Intro
You’re listening to the Transform your Life from the Inside out Podcast. And if you’ve read all the books, been all the seminars, followed all the gurus, and you still don’t have what you want in life. It’s because you’ve not learned to master your attention. mastering your attention is the master key in life. If you’d like to create a whole lot more in life, then 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, for 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.
Where Are You Applying Your Mind?
So you may already be thinking, what is Attention? Well, according to definition, attention is the act or state of applying the mind that something? So the question that I have for you is, where are you applying your mind? And let me answer that for you. Look at your life, look at your bank account, look at your health, look at your relationships, your external world, is your application of your mind. And your external world has been 100% created by where you have chosen to place or keep your attention. That’s why it’s vital. It’s vital that we learn to master our attention. And we keep it and we move it into places that actually serve us as opposed to places that do not serve us.
Speaking of attention, look at the last 10 minutes. Where was your attention? Was it on Facebook? Or was it on Instagram? Or was it yelling at somebody in traffic? Or the kids are yelling at the kids in the back seat? Or you read something online? Or something burned down? Or somebody shot something? Or Donald Trump did this? Or this person did that? Or might somebody might you know, where it could be a bazillion different things. But what I want you to look at, seriously the last 10 minutes? Where has your attention been? And it’s vital that we come to understand attention and start paying attention to attention? Because you are and you’ll hear me say this a lot. You are and I am we are where our attention is.
And I’ve been a performance coach and transformational coach for a lot of years, almost 25 years now. And whether it be group coaching, or one to one coaching or live or, or virtual or email or whatever it is, I always hear the same things from people, the majority that is it’s always the same things. Jim, there’ll be like to be like this, you know, Jim why? Why do I have no money and bad health? And why do I feel bad and I’m stuck and I hate my job. And I’m getting a divorce. And it’s really messy. And we’re fighting over the kids? And why am I a failure in life? And how can I have no control, which by the way is an illusion? Why did bad things happen to me, and on and on and on? All of these things happen to you. And this is a very subtle distinction of thinking. That’s why I say that this is the master key in life, everything that happens to you is because you’ve attracted it and you’ve attracted it, because that’s where you have your attention. And when you’re getting things that you don’t want, what most of us do is we keep our attention on more of what we don’t want, which means we therefore attract more of what we don’t want, which then actually makes us feel bad and we keep our attention there. That’s why it is vital that we learn to master our attention and keep it in, keep it in a place that actually creates for you and actually attracts all the things that you want in life.
Somewhere that I want to actually slow down my my my voice pace right here is on your health. If you’re not in great health, and I’m going to say something, it’s going to be controversial to a lot of people. And that’s okay. But something that I have learned over the years is and again, this is gonna be controversial for a lot of people is that there is no such thing as disease. We create disease from the mind. A toxic mind creates a toxic body. I don’t want to really promote anyone. Let me just think here how one To say this,Dr. Joe Dispenza never met him before, he does have a documentary on Netflix right now called HEAL. H E A L, and there is years and years and years of very high end, medical research, etc, that we can heal ourselves. What I have learned over the years working with a shaman is that generally, people that have the most ailment in the body have the most element in the mind. But I want to get back to this episode and then I want to ask you, if you have element in the mind, then where is your attention, and then that manifests in the body and that manifest in your external experience. This, again, is why it is so vital that we master our attention.
What I’ve noticed before and people and I am not tossing stones, because I have been there, a different place in my life, is that most people keep their attention many times on not being well, and you even see it in our culture and that you know, different TV channels you might watch. There was one channel that I was watching one time, and I’m not kidding, every second commercial was a pharmaceutical commercial about if you have Crohn’s disease, or fibro, fibro, myalgia, or this disease or that disease, and it’s just like, I’m thinking, Oh, my god, there’s just so much disease in the world. And then people go to the doctors and the doctors perpetuate that. And again, I know that it’s going to be controversial, not all doctors perpetuate, but many do with pharmacology.
But what I want to share with you here, let’s keep this to this episode is wherever you have your attention, which means your thoughts relatively your health, what happens is, your thoughts actually affect the cells in your body. And your cells communicate, like you know, like a network of just like telephone wires that communicate. So it’s vital that we keep our attention on being healthy, even if we’re not healthy. Because if we have our attention on not being healthy, then that’s what we’re actually creating more of in the body. You know, I’ve noticed also that many people that are sick, many, and I got to be careful of many and most, but let’s just say a lot, a high percentage of people that are sick, they keep their focus on being sick, and how bad they feel, instead of actually taking that massive leap, which is a challenging leap for a lot of people and focusing on Okay, you know what I’m going to focus on health and wellness, as opposed to keeping my attention on feeling bad, and sickness.
This is a big leap for a lot of people. And I’ve had to make it myself. So I definitely understand how, how it can be a slippery slope. And it can be a very challenging thing for us to actually if we’re not feeling physically well, how to keep our attention on being happy and feeling good, as opposed to actually not keeping our attention where we are, which is feeling bad. This is a I’m going to say this is like a very, very challenging thing for a lot of people. But I go back to simplicity here is that wherever my attention is I am. And if you ask me, you said to me, you know, Jim being with a shaman for 23 years, and if you could only pick one piece of advice, what would that advice be?Just one piece, you can only give me one line, what would it be?
I would say the most powerful thing that I have learned because it applies to every single area of my life, even my own development, spiritually, I would say that the number one thing that I had, that I would give you that I have learned is I am where my attention is. And if I find myself somewhere that I do not want to be guess what it is my attention that has gotten me there. And the same thing with you. And so I’m going to be a little repetitive here. So what many people do is their attention Got them to where they do not want to be, then they don’t like where they are. So they keep their attention on not liking where they are, which perpetuates where they are. This is why it is vital that you beginning now, learn to move your attention, which I’ll talk about a little bit more in just a minute. And I’ll show you how I learned to move my attention.
I also want to point out that we live in a world of attention deficit. And I’ve read some research on that I’m not going to go into it at this point. But and I don’t know if it’s accurate. But I read somewhere that a goldfish. A goldfish has an attention span of eight seconds. And humans have an attention span of seven seconds. So and you know that’s not really hard to believe. And there’s a whole actually, there’s a whole category here about how social media is affecting the brain. And I won’t go I will not go into it here maybe another episode how there are companies like Instagram and Facebook. They’re using social media and there’s an episode on 60 minutes, I think it was called race to the brainstem. How we get actually rewards. We get dopamine, what’s called dopamine release in the brain. When we get like a lot of likes on Facebook. And these companies are doing this to addicted us to the social media. Why because the more of us on social media, the more adspace you know they can offer the more money that they can make. But our attention and a lot of ways is affected right now by the world we live in, which has a very, very short attention span.
And many of us and I’ve been there before are like a dog and a squirrel you know you’re a dog and you’re sitting there in the school, a squirrel runs by and boom, there you go. What’s vital for us to learn vital is, we need to slow the mind, we need to get quiet in the mind. And I definitely will do. I’ll record an episode on that at some point. But most people are extremely controlled by the external world. And we want to actually slow that down and be very deliberate where we keep our attention. Because I’m going to be repetitive in this episode you are where your attention is. And if you don’t have what you want in life, guess what? You’ve created it by where you kept your attention. Even as I’m saying this right now, where is your attention? Right now? Look at that. Where’s your attention? Right, the second.
Let me share with you where most people keep their attention. And I’ve been there. So anything that I say in all these episodes, I promise you.I’m not judging, because I’m human. I’m here learning my lessons as well. I tell everyone that we’re an earth school, literally. And you know, if you go to school, I would say that somebody that’s in 12th grade is no better than somebody that’s in first grade. They’re just at different levels, learning different lessons. But we’re all here learning our lessons. I’ve had the good fortune to apprentice with a shaman for over 20 years, and every day is still a lesson. And there are things that I’m still working on, by no means do I consider myself enlightened or evolved. I do my interpretation is that I have many, many things that I need to work on to still create mastery in myself. And on the flip side, there are things that I become very good at over the years. And I would say that, I don’t know if I’d ever get to mastery. But I would say you know what, I’ve got a good command of this.
And mastering my attention is something that I have literally kept in the forefront of me for over 20 years now. And I used to be exactly like I’m going to share here with you guys, is my attention used to always be many years ago would always be on the past, things that happened to me in the past, or this person did that or this person did that or I had to spell your or I did this and it didn’t work. Therefore I believe that, you know, things will not work for me, or I can’t keep this or I can’t just always on the past, or were many people live, they live in the past or they live in the future.
Something is going to happen later. And oh my gosh, hadn’t even happened yet. But you know what, let me put my attention on something that doesn’t even exist with the future because it’s not even here, right now. But you know what, it’s not even here right now. But I’m going to worry about it. And I’m going to obsess about it. And I’m going to keep my attention on something that hasn’t even happened. So I’m going to say that, in my observation watching people, and I’ve been there before, is that most people actually do not have their attention. Right here. Right now. Most people have their attention on what they just did, or what’s happened or what’s something that happened in their childhood, or something that can happen later, or something that can fall through, or some you know prognosis about something that’s going to happen in the future.
Most people either live in the past, or in the future, and very few live in the present. And I know you might have heard that before. So I want to give you an illustration and just a bit to show you how. And perhaps it would be a metaphor to help you better understand how you can keep your attention right here in the present. Before I do that, I want to share a thought with you is that time is an illusion. Time doesn’t exist in the universe. It’s something that’s human created. And most people live their lives by time. Everything is time, oh, this happened yesterday, this happened, you know, 10 years ago, or this is going to happen in the future. And this is a slippery slope concept. But please stay with me because I think I don’t think I know that’s gonna make a huge difference in your life is that time is an illusion. It was created by humans. And something I want you to understand is that there is nothing but now there’s nothing but right now, even what I said three minutes ago is already gone. Because right now I am in the now saying I am in the right now.
And something else that I want you to understand is that anything that has ever happened to you anything that will ever happen to you will only happen in the now it cannot happen in the past because there is no past and it cannot happen in the future because there is no future there is only now. And that’s really a mind bender when you actually if it’s even possible to get your mind around it, that your entire life exists and the right now, but what most of us do is we actually even though our entire life exists in the right now. We spend our right now actually not right now but thinking about the past or the future. Therefore that’s where our attention is. And we are never present as a being and when we’re not present. We don’t have power.
So I want to go into two stories here that I think will help you tremendously about managing your attention, one, and then secondly, existing in the now. So the first one was is my brother in law many years ago, when he was talking to me, he says, you know, he goes, you don’t have a center. He said, when I watch you, and basically he can read my energy at the deepest levels of consciousness. And he goes, you know what, imagine, for example, a bicycle spoke. And he says, you have the hub, you have the center, and then you have all the spokes. Now, even though I’m telling you this auditorily, I’m talking, hopefully, you can visualize this or imagined as I’m going through it, because this probably applies to a lot of you. And it says, what we want to maintain our power is we always want to be in our center. And I’ll talk about what center is also in just a moment.
But he says, what you do is you leave your center, and then you go to the end of one spoke, and then something else pulls your attention, and you jump from that spoke over to another spoke, and then something else pulls your attention. And you move that from that spoke over to another spoke, and he goes, you’re extremely inefficient in the use of your energy, what we want to do is we want to be in our center. And if we want to actually go to the end of the spoke, what we do, we come back to the center of the spoke, which is our center, and then go to another spoke, but you jump all over the place from spoke to spoke to spoke to spoke, and it goes, you’ve got all this massive, just nonsense and this noise in your head, learn to center yourself and always come back to your center.
Now I’m going to share with you guys you can pick whatever you want, obviously, you’ve got free will. So I’m going to tell you though, what my center is and where I keep my attention, my center is always being happy. And being 100%, transparent. These are still things that I’m working on. But this is right in front of me. And this is what I keep my attention on. And there’s some other things that relative to my work with a shaman, but that’s more personal, but I can share with you where I keep my attention is being happy. And then another place I keep my attention is and as you hear this, and as you look at this in your own life, you will find it to be true. Everything always has been is now and will always be fine.
Now I know that might be hard for some of you to get your mind around. But if you look at life, life is always fine. But what we do is we use our attention and we wasted because something happens and oh my gosh, I’m gonna fly off the handle, or this happened or this is bad or this is right or this is wrong, or this is good or this is bad. And where I’ve learned to work from over the years, and I’ve come to know, there’s a difference between knowing and understanding. What I’ve come to know is that when I stay in happiness, and that’s the center of my spoke, and when I work from everything always has been is now and will always be fine. That to me, gives me peace.
And I don’t know if you’ve ever thought about it, but one of the most powerful states of mind that you can have is peace. Because Have you ever noticed that when you have peace, peace of mind, it’s very easy to function, it’s very easy to get things done that you want to get done, it’s very easy to make money, it’s very easy to do things that you need to do. But yet, when you don’t have peace of mind, which is no peace, life becomes very difficult and hard and challenging. And I also want you to look, I want you to look at where your attention is, when you don’t have peace, that’s where your attention is. That’s why it’s so vital that we master our attention because it’s the master key to always exhale and stay at peace.
So that’s where I live from. So I’m not sure what’s going to apply to you or what’s what’s not going to apply to you. But I’m going to tell you, these are fullproof and fail proof. And if I can do it, you can do it. And that is never letting the external world or things that people do and you know, steal your internal peace always be in a state of peace. And for me it was it was a great deal of attention to learn how to to get to this place.But when you work from peace, life becomes so, so easy.
Okay, the second example metaphor that I want to give you, is when I talked about always living in the past or the future, you know what, if you’re like most people, and we’re pretty much all the same, because we’re all human beings. You’re like, yep, but right on, I get that. And then if I said, Well, how do you do it? You’d be like, well, I don’t have a clue. I don’t know. I mean, how do I be present? How do I be in the now use your imagination as best you can. And if you’re driving, keep your eyes on the road and maybe come back and listen to this later. But what I want you to do is I want you to imagine that you have a yardstick in front of you. And let’s just say that it’s three feet. And this yardstick represents the totality of your existence on this planet. I also want you to imagine that you are at the halfway point in terms of your interpretation, years, you’re at the halfway point in your life. So basically, what I want you to do is imagine that you’re actually where you’re existing right now is right in the center of the yardstick. And as you’re looking at that, that’s where you are right now. And you look to your left, because the sharp stick is in front of you, and you’re imagining it, if you look to your left, that’s all of your past. And then you look to your right, that’s all of your future.
So most of us never live right in that center in the now being present. As I said, we live in the past. And I’m going to, I’m going to show you when I say you live in the past, anything that you think you can do, you’ve gotten from the past, any anger that you have, you’ve gotten from the past, any fear that you have, other than the fear of loud noise and falling, you’ve gotten from the past, if you’re worried about something, you’re worried about something in the future, and you’re not present now.
Okay, so the yardsticks in front of you, what I want you to do, is obviously want you to imagine you’re looking at that, and you see this totality of your life. And this little bitty hairline point, maybe you know, you can take a ballpoint pen, metaphorically, there’s little, this little line in the middle, which is your now and you spend all your time in the past and all your time in the future. Now, I want you to imagine that you actually take the yard stick, and you go to either end, and you cut off one eighth of an inch of that entire yard stick, that’s it one eighth of an inch. Now, throw the rest of the yard stick away and put that one eighth of an inch of yard stick right in front of you so you have one eighth of an inch.
That is the now that is the now that’s where we live from being present right now. Because it’s all that we have. Your past doesn’t exist anymore, and your future doesn’t exist. All that exists is right now and that little bitty one eighth of an inch sliver. So bring your attention to right now. And when you are in the now it is so easy to be at peace because nothing in the past is making you fearful or afraid. And nothing in the future is making you worried. Just be here now. And when we’re hearing now, we can experience the love and the joy and the peace and our own good health and all the great things in life. And that is a place that we want to work from. And that is the place we want to move our attention to. Because when we’re in that place, that is when magic happens.
Okay, sharing this episode and getting it recorded for you for you guys was a big bite. I mean, you know, how do I explain this to people? I’ve been on this path for a lot of years. But if this is new to you, I mean, how do I get this into your brain in a way where you’re like, you know what? Okay, yeah, I finally can get my mind around that a little bit. So hopefully, I at least got the ball across the plate. And you now understand why it’s so important for you to be present, and then now and to be happy. And that everything’s always going to be fine. And keep your attention on that. And I give you my word, I give you my word, you keep your attention on happiness, and things are fine and peace. And you will be shocked at what happens in your life.
Okay, so like every week, there’s a transcript or every podcast, there’s a transformational takeaway. So your takeaways this week is you are where your attention is. And I’m going to share with you because looking at my own self, you might hear that you might be like, well, that’s pretty cool. That makes a lot of sense. Right on. Yep. My analytical mind can understand that. That makes a lot of sense to me. However, what I’m going to tell you is you understand that however, it could take you a day, a week, a month, maybe even years or decades to fully know what that means. Another transformational takeaway is, which I think is obvious with the ruler example that I gave you is that time is an illusion. The past does not exist, the future does not exist, all that exists is right now and move your attention. Also, when I say move your attention, some of you that are more analytical could say.
Well, where do I move my attention to? It’s pretty it’s pretty simple. If you’re in a bad place air quote, you’re in a bad place. Well, that’s where your attention is. Move your attention to somewhere that is actually a positive place. Even though these are takeaways let me go on a little bit longer here. One of my students recently she’s in my mastermind program is getting a divorce. She’s in a messy a messy marriage and getting a divorce. And when I saw her live a while back at an event that someone else was hosting. She was crying and upset and all these kind of things and she’d come all the way from Australia. And I knew in that moment she was crying. Because that’s where her attention was. So what I did is I distracted her. And I moved to her attention, guiding her to think getting her to think about very positive things. And about 30 minutes later, I’m like, how are you feeling right now and she goes, I feel really good.
And I said, if you noticed that 30 minutes ago, or 45 minutes ago, you were crying, and you were in the self pity and you were upset. Now you’re feeling really good. The only thing that’s changed in the world is that you have moved your attention. And that was a great example for her. And a great example for you is that you are where your attention is. Okay, before we wrap up. And before I tell you about the next episode, I am doing a live training today. And the training is called How To think act and be bigger than you ever thought possible when you learn to control your mind.
Now to be 100% transparent with you this program, it’s a it’s a 90 minute training, I believe, well, it’ll be an hour at least. But this is an introduction to my transformational coaching program. Because the doors open today, it is a 12 week program that will transform your life. So if nothing else, just register for the training and get on it and learn some more to improve your life. And if my transformational program works for you then get registered and if it doesn’t, well, then it doesn’t that’s entirely up to you. But be on that live training today, and as always, I will tell you, it’s at 3pm Central Standard Time. And as you always hear me say the link to that live training will be in the show notes at jimfortin.com wherever this episode is if you’re listening on iTunes, just go to jimfortin.com click on the episode, and in the show notes, you will find the link to get registered for this training already.
So Monday is a Q&A again. And Abigail is the person that I selected for Monday. And Abigail’s question is, what do I do when I’m tired of being me? And my life? So if you’d like to hear my answer to Abigail about, you know, being sick and tired of being sick and tired, make sure you’re on that episode. And as I say on every episode, I am grateful and I am humbled. And thank you so much for listening and sharing and being a part of this with me. Okay, stay well make it an awesome day and I will catch YOU on the live training or one of the other episodes. Bye bye.
Conclusion
Thank you for listening to this entire podcast. If you’re the kind of person who likes to help others, then share this with your friends and family. You know, if you found value, they will too. So please share via your social media channels. Also, if you have questions, I’m here to assist. You can email me questions to support@jimfortin.com. And I may even use your question for a future podcast episode. Also, if you want transformational content like this daily, connect with me on Instagram, my Instagram name is @iamjimfortin. Finally I do have a personal request. I believe that we’re all here to help others and to grow and evolve ourselves. together. You and I, let’s help more people. If you would, please leave a review on iTunes and a good one by the way. I’d be grateful and through your assistance together, we can transform more lives. Thanks for listening.