will say it again. Progress is conditions, losing authority over you. My friend this morning, it was painful for me to listen to my friend because I love my friend so much. My friend is a very, very, I’m very fortunate to have a friend like this friend and notice this friend who defines himself as a spiritualist. My friend 
 
gave all of his, what I’ve said before, seniority and authority to the world of 3D illusions, not even recognizing that he’d given all of his seniority and authority to the world of 3D illusions. So when this sphere of the external world no longer controls you, no longer masters you, even in tumultuous situations, that’s when you have shifted and that’s when you start becoming 
 
a spiritual master. So remember this, effects follow your consciousness. And for the purpose of this podcast, where your attention is, is where your consciousness is. So this is why I constantly say move your attention. You know, we all want, I think all, most, many, we want external changes in our life. 
 
Jim Fortin (28:50.944) 
more money, better health, better relationships, nicer home, nicer apartment, nicer car, better job, whatever it might be. And the external shift will only follow after the internal inner shift has happened. Because your internal inner shift inside of you, your consciousness is what allows the external world and the outside world transform your life from the inside out. The internal shift 
 
is what allows the external world to shift. Okay, I promised you a couple of questions. Your transformational takeaway is this, is that we’re lost and we’re stuck in life because we serve the wrong master. Think about that. You are lost or stuck in life because you’re serving the wrong master. And the master you are serving is the world of circumstances and appearances. So, 
 
Once we go to peace of mind, and I’ll give you two questions to help keep you on track. Once we go to peace of mind and we work from there, now we are aligning our consciousness. We are consciously aligning our consciousness with being a creator, a creator of a life experience that we want to live. All right. So the questions, okay. Now look at the three areas of your life, the big areas. These are the three biggies for people, money, health. 
 
and relationships. You can write this down. If you’re driving, do not write it down right now. I’ll write it down later. You have to know what something looks like. Psychologists often say, and I do a lot of this in coaching, somebody will say, I’ve got this nagging voice in the back of my head. And what I will say is name that voice. And the reason you want to name that voice is because when that nagging voice comes, now you can identify the voice instead of just being a generic nagging voice. 
 
You can identify the voice and you’re giving it form and you can actually then dismiss the form. You want to have an awareness of which master is controlling you. Make a note of this. Write this down. My material master says blank controls my well-being. My material master says blank controls my well-being and put in that blank. 
 
Jim Fortin (31:18.551) 
which you think controls your wellbeing. Medication, money, whatever it might be. Now, the second part is my spiritual master says blank is an effect, meaning the world of money and health and relationships is an effect. Consciousness is the cause. Let me repeat those. Material master says blank 
 
controls my wellbeing. Now you pick your blank, okay? I would put actually consciousness controls my wellbeing, if it me. And your spiritual master says blank is an effect. Consciousness is the cause. So there you could put money, health and relationships are an effect. Consciousness is the cause. 
 
Your entire solution, and this is a little barometer for you to just kind of keep track of where your attention is, because where your attention is, where your consciousness is. And if you find you’re not getting what you want, I’ll go back to maybe like the first five episodes. When I’ve said move your attention, when you move your attention, you move your consciousness. When you move your consciousness, now you start shifting from the inside out, the human experience that you are having. 
 
Thanks for listening and I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye bye.