Intro

You're listening to Episode number 26 of the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This episode is a Q&A episode, and I'm going to answer the vexed question. And that question is, “What do I do when I don't feel good enough?” Now the truth is, pretty much every single person listening to this podcast feels that same way at some point in their life. 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 have 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, and 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.

Living Your Karma Means Different Life Lessons

Yeah. So we're talking about not feeling good enough. And I did say that pretty much everyone at some point in her life has probably felt that way. You know, I've got to admit, I mean there have been times in my life that I've not felt good enough, and I've compared myself to other people. But it's really been a long time since that has happened, and I'm going to try to help you. That's my attempt and this podcast is to help you get through, you know, comparing yourself to others. But I tell you, once you stop comparing yourself to other people, oh my gosh, that becomes pure freedom. In this day and age, and obviously I can't tell stones, but I hear it so much for people that come into. They don't leave the program that way, but they come in to the transformational coaching program. And one of the biggest things that people say is, you know what? I'm afraid to be judged, and I don't feel good enough. And I hear it so much that I almost want to scream and pull my hair out because it's just so prevalent in the world. The truth is, this is pretty much your two biggest fears, depending on where you are in life. But for most people, the biggest fears for most people are abandonment. Meaning people are going to reject me, and inadequacy, I'm not good enough. And many people actually carry these fears for a lifetime. My objective here in this entire podcast is that you start being the kind of person. And you start ways to let go of some of that old counterproductive and toxic thinking. 

So let's keep this really simple. Anytime that you say that you're not good enough, that comes from one thing. And that comes from comparison. You know, if you were on a deserted island by yourself and it's all that you knew, I mean, how could you ever compare yourself against anyone else because there'd be no one to compare yourself against. So understand that comparison is the poison that leads to the beliefs and the thoughts that I'm not good enough. And like I said, I used to feel the same way. You know what, it's interesting. I've never really, I mean some people are really, they get into extreme of not being good enough or being rejected. I've never been that person. As a matter of fact, as far as rejection, that's never really been a big deal to me. There's a movie, it's, I don't know, it's 7, 8, 9 or 10 years old, called “As Good as it Gets” with Greg Kinnear, Jack Nicholson and Helen Hunt. And one of the characters, Greg Kinnear says to Jack Nicholson, something along the lines of “One of your greatest skills or your greatest abilities is that you're not afraid to humiliate yourself.” And I can relate to that. I mean, I have never been afraid to put myself out there and I had been shot down plenty of times, and it's just never bothered me for the most part. So I would say “lucky” that that has never bothered me. However, there have been times, and it's been more professional than anything else, there have been times that I haven't felt good enough. And there were times I would say things like, well, you know, I wonder, you know, as my content, as good as theirs or will it be received the same way? And then a stupid fear that I used to get into a lot of years ago was, oh my gosh, what if somebody who's a lot more advanced than I am? What if they see my content and what are they going to think about me? 

Well, this day and age, I don't care. And when you get to that place, like I said, it is freedom. Let me share with you what set me free. This may or may not resonate, but we'll go. If it doesn't resonate, we're going to go to some other places in our time together today. But what set me free is when I heard something many years ago. And for me, because it was my psychological vernacular, my spiritual vernacular, it made instantaneous and immediate sense to me, and I was able to let go of comparison. And when I heard this phrase, everything changed. And the phrase is this, “Never compare yourself to anyone because no two people have the same Karma.” And when I said that, it resonated with my spiritual, you know, my vernacular is because I'm 100%, I'm trying to think about how I want to say this, I'm just going to say believe, but it's not that. I know that we have Karma. I know it till my core working with a shaman for so many years. You know, when I heard that I started thinking, and I'm thinking through my thought process now as I'm sharing this with you. But a question I started, well, I'll just tell you where it started, the question I started asking myself many years ago, but let me tell you where it started. I was in Mexico backpacking back in the 90s and I saw a guy fall out of his wheelchair and he was crawling in the streets literally. And I just watched him for a second. There were, there were a lot of people between, you know, between the two of us, but he was crawling in the streets. And what came to my mind was this question, “I wonder what his Karma is?” And I pondered for a moment and I thought, you know what, that guy's learning lessons that I will never learn in this lifetime. I mean, I'm healthy, I can walk. And I live in the United States, I have money, and all these things that I started thinking about. And I said to myself, and I didn't feel sorry for the guy. I said to myself, you know what? As I just mentioned, this guy is learning lessons, life lessons, that I will never have the opportunity to learn this lifetime. And that was a big Aha for me. And then on the flip side, I look at Oprah and I asked myself, “what is her Karma?” Because she's living in life. I mean my life's not even comparable in terms of physical wealth or notoriety. And candidly, I don't want to be famous. It's not something that's important to me. 

But you know what? The guy in the wheelchair is living his Karma. Oprah is living her Karma, I'm living my Karma, and you are living your Karma. So if we're all living our Karma, which means we have different life lessons, and we're here to evolve and grow, then how can we possibly in any way compare ourself to someone else, when we don't even know what their Karma is? So hopefully, you're starting to understand that when you compare yourself to other people, that is a ridiculous, ridiculous notion because you don't know what their Karma is. Therefore, there's nothing to compare to. You know, another question is, “How can you, any sane person, reasonable person, how can you even presume that you can compare the totality of you, that cosmic totality of you to the totality of someone else?” And you know, when I say it that way, maybe, maybe it even becomes even more ridiculous to you that you've been going on in your life, comparing yourself to other people. And people get into really, I mean, and I'm not calling anyone stupid, I'm using this for a fact, but they get in the really stupid comparisons. I remember many years ago, a friend of mine, she was very materialistic. And we were in a nice restaurant having dinner. And there was a party, it was a lot, a lot of years ago, but there was a party or a banquet or something. And she looked at me, and she says, “You know what, her diamond ring is bigger than mine, but I have a Rolex and she doesn't.” I don't even know what to say. So, you know, we compare with all kinds of things in life. And you know, when we compare, that leads to even further inadequacy because it puts us for a lifetime, a lifetime of not being good enough and being unhappy, which that in itself is a cycle. And you know, we spiral psychologically for a lifetime of not feeling good enough. And the more you don't feel good, you know good about yourself, the more you're not gonna feel good about yourself. 

And you know, I think you know this analytically, we've all heard it before, but, and I'm going to use a different phrase here, but you've heard the phrase before, that there's always something that you know, someone better than you. or someone better off than you, and someone worse than you, and someone worse off than you. You know, the way that I want to put it is that there's always someone ahead of you, and there's always someone behind you. No matter what your station in life is, there's always someone that farther ahead of you, and farther behind you. We get into a lot of illusions. Also, when I lived in New York City, I did have celebrity clients. I mean, there was one time that I had three cast members at the same time of Saturday Night Live. And I've had, you know, an academy award winner. And I've had different, you know, movie stars and TV stars and things of this nature. And so many times, people look at their lives and they're like, oh my gosh, what a glamorous life that person lives. And I remember a client of mine, he came to me, and I'm not going to go too deeply into this story, but a very handsome man, he still is a movie star, a very handsome, he was in the movie since he was very young. And the irony, the interesting thing here is, he came to me initially for smoking cessation when I was a hypnotherapist. And he called me one day after about a month after I worked with in the first time. And he said, “Jim, I have to see you today.” And I'm like, “Well, you know, can we do it Monday?” And he's like, “No, I have to go back to LA, I'm starting a new movie. I have to see you today.” And this was on a Friday afternoon, and I'm like, “Fine, you know what, come into the office later today.” And he goes, “Can I come in after work? Can I come in like five o'clock?” And I'm like, “Sure, that's fine.” And he said to me, “I need some help. I'm a really bad alcoholic.” And he said, “I called you this morning when I woke up. He goes, “I got home last night from a party and I wasn't drunk enough. So I went to a party that my agent told me about, I'd drink til 6:00 AM and then I went home in a stupor and I passed out. And the first thing that I did was call you.”. 

The gist of this whole story was, is I ask him when he had his first drink. And he was already a movie star by this point. As a matter of fact, his first movie was an Academy Award nominated movie. And he was one of the stars. And here's the kicker, he's handsome, he's famous, he's a movie star, all this stuff. And he says, the very first drink that I ever took, everyone else around me is drinking. And I started drinking because I wanted people to like me. And then interesting, I mean the guy's a movie star, and he's drinking because he wants people to like him. So, you know, I don't want to go too far off track here, but wanting to be liked by people and wanting approval of other people is literally just toxicity. You know, I think here, what if he had never really had that need for approval? We, you know, where would he have been or you know, when he called me, where would he have been in terms of his behavior? And you know, has consumption and addiction and everything else, had he not had that need to be approved of by other people. You know, something else I've noticed is that when we compare ourselves to other people, and you may see this in yourself, have you noticed that? For the most part, we don't compare down, we compare up. So if we're doing okay, we're looking for people that are doing better than us and comparing to them. But rarely ever do we compare down. And that, you know, we have more than other people. And rarely do we, you know, compare down and have gratitude for that. Nine times out of 10 we compare up, and then we feel inferior. 

Something else that people do, and most people don't recognize this, is because people live all these illusions. Because most people, and I do mean most, most people spend 99% of their time doing one thing or the other. They spend 99% of their time trying to look good or trying not to look bad in front of other people. So, you know, all this stuff, I get a kick out of it and I'm not, and I don't think I'm judging. I mean, to me it's kind of like, it is what it is. But you know, all these things that people post on Facebook and Instagram and Social Media, you know what, most people don't post there bad stuff. They post their good stuff, they post things that are going to make them look good in front of other people. So what most of us do is we compare the worst than us to the best in others of what they're posting. And then many times we say, well, you know what? Oh my gosh, look how good they have it. I don't have it like that. And we're comparing to an illusion. You know, something else that I read and I personally, I don't use Facebook for personal stuff anymore. I use it for my transformational coaching programs. We have communities and we have groups. And I use it for all of my coaching programs. But I don't use, you know, traditional social media. Facebook, well, the reason for me is just a waste of time. It's just to me it's just a bunch of mumbo jumbo and people, here's my sandwich, I had lunch today, and I'm going downtown, and I'll let me come in here and dump and vent, and you know, a pity party, and let me get people to feel sorry for him in, and all this kind of stuff. Or to me it's a name, you know, completely useless and banal, motivational quotes that people just scan over anyway. 

But I read one meme, and this one meme was priceless on Facebook. And the meme was, “you're being judged by people who don't even have their own stuff together.” And I'm going to tell you, being a hypnotherapist for many years, of course it was a couple of decades ago, people would tell me everything. And you know, you would look at people that are the most well put together people. Oh, but what they don't tell you is that their wife's an alcoholic, or their kids are on drugs, or one of their kids, you know, got caught stealing, or one of their kids flunk out of Harvard, or they themselves were on drugs or overdrinking, or gambling, or pornography, or escorts, or extra marital affairs, I mean, I've heard it all. But again, what people do because of social situations, and social status as they put their best face out to the public. But behind the scenes, sometimes it's just really a hot mess, you know? And, this is what I know about me. There are other people that can do things better than I can do. And I can do things better than a lot of other people. I don't compare anymore. I just don't. And the reason why is because whatever I do, and however I'm doing it, I'm exactly where I need to be at this point on my path. And the people that I need to work with, will find me wherever I am. A lot of people that are new to online marketing or coaching, or training, or anything like that, they're afraid to put themselves out there, and multilevel marketing, are afraid to put themselves out there. And the reality is what I tell people, wherever you are right now, and let's say you're a health coach, but you're new to it, wherever you are, by the way, we live in a country with an 81% of the population's overweight here in the US. Wherever you are, there are people seeking you because there are people behind you. So just put yourself out there. Stop comparing stuff. Put yourself out there with the intention to help. And by the way, I just had a, a verbal flub there. Comparising, that's a word that I just made up. 

You know, so many people spend time in perfection as well, which I've touched on. And the reason that I leave when I call warts, you know, warts and all, I leave the verbal flubs and tripping over my words and everything else, is people don't like perfect people. And you know, people want real people. And if you're trying to be perfect, guess what? You're actually probably turning part of your audience away because look at you. I mean, you pretty much don't have a strong appreciation for perfect people. And there's been a lot of research on this. That's why marketing, what's it called here? I'm an admission of an error. And this is why in marketing, a lot of times people will say, I want to get something off my chest, which is obviously something that doesn't reflect well on them, which makes them look like a “normal person.”. You know, even JFK back in 1960, when he's running for the presidency, a challenge that JFK had is that he was two hands somebody looked too perfect. Now of course, it helped him that Nixon was sweating profusely in the Nixon-Kennedy debates. But a lot of people didn't trust Kennedy because he looked too perfect and too well put together. So just an ancillary takeaway is people don't like perfect people, just be you. So as I was saying, you know, I know that there are other people that can do things better than I can. But you know what, there's no one, and I know this, there is no one pretty much anywhere in the world that has my background. 25 years of high level NLP training. Also being a hypnotherapist, being a stage speaker for many years, and specifically apprenticing with a very, very powerful shaman who has a year long, weighty list, less than people come from all over the world to see him. My brother in law, no one puts a twist on things that I do. I don't know when you're going to be listening to this podcast, whether it's, you know, this week in June of 2019 or three years from now, but this podcast has grown from nothing in a few months to over 100,000 downloads. And the reason that that has happened is because I bring the unique me here, and I look back at the old me, how I used to compare myself to other people and wow, how much and you know, how many years did I lose helping people because as too damn busy comparing myself to other people. 

So you know what, when I'm me, and I am just me, everything works well. And the same thing applies to you. You know, so I had mentioned my brother in law, the Shaman, and I do, I'm pretty much in every episode. And somebody wants Rodin, and I appreciate the feedback, and she said, “well, you know, how come you don't own as yours a lot of what you've learned?” Well, guess what, I do own a lot of what I've come to know over the years. However, I want to give credit to where credit's due because I would not be doing at the level that I'm doing what I do without my apprenticeship of the shaman. Now I'd mentioned before shamans were, they were the medicine men in native American tribes. My brother in law is beyond a shaman, and he's a babalow, and he's also a sorcerer. I'm like merlin, and a lot of people think like stuff like that doesn't exist. Don't care, go educate yourself. There are things in the world that do exist, that most people have no idea about. And when I say don't care, I don't mean that arrogantly, but I'm also demonstrating I can't please everyone. And you know, it's so easy for people to be skeptics in the world, especially this day and age without actually exploring life and learning and growing. But one time, we were talking and my brother in law said to me, he says, “you know, I am a shaman, I am a sorcerer, I am a new wall. And he said to me, he said, “some people think that I'm evil. And some people think that I'm the work of the devil.” And he goes, “On the flip side, some people think that I am a spiritual master, but you know what? It doesn't matter what other people think, because I am what I am.” And the same thing with you. You are what you are. I also want to point out their caveat. My brother-in-law only works in the light. He only works for healing. He works to help people grow and evolve spiritually. And he helps people heal energetically. Not faith healing, but energetic healing. We are all energy beings. 

So I've learned long ago is that I don't compare myself to anyone for anything about anything, because quite literally it is a waste of time, and it is a waste of my life. And you know, I'd never thought about it until I was putting this episode together. And thinking through it is I wonder seriously, I wonder if other people compare themselves to me and if anyone does, please stop. You know, just be you. I'm a little reticent to say what is I'm going to say, but he's a very, very big speaker now. And I was at an event when he was, maybe he wasn't just starting out, but he was kind of new. And now he's very, very, very big. And the whole time he was trying to be Tony Robbins and I mean, everything about it was Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins. And my NLP coach who has taught NLP now for 30 years, she was with me and she said, “You know what? She goes, he is so busy trying to be Tony Robbins that he's a second…” okay, how did she say this? “He's so busy being kind to be Tony Robbins that he's a second rate him as opposed to being a first rate him.” And hopefully by me telling you that that will resonate in some way with some of you guys. Okay, so I have some questions for you. You know, I ask a lot of questions and there are thought provoking questions or questions to get you to think. But a question is this, when will you know you are good enough? Here's the thing, you will never be good enough ever, if you compare yourself to other people. Because as I said earlier, and as you already know, there's already people ahead of you, and people behind you. And if you persist, if you persist in playing the comparison game, you will spend your lifetime never being good enough. So the question that I started with is, when will you be good enough? You're good enough, now. 

Many years ago, I hired a branding expert, and this is when I was only doing hypnotherapy, and I was moving into platform speaking. And she said to me, this changed the game for me, she said, “You're an expert at what you do.” And I said, “how am I an expert at what I do?” And she said, “Easy, because you can do it.” And she said, “Most people can't do what you do. Therefore that makes you an expert.” So I just gave you that little tidbit because that might, that might apply to some of you listening, some of you think that you're not good enough. You know what, if you can do it, and you can do it well in what you can do, you can do better than 95% of the population. So maybe that'll help you actually stop playing the comparison game. Another question is, how good do you have to be? And here's the reality. As I'd mentioned earlier, wherever you are right now, you are good enough to help people. You know, so many people have these illusions that they have to have a certain level of being good enough. And that's absolutely ridiculous because I look at, when I did my first NLP seminar back in 1995 or so, you know what I mean? I was a novice. I mean, I knew more than most people about NLP because you know, I had studied that quite a bit. I mean formally and going through a lot of training for the course of a year and working at an NLP Institute. But you know what? I look at my skills now compared to my skills, you know, then, and Oh my God, I was a fledgling back then. But in that moment, the first seminar that I did, I think 1,920 people in it, charged them 100 bucks each for a full day training. 

But you know what? I was good enough then. And my life has always been a journey of I'm good enough to exactly where I am, because tomorrow I'm going to learn more. And that's exactly where I'm going to be. And the next day, I'm going to learn more, and that's where I'm going to be. And I'm always good enough as I am. Another question for you is, who are you comparing yourself to? And I think I covered that a little earlier, and that I'm going to tell you this. I know because I coach a lot of people, and I coach a lot of high level people, is that the people who appear to be on the outside are not always who they are on the inside. And they might appear confident, but inside there is shaking bag of bones, or they're drinking too much, or they're doing this or that, or they're not walking their talk. So you know, stop comparing because you don't know how they're living behind the scenes. So I think you're getting by now, that comparing yourself is a literal waste of time. I recently had in my transformational coaching program, and by the way, I'll probably start just referring to it as by the acronym TCP, Transformational Coaching Program. And this woman was afraid to put herself out. Very smart woman and very afraid to put herself out there because of her height. And I think she said she was 4'11. And when you look at a guy you can Google him. I don't know how to spell his last name, but his name is Nick Vujicic. I did have dinner with him many, many years ago because his manager used to live in Dallas. I think his last name is V-U-I-J-E-C, he's Australian, no arms and legs. And what is he? All of two feet tall, 2'5” tall. And you know what? He moves millions of people and he doesn't get into, well I'm not tall enough to help people. So obviously with that example, she's 4'11, he's 2 feet, you know, 2'5″ tall. She's not moving anyone or wasn't at that point. Now he's moving millions, and he's half of her height. What is she doing? She's comparing and she's evaluating. 

You know, speaking of, you know, being sure just to use it as an example, look at Mother Theresa. I mean, what was she, 4'8″ or something like that. What if Mother Teresa said, you know what, I compare myself to taller people and you know what, I'm just too short to help people. And then you look at, you know, when I used to live in New York City.  Well, I read this also that Richard Nixon wanted to move into a particular years ago, obviously. He wanted to move into a co-op and they wouldn't let him in because the board voted, they didn't want Richard Nixon in their building. Well, guess what? Talk about abandonment. Richard Nixon, the former president of the United States got rejected. I used to live on the upper west side, and a lot of celebrities live on the upper west side. I mean, it's no big deal to walk in the park and see Steven Spielberg or people like that. I mean, I've done a lot of us that have lived in the city and I've seen that. But I read where Madonna wanted it in a particular building. And they coop rejected her because they didn't want any kind of Paparazzi, or any of that kind of stuff at the front door. And the same thing happened in Jerry Seinfeld. So, you know, look at this. These are people that are, and these are famous and rich people that are also rejected and abandoned. So you know, if they're going to get rejected, obviously, you also are not going to be accepted by everyone, and you're going to be rejected. So I'm going to use this word for effect, but it is a stupid waste of time. And again, I'm not saying you're stupid because I've been there. It is a stupid waste of your time and life to get into comparison about how good am I, or how good are my skills are, how good is my life compared to other people? Just be exactly where you are right now because that's exactly where you need to be and work from contribution, because there are people looking for you right now. Because no matter where you are, you can help someone. Okay? 

So your transformational takeaway from this episode is, no two people have the same Karma, and that makes comparison. Foolish. Okay, next episode. I want a balance of episodes from the more esoteric to the more psychological, to the more ancient wisdom to even practical application, and perhaps a business life. But I saw last week on Facebook I didn't comment, but I just saw where somebody said, “Well, you make money based upon the value that you create in the world.” And I did create an episode here, and it's about a law of attraction, and how much people use it to repel money. And I had this kid, basically what I said was his money comes from the universe. Money comes from your vibration and your frequency. And those come from how you feel when you're not going to be rich until you feel rich. Now, this kid was 21 years old because I went to look him up and basically he told me, he said, “You know what? I couldn't get through the whole episode because I don't believe it. Money in life comes from value.” And I said, “Okay, that's not true, but okay.” And that was the end of that. And he emailed me a few days later and said, “You know what? I started reading some other stuff and I think you might be right.”. The next episode is this cultural myth. That money comes from value, and the more value you create in the world, the more money you're going to make. Value can make money, but value in and out of itself does not make people money. So in the next episode I'm going to dispel the cultural myth that value equals money. Okay? Thanks for listening, and I will catch you over on the next episode. Make it a great day to day. 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 at Jim dot 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 I am gym for 10 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.