You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is a throwback episode to episode number 113, and that episode is titled, You’re Trapped in Your Beliefs.
You know, I was talking to a guy recently here visiting Sedona, and he said he wanted to move to Sedona. He said he just didn’t have the money to do it. Sedona is a very expensive place to live. And I said, it sounds like you’ve got some beliefs you may want to work on. He goes, no, all of my beliefs are fine. I don’t have any limiting beliefs. Well, that was a pretty myopic comment that he made. But what I want to share with you in this episode, it’s not about rah-rah believing in yourself. If you’re not creating what you want in life, it doesn’t matter health, wellness, relationships, whatever, the fact is this. You have some subconscious limiting beliefs getting in your way, and you don’t even recognize that they’re getting in your way. And if you’d like to start removing those beliefs, listen to the episode and enjoy the episode.
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 what I just said in the introduction about you being trapped in your beliefs, and you’re probably thinking, Jim, come on, literally, dude, what are you talking about? I am not trapped in my beliefs. Well, if I was to sit with you and if I was to talk with you, I guarantee you that I could find a dozen places, if not even more, that you’re trapped within the context and frame, an unconscious prison of your beliefs, but you don’t even know it. And you’re literally trapped in a lot of places because of the beliefs that you hold.
Now, this isn’t going to be a rah-rah, you got to believe in yourself, because I’ve already created another podcast a while back where I said something along the lines of, I don’t know what the title of the episode was, but where I talked about it’s not important to believe in yourself. So I want to take this a step further and I want to talk a little bit about what I’ve learned about beliefs over the years. And I’m not going to be able to get you across the finish line where I’d love to get you, but I’m going to get you to thinking about your life in a new way in this episode.
Okay, let’s go to shamanism. My brother-in-law, Don Javier the shaman. Shamans have, and I know I’ve said it before, but they have what are called benefactors. And a benefactor is, so to speak, the teacher of the shaman. At least that’s the name that I know it by, is a benefactor. And my brother-in-law, his benefactor was named Juan, Don Juan. And Don Juan, many years ago, said to me, he said to me, he goes, which I’ve said in the podcast before, but I’m going to say it again, because when I say things in a different context, in a different way, and you grow and you transform as you go through the episodes, you might hear it in a different way. But he said to me many years ago, probably 15 years ago, he said, beliefs are archaic. Beliefs are archaic. And he even said primitive. And he said, believe nothing. And then he said, observe everything.
Now, the story is this. I’ve just kind of spit that out. But basically, when he said beliefs are archaic, what he meant by that is that beliefs are a function of a lower-functioning human being. And you probably have heard me say before that I say that we’re cosmic beings having a human experience. So basically what I’m saying and what he was implying is that when you get into your beliefs, you’re getting into your 3D ego, meaning the life that you live, your identity, John Smith, pseudo, whatever your name is, whatever your past history is, whatever your ego is, you’re trapped in that. What he was saying is believe nothing. And that does not mean to be the classic doubting Thomas, that you believe absolutely nothing. It means that you’ve evolved beyond the need to believe because then what you do is you observe the world around you. And when you observe the world around you, now you have clarity.
Now, what I mean by that is, and you’ve heard me use this example before, if you’re wearing eyeglasses right now, whether it’s contact lenses or reading glasses or whatever it is, you never actually look at the world and say, you know what? I’m looking at the world through a lens right now, a filter. And guess what? I’m not even conscious that I’m looking at the world through a filter because I’m not thinking about looking at the world through my eyeglasses until somebody brings it to my attention. Let me give you another example that will resonate with anyone anywhere listening to this. Let’s say that you’ve driven a car before or you’ve ridden in a car, and everyone listening has ridden in a car. And let’s say that you’re looking out the front window. Well, you’ve got a lens between you and no window. There’s a lens there. The window is the lens. And you’re looking through a lens, but you don’t even actually know, you’re not conscious of the fact that you’re looking through a lens because you’re completely unconscious to it.
So what he meant was, Don Juan, when he said this, what he meant was, is that when you have a belief, you’re looking at the world through your rose-colored glasses. And when you take the glasses off, meaning you metaphorically no longer need the glasses and you no longer look through the glasses, now you’re seeing the world with clarity and you’re seeing the world for what it is without the filter of the glasses.
All this being said, I would love to say that, you know what? I had learned, I have mastered, I have transcended and ascended to a place, our brother said transcended to a place instead of ascended, but I’ve transcended to a place where, you know what, beliefs for me are archaic and I get into no beliefs, but I’m not there yet. I’m in earth school. I’m still learning my lessons, but I will tell you this with 100% conviction: If somebody could put a button in front of me and they said, you know what, if you push this button, everything you have ever believed or currently believe now and all the things that you believe that you don’t even know that you believe would be erased from your mind, you would be functioning like you are now, but you would have zero beliefs, would you push that button? I would say, hell yes, I would push the button and I wouldn’t even give it a second thought. It’s kind of like the choice between the red pill and the blue pill. I would push it in a heartbeat. Why? Because that would remove every single limitation that I have. Because as you know, you’ve heard me say on other episodes, your thinking is your biggest limitation, specifically, and I even talked about it in the last episode, the toxicity of thinking and the way that you think.
So we tend to, not tend, we do. We think about the world through our lenses and our beliefs, not even recognizing that we’re doing that because they’re completely unconscious and we’re not even observing the world for what it is. Therefore, when we do that, we have no clarity.
So let’s go back here, and I’m going to hop around a couple of places in this episode like I do every episode, is if you want to see how apparent beliefs are in the world. Every morning when people wake up, no one ever gets up and says, you know what? I think I’m going to, it’s Wednesday morning, and I think I’m going to get into my beliefs today. Now, what do I believe about coronavirus? What do I believe about government control and all these kind of things? Well, when I use the inflection for government control, I’m not saying that doesn’t exist. I was just inflecting. I’m going to leave that there and leave it alone for now. But I was just doing that for, I guess, for expression, for intonation. But I want you, in the morning when you get up, you never say, well, what things am I going to believe today and what things am I not going to believe today? You go through pretty much 100% of your day operating from your unconscious beliefs.
But not only that, you know what? 99, I don’t know the exact number, but I was going to say 99%, 99.9% of what you believe is what you’ve learned to believe. And as I look at the world right now, and it’s never been more apparent to me than any time in my life, as you look at Facebook, and you look at all the comments on Facebook, all the comments that, and there’s a myriad. I mean, you could probably find, you know, two or three solid positions for what’s going on in the world with corona, what’s not going on in the world, what medical protocol, what not medical protocol to use, what mask to wear, you know, what mask not to wear. Should you wear a mask? Shouldn’t you wear a mask? The experts say this. I have beliefs about the experts. I have beliefs that are not about the experts and on and on and on times a thousand.
But to me, it’s never been more apparent is that people, every single comment, for the most part, on Facebook is going through and coming through somebody’s filter about the subject matter of the content. So if you look at, for example, your Facebook feed or even Instagram or anywhere, you look at any of your social media feeds, they are really just full of people’s filters and their belief systems. Because again, no one gets up in the morning and says, you know, what do I believe today? And the interesting thing is this, is that, which we’ll talk about in just a minute, is that it’s something that people have a hard time getting their mind around, but how true are beliefs? Because if you look at one set of beliefs, they’re true for somebody but not true for someone else. And then you look at another set of beliefs and they’re true for people that have that set of beliefs but not true for other people. So the question that I have for you in just a bit is, how true are beliefs?
Now, this whole episode was prompted by a friend of mine, an old college friend. We’ve been very, very good friends for a lot of years. We don’t talk a lot anymore, but in college we were close fraternity brothers, really good friends. And I posted something on Facebook. It was chatting about coronavirus and self-healing and the role of D3 in self-healing and D3 in K2. And research, medical research proves this, is that like D3 with K2 is effective for literally preventing corona. And this is research proving this. I mean, clinical research. And then some people are going to say, well, yeah, I believe that. And some people are going to say, no, I don’t believe that.
But he was posting these very strong, what’s the word here?, these very strong beliefs about corona. He was very much following the official narrative, the CDC narrative about what corona is, how you can contract it, what’s going to happen if you contract it. All these stories that he’s absorbed over, you know, this time that all of this has been out. And at the end of our conversation, and we had a thread going back for about an hour, normally I wouldn’t engage with anybody that long on Facebook, but I’ve known this person literally for more than half my life. And he’s been a very, very good friend over the years. But he’s very much caught in the official narrative. I’m going to, yeah, I’m going to use that word. He’s very much caught in the official narrative of what Corona is and what it’s not.
And I even said to him, I said, you know what? You don’t know this about me, but I’ve worked with a shaman healer for 25 years, and we’ve never discussed it. And I can tell you, even though you might not believe me, I can tell you a way to actually alleviate, prevent, or in some way help should anyone that you love and care about contract corona. But I know you’re not going to believe me. And I was literally baiting him because I wanted to see what he did. Now, somebody else popped in and said, Jim, which I’ve known for a lot of years, said, Jim, I definitely want to know that. Now, the person that I’m talking about never once said, Jim, yes, please, would you tell me what you know that I can do to prevent any of my family having any challenges with this, which confirmed what I was observing, is that he wasn’t going to believe anything that I said.
Yet, now, working with a shaman for a lot of years, I mean, I’m not walking a shaman into a laboratory at Harvard and saying, hey, Harvard Laboratory, I want you to follow what the shaman’s saying, and then I want you to find the scientific evidence behind it. But in the research that I had discovered just a while back is that, guess what? Is that there’s some very credible research that says, yes, D3 is very effective. And they actually, even in this article, and it was a very credible article, that said that D3 is very effective at, I’ve got to remember the right words here because I want to be accurate in my wording. But basically, if you want to prevent corona, then take D3.
So here’s the thing, is he didn’t even know it, but part of, well, part of his backstory came out and his backstory said, well, we have a daughter, which I don’t know his kids personally, but I know of them because I’ve watched them grow up through him over the years. But he said, you know what? We had a daughter. She had a very difficult time when she was much younger. And basically he was expressing fear that his daughter might get Corona. And then something obviously, it would impact her health is what he was greatly concerned about.
But what I want you to notice is his entire air-quote argument on Facebook was through the filter of his fear, through the filter of his beliefs, not even knowing that he was getting into the filter of his beliefs. So I want to share that you, me, most people, what they do is they’re actually seeing through the filter. You are seeing through the filter all day long, not even knowing that you’re seeing through the filter.
So the bigger point that I want to make, and I want to bring it home to you, is if you just actually just got quiet for a moment and you looked at your life, everything that you do not have in your life that you want, you’ve heard me talk about identity before, but obviously the next level up on identity, not obvious to you, but obvious to me because I do this every day, from identity comes our beliefs. So everything that you don’t have in your life is a result of a subjective construct in your mind, is a result of rose-colored glasses. And they might not even be rose. It might be smoky quartz. I mean, you can’t see through it. It’s opaque. But it’s a result of your belief systems.
So let me give you an example here about some very banal, well, I call them banal, but just some simple things I want to use as an example. What do you believe about divorce? Doesn’t matter, pro or con, what do you believe? What do you believe about premarital sex? What do you believe about money? What do you believe about the economy? What do you believe about Donald Trump? What do you believe about coronavirus?
Now, the six questions that I ask you, it doesn’t matter what your answers were or your answers are. What I want you to notice is when I ask you each of these questions, you automatically went to a thought, and that thought comes from your belief. Now, notice what you did not do is you did not ponder through it going, hmm, now, yesterday I thought X, Y, Z, but today, you know, I don’t know what I think today. Now, most of you, 99.9% of you, you came to an automatic answer in your head, which was already filtered unconsciously through your beliefs. But the bigger point was I want you to notice whatever you believe, and I did say pro or con, doesn’t matter, whatever you believe is literally the filter you’re seeing your life through.
So what I want you to look at also, these beliefs that you have about these life situations that I gave to you, these life circumstances, whatever you want to call them, these life scenarios, these beliefs that you have, are any of them true? Are all of them true? Are some of your beliefs true? And then if some of your beliefs are true, what percentage of your beliefs are true? Is none of this true? Is none of this true for other people, but some of it’s true for you? Is some of this not true for you, but true for other people?
And I ask you all that because I want you to look at the convolution. The convolution of beliefs is that every single person walking around on this planet has a belief about every single thing in their life, not even knowing that they’re running conscious filters of beliefs and they’re keeping themselves trapped. Now, that’s a micro way to look at it, but let’s look at it in a macro way. And I know I’ve mentioned this on podcast episodes in the past. If you look at humanity, humanity itself, and I’m not going to go into it here in depth, it’s not the right podcast episode, but humanity as a whole is trapped in paradigms that are thousands of years old. But no one says, you know what, as humanity, I wonder if we’re actually trapped in paradigms that are 2,000 years old.
No. I mean, for example, let’s say you were born in 1965, 75, or 85. You don’t think, you know what? If I was born in 1975, what were the cultural paradigms at that time? What paradigms did I learn to believe that I’m trapped in now that don’t apply anymore, but yet I learned back then and I’m still trapped in those cultural paradigms? Well, what about the paradigms of the past 100, 200, 300 years that humanity has been perpetuating for thousands of years? You know, I mentioned before also the space shuttle. A lot of people don’t know that the space shuttle is the width, meaning from wheel to wheel, it’s the width that it is because of something that’s 2,000 years old, because of train tracks, and train tracks are the width that they are because of Roman chariots. Another story for a different time, but that is true.
Oh, by the way, off topic here. I know at the end of the podcast, many of you probably click off before you get to the outro, meaning my final comments at the end after I give you the transformational takeaway. But if you would, please, if you’re getting value out of the podcast, a little irony here, which means reciprocity of life. If you would please share this podcast with your friends, your family, your social media. And when I say irony, I give to you guys, give a little bit back to me. I don’t even know if you’ve noticed this or not. And some people have, there’s no ads on this podcast. We’re at a million downloads, right at a million downloads our very first year. I’ve had people approach me and say, Hey Jim, can I advertise on your podcast? I could probably make, I had somebody offer me $3,000 just to do ads weekly on the podcast. That’s 36 grand a year. And that’s just one advertiser. And I said no. Why? Because I don’t want to bring advertisers into my podcast. That’s going to affect the energy. But my point is, is I’ve also got to sit down and these take me time and I’ve got to think through what’s the content. I’ve got to send it to my team. There’s a lot of work that goes into this. All that I ask you so that we together can reach more people, because obviously hopefully you’re recognizing this whole podcast is about self-transformation, is share, please share the episodes with your friends, your family, and social media. And by the way, if you would do it right after you’re done with this episode and leave a review, I would very much appreciate it. And by the way, if you say, well, I’ll do it later, generally when we say we’re going to do something later, it doesn’t happen. So if I could just ask you to leave a positive review here in the review section and then share, I would be very grateful for that.
Okay, so let me go back to beliefs. And I know, I know, because the fact that you’re listening to this podcast means you probably are in the transformation or personal development or peak performance. And I know that over the years, you’ve heard all the motivational speakers all the way from, you know, and great work, great work, what’s his name, Les Brown and Zig Ziglar and all these people all these years. You’ve all heard them screaming from the top of their lungs about beliefs. And I know you’re listening and you’re like, you know, yeah, yeah, blah, blah, blah, Jim. I get it. I get it. I get it. Okay.
I mean this humbly: I know that you intellectually get it, but you don’t really get it. Because if you really got it, then you wouldn’t be struggling with the things that you’re struggling with in life. Think about that. It can be your husband, your wife, and you’re struggling with them. Now, it may be compatibility issues. It can be something simple. You might have incompatible beliefs or, in particular, beliefs about the way the other person is supposed to be in a relationship and the way that you’re supposed to be treated. Or your kid’s school or coronavirus or what’s happening in New York or Bangladesh or Afghanistan or somewhere in the world. But I want you to know that anything that perturbs you, anything that takes away from you, anything that holds you back, please, even though you think that you get it and you’re like, Jim, yeah, yeah, I get it, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, no, you don’t get it because if you really got it, then you would not be struggling with those things in your life.
You know, I want to go into a second here, and I’ve talked about it before on another podcast. As you hear, and I’ve said this, this might be the second time you heard it, but it’s worth repeating. So many people are out there, you got to believe in yourself. And you’ve never heard me say in any episode, you know what? Rah, rah, let me pat you on the back. You’ve got to believe in yourself. You don’t hear me saying that because, for example, earlier you heard me say that, you know what? We’re at a million downloads in just over a year. We took us a little longer because of some things in my life, but we’re right at a million downloads in one year. I mean, that’s insanity in terms of it just doesn’t happen. We’re literally like in the top 1% of podcasts downloaded in the world. And when I started this podcast, what I didn’t get into is, yes, Jim, I believe I can do it. I know, I know I can do it. I have this message. People need to hear it. I didn’t get into, I believe in myself, which is where I’m going here in this segment of the podcast. I didn’t get into any of that. Zero, actually.
What I got into is, you know what? Let me do what I do, whatever’s going to happen as a result of that, whether people like it or they don’t, and we’ll look at the outcome. And a year later, we see the outcome. Now, where I was going with that is I read a quote here a while back, I’m not going to read it in this episode. It was probably a half a year ago, four or five months ago by Martha Graham, the dancer. And Martha Graham said that this energy comes through us, and it’s not our job to judge how good it is or how good we are. It’s just our job to let this energy come through us and let it impact the world in the way that it impacts the world. Now, I’ll paraphrase a little bit about impacting the world because, honestly, I don’t remember the last part of the quote, and it’s very long.
But what I’m sharing with you is I wish, because there are so many people who create podcasts and books and seminars and videos, and they’re actually full of crap. Because I’ve done this for a lot of years, and I’ve watched a lot of people talk a lot of crap and not walk their talk. What I’m saying is I wish you could see in my brain that I’m telling you the truth humbly, is that I don’t get into, oh my gosh, I got to believe in myself. You know what, Jim? No, I don’t operate from any of that. I just operate from, you know what? Let me be me. Let me serve. Let me serve with an open heart. Let me be a clear channel. Let me bring my gifts to the world. And then whatever is going to happen is going to happen. Now, what I just shared with you, each and every one of you might apply it in a different way. But my bigger point there is I don’t get in that I’ve got to believe in myself and rah, rah, hype myself up and all that kind of stuff. I don’t get into it. I just show up. I let the universe work through me. And then I let whatever happens need to happen. Now, you might be reading between the lines at this point. My suggestion for you is that might be a powerful way that you also want to show up as well.
Okay, so let me play with how destructive beliefs can be. Now, of course, they can work on the opposite side and providing that you have created beliefs that actually sustain you and support you, which I’m all in favor of. But as I’m saying this, guys, these are not scripted. I’m thinking through it and I’m like, well, do my beliefs about me support and sustain me? I don’t even get into them. I just do what I do. And I’ve created a multimillion dollar business over the last, even rebranding my business the past three years, a mega multi-million dollar business in the past three years just because I put my head down and I do what I do.
But I want to look at negative beliefs for a moment. And I want you to actually look at something in your life that you’re unhappy about. Consider, just pick anything, something in your life that you’re unhappy about or unsatisfied with. Let me, semantics, but let me put it that way: Something you’re unsatisfied with, something that you want more of. And I want you to think about it. Now, what does that situation say about you? Now, the next question is, what does it say about what you believe, which is a rose-colored glasses, the filter that precedes the situation? It just goes to show you whatever that situation is, you’ve got underlying beliefs that are actually creating the situation, whether you want it in your life or you don’t want it in your life.
So I’m going to go a little farther here, and I’ve asked you guys before, but I’m going to ask you again. I want you about the situation, whatever situation you just picked, I want you to ask yourself three questions, and here they are. Let’s take money, for example, okay? Let me just use money. Let’s say that you don’t have the money that you want. These are the three questions: What does this mean about me? What caused this to happen? What does this say about me?
Look at that. What does this mean about me? What caused this to happen? And what does this say about me? Now, what I want you to notice is notice how you were answering those questions. You were actually giving belief to the meaning because, see, those three things were all about beliefs. We have beliefs about meaning, beliefs about cause, and beliefs about identity. And those three questions were about meaning, cause, and identity. And I want you to notice that you even have beliefs about your beliefs about meaning, cause, and identity. You’ve noticed here, you have beliefs about your beliefs. Now I want you to further notice is look at the conundrum. It’s a never-ending vortex. And for most of us, for most, not for me, but I’m going to say well, for most people, and then when I say not me, I’m not special, not better than anyone else, but I just know what I’m sharing with you and I know it at a very deep level.
But for most people, what I just shared with you is a never-ending vortex. And it’s like somebody pulled the plug out of a bathtub and it’s just spiraling backwards. And this is why, for example, you’ve heard me say before that 80% of the American population is overweight and 78% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck. Now, I know we have people all over the world listening to this podcast, but you know what? Wherever you are, Tokyo, Bangkok, Thailand, Timbuktu, people are pretty much people all around the world. So the reason that I keep going on here and I keep sharing this is I want you to understand is that beliefs, they can’t, I haven’t thought through this, how I want to share it, but they can have a place in your life. But for many people, it’s not a positive place that they hold in somebody’s life. And people are blinded by these filters that keep them trapped, but they don’t even know that they’re in vortexes and conundrums and filters. And they spend their entire lifetime fighting the invisible prison of beliefs.
Now, something I started this podcast with, I’m going to share food for thought. Here it is. And I heard this, I was told this many years ago. I’ve let it sit in my life where I’ve just kind of like it’s on a windowsill and I can see it all the time. And I’ve let it just sit in my life. But it’s something I was taught many years ago is that there are no true beliefs. Ponder that. Sit with that. There are no true beliefs.
And if you look at the world, people steal out of beliefs. People murder. They maim. They plunder the planet. Look at the things that they do out of beliefs on the counterproductive negative side. Now, also, now, I don’t know. I can’t speak for anyone else or like Einstein or Jonas Salk or Henry Ford. I don’t know if they believed that they could create X, Y, Z. I don’t know because I want to balance out here positive and negative. I don’t know what their thought processes were. Like I said, I don’t get into belief. If you literally said, Jim, do you believe in yourself? I would say I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what it means. I just do what I do. And whatever happens is a result of whatever I do.
But where I want to go here is that beliefs can be, I think I’ll leave it at that, beliefs can be extremely destructive, counterproductive in your life, or beliefs can actually sustain and build for you based upon what you choose to believe. And even if you choose, because I just said there are no true beliefs, it doesn’t matter what you choose to believe, either being positive or negative. It doesn’t mean that it’s a true belief. It just means that it’s something that you believe.
Okay, so where do we go in this episode? And I even thought about that before I started. And I was like, okay, where do we wrap this up? Now, I don’t have the pills. I don’t have the dispensary where I can say, okay, red pill, blue pill, which do you want? Here you go. Take it. Take the pill. I don’t have that power, but I do have the power to get you to start thinking at a deeper level about your beliefs and your beliefs about beliefs. So we can go there and we can start thinking about that.
But what I really want you to start thinking about is I want you, here’s something tangible we can do, is I want you to question your beliefs. Now, a lot of people are afraid, especially their fundamental identity level beliefs, they’re afraid to question those beliefs. They’re afraid to question their beliefs about the nature of reality. They’re afraid to question their beliefs about God. And I’m going to tell you, if you’re afraid to question your beliefs, then your belief is not very solid in the first place. Why? Because you’ve learned it and you’re in fear of it and you’re living in that fear. So most people are afraid. They don’t trust enough in their belief to doubt their belief. There we go. I said it. I got it out. They don’t trust enough in their belief to doubt their belief.
But here’s what I want you to look at is question your beliefs. Question what you’ve been taught. Question all the things that you even hold dearly. And you can ask yourself, is this true for everyone? If it’s not true for everyone, then it’s not a true belief. And you’ll find that the only true belief, if you need to hold a belief, is that you’re going to transition out of your body. At some point, you’re going to leave your body. And that’s actually a fact. You don’t even have to believe that. You might believe it, you might not believe it, but that is a fact. You’re going to leave the body that you’re in.
So the reason I gave you that is everything, everything is a belief. So what I want to ask you is, what are you trapped in because of your beliefs? Because anything, let me go to the negative side of this, the counterproductive, anything that you want that you don’t have is because of your beliefs.
Now, the mistake that most people make, and you’ve heard it because it’s part of my signature message all the way through the podcast, is that when people want to create new things in life, the first thing that they do is they go do something, never even questioning what’s the underlying belief to the behavior that I’m doing. So a mini example there very quickly because I want to wrap up: if you want to, you know, get in shape, you’re going to do something, you’re going to go to the gym and you’re going to work out. But 92% of people when it comes to New Year’s resolutions stop by the third week of January, which means 92% of people fail, 8% of people or thereabouts or less succeed. It has nothing to do with the doing in life. It has to do with the being, which comes from the identity, which precedes the doing.
This is why, again, I would love to give you that magic pill and just say, but I’ve got somewhere I want to, by the way, I’ve got somewhere I want to go with this for you. I would love to give you the magic pill. Shazam! And guess what? If you want it, all your beliefs are erased and then you now have clarity. But here’s a place if I, Chief, or hopefully I tied it all together for you, but here’s somewhere that I go and I go often in my life. Why? Because I’m like you living on the planet and I’m still working through things as well. But here’s somewhere that you can go: Anything that I’m looking at in life, my first inclination is to start forming beliefs about it because that’s what my brain does. It’s not my mind, it’s my brain.
So here’s a tool that I use quite often. And you may want to write this down. I’ve said it before. When you come to know the power of this, it is true liberation. Seriously, it’s major, major freedom. But here it is. It’s a phrase that I live by: Nothing has any meaning except the meaning that I give it.
Nothing has any meaning except the meaning that I give it. Because two people can look at the very same thing and give it two very different meanings based upon the preceding filters, rose-colored glasses of the beliefs.
You know, an example would be here. Let’s say that you grew up and you believe, because that’s the way that you grew up, that kids must be, seven, eight-year-olds, six, seven, eight-year-olds, kids must be clean and tidy, because that’s what I learned. Metaphorically, I’m just using that meaning. When I say I, I mean anyone. And then you walk into the kitchen, and you see your kids have made a mess in the kitchen. And then somebody else believes that kids are pure joy, and that’s the belief they have. And they walk in the kitchen and the kitchen’s a mess. Notice that the responses to the kids, the parent that believes the kitchen’s supposed to be tidy and kids are supposed to be neat, even though I know a lot of you have three, four, or five-year-olds and the playrooms are a mess, but hopefully you’re getting the metaphor here, versus a parent that believes that kids are pure joy, they have different responses based upon their interpretations, which are actually preceded by their beliefs.
So that’s what I want to take you back to in this episode and wrap up there: Anything that might be causing you some discomfort, some unhappiness, some challenges in some way, what I want you to ask yourself, aside from the questions I gave you earlier, is ask yourself: somebody just wrecked my new car, somebody stole my credit card number, somebody did this, somebody did that, my husband had an affair, my wife had an affair, I found my kids on drugs, my kid flunked out, all these things, counterproductive things, I’ve used counterproductive for a reason. What I want you to ask yourself is this: What meaning am I giving to this?
Final comment: In one of my transformational coaching programs about two years ago, one of my students, and she had learned this fully and in greater depth in the transformational program, because we do a lot of work on this in the transformational coaching programs, somebody had sunk her boat. She and her husband, they had a nice boat and somebody sunk the boat. They sabotaged it, literally like criminally. She even shot a picture and posted it in the Facebook group, which is a private group, of the boat underwater. And you could see the antennas above the water, and you could see the boat and the captain’s chair and all that kind of stuff below the water, but the boat was sunk.
And she said, you know what? Prior to learning all this, I would have been angry and depressed, all these kind of things she went into. But she asked herself, she goes, what does it mean? What interpretations am I making about this? Now, let’s be a little levity here. She said, you know what my interpretation was? She goes, my interpretation, I’m laughing because there is some levity here, she goes, my interpretation is, thank God, my husband’s not going to ask me to go fishing anymore on the weekends! And that was her interpretation about somebody sinking their boat, whereas somebody else could have been completely bent out of shape because somebody sunk their boat, which her husband probably was because he used it to go fishing on the weekends.
Okay. Your transformational takeaway: Nothing has any meaning except the meaning that I give it.
And that ties back into this week. And that’s because this week is about belief. And it ties back into this week because the headline is you’re trapped in your beliefs. So any place that you’re stuck is simply because you’re giving it some meaning based upon your belief.
Okay, thanks for listening. I’ll catch you over on the next episode. Take care and make it an awesome week. Bye-bye.