You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This episode is titled “How Amazon and Henry David Thoreau Can Help Deliver Your Dreams.”
Henry David Thoreau said many years ago—well, of course, he said it many years ago, but he said, “I learned this, at least by my experiment, that if one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” So the question for you is, and we’re going to talk about it in this episode, is why don’t you advance confidently in the direction of your dreams? In this episode, I’ll reveal why you don’t advance confidently in the direction of your dreams and how by watching Amazon, you can actually live the life of your dreams. Stay tuned.
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 advancing confidently in the direction of your dreams. I was talking to my team this morning and someone on my team, he doesn’t live in the U.S., and he was talking about he had found a home that he wanted and he said it was a perfect home for him. He really loved the home. And then what he was getting into was all the reasons that he couldn’t have the home. Specifically, he couldn’t figure out how to literally acquire the property. And when I thought about that this morning, I’d already decided what I wanted to do for the podcast. And when he shared that, I’m like, that perfectly dovetails with what I want to talk about later today when I do the podcast. Like him, and again, we will dig into this. Like him, he literally said, “this is what I want. I’m at point A. Here’s where I want to go, and it’s point B. But here are the obstacles.” And then he gave me a lot of the obstacles: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10.
So the reason that we don’t confidently advance in the direction of our dreams is this. Are you ready? And it applies to all of us. I mean, I’ve been there before. The reason that we don’t advance confidently in the direction of our dreams, and the fact that you’re here means that you have dreams, but the reason that you don’t advance is because, are you ready again? You don’t know how to create the outcome that you want. So when we get in that place and we say, “I’m at point A and I want to go to point B,” and that’s hardwired in the brain. We all want to go to a higher emotional state, a higher level of being. We want to have more, be more, and do more in life. But then what stops us and the reason we don’t do it is because we say, “well, I don’t know…” here’s that word again, “I don’t know how to create it.” Well, in this episode, I’m going to show you, you’re going to discover how ridiculous that thinking is.
So in the headline, when I talked about Henry David Thoreau and Amazon, you probably or might’ve thought, what the hell is he talking about? How is Henry David Thoreau and Amazon going to help me achieve my dreams and live the life that I desire? So let’s talk about Amazon. And by the way, we’re not going to talk about marketing and all these kinds of things. I want to talk about something different. Now, we can talk about Amazon, but it doesn’t have to be Amazon. It can be FedEx. It can be UPS. It can even be the US Mail, whatever you choose, but you’ll understand the example as I give it to you.
And when you look at… let’s stay with Amazon. When you look at Amazon, this will demonstrate a brand new way for you to start thinking. Imagine that you desire something new in your house. You desire to order something on Amazon, which by the way, two days ago, moving into a new home, I desired an Amazon… not from Amazon, but I live in a small Colorado town, and the easiest way for me to get it would be to just order it Amazon. And so what I did is I wanted a Black and Decker handheld vacuum cleaner to clean up after my dogs. So two days ago, I got on Amazon, I ordered it, and it showed up today.
Now, you in your own life, and again, this is a metaphor, think about things that you want, but you don’t go for, you don’t try to create. So if you look at Amazon, what you do is you go to Amazon, you look at the item that you desire. And that’s what this episode is about. It’s about you desire things in life, but why are you not advancing in that direction? Well, the reason you’re not advancing in that direction is because what stops us is you don’t know how.
So back to Amazon. You go to Amazon. You look for your Black and Decker handheld vacuum or your who’s he wizard or your, you know, widget or widget or whatever it is you want to buy on Amazon. Maybe you read some reviews. Then finally, you decide on something. You add it to your cart. And I told this example to someone today and they said… I said, “what do you do next?” and they go, “well, it sits in the cart for a bit.” But let’s say you add it to your cart. And then what you do is you click buy now, right? Think about that. You go to Amazon. You desire something. That’s why you go. You add it to the cart. You click buy now. And then what you do, you sit back and you wait for your Black and Decker, Dustbuster, or whatever it is to arrive.
You know, as I was creating this episode, I had a good laugh at myself because living in Sedona, Arizona, I would buy local when I could, but many things I could not get local. So I’d buy Amazon, and I bought so many things from Amazon that many days I’d look at my front porch, and I’d be like, “oh, okay, the Amazon box showed up. What did I order this time?” Now, I don’t know if you can relate, but I’ve had to use, unfortunately, a big company like, and fortunately, a company like Amazon, because I just couldn’t get it locally. If you live in a big city, I’m sure you don’t have that problem.
Okay, but let’s look at this. Let’s take this apart and let’s see how this applies to your life. I’m big when I watch TV. I don’t watch junk TV for the most part. I’m always looking to learn more, to educate myself. And I was watching a documentary on supply chains. And the supply chain they were featuring was, well, you guessed it, Amazon. And I didn’t know this, but when you order something from Amazon, the second you hit buy now, literally, I mean, within two or three seconds, when you hit buy now, their entire automated fulfillment system is already going to work. I mean, the supply chain, it’s mind-blowing to me how they created this supply chain. But what we do is we click buy now and then many of us are like me, we forget about it. And it shows up two days later and we’re like, “oh, okay, there’s that handheld dust buster that I ordered” or whatever it is, kitchen towels or whatever. But Amazon is not idle like we are. Amazon is moving behind the scenes.
Okay, now let’s apply this to your own life. First, I want you to notice the frame. We have the desire, we place the order, and we know that we’re going to get it at some point. But what I want you to notice is this. Notice where your attention and where your mind is. Because your mind, when you order from Amazon or FedEx, your mind is, “okay, I click buy now, I can cross my arms, I can sit back, and it’s going to be here.” Notice this. Your mind is: it is done.
Now, I’m sure someone listening here might have problems with Amazon. Maybe it’s because their neighbors have very similar addresses. I’ve been through all that as well. But you get the point. For the most part, we know that once we click buy now, we don’t have to think about it. We don’t have to worry about it. We don’t have to place any attention on it. We don’t have to do anything. It simply just shows up and we can take it off our to-do list because we know it’s going to happen.
So again, the metaphor. When it comes to living life, this is how most people order Amazon. But your metaphor is this. When you actually want to order new things in your life, what do you do? Let me share with you what you do not do relative to Amazon. So when you click buy now, 10 seconds later… I’m going to slow down, see if you can see yourself in this metaphor, okay? Because this will change your life when you get it. So you go to Amazon, you order, you click buy now. What you do not do, 10 seconds later, you do not pick up your phone and call Amazon customer service. You do not sit there and say, “oh, okay, I ordered that. I hope that it shows up.” You don’t call customer service and you don’t ask them, “all right, guys, I just ordered online. Do you have the order? Who took the order? What’s the robot’s name that took the order? What robot is going to put my Dustbuster in an automated basket? Who made those automated baskets? Who made the robots? Where did the parts come from? Where is your distribution center? By the way, what truck will be delivering my Amazon package? Who will be driving the truck? Where did they get their driver’s license? How old are they? And by the way, when they deliver my package, I want them to go up this road to my house, not that road. And I want them to be quiet driving up my driveway. And then when they come to my driveway, I want them to park on the left side of my driveway, not the right side of my driveway. And when they deliver my package, here’s exactly where I want them to put it on the porch.”
Now, if you were doing that, what have you done? You have tried to figure out every single aspect of that delivery. But notice, you don’t do any of that. You simply have the desire, you place the order, basically putting it in your basket, buy now, and you let it go. Why? Because a very, very, very, very intelligent system, far more intelligent than you are, takes care of it. The Amazon fulfillment system is a very sophisticated and intelligent system. Their system, the Amazon system, does not need your help. All it needs to know is, what do you want?
Well, the same thing with the universe. Now, many people will say, when it comes to creating in life, they will create an obstacle. And they’ll say, “well, I don’t know what I want.” That’s pretty much not true. We might even want many things. Most of us know what we want, but what stops us is not knowing what we want. What stops us is not knowing how to create… there’s that how word again, not knowing how to create. And then what we do is because we don’t know how to create it, then we say, “I don’t know what I want.” And we say, “I don’t know what I want,” because if I don’t know how to create it, then I have to decide, I have to orchestrate, I have to think through this, I have to plan every single step. And if I don’t do that, then I can’t have what I desire. But notice, Amazon, you don’t do any of that. You don’t even think about any of that. You simply desire it, you place your order, and you leave it alone.
So the universe is an extremely intelligent system. I mean, what do you think created Amazon? Universal intelligence is what created Amazon. Are you starting to see how ridiculous it is to think that you need to know how to make something happen in your life when the universe is the one that makes it happen anyway? Okay, so here’s the point, and this will really hit home. You don’t know how Amazon works. You don’t know the mechanisms in their supply chain. You don’t know any of that. But here’s what you do. What do you do? The operative word is you trust it will show up. You trust Amazon will deliver. You trust their trucks will be running. You trust their computer system will be up. You trust all the mechanisms. If you ever watch that documentary on Netflix, I mean, it’s a big deal and a mind-blowing system that brings your dust buster to you, you know, and gets delivered two days later. Well, the universe is just as mind-blowing. Why not trust the universe in the very same way? Because as I said earlier, the universe is more intelligent, or I’m saying it now, is more intelligent than Amazon because the universe and consciousness is what created Amazon.
So what we do, and I have been there. I don’t work from that place anymore, but I’ve been there. We desire the new home, the new car. As a matter of fact, as I’m sharing this list, what applies to you? Maybe you want a new apartment. Maybe you want a new home. How about a new shiny car? How about this, a big one for a lot of people, a job. And then what we do is we hope and we wish and we want and we pray, but we stop right there. Why? Because we do not know how to create the outcome that we want.
So I’m talking to you right now, listening right now, wherever you are in the world. Look at your past. Maybe this morning, maybe last week. How many things did you stop or did you abandon because you didn’t know how you were going to do it? Maybe you want to start writing a book and you’ve got the calling, but you don’t do it because you don’t know how. Maybe you want to start using AI to build a business, but you don’t do it because you don’t know how. This example I could carry to many, many places in your life. And there’s no criticism and no judgment here because I, to be, literally, I used to be the king of, and I’m not exaggerating, “let me figure it out.” And years ago, I recognized, wow, how arrogant of me. Seriously, I tell the universe, you know, I want something, but then I don’t trust the universe. And then I say, “let me figure it out.” How arrogant of me to think that I know more than the universe, and the universe is what created me.
Now, you’ve heard this before, most likely. Make a note of this, please. Start literally etching this into your mind: it’s not your job to know how. It’s simply your job to know what you want. But if you’re like anything like the old me, again, I was the king of how. How am I going to do this? Now, at one point in my life, I was fairly analytical and cerebral. And I would (air quote) I used to pride myself on, “I will (air quote) figure it out.” And I used to pride myself on, “okay, let me do the research. Who do I need to talk to? And what do I got to do here? And what do I have to do over here?” All these things. And when we do that… I’m recognizing myself when I did that, I felt responsible because I was figuring it out. I felt that I was the one responsible for making it happen. But that’s not the truth. I was the one responsible for knowing what it is that I wanted, what I desired.
And actually, let’s change the word wanted to desire. Because when we say “I want something,” we’re telling the universe simultaneously we do not have that thing. But we all desire things. We desire great health. We desire travel, homes, whatever it might be. The reason I moved to the next state is because I desired something different. I desired a different experience of life and a different way to live in a different kind of town. So we all desire things.
And what’s interesting, think back to the quote, and it didn’t dawn on me until just a second, when Henry David Thoreau said, basically, if we simply advance in the direction of our dreams, they will happen in uncommon time. A couple of days ago, somebody said to me, “Jim, holy mackerel, your move happened so fast.” It was only seven months ago that I had visited Durango and said, “you know what, I’d really like to live here.” In that seven-month time, my other home went on the market. Boom, I sold my other home in Sedona. This home miraculously opened up. Boom, in seven months, I move across state lines hundreds of miles away, and everything just happened clockwork. Why? Because I confidently advanced in the direction of my dreams. I didn’t try to figure out anything.
Now, what I did do is I did my part. And my part was, well, okay, I have to go to Durango. I have to find an agent, which was very easy for me to do. I have to go see homes. I have to tell the agent what I want. But everything else literally just fell into place. And the piece of property that I’m on, I love where I live. I’ve got five and a half, six acres here. I’m literally eight miles from downtown, proximity to downtown. I’ve got an amazing view. Every neighbor is at least five acres away, but I’ve met them all, very nice people. I mean, this is idyllic for me. I didn’t force it. I didn’t try to figure it all out because I knew that it would happen exactly in the way that it needed to happen.
And living in this house, the one that I found, I could not imagine. I could not imagine… I’ll put it this way, let’s show you the depth of what I’m sharing. Fire mitigation is a big thing in Colorado, and it has been since they had a big fire several years ago. Candidly, it should be a big deal in Sedona, but nobody talks about it because long-term risk, Sedona has a higher fire risk than where I live in Colorado. But the home that I found literally… I said a couple of days ago, of the last several homes that I’ve lived in and that I’ve owned, this one is my favorite. I love the home that I live in. It fits me perfectly. The layout, the view, the woodwork, everything fits me perfectly. And I said, for the first time in my life, I said, “you know, other homes that I’ve had, if I lost them, I wouldn’t really care. This home, I love so much and it’s so perfect that I’m going to do everything that I can beyond my intention to make sure that I’ve done proper fire mitigation.”
But notice what’s happening here. Everything is not about the doing. Be, do, have. It’s first about your mind and your mental attitude, not your behavior. When we look at creating something… I want to create XYZ, I desire XYZ. When we look at that, we don’t look at the mental attitude. We don’t look at where our consciousness and our attention is. What we look at is, what do I have to do? And then what we do, which is a huge error, we try to figure it out. Why? Because I got to solve the problem. So to solve the problem, let me gather all the information and let me figure it out.
Now, I want to be very candid here. You must work in tandem with the universe. You take action physically, but notice where you keep your mind while you’re taking action physically. You’re not worried. You’re not negating. You’re not saying, “oh my God, is this going to work? Is it going to work? Is it going to work? It’s not going to happen.” So when I ordered on Amazon, I did the action of ordering on Amazon, but then my mind was in the peace knowing that it would show up because Amazon normally shows up. Notice the difference here. This is really important because what most of us do is we engage in the action, but simultaneously we engage in figure out, worry, worry, strategize, figure out. And the mind and body are not the same, but we let the mind and body both go to the lowest common denominator, which is physical activity, which then when we get into all the worry and the frustration and how am I going to do this and who’s going to do that… when we get into that, we literally negate all the physical work that we’re doing. Literally, the consciousness is tearing down the physical work. What we have to do is we have to release the how. And we have to give up control. Because many of us think, “oh, if this is going to happen, and I figure out how it has to happen, then I have to control it.” And what we have to recognize, that’s all an illusion of the physical body.
When we try to figure… and this took me a long time. When we try to figure out how to do something, that how… think about this in your own life. When you’re trying to think about how to create something that you desire, notice the subtle mental interference. The subtle mental interference is, “there’s no way I could have that house. Why? I don’t have enough money. There’s no way they would sell it to me. There’s no way I could live in that part of town. There’s no way I could move into that apartment building because they told me they’ve got a two-month waiting list. There’s no way I could have or be or do.” Many times we know what we desire. I’ve already covered that earlier. Then we worry about the how to create, and that how is simply static. It’s the mental noise, and it’s consciousness, which I’m talking a lot about these days. It’s the consciousness that’s preventing the materialization of what it is that you desire.
So take this away with you. The universe does not need your help. Think about that. It’s pretty crazy. The universe does not need your help. Now, how I can assist you in this episode, you might remember before that I told you to read the book. You can find it on Amazon. The book is titled It Works. Now, what’s really not covered in that book is literally it lays out exactly what I’m talking about. But what really is not covered in a more comprehensive way like I’ve done now is where you hold your attention. Because where you hold your attention is where you hold and where your mind is. And where your mind is is where your consciousness is. And it’s consciousness that creates every single thing in your life. Everything. Everything is consciousness. But again, the mistake that we make is: let me do activity. Wrong, backwards. And I spent 40 years of my life doing the activity. And by the way, I made some good money, but I never became… I never created what I’ve created that I have this day in my life.
So what you want to do is stay in action, but align mentally with trust and the universe, knowing that the action helps, but it’s your universe that creates and manifests. The universe—in case I said your universe, but it is your universe too. When we do that, now we’re working from unlimited consciousness because the universe is unlimited. Think back to the episode that I did on you are the ultimate power in the universe. This is the way to start trusting the ultimate power in the universe. Because when you try to figure things out, you’re working from your very, very, very, very, very limited experience of reality. And you can’t see what the universe can see. And the second you start trying to figure out how… think about that Amazon truck I told you about. You’re trying to tell Amazon how to deliver your package. And I had to guess, if you tried to tell Amazon how to deliver your package, they’re probably gonna say, probably better off that you not be a customer of ours.
So I’m gonna give you a… this is your transformational takeaway. I’m going to give you a thought. And if you’re driving, then listen again and write this down later. But if you’re not driving, write this down. And what you wanna start doing is, habituating this thinking. Here’s what you want to write down: “I do not know how XYZ will come, and that is fine with me. The universe has channels I cannot see, and I am open to all of them.”
And again, let me repeat this, write it down, habituate this thinking. I do not know how XYZ—XYZ of course is whatever you desire—I do not know how XYZ will come, and that is fine. The universe has channels I cannot see, and I am open to all of them. Give this a whirl. I promise you, you’re going to start seeing results when you start working from this paradigm that I’ve given you.
Now, as you know, I’m starting to ask if you would, please. If you find value here, please go to Apple and leave a five star review. Anything less than that will not help me and not help me reach more people. And I think all of us want to live in a better world and reach more people and help more people grow and evolve. And then finally as well, if you find value here, other people will, as well as you, please share the episode with them. Thank you for listening and I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye bye.