You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is a
throwback episode from episode number two, and the title of that episode is Who
Are You and What Is Your Identity? Most of us never think about it that way.
We never think about what is my subconscious identity, and it’s vital that we start
thinking that way, because what your subconscious identity is, is what you
automatically do in life, and what you do is what you create. Your subconscious
identity was created when you were a child before the age of eight years old,
or they’re about the age of eight. Aristotle once said, give me a boy until the
age of eight, and I will own him for a lifetime. Many things that you’re doing
right now in life are things that you learn to do when you–
identity so that you can actually be more at a subconscious level so you can do
more so you can have more. 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 raw
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 cast this 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. So let me ask you a question. Did you buy or did you smoke
a cigarette today? Now, that might be an odd place to start, but this is a very
poignant illustration about identity, because this episode is about who are you and
what is your identity. All right, back to my question. Did you smoke today? Yes or
no? Now, plain and simple, if you smoked a cigarette today,
which is a doing behavior, you are in your self -image and your identity,
you are a smoker. Sure, If you did not smoke today, then plain and simple,
you are not a smoker. What I want you to understand, and this will be like a big
aha for a lot of you, is it doesn’t matter what you think that you want. It
doesn’t matter what you do. You will only create in life what you are,
and a smoker smokes because they are a smoker and a non -smoker does not smoke
because they are a non -smoker. This is why people become wealthy because they are
wealthy in their mind. This is why people, no matter what you do, stay poor and
don’t have money because in your mind, in your identity, in your self -image, you
are a poor person. So it really doesn’t matter, As I said, what you think or what
you think, you think that you want. You will only get what you are.
And you know, when I said it doesn’t matter what you think, the reason I’m saying
that
is that let’s say that you think that you want to make a million dollars a year.
And that would be left -brain analytical thought. Yes, I see other people doing it,
you might say, so if they can do it, I can do it, or I can be fit and trim and
healthy, or in a great relationship or whatever it is that you want. And then a
year later, you find that you know what? You haven’t created any of it. Why?
Because that is your left brain analytical thought saying, “Yes, I can have that.”
But at your unconscious level, in your unconscious paradigms,
and in your identity, you are not that. And if you are not that, you cannot do
that. And if you are, if you cannot do that, then you cannot be whatever it is
you want, the rich or the fit or the trim or whatever it might be for you. So
your identity is who you are subconsciously. Now you’ve also heard me mention the
word self -image. Your identity, you learn as a small child.
So let’s say, for example, this is how it works. When you are a small kid and
let’s let’s just use money because interestingly enough, 80 % of the American
population right now today, whatever the date is, I don’t know, February the
something 2018, the 27th, 2018, 80 % of Americans live paycheck to paycheck.
So here’s what happens. And this is a great example in my and family with my
brother and I. So if you grew up in a family and you constantly hear money’s hard
to come by, you’ve got to struggle, money doesn’t grow on trees, we’re not rich,
there’s never enough. So those are experiences that you’re having. Now,
what happens from the experience is that you create interpretations. So the experience
as a toddler, you could hear your parents saying, “We never have enough money, “we
never have enough money, we ever have enough money. Then what happens is from those
experiences, you create interpretations, well, I guess, you know, dad says that and
mom says that, never enough money, never enough money, that must be the world that
I live in. Therefore, I’m going to tell myself stories about not having money.
And I’m gonna tell myself stories for a lot of my life that money’s hard to make
and I’ve gotta struggle and I’ve gotta work until my eyeballs bleed and hard work
is the key to success, and you got to be this, and you got to be that, and on,
and on, and on. And this is what I call the identity loop. Once you’re in the
loop, for most people, it persists for a lifetime.
If you look at, for example, you know, I used to live in New York City, and
there’s a heavy contingency of Orthodox Jewish people there. And, you know, you would
never see a small Jewish boy, let’s say seven or eight years old, say, you say,
“Dad, I’ve rethought this Jewish thing, and I think that I’m going to be Catholic.”
You don’t see it. And the same thing pertains to pretty much the entire world we
live in and the entire world that you live in. For the most part, whatever your
parents were, you are. That’s why people that are Republicans,
for the most part, grew up in Republican families. People that are Jewish, grew up
in Jewish families for the most part. Now, of course, there are exceptions. However,
pretty much you have been indoctrinated since you were a kid to be exactly who you
are today. And you were indoctrinated with your parents’ identity as well.
As a matter of fact, whatever identity they held, they indoctrinated you with that
entity to be a particular kind of person or a certain way or in particular that
the world works in a certain way. What most people do is they go through their
entire lifetime, entire lifetime, never questioning
how, how did I become who I am? So if you look at your life and I’ve seen this
so many times and I’ve been there. So let me talk about my family for a second. I
remember when I was in my 30s or so, early 30s, and I was buying a new condo.
And when I moved into the new condo, I had to have it painted. So I stayed with
my parents for a week or so. And I remember one day my mother saying something and
I thought to myself, “Oh my God, I am my mother,
because I learned so many characteristics from her that became my identity. And then
I’d mentioned earlier about my family, my brother and I, we were both raised in the
environment where my dad was a blue collar worker. He was an auto body repairman.
And all that we ever heard, I mean, literally, I popped out of the womb and
probably when my dad got the first hospital bill, he said, I can’t afford that. All
that I ever heard growing up is money’s hard to come by, we’re not rich, money
doesn’t grow on trees, and I heard that incessantly over and over and over. Now, my
brother also heard the same thing. The difference between the two of us is very
early in life. I decided that I wanted different things for my life. I remember
when I was in high school, I said, “I want a Mercedes Benz.” Why? Because I saw
somebody that had one and I wanted one. Well, this day and age, I do extremely
well financially. And yet my brother, who is five years younger than I am, my
brother still today works as probably about a $20 an hour ranch hand in the hot
Texas heat. And he works literally his life into the ground. That,
see, we grew up in the same environment, but that is identity at work for you. So
right now, what I want you to look at is the question, and that question is,
who am I?
Couple of days ago, I got an email and the person said, “Hey, Jim, if our identity
“is subconscious,” and I use the word subconscious and unconscious interchangeably,
they said, “If my identity is subconscious, “then how do I know what my identity
is?” That, my friend, is a really simple one. Look at your external environment,
which is what we talked about in the last episode because see your identity actually
matriculates obviously into your beliefs, into your skills, into your behavior, into
your environment. So if you want to know what your identity is, go log on and look
at your bank account. Go look in the mirror, look at your body, look at the state
of your relationship. Are you in an amazing relationship or are you on your fourth
marriage? So what you want to look for And these are telltale clues.
What you wanna look for is what are the patterns of your life? Do you actually
lose a lot of weight and gain it back? Do you make a lot of money and actually,
you know, lose it? If you’re like most people, when it comes to money, we have
what I call a money barometer. And that is related to our identity.
If you’re the kind of person, for example, you learn that you’re the kind of person
that makes 100 grand a year. That’s pretty much what you will do every single year,
year in, year out. Why? Because you’re the kind of person who does that. Yet, for
people that make millions a year, you do that because that is your identity. So I’m
gonna slow down here and I cannot stress enough is that you can only do identity.
And if you want to know what your identity is, look at your environment. That will
tell you 100 % what your identity is. I remember, I don’t watch a lot of TV,
but I did enjoy American Idol when it was on TV and I think it’s back on now.
And I remember one of the final seasons, there was this kid named Sam Wolfe. And
when I saw him audition, for some reason I have this uncanny ability and I think
it’s because I’m reading body language, is that I can pick winners and I’ve been
very good at that. And I said, when I saw Sam Wolfe audition, he’s probably 17 or
so, I said that kid can win it. Even the judges said that kid can win it. Well,
he was actually, I think he came in at number five. And in the final episode, they
had Sam Wolfe on stage and they also had a prior winner named Phillip Phillips,
be on the final episode. And I watched Sam play, and he was very rigid,
very, I mean, just very modulated. And then Phillips walked out. And of course, he
had more experience and he was probably four or five years older. He came out and
just tore up the stage. Well, this is something that I want you to get is that
they both probably had in my, my, I don’t have a professional opinion.
I mean, I’m not a music critic. But Sam did get to number five. And even though
it’s a popularity contest, the judges did say that he could possibly win. So the
judges are professionals and I believe them. So basically what the judges were saying
is Sam is pretty good. Now, where am I going with this? Is I believe and I
observe that Sam Wolfe and Philip Phillips had very comparable potential.
yet they’re working from very different identities because Sam’s identity was along
the lines of he had a lot of fear in his body language so his identity probably
was along the lines of I have to I have to be a certain way or I have to show
up in a certain way whereas Phillip Phillips showed up completely differently so so
many of you parents You tell your kids things like you’ve got to live up to your
potential. You’ve got to live up to your potential. Well, that’s a misnomer because
you and everyone else, you may live to your potential, but what most people live to
is their identity. And if you want to create more in life,
it’s not about your potential. And obviously, that does help, but it’s about what
your identity is. because here’s something that I want you to understand.
You, you can never outperform your identity.
Let’s take this back to money again and back to episode number one and all these
social media personalities. When they want you to perform something, they want you to
do something, you’ve got to work until your eyeballs bleed and you have to do this
and you have to do that, and you’ve got the prospect and knock on doors and lead
generate and go to the gym and be on this diet and that diet. Those are all doing
things. But see, let’s say for money, for example, you do all these things,
but your identity is separate and different, well, it is separate, but it’s
different. So you do all these things to make money, and that’s why some of you
might be doing it. You do all these things to make money, yet you never have any
money to show for it. Why? Because you’re living from your identity, which is what
we do unconsciously. You look at people who win the lottery, and there’s been
studies on this. Many times people who win the lottery just a few years later,
they’re broke again. Why? Because in their external world, they might win all this
money, but their internal barometer it’s about being poor. A great example of that
is if you look at Mike Tyson. I think Mike Tyson won something like $300 million
in his career. Yet, as I understand, and I don’t follow paparazzi and news and
people magazine, but I think I read somewhere where he’s broke again. I mean, how
in the world can someone, how in the world can they make $300 million and be broke
again. Well, it’s the same way that lottery winners win 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 million
dollars, and three to five years later, they’re broke again. Because our, our minors,
our identities are like a thermostat. Whatever that thermostat or barometer is set
at, that’s what happens automatically. So I’m going to give you a little subconscious
dialogue here. So let’s say, for example, that your identity, your unconscious
barometer with money, is you got to struggle for it, you don’t deserve it, it’s
hard to make. And let’s
subconscious identity, and I’m going to make you broke. I’m going to make you lose
it. I’m going to make you spend it. I’m going to make you frivolous with it. I’m
going to make you mismanagement, whatever. But the reality is, as long as you’re
broke in your mind, I’m going to make sure that you are broke in your external
environment.
So hopefully you’re starting to see, hopefully we’re starting to crack open here now
in our very short time together that whatever it is that you want to create in
life, you must.
are that.
Now, here’s a phrase that I live by and this is very, I think is very powerful is
that you cannot do what you are not. Consider that you cannot do what you are not.
If you are not first rich in your mind, there’s no way you’re going to be rich.
If you are not first healthy in your mind, there’s no way you are going to be
healthy. It is just not going to happen. Now, I know you’ve heard all the
motivational hyperbole and jargon and all that. One of my clients one time, she’s a
very large real estate company. She’s one of the top real estate brokers in the
United States. NAHR, the National Association of Realtors, considers her one of the
top 20 thought leaders
She is a she’s she’s older now. She’s about 80. She’s a Dallas business icon I was
her coach and she became my mentor and she said something to me very simple Which
I’m sure you’ve heard before but now after this podcast it might sink in a little
a little deeper But she said, you know, Jim I tell my agents that they’re never
going to be a successful agent until they are first successful in their mind and
the same thing pertains to you.
Let’s talk about that for a second. Let’s talk about money and money identity. So,
and I think I pretty much covered this, but if you wanna know what your unconscious
identity is about money, go look at your bank account. The way that,
or the place that most people work from is identity sustenance. Most people work
from, you know what, Just enough, and even people that are middle class, just enough
to get by. I never have a lot of money, I’m never out of money because they work
from the universe provides, but they’re really not working from that place even
though they don’t know it. But they’re working from this place of, you know what, I
always have enough money to pay my bills and to get by. And that’s what they do.
And the reason why is because that’s who they are in their
Identity, where do you work from? Do you work from, I’m the kind of person who
attracts money and money piles up into my life. Do you work from that I’ve got to
struggle and money’s hard and I’ve got to work to my eyeballs blade and I’ve got
to struggle and struggle and struggle? Now, I don’t care where you are in life. I
don’t care if you’re driving in your Tesla right now or your Mercedes or your old
it up car. I don’t care if you make a million dollars a year, 10 million a year,
or you’re making 32 ,000 a year. What I’m telling you right now applies to every
single person on this planet is that you will never outperform your identity and
you’ll always work within that. You want more, you have to be more, which is ways
of being, which we talked about in the first episode.
You know, if you go back and we’ve all seen this, if you look at Oprah, for
example, you know, she’s one of the most famous people on the planet and we all
know that Oprah’s had weight challenges over the years and she owns part of Weight
Watchers now and she, you know, many years ago pulled out a wagon on stage and had
60 pounds of fat in it. And look at Oprah, she yo -yos from, and I don’t know
because I haven’t seen her in years personally, well not personally, but on TV or
whatever, but she yo -yos. Why is it that she can do everything in her external
environment, hire the trainers and the right diets and this and that and the foods
and the experts and the nutritionist? Yet, she loses weight, but she always goes
back to being overweight. Now, a little bit off topic here, I understand that she
was raped when she was, I think, 14 years old or so. What I learned, and I am a
master hypnotist, what I learned many years ago is that that can be what I call a
metaphor, an isolationist metaphor or a metaphor to create isolation for her.
Because let’s say, for example, she was raped, what the body could do is put weight
on, and then she could say, “Well, see, now I’m overweight, and I’m unattractive, or
I’m the F word, I’m fat, and nobody wants me. Therefore, I will not be raped
again.” Anyway, Either here or there at this point in this particular episode, but I
want you to look at Oprah as an example, is that in her identity, there’s something
going on that creates the continued weight challenge for her.
You know, we also, you’ve seen this in your own life. To give you some more
examples here, I know you’ve seen this is, you know, you might know a woman and
she’s in a relationship and he beats her and she gets out and everyone in the
family is like, oh my gosh, thank God Susan is out of that relationship with Bob.
He was so bad for her, he was so destructive for her and now she’s out and she’s
free and everyone in the family is happy about it. Then a year later, she meets a
new man and she’s all excited and guess what? The new man beats her. Why? Because
in her identity. If she is a woman that stays in a relationship where she gets
beat, that confirms her identity that she is a woman who deserves to be beat.
On the flip side, something that you don’t hear people talking about is what about
Bob who’s beating her? So we tend to actually seek out people that also confirm our
identity. So If she is actually, she’s a woman that she deserves to be beat,
what she will automatically do is search out a man that believes women deserve to
be beat. Now what they’ve done is they’ve created a relationship which confirms both
of their identities. Her identity is confirmed because he beats her and his identity
is confirmed because she lets him beat her which confirms his identity that women
deserve to be beat. This can go pretty deep, I know. And I want you to look at
your own life because everything in your own life is your identity at work for you.
This is why it’s so vital, vital. And you know, when I look out on the world,
at all the personal development content out there and all that. For the most part,
every bit of it is external. If you were to go to a big speakers event,
you know, some large speaker, one of the first questions they never ask is who and
what is the identity of the person attending this event? You know, you look at big
speakers and they’ll say, “Well, here’s my book. Here’s how to do X, Y, Z. And I’m
famous and you should listen to me and here’s my book on how to create blah, blah,
blah, blankety blank in your life. And let’s say, for example, which is something
I’m going to talk about a lot. And one of the next episodes is going to be on
habits. But let’s say, for example, that I have a book on habits, which I don’t.
And let’s say that I tell you, and you see all the time on Facebook, here’s the
seven habits of millionaires, they get up early, they read books every day, whatever
it is. Well, let’s say, for example, that I tell you in my habit book, habit
number one is that you have to get up early because that’s, you know, people who
make a lot of money, that’s what they do. But what if by circadian rhythm that,
you know what, you prefer actually you’re a night owl, which is biological and
actually electromagnetic, and that you prefer staying up at night. So all these
people, all these motivators tell you, here’s the seven ways and this and that and
this and that. But what no one whenever looks at is as an individual, who are you?
What do you identify as? What are your stories? And we’re gonna do an episode on
stories. What are your stories about that? Now, as I was creating all this, I did
say that you’re going to start learning in this particular episode how to change
your identity. What I wanted to do in this episode is I want to in grain before
we start doing change work. And I want to ingrain and to get you to start
thinking. I want to get you to a place where you own, you own this,
you come to actually know it, not understand it. There’s a difference between
understanding and knowing. And the example there could be is that, for example, I’ve
never had a broken bone. Yet I understand what a broken bone is because I’ve seen
it on TV and in the movies and I’ve read about it in books and you know, biology
class and everything else. But you know what, I understand it, but I don’t know
what a broken arm is because I’ve never had one. And if you’ve had a broken bone,
you know what it feels like. So the purpose of this episode is to get you to
start knowing to know that you can never outperform your identity.
And if you wanna create more in life, which you do and the fact that you’re here
means that you want to do that, you must own that what we have to start working
at, which we will do as we go through the episodes, we have to start working on
letting go of your old identity and creating a new identity for you. I think you’re
probably already know by this point also the old, you know, people telling you
you’ve got to work harder and more hours and blah blah blah blah blah. That stuff
doesn’t work Because see if that worked, everyone who did that would make more money
and they would live better lives. And that right there demonstrates that that social
paradigm is that you have to work hard to get ahead, you’ve got to work hard to
be wealthy. That is a broken paradigm that pretty much the entire culture is caught
in. So what you want to do is you want to start with your identity, the logical
level of the pyramid, not the behavior, you want to start with the identity because
when we start there, just like the smoker, whatever the identity is, everything else
will follow. So here’s a huge question that I have for you. If you’re not driving,
write this down. The question is this, what would be the identity of someone who
already has what I want. I’ll repeat. What would be the identity of someone who
already, the operative word is already. What would be the identity of someone who
already has what I want? And I want you to consider that. What I want you to do
is look out on the world. Look, you know, look around and I want you to look for
someone who already has what you want. And then I want you to ask yourself,
how is their identity different than mine? What identity would I need?
And then you look at, this is plain and simple, people make this really hard. Well,
how do I get that identity? Easy, you start thinking that way. You know, I once
had someone actually mention to me, they said, well, Jim, you know, can you help me
here? Can you give me steps to being happy. And I had to giggle at that because
the way to be happy is the way to be happy. There are no steps to be happy.
You just be happy. Happy is a factory setting. We all know how to be happy.
And when I say all, I shouldn’t say all. 99 .9 % of us, we know how to be happy.
But this person was looking for ways to build an extra step since she couldn’t be
happy till she had steps to being happy. Now, there’s a whole different coaching
lesson that went on there, but what I want you to get right now is I want you to
ask yourself what would be the identity of someone who already has what I want.
Now, I know that also a lot of successful people
I coach and they listen to me and they’re making a million, two million, three,
four million a year, five million, some six, seven and eight and some even more.
For the most part, most of us want to go to a higher stage in life. And the
reality is, if you’re making three million, but you want to make ten, the person
making ten most likely has a different identity than the person making three million.
Just like a person making three hundred thousand has a different identity than a
person making thirty thousand dollars a year. So your transformational takeaway from
this episode is what identity, what I need to have to create blank in my life.
What identity, what I need to have to start creating blank in my life. When you
start working from there, what will happen is you’ll find that you’ll start doing
different things because now you’re working from a different place. Okay. So now
we’ve got you started thinking about your identity and knowing that the foundation of
your life comes down to your identity because as I’m going to say for the third
time, you cannot outperform your identity. So stay tuned and keep listening because
in the next episode, you’re going to learn how your subconscious stories either built
for you or take away from you. Whatever you think that you can or you cannot be,
do or have, plan and simple, is a story. Even as I’m telling you that,
notice that you’re telling yourself a story even as I’m telling you about stories.
Because see, your entire lifetime is one big story that you learned in childhood.