Intro

You're listening to episode number 34 of the transform your life from the inside out podcast. This episode is a Q and A episode and I'm going to answer Rocco's question. Rocco's question is this, how can you commit to your goal if you don't know what your goal is in the first place? Now, many of you listening can probably relate to that because you have a really hard time actually articulating what your vision is or what it is that you want to create. If that pertains to you, 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. 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.

Go After What You Want, Not What You Think You Can Have

So Rocco's question, how can you commit to your goal if you don't know what your goal is in the first place? Rocco's sent me a really long and really detailed question, but it all boiled down to this one question and this is actually how he started his series of questions. So we're going to keep this really simple. Most times it's not that people don't know what they want, which is what Rocco has said, and you yourself, you might be thinking, well, you know what? I really want to create something. I want to grow, I want to make more money, but you know what? I don't know what I want. Well, that's simply what Rocco was saying as well, is that he doesn't know what the goal is in the first place. Here's the thing, everyone knows, you know, Rocco knows, everyone knows what they want and desire. 

So it's not a matter of not knowing what your goals are or what you want to create. It's not that at all because we all know it's that we believe that we can not have that. So we have all these grand visions of things we want to create in the big goals. Yet we also many times have a belief that, you know what, I, I just don't know how I'm going to get there or that's not for me or I can't have that. So obviously for any of us, it's not a matter of knowing what the goal or the vision or the outcome is. It's a matter of believing and working from, can we have that thing? Now, in one of the recent podcasts, I said that you don't necessarily need to believe in yourself. A little bit of a here between believing in yourself and then believing in a particular outcome. And what I mean by that is where I work from personally is it doesn't matter that I believe or not believe how good my skills are. Where I work from is just let me do what I do. Let me help as many people. And whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen. And what happens is the outcome happens inadvertently. So I just wanted to draw that simple distinction. So the big mistake that a lot of people make and what I'm going to cover in this podcast, I've been there as well. So you know what, like I say, pretty much every podcast, I'm not tossing any stones, is that most people work from resignation instead of possibility. Most of us even know we actually want and desire. We resign ourselves to the thought that even though that I want that thing, I'm resigned in that I just don't know how to get it. 

It's just not in me. I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough. I'm not the kind of person to have something like that. Another big mistake that a lot of people make and I had been here as well, is that most people actually think reasonably now. What I mean by that is that we don't ever really, this is brain based by the way which I'll cover in just a bed or partly brain-based reptilian brain to be specific is that we're most of us operate from and you know what I want? You know a jet. I Want Mansions, I want to explode my business, I want to impact a million people, but let me be reasonable and if I'm reasonable, reasonable about it, then you know what? I just don't know how I'm going to make that happen. What do we also do? And I'm going to come back to that in a moment. What we also do is that many of us have been conditioned to work from circumstance, and I know I've said this before and I'll say it again because it's life changing. When we get it. Any time that you say, I don't have enough time, I don't have enough energy and I don't have enough money. And that moment you're working from circumstance and when you work from circumstance, you repeat your circumstances. To give you an example of that, as you may or may not know for for many years I've been dealing, you know, I've been out, you know, doing what I do for 25 years, but for 20 years of that I predominantly taught subconscious persuasion and influence. And I worked predominantly with selling professionals. And candidly, I've worked with some of the highest producing selling professionals in the world. I mean at some companies and some industries I've, you know, I've coached number one person at the company, but here's what I see a lot of, and especially low producers and this is the reason they're lower producers. 

I've seen many selling professionals just over and over and over again. I see it. I used to see all the time where people would say, you know what, Jim, I really want to increase my sales. I want to make more money, but I can't afford to go into your training and coaching programs. Well, in that moment, that person is literally working from circumstance. Then the very next year they make the same amount of money or less. Plus they lose the opportunity cost of all the money that they didn't make because they didn't sharpen their skills. And you know, I'm going to be candid, I've been there myself and I'm going to slow down here and say it again. I really want you to, to really absorb this is that when we worked from circumstance, not enough time, not enough energy and not enough money, we repeat circumstance. But here's something that a lot of people never look at it. They never step back and say, you know what? I am getting into self deception because that's literally what you're doing. Most people, and I guys want to use the words, you know, like most and many, I'm pretty cautious about using those words. As you already know, I've done this for a lot of years. I mean I, I've taught all over the world traveling and, and to all kinds of people. I mean all the way from royalty quite literally and Europe too. I mean the top producing cells, people at like the largest real estate company in the United States, I've coached their number one actually certain sell kind of selling position multiple times and I just see it over and over and over again is that people will say they want to create something different but they will do nothing different. 

They will be nothing different but yet they have this self deception that in some way like somebody who's going to wave a magic wand, Abracadabra and boom, things are going to change. That is self deception and it's also irresponsible because the success you have in life or what you don't have is because you have not been responsible for creating it or you have been irresponsible in creating it. Okay. Next thing I want to talk about is, which I just opened up a little earlier, is reasonable. We are parents for many of us and minded. My parents actually, my father in particular had really poor money, prosperity consciousness. And anytime that I would, even when I wanted to go to college and there was a recession in the early eighties even when I wanted to go to college and I went, I did go to college and I, you know, graduated two degrees, four years, private school, very good school. My father said to me, he says, you know what? You have to realize son, that it's a really depressed economy right now, which was the early eighties. I went to college from 83 to 87 and he says, you know what? You need to be more reasonable and realistic about where you want to go to college. Which by the way, he never gave me a penny for college anyway, but that's where he thought from and I was conditioned that way. My entire life has to be reasonable. Now, let me show you. And by the way, people who change the world, they're not reasonable at all. I mean, look, I mean, I don't know what device you're listening to this on, but for example, do you think that, Steve Jobs was reasonable? Do you think the Wright brothers were reasonable? Do you think Bill Gates was reasonable? But that's what we're taught to work from. 

And then what I see in sales is, here's the thinking. I'm gonna kind of just mimic the thinking of most selling professionals. Most people will say, you know what? Hmm, okay, I made 125,000 last year. Now if I made 125 I can make one 40 this year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. That's a good idea. That sounds good.140 and then they actually probably don't hit 140 they will hit like 138 or something like that. The very next year they'll say, you know what? I made 138 this year. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I can make 150 next year. And they inch up and they stairstep step by step by step. Where are these people are working from? Number one is they're actually not working from possibility. They're working from resignation. And here's something that you might not have heard people say before. They are also working and they are living from their past. Anytime that you say, you know what, last year I made x, Y, Z, this year I can make x, y, z. Plus you were in that moment working from your past and when you work from your past you stay trapped in your past. Also about possibility. You know a metaphor that I use also is if you've ever been, for example to the four seasons, it's a, it's a hotel, a restaurant, very, very, I think it's four star and many times when I lived in, well parts of Dallas we would go for lunch, business, lunch, 75 bucks a head. This buffet had anything you wanted for the most part, from king crab legs to lobster to just about everything and that's why it was 75 bucks a head. And the way that most people live their lives is I metaphorically say, hey, let's go to the four seasons for lunch. 

You know what? This is an amazing buffet. You can have anything that you want and you know, I'll say, well, you know, go to the buffet and load up your plate. Most people, most people come back and they have a bologna sandwich on their plate. And I've been there as well because I was conditioned that way from my father. I'm not that way anymore. I mean I'm coming back with the king crab legs this day and age and whatever else over there looks really tasty and expensive. But that's the way that most people live is it live from circumstance. They live from their past and they live from rationality. And when you live from those places, you know as you're hearing me say this and you're probably starting to apply this to your own thinking about how you've been living in your past, this is why you're stuck. This is why you want to make, you know, $1 million or 200,000 or whatever it is. And you just quite never seem to get there because you're working from one of those places. So let me ask you a question. I want you to really ponder this question. When I say I want, I request and you can do what you want yet I request that you really get serious and you take your time and you get in depth and you get introspective with this question. But the question is this, what if there were no rules? Literally, what if there were no rules in life? What happens in is that life becomes a hundred percent possible. Whatever you want becomes 100% possible, but where most of us live from is, oh my gosh, I've got rule number one, rule number two, rule number three, rule number 47 rule number 83 and in truth, if you really get silent with this and you just sit with it and you finally get that Aha where you actually no longer just think it and you understand it, but you know it, there are no rules. 

You know, it just popped in my mind quite literally to actually share this story with you. I didn't even when I was thinking about this podcast, didn't even enter my mind til just right now. Many years ago. I was about 15 years ago. I had a student and he, his name is Terry Terry Hitchcock. You can Google him now. I've not seen Terry in a lot of years, and it was a student for a different program. When Terry was 57 years old. He said, you know what? I'm going to run 75 consecutive marathons. Now think about that for a second, 75 consecutive marathons. What that means obviously is four seven let me, let me, let me just go a little further. 75 daily consecutive marathons for 75 days. He ran 25 plus miles per day. He quite literally ran from Minneapolis, Minnesota to Atlanta, Georgia to the opening ceremony of the Olympics. Now he did this for a lot of personal reasons and things that were going on in those life. Now, part of his story also, and I believe there is a movie about it called “My  Run” and I think “Billy Bob Thornton” or whatever his name is as the guy who narrates or moderates the movie, but here's the thing. Terry did not train. As crazy as that is, he did not train for one marathon. He trained for none. He had a heart attack three weeks prior and obviously everyone was telling him, are you crazy? You just got him to the hospital. Yeah, I had a heart attack. You haven't trained for this and you're gonna run one marathon. I mean 75 I mean 75 days in a row. And he did it and he did it because there are no rules. And that applies to anything in your life when it comes to creation. 

I don't care where you are, I don't care who you are. I don't care how you grew up, you grew up there on the rules. So when I go back up and I'm looking at Rocco's question is when you look at it from that perspective, like, I don't even know what I want. Well you know what? You can have the king crab legs. You can have any thing that you want if you're willing to invest and exchange the energy for it. You know, and talking about being reasonable, I remember one of my coaches, a transformation coach and he's, I would say significantly responsible for the life that I have today and the way that I'm living because of his mentorship. But he said one time to me, and he actually was a very affable guy and he said this in a joking way, but a serious way. He said, you know what? He goes talking about reasonableness. He goes, reasonable people live reasonable lives and they make reasonable money and they have a reasonable amount of happiness. And when he said that, I'm like, Whoa, oh my gosh, that is true. And so where I think from today is I think from how can I impact the most amount of people without having to be trapped by being reasonable about doing that. I want to share another thought with you that I learned from my brother-in-law, the Shaman. And I do mention him pretty much in every or every second episode. And the reason why is because I have apprentice with him for all these years. I still work with him. And something he said to me was just an Aha moment for me. He says, anytime that you think that something is out of your reach, that's because you're working from your limited structure of the past. 

Consider that anything that you see beyond your reach is because quite literally you're living from the actually limited structure of the conditioning of your past, which doesn't exist anymore and so I thought to myself, well, anything amazing like, like spectacular, anything amazing that I think that I can not have. There's no truth to that whatsoever because there are new rules. That's because I'm working out of my past structures, so I'm telling you and I request and hopefully you hear this, is that if you're working from you can't create something. You can't imagine something, you can't see something, you can't have something. Then where you're living from is the conditioning of your past and I know you've heard me say many times before or perhaps you have in other episodes, is there is no such thing as time. Time is human created. The past does not exist. The future does not exist. Now think about that for a moment. Consider that deeply. The past doesn't exist. When we started this podcast that's already gone and when I finished this podcast, this particular episode, that time is not even here. All you have is right here and now. Now, let me bring that to this podcast is the only place that you can truly create from, which is very powerful, is from right now. You can't create from the past and you can't create from the future. You can only create from now. Let me go back here for a second. Something just popped into my mind is and coaching people as many years as I have, when I start coaching people and I don't do much one-to-one, very, very little one-to-one anymore. When I would ask people, the very first question I would say is what do want, and I'm sure I've been there before, but it's amazing to me the amount of people that can't tell me what they want. 

Just like Rocco, and it's not that they can't tell me what they want because I know you know what you want. It's because what they do first as they get into, well, I think that I want x, y, z, but let me tell you all the ways that I can't have it because of circumstance and resignation and my past conditioning. Therefore it's not reasonable for me to want what it is that I think that I want. Also, I've noticed over the years is when I ask people what they want, the first place that 90% of people go is, you know, the conversation will be like this. I'll say, tell me right now, tell me specifically what you want and where people will most people will go is, well, I don't want to find myself in a situation where I don't have any money or I don't want to find myself in a situation where I have bad health and I'll say to them, we'll, okay, you just told me what you don't want, but tell me what you do want. And when I say that it's like, for example, it's like asking people a puzzling question that they've never heard before. Quite literally because it catches people off guard because we are more conditioned, most of us to think about what we do not want as opposed to thinking about what we do want, which is exactly the place that Rocco's playing from and many of you as well. Let me share something else. Maybe you've heard it. Maybe you haven't. Is that you? You're a creator. We're all creators. Now, if you look at my life right now, I'm sitting in my home in Sedona Arizona, I've got an amazing view right in front of me. I wish you could see the view. I'm sitting out on the back deck and let me ask you, did you purchase this home for me? Did you actually find the home for me? 

Did you send me the MLS listing? No. The answer is no. I manifested and I created the opportunity to live in this home. Wherever you are and you know whatever you have, you are the one that created it. If your life is amazing and always guess what, you created it. If your life is upside down, guess what? You created it. We all of us are born creators. Now here's the thing we are creating every single day, but the biggest mistake that most of us make, and I have been there as well, the biggest mistake that most of us make is that we recreate our days and for example, you know, whatever today is you'll go into tomorrow, which we do many of us and you re you recreate tomorrow exactly like today and you go on to the day after that and you recreate, you know, you create that day exactly like tomorrow and it's just a sequence of recreating, you know, groundhog day over and over and over again. But if you take a step back and you really look at that and you really actually become self responsible and you own it and you own your life, you will find the truth is you're the one who is created every single thing you have in your life. And also we get into deception or victim mentality and say, no, it's not me. It's this person, it's that person. And that's just not true. You are the creator in your life. Let me show you a really simple process here to demonstrate to you that you are your own creator. I want you to think to the first minute of your thoughts this morning when you got out of bed. Now your first thoughts were, you know what? Boom, out of bed headed to the gym. Or you know what? Oh my gosh, I am so tired. I don't want to go to work today. 

I don't feel good. I'm sick. Or you know what? Hey, I want to play golf today. Or, Hey, you know what? I can create a podcast or whatever. I don't know. I mean we're all obviously thinking in the morning, but I want you to notice that the fact that you can think anything you want, the second you open your eyes and see what we think is what we do will actually what we think is what we feel and what we feel determines what we do. And then what we do determines the outcomes that we get. You are the hundred percent creator of your life by actually where you're holding your thinking. So if we go back to Rocco and we actually look at this and we look at as question, even look where his question is coming from, how can you commit to your goal if you don't know what your goal is in the first place. So where as Rocco really working from by asking this question, he's working from predominantly is, I don't even know what I can have and Morocco, I'm filling in the blanks for you here and everyone else that this pertains to is, so if that's the context that he's already thinking from, which means the box so to speak, if that's the box he's already thinking from any possibility thinking that he might have is going to be squelched by the context that he's working from. Let me explain what I mean by that very quickly. I had this client one time, he was a gentleman, 57 years old and he's about 75 pounds overweight. And he said to me, he goes, Jim, no matter what I do, no matter what I do, I cannot lose weight. Well that was his contextual thinking. And so what that meant was is whatever he did wasn't going to work and help him actually release weight because the bigger contextual thinking was is no matter what I do, nothing's going to work. 

Then what people do and him as an example is they diet and they try slimfast and they order things on TV and they hire trainers and they go to acupuncture and they decide to work out again and they fall off track very, very quickly and they use hypnotherapy and they use like 10 different things and then what happens, because the bigger contextual thinking is that no matter what they do, nothing is going to work. What happens is that's an unconscious paradigm and no matter what they do, nothing works. So the contextual is a broken strategy. Okay, somewhere else I want to go here is your reptilian brain. You've heard me talk before about the three predominant or three largest parts of the brain, which is the prefrontal cortex. It's your thinking part of the brain. Listening to me now saying, well, Okay Jim, yeah, this makes sense. Blah, blah blah. You have the the middle brain, which is called the limbic system, which is let's just keep this very simple as the emotional brain and then you have the reptilian brain, which is the smallest part and oldest part of the brain. Now let me share some facts with you is the reptilian brain because people will say, well, the brain doesn't like change. That's not true at all. And are I heard a very, very big speaker say the brain doesn't like change. That is not true. And that's misinformation because your prefrontal cortex thinking part of the brain does want change. That's why you want transformation and change and you want something different in life. It's the reptilian part of the brain, which is the oldest part of the brain, which is also the part of the brain that houses your habits. That part of the brain does not want change. 

And the reason why it's partly a survival mechanism that part of the brain actually values predictability, which I've never read this anywhere, but if I just think through this is predictability is partly hardwired in the brain. And the reason why is that many years ago when we had the run from Saber Tooth Tigers, you know, we're hunters and gatherers and we've got to leave the cave. We wanted a certain amount of predictability that guess what? I'm not going to be eating my tiger and I'm gonna make it back to the cave again. So research has demonstrated with with other mammals as well, is that the brain wants predictability. So what happens is, is when we say, you know what, I want to create x, y, Z in life. Well, many times when we think about things that we want, we want to create x, Y, z. What happens is that takes us out of our comfort zone. And then when we go out of our comfort zone, that's no longer predictable. And then what happens is we get into anxiety, which for most people, anxiety is pain. So we actually moved from pain to pleasure. So therefore we move right back into our comfort zone again, out of anxiety to eliminate the anxiety. So this is one of the ways that your own brain, literally the reptilian part of the brain sabotage is what you think, which is prefrontal cortex. It's sabotage is what you think you want to create because that part of the brain likes predictability and it is survival based. So let me start to wrap this hub up here and tile this together for you. Where you want to start working from is possibility and what's possible. And remember that I said earlier there, there are no rules. I can't tell you the amount of people that I've coached that have come from abject poverty and I don't, I'm not the right word, air quote, I don't want to brag about it. 

I want to stay humble about this. But I have coached movie stars when I lived in New York City and TV stars and very, very successful and very powerful people. And many of these people just like you know the rest of the population. Many of these people have come from, you know, abject poverty or nothing or, or less than stellar conditions they grew up in, but they're working from possibility and not from resignation. So a question for you is to what degree do you live from resignation? And most people do. And like I said, I've been there and resignation is this, you know what? I want x, Y, z. But there's that, but word, but I can't have it because, so we're where we want to start working from. And the question that I have for you, and it seems so simple, but a powerful question that I have for you is what do you want next? What's going to happen is once you start thinking really big, the reptilian part of the brain is going to actually start metaphorically a five alarm fire back there in saying, no, no, no, you can't have that. Because if you want that, then you've got to move out of your comfort zone. And you know what? If you're out of your comfort zone, it's not predictable. If it is not predictable, that's not safe. And if it's not safe, that's painful. Therefore, let's go right back to predictability again, which is what people do. Let me give you another example here. Real life. Everyone can relate to either through personal story, knowing somebody or it's just, it's just cultural. Look at women that are, and by the way, I got accused of being sexist for using this example. So let me just say this, let me, let me phrase it this way, is look at women who are abused. 

Now what I'm going to say, let's not be sexist, is I even had a good friend of mine one time. The guy was six foot two. He was an air force officer, a very, very masculine, very big guy, and his wife used to actually abuse him. I mean, he even told me, he's like, you wouldn't believe the amount of times I've had to stop her from punching me, kicking me, throwing things at me. So I do want to say it goes both directions, but predominantly I think more so a more women are abused in men. But where I'm going with this is if you ever noticed before is that if you might know somebody that's an abusive relationship, she gets out of it and everyone's like, oh my gosh, you know, thank God Susan got out of that relationship. Her life's going to be so much better, et Cetera, et Cetera, et cetera. And before you know it, Susan's right back in a relationship again with somebody who abuses her. The reason why, as crazy as this sounds and research has demonstrated that some very, some very obscure research that I found at the University, Texas, done back in the 70s is that if a woman is abused and she leaves as a relationship, you know what? Now she actually can't predict what's going to happen. And many times she will go back into a relationship where she's abused, even know that's not healthy because she can predict what's going to happen to some degree in the relationship. And as I said earlier, they've done research with animals as well with with monkeys doing stuff like this, we want predictability and that's one of the reasons people won't reach for things they really, really want is because they can't predict what's going to happen and because they can't predict that's pain. 

So for Rocco and everyone listening, the question was again, how can you commit to your goal if you don't know what your goal is in the first place? Rocko actually has the cart before the horse is that commitment doesn't even come to the inquiry into the equation when you don't even know what you want. You have to start there to even know what you're committing to. But most people don't even start there. So asking how you stay committed to something that you don't even know that you want is completely an empty question. You're Transformational Takeaway. And before I tell you the Transformational Takeaway and the next episode after this, I want to thank you seriously. I get a lot of messages on Instagram and Facebook from people all over the world that listened to the Podcast. And honestly from the heart, it is a true blessing for me to be able to do this. This is my Dharma. This is what I do. And many people tell me thank you and thank you for the notes by the way. I appreciate them, but I think it's reversed. I want to thank you for allowing me to live my Dharma and to do what I'm on the planet to do. So it's one of the say that because it just popped in my mind and I'm just thinking about that earlier today. Okay? So your Transformational Takeaway is this. Ah, Big Sigh. What do you want? Not what do you think you can have, but what do you want? Now, I don't know what you're doing right now. Maybe you're in the car, maybe you're in the hot tub, I don't know. Maybe you're at the gym, but take some time and get intimate with this question. And I want you to notice something I want. 

Because see, most people don't even know how to dream anymore because he dreamings not reasonable air quote. Why? Because we're not like that. Other people can't have that. And I want to actually wrap this up, but that's a whole different topic is when I do coaching and especially my group coaching program, is that most people don't even know how to dream because they've already ruled out what it is that they might want or their dreams because it's not reasonable and it's not rational or it takes them out of their comfort zone and puts them into fear. So the question to get intimate with again is what do you want? Okay. The next episode coming up is one that my heart is very much in and it's going to correlate to, I believe the last episode of James Wedmore on AYNI,A-Y-N-I which is INCAN for the Ancient Reciprocity of Life. This is the law of life. What you put out with an open heart is what you get back, and I'm going to just be transparent, as I say, is I used to be very stingy with what I'd put out and I don't, I don't know if that came out the right way. I've always been somebody that wants to help people, but I always used to work for them. You know what? I will help other people with my time or my energy or my money after I helped myself and I worked from that way for a lot of years and that is not AYNI. And when I started working from a let me serve my target market with an open heart, let me serve. That is when boom, the doors, you know, blew off and my business really, really, really exploded. So the next episode is going to be my take and me sharing more on the concept of AYNI. Okay. Thanks for listening and I'll catch you on the next episode. Bye Bye. 

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.