Intro

You're listening to episode number 19 of the Transform your Life from the Inside Out podcast. And in this episode, I'm going to discuss why, and I almost want to laugh here as I say this because I know you might be rolling your eyes, but I'm going to discuss why it's great when people trigger you instead of getting angry and annoyed and frustrated. You know, and getting bent out of shape when people trigger you. In this episode, you're going to learn that these things, these triggers are blessings. Why? Because they are your greatest opportunity to grow and evolve. 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 superachievers 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.

Other People Don't Trigger You, Your Judgements Do

Okay, I'm curious. And I'm curious about what you're thinking right now about the introduction and people triggering you. Because people triggering you is probably one of your biggest sources of irritation and frustration in life. And it's also perhaps you've not recognized it, but triggers are a huge source of stress for you. And you know what things trigger you, maybe somebody says something in a particular way, and you get all bent out of shape. You know, maybe somebody is driving and they're driving too fast, and that triggers you. They're driving too slow, and that triggers you. Maybe they've got a bumper sticker that triggers you. Somebody makes a particular comment, you get triggered. Maybe it's a situation like customer service. Maybe it's not fast enough for you, and you get triggered. Maybe somebody makes you know, a face at you in some way, and that triggers you. What I want you to look at in this episode is, all the things that trigger you and all the places you flip out because again those, and trust me, you know that you've got days full of being triggered, for the most part many of you, those are huge opportunities for you to grow, to learn, and to evolve. First thing's first, anytime that you're triggered, you're making a judgment about someone or something. As a matter of fact, other people do not trigger you. What triggers you is your value system and your judgments. Because when people do things, they just do what they do, and it's you who is triggered. I mean, it doesn't trigger them or they wouldn't do it, right? And you know, you look when you're triggered. Maybe somebody swerves into your lane, and let's say that you have a judgment which actually it's not safe at all. It's actually texting and driving is very, very unsafe, and it's actually more unsafe than actually drinking and driving. So but maybe somebody actually swerves in your lane, and you actually get triggered because you think they're texting. Maybe somebody's wasting water and you think well, okay, I've got a judgment about that people shouldn't waste water. When they waste water I get mad. I get angry I get bent out of shape.
One of my coaches for a long time, a transformational coach, her name is Laurie. Laurie was a massive impact, and a massive influence on my life as my coach. And we were talking about triggers one time. And she said that what triggered her husband, he grew up very poor in Brazil. And when their kids at, you know, when their kids would make a mess in the kitchen, she would just go over to the paper towels and you know, pull out a handful of paper towels. You know, kind of wrap them around their hand, and then clean up the mess. Well that triggered her husband because he grew up poor, and literally she said they couldn't even afford paper towels. But so what would happen is when she would wrap a lot of paper towels around her hand, her husband considered that wasteful. And he grew up where you're not supposed to be wasteful. So that was a trigger to him. What about this? Do you get triggered when somebody takes up two parking spaces, and you can't park your car? Or someone littering, or someone being late? That's a big trigger for a lot of people. What about people that are too early, you know, to your house, to your parties, to your events, whatever, is that a trigger for you? Some people for example, get triggered when other people leave the kitchen dirty. And their partner wakes up in the morning, or when your husband leaves his clothes, you know somewhere. Or maybe your wife or your partner, she leaves all of her makeup all over the bathroom. There are all kinds of things that trigger people. And what I want you to understand for the most part, even though I said all earlier, but for the most part, any time that you're triggered, your triggered because you're making a value judgment.
A quick segue way here, off topic, when I say for the most part, let's say that I'm going to use a husband and wife, let's say for example that she leaves her makeup all over the bathroom and and there's stuff everywhere in the mornings, now that could trigger him for a couple of reasons. Because maybe he's very clean and very neat. But another reason which we're not going to go into here, but I want to share if he's predominantly visual, which means he processes the world through his thinking predominantly visual, what he may prefer is an orderly environment. And if the environment is not orderly, than that triggers him. And that's actually more neurological than psychological. But as I've said two times now, for the most part, any time that you are triggered, you are making a value judgment about someone or something. Speaking of judgments, a huge and I mean a huge trigger for a lot of people is that when someone judges them, or someone looks down on them, or when someone is “disrespecting” them. So let me ask you, do you get triggered when somebody actually talks down to you, or they look down on you, or in some way you think they're judging you? Does that trigger you? Ponder that for a moment, consider that. And I'm sure a lot of you listening can probably say oh, yeah, that gets you know that gets me going. Well, what I want you to understand here, and I want you to fully get, is that when people judge you, and you get triggered, what you're doing is you are literally judging them, which you're mad at them for judging you or your triggered, but you're actually doing the same thing right back by being triggered because your triggers as I said for the most part always come from judgments. So when people judge you, and you get triggered, what most people do is they get triggered, and they judge right back about the very thing they don't want to be judged about. I mean that shows you how illogical we are as species and as beings. Pretty humorous.
I want to share a story with you here. And I just I don't remember where I heard the story, but it was about monks in a monastery. And let me ask you this, let me back up here. When let's say you want to boil some potatoes, and you bring them home from the store, what do you do with the potatoes before you boil them? Well, most people that I know of, they wash the potato then they put it in the water and boil the potato. This story about the monks, what they do is they put all of the dirty potatoes, the muddy potatoes, in a big pot, and they let the pot just stir and kind of rotate all the potatoes in the pot. The reason why this is very powerful, the reason why is that when the potatoes rub against each other in the big pot, that creates friction. And the friction actually cleans the potatoes. When potatoes bump into other potatoes, it rubs the dirt off. So this whole podcast is about people triggering you, and this being your greatest opportunity to grow. I want to share a story with you here in my own life. If you've been listening for any amount of time, you know that my brother-in-law is a shaman, and for a lack of better words, I apprenticed with him over the years, and I've done this almost 25 years. He's had upwards of about 30 apprentices. And right now for the past several years, he's had I think 12 or 15 there we go, 15 apprentices. And in the early years, when we were all together, he would literally help us evolve by putting us in situations that would cause a lot of stress and a lot of friction. And then what would happen is a lot of the personalities, and a lot of the egos would come out and personal, you know, people's personal proclivities and judgments and everything else. And we used to travel the world going the power spots. I mean, my family has been inside the Great Pyramid of Cheops for two nights. We have been inside de out de Wakan in Mexico for two nights, doing ceremony on the Spring Equinox, and LuLaRoe in Australia.
And in the early years, you know, when you get a lot of people traveling, there's a whole lot of ego. And a way that he moved us out of the ego was to basically put us like potatoes in a pot, and stir the pot. And what I learned many years ago was that people literally in the world, they mirror us. However, we're showing up in the world, and whatever our emotions are, and if we're getting bent out of shape or getting triggered, that has nothing to do with the people that are doing what they they're doing. It has to do with those people are triggering something in us, which is a reflection of us. That's why I said, you know, the title of this podcast is I don't know what the title is, I forgot what I titled it, but basically is being triggered, and the people that trigger you, they're your greatest blessing. Because they give you the biggest opportunity to grow and evolve yourself. And you know, I think you're getting by this point. When we're triggered, it's always external things that trigger us. It's always somebody in traffic, or somebody leaving a coffee cup out. Or somebody doing something the “wrong way” or whatever it is. Or somebody posting something on Facebook or Instagram, or blah blah blah. People are triggered by external things. But triggers are not external. They're all completely internal. The Dalai Lama said, and I've read you know, a couple of versions of this. But I've seen my brother-in-law demonstrate this for 25 years. I have never, not one time in 25 years ever seen him angry, frustrated, upset, heated, triggered. I have never seen anything out of him other than peace, love, and silence. I mean just always an internal state of peace. And the Dalai Lama said something along along these lines, “Never let anyone's behavior have your internal peace.”.
Being transparent with you, this has been something that I've been working on for a couple of years now. And I think it's the number one thing that I'm working on in my own growth is to always have a state of internal peace. Because you know, just being transparent with you, I used to be pretty high strong and wound up. And I used to be Type A personality, and I could move to the world very quickly. And when people you know, when people were “doing stupid things” or not moving as fast as I wanted, or whatever it was, that would trigger me. This day and age, I know that I'm not at mastery, but this day and age, it's very easy for me just to let people be who they be, who they are, and let the world be what it is. And where I'm working from is, to let nothing or no one have my internal peace. So let me ask you a couple of questions. Let's say that you take an orange. And you cut it, and you cut it in half, and you squeeze it. What comes out of the orange? Well obviously, orange juice. And let's say you take a lemon. And you cut a lemon in half, and you squeeze it, what comes out of the lemon? Well obviously, lemon juice. When the world squeezes you, what comes out of you is your triggers. Take some time. Let that soak in. When the world triggers you, meaning things outside of you, and when I say that, it's just colloquial, because the world doesn't trigger as we trigger ourselves, but I'm explaining it colloquially so that you can get your mind around it. When the world triggers you, what I want you to look at is what comes out of you. For most of you, and I've been there, what comes out of you is anger. So when you're triggered, what comes out? Does jealousy come out? Does anger, does judgment, does frustration, does fear come out of you? Because just like the orange, when it's squeezed, the orange just comes out. So whatever is in you, you want to know what's in you? Look what happens when you get triggered. Because that is what is in you.
So let's go back here. What if for example, I'm just supposing, what if you operate from a state of internal peace? How would you be in the world then? How would you show up in the world? What would the world be to you? Consider that. Along those lines I want to share something with you that's very simple, but very powerful. And again, I learned this on my path that I'm on, is you can't do anything well without peace of mind. Think about that for a moment. Think back to a time in your past when you didn't have peace of mind. And I mean your mind was just cluttered with all this self talk, and all these stories, and all this jargon. You ever noticed how hard it is to actually act in the world, when you don't have peace of mind. And then I want you to contrast that when there was a time in your life when everything was hunky-dory great, and everything was amazing, and things are just working well, and you're happy, and you had peace of mind. Notice then how easy it is to operate in the world. So when you're not having internal peace because you're letting the world trigger you, what I want you to get is that it's so much harder for you to operate in the world when you're letting the world constantly trigger you because you have no peace, internal peace, peace of mind. And when you have no peace of mind, life becomes a lot more difficult.
Also, as I mentioned when I started this episode, people don't think about it this way. But have you ever fully recognized how actually mega stressful it is to be triggered. If you could take a third party position, a meta position, and look at yourself when you get triggered, what happens in your body? What happens with your blood pressure? What happens with your state of mind? What happens with your focus? For most people when they get triggered, it's like the wheels come off. I mean, they just completely come unglued and you even see people saying, oh my gosh, I forgot what I was doing, or I lost my place, or oh jeez, I can't focus. I can't concentrate now. All because of a trigger. So you, think about your emotional state when you're triggered. Is it peaceful? Or is it as I said just a couple of seconds ago, isn't like the wheels have all fallen off and you run off in the ditch? So let's start in the simple place. What I want to ask you right now, because we can't you know, I tell people all the time, and my coaching programs are so many people want to tackle so much at once. And you know, you've heard the old phrase that “Rome wasn't built in a day.” And even as I'm saying that, i wonder if that phrase triggered anybody. Rome wasn't built in a day, but let's work from there. And what is one thing that you know you've got experience that always triggers you, and what if you gave that trigger up because you recognize you're making a judgment. And let me go back here and recapitulate, even though I think it's pretty obvious. What's funny is if you're like 99.999% of people, you don't like to be judged. But yet the interesting thing is that you don't like to be judged, but when you're triggered, you're judging other people. So you're doing to them exactly what you do not want done to you. But what if this what if you could take one trigger only and you could say, you know what, going forward I'm going to have internal peace about this. I am going to let it go. How do you suppose your life might be different? If you operate it from that place as opposed to the place you used to operate before you listen to this episode.
Let me give you another example here to concretize this. Many years ago out of college, I waited tables at some very nice restaurants. And I waited tables at the Ritz Carlton, which I don't know if you know anything about hospitality, but the Ritz Carlton for the most part sets the world's standard for excellence in hospitality. I mean, it's just generally a world-class experience to dine or to stay at the Ritz Carlton. So where I learned to work from back at that time, was I learned to deliver extraordinary. I mean flawless, very expensive dinners and meals, and Flawless service. And I recognized that I came to hold a lot of people in the world of that same standard other companies and places that I've been to. And you know, we all buy things all day long, and dine out, and everything else. And I recognized also that it was a great source of stress for me. Why? Because I was expecting I was holding the rest of the world to my judgment and my standards about what extraordinary customer service is. And the reality, I was talking to a friend of mine today, and I did not apologize for making this comment. A good friend of mine, I've known for a lot of years, we were talking about how we both fly first class all the time on American, and how crappy for the most part. And American CEO, hopefully you will hear this, how crappy First Class is an American. Basically, you pay a lot more money, you get a bigger seat. But overall service is crap in First Class in American.
Now, years ago that would have triggered me like to know in like, oh my God, I can't believe they did this! And you know, I'm gonna just segue way here for a second. My last American Airlines flight first class, I was flying back from Phoenix to Dallas. Now in first class, you're supposed to get served. You know, what happened is the entire coach got served all their drinks in coach, before I ever even got a drink in first class. And in the past, I would have completely come unglued about that. And now I'm like, you know, it is what it is. What are you going to do it? And why am I going to get riled up about this? You know, so there's no reason to get riled about it. But obviously as you can see here, my trigger used to be bad service. So look at something that triggers you, and recognize that you know what, you can let this trigger go because it's you just simply making a judgment about something. Let the trigger go, and when you do that, and you put conscious effort and attention into that, you're going to be surprised at how easy it is to let things go. And then secondly, you're going to be surprised that you have a lot less stress in your life, because I guarantee you, most of you, go through your days being triggered at least a dozen times, and you're not even recognizing you're not calling it being triggered but it's happening all day long. And when you start letting go of that, when you start letting go of that, life becomes so much easier to move through.
So, one more thing I want to add here is that we're not perfect. You know what, you take this out, you start using it like right now because you can start using it right now. You start using this, there are going to be times, because see, being triggered is not conscious as completely unconscious. They're going to be times that you know, what you're going to drop the ball. You're going to actually forget that you want internal peace all the time. And you're going to you know, perhaps be triggered. That means nothing. Simply just you know, mentally reset and recognize that the next time that happens, that you're going to maintain your state of internal peace. So your transformational takeaway, let's keep it really simple. And let's listen to the Dalai Lama. And that is, “let no one's behavior steal your internal peace.” Notice also, I want you to notice the past two hours before you listened to this podcast, how many times did somebody steal your internal peace? We're you driving somewhere and somebody cut you off? Were you talking to, which this used to be my piece so many years ago, were you listening to an automated system, like an airline system and they'll say, “tell me your flight number.” And you'll say flight 2704. And then the voice will say which is automated, “I didn't get that. Can you please repeat it?” And you're like, yeah 2804. And the voice comes back, “I'm sorry. I didn't get that.” You've all been there, right? Well, I want you to notice the past two hours prior to listening to this. What has actually robbed you of your internal peace? So the takeaway again is let no one's behavior, automated or human, steal your internal peace.
Okay, the next episode, next Monday is a Q&A episode, and it's from Jennifer. And Jennifer's question is, “can I ever fully overcome my negative thoughts even if I've been believing them for 40 years?” Well, I'm going to share Jennifer on that episode and with you, what Jennifer's doing here is that she's actually, she's associating and qualifying her negative thoughts and giving them more power by associating them to 40 years. Thoughts are simply thoughts. So if you want to hear my answer about Jennifer having many years of negative thoughts, and how to overcome that, make sure that you listen to Monday's episode. Okay. Thanks for listening and do what you can to make it a great day today. And you know what, keep the peace. Take care. I'll talk to you later. 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.