You’re listening to the transform your life from the inside out podcast this is a
throwback episode back to episode number thirteen and that episode is titled the
master key to everything you want in life. Is in this episode now you might be
wondering if this is some kind of like ancient wisdom or whatever it is. This is
something that you’re even actually using and doing right now. The key to everything
you want in life is your, are you ready? Your attention, because you are where your
attention is. To prove that, look at your bank account and look when you don’t have
any money, where’s your attention? Look at when you’re lonely, where’s your attention?
Look at when you’re hungry, where’s your attention? Attention is the master key in
life, because where your attention is, is where you are mentally and where you are
mentally is what you create. It’s vital that you learn to master your attention.
So in this episode, I talk about mastering your attention and how your attention 100
% affects your health, your wellness, your happiness, and your wellbeing. Enjoy the
episode. – 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 ra ra 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.
So, you may already be thinking, “What is attention?” Well,
according to definition, attention is the act or state of applying the mind to
something. So the question that I have for you is, “Where are you applying your
mind?” And let me answer that for you. Look at your life, look at your bank
account, look at your health, look at your relationships. Your external world is your
application of your mind. And your external world has been 100 % created by where
you have chosen to place or keep your attention. That’s why it’s vital.
It’s vital that we learn to master our attention and we move it into places that
actually serve us as opposed to places that do not serve us. Speaking of attention,
look at the last 10 minutes. Where was your attention? Was it on Facebook or was
it on Instagram? Or was it yelling at somebody in traffic or the kids or yelling
at the kids in the back seat or you read something online or something burned down
or somebody shot something or Donald Trump did this or this person did that or
somebody on my, you know, it could be a bazillion different things. But what I want
you to look at, seriously, the last 10 minutes, where has your attention been?
And it’s vital that we come to understand attention and start paying attention to
attention because you are, and you’ll hear me say this a lot, you are and I am,
we are where our attention is. And I’ve been a performance coach and transformational
coach for a lot of years, almost 25 years now. And whether it be group coaching or
one -to -one coaching or live or virtual or email or whatever it is, I always hear
the same things from people, the majority that is. It’s always the same things. Jim,
it’ll be like this, be like this. You know, Jim, why? Why do I have no money and
bad health? And why do I feel bad and I’m stuck and I hate my job and I’m
getting a divorce and it’s really messy and we’re fighting over the kids and why am
I a failure in life and how come I have no control which by the way is an
illusion. Why do bad things happen to me and on and on and on.
All of these things happen to you and this is a very subtle distinction of
thinking. That’s why I say that this is the master key in life. everything that
happens to you is because you’ve attracted it and you’ve attracted it because that’s
where you have your attention. And when you’re getting things that you don’t want,
what most of us do is we keep our attention on more of what we don’t want, which
means we therefore attract more of what we don’t want, which then actually makes us
feel bad and we keep our attention there. That’s why it is vital that we learn to
master our attention and keep it in a place that actually creates for you and
actually attracts all the things that you want in life. Somewhere that I want to
actually slide on my my my voice pace right here is on your health.
If you’re not in great health and I’m going to say something it’s going to be
controversial to a lot of people and that’s okay but something that I have learned
over the years is And again, this is going to be controversial for a lot of people
is that there is no such thing as disease. We create disease from the mind,
a toxic mind creates a toxic body. I, you know, I don’t want to really promote
anyone. Let me just think here. I want to say this, Dr.
Joe Dispensa never met him before. He does have a documentary on Netflix right now
called Heal and H -E -A -L. And there is years and years and years of very high -end
medical research, etc., that we can heal ourselves. What I have learned over the
years working with the shaman is that generally, people that have the most ailment
in the body have the most ailment in the mind. But I want to go back to this
episode and then I want to ask you, if you have ailment in the mind, then where
is your attention? And then that manifests in the body and that manifests in your
external experience. This again, is why it is so vital that we master our attention.
What I’ve noticed before in people, and I am not tossing stones because I’ve been
there at a different place in my life, is that most people keep their attention
many times on not being well. And you even see it in our culture in that,
you know, different TV channels you might watch. There was one channel that I was
watching one time and I’m not kidding. Every second commercial was a pharmaceutical
commercial about if you have Crohn’s disease or fibromyalgia or this disease or that
disease. And it’s just like, I’m thinking, oh my God, there’s just so much disease
in the world. And then people go to their doctors and the doctors perpetuate that.
And again, I know this is going to be controversial, not all doctors perpetuate, but
many do with pharmacology. But what I want to share with you here, let’s keep this
to this episode, is wherever you have your attention, which means your thoughts
relative to your health, what happens is your thoughts actually affect the cells in
your body and your cells communicate like, you know, like a network of just like
telephone wires that communicate. So it’s vital that we keep our attention on being
healthy, even if we’re not healthy, because if we have our attention on not being
healthy, then that’s what we’re actually creating more of in the body. You know,
I’ve noticed also that many people that are sick, many, and I gotta be careful of
many and most, but let’s just say a lot, a high percentage of people that are
sick, they keep their focus on being sick and how bad they feel, instead of
actually taking that massive leap, which is a challenging leap for a lot of people
and focusing on, okay, you know what? I’m gonna focus on health and wellness as
opposed to keeping my attention on feeling bad and sickness. This is a big leap for
a lot of people and I’ve had to make it myself so I definitely understand how it
can be a slippery slope and it can be a very challenging thing for us to actually,
if we’re not feeling physically well, how to keep our attention on being happy and
feeling good as opposed to actually not keeping our attention where we are, which is
feeling bad. This is a, I’m gonna say, this is like a very,
very challenging thing for a lot of people. But I go back to the simplicity here,
is that wherever my attention is, I am. And if you ask me, you said to me,
you know, Jim, being with a shaman for 23 years, and if you could only pick one
piece of advice, what would that advice be? Just one piece, you can only give me
one line, what would it be? I would say the most powerful thing that I have
learned because it applies to every single area of my life, even my own development
spiritually. I would say that the number one thing that I would give you that I
have learned is I am where my attention is. And if I find myself somewhere that I
do not want to be, guess what? It is my attention that has gotten me there. And
same thing with you. And so I’m going to be a little repetitive here. So what many
people do is their attention got them to where they do not want to be. Then they
don’t like where they are. So they keep their attention on not liking where they
are, which perpetuates where they are. This is why it is vital that you, beginning
now, learn to move your attention, which I’ll talk about a little bit more in just
a minute, and I’ll show you how I learned to move my attention. I also want to
point out that we live in a world of attention deficit. And I’ve read some research
on that. I’m not going to go into it at this point, but, and I don’t know if
it’s accurate, but I read somewhere that a goldfish, a goldfish has an attention
span of eight seconds, and humans have an attention span of seven seconds. So,
and you know, that’s not really hard to believe. And there’s a whole actually,
There’s a whole category here about how social media is affecting the brain, and I
won’t go, I will not go into it here, maybe another episode, how there are
companies like Instagram and Facebook that are using social media. And there was an
episode on 60 Minutes, I think it was called Race to the Brainstem, how we get
actually rewards. We get dopamine, what’s called dopamine, releasing the brain when we
get like a lot of likes on Facebook. And these companies are doing this to addict
us to the social media. Why? Because the more of us on social media, the more at
space they can offer, the more money that they can make. But our attention in a
lot of ways is affected right now by the world we live in, which has a very, very
short attention span. And many of us, and I’ve been there before, are like a dog
on a squirrel. You know, you’re a dog and you’re sitting there and a squirrel runs
by and boom, there you go. What’s Vital for us to learn, vital,
is we need to slow the mind. We need to get quiet in the mind. And I definitely
will do. I’ll record an episode on that at some point, but most people are
extremely controlled by the external world, and we want to actually slow that down
and be very deliberate where we keep our attention, because I’m gonna be repetitive
in this episode, you are where your attention is. And if you don’t have what you
want in life, guess what? You’ve created it by where you capture attention. Even as
I’m saying this right now, where is your attention right now? Look at that.
Where’s your attention right this second? Let me share with you where most people
keep their attention. And I’ve been there. So, and anything What I say in all these
episodes, I promise you, I’m not judging because I’m human. I’m here learning my
lessons as well. I tell everyone that we’re in earth school, literally. And you
know, if you go to school, I would say that somebody that’s in 12th grade is no
better than somebody that’s in 1st grade. They’re just at different levels learning
different lessons, but we’re all here learning our lessons. I’ve had the good fortune
to apprentice with a shaman for over 20 years and every day is still a lesson. And
there are things that I’m still working on by no means, do I consider myself
enlightened or evolved? I do, my interpretation is that I have many,
many things that I need to work on to still create mastery in myself. And on the
flip side, there are things that I become very good at over the years. And I would
say that I don’t know if I’d ever get to mastery, but I would say, you know what,
I’ve got a good command of this. And mastering my attention is something that I
have literally kept in the forefront of me for over 20 years now. And I used to
be exactly like I’m going to share here with you guys is my attention used to
always be many years ago would always be on the past things that happened to me in
the past or this person did that or this person did that or I had to spell your
or I did this and it didn’t work. Therefore, I believe that, you know, things will
not work for me, or I can’t keep this, or I can’t, it’s just always on the past,
or where many people live, they live in the past, or they live in the future.
Something is gonna happen later, and oh my gosh, it hadn’t even happened yet, but
you know what, let me put my attention on something that doesn’t even exist with
the future, because it’s not even here right now, but you know what, it’s not even
here right now, but I’m gonna worry about it, and I’m gonna obsess about it, and
I’m going to keep my attention on something that hasn’t even happened. So I’m gonna
say that in my observation, watching people, and I’ve been there before, is that
most people actually do not have their attention right here, right now. Most people
have their attention on what they just did or what’s happened or what’s something
gonna happen in their childhood or something that can happen later or something that
can fall through or some prognosis about something that’s going to happen in the
future. Most people either live in the past or in the future and very few live in
the present. And I know you might have heard that before. So I wanna give you an
illustration and just a bit to show you how, and perhaps it would be a metaphor to
help you better understand how you can keep your attention right here in the
present. Before I do that, I wanna share a thought with you is that time is an
illusion. Time doesn’t exist in the universe. It’s something that’s human created.
And most people live their lives by time. Everything is time. Oh, this happened
yesterday. This happened, you know, 10 years ago. Or this is going to happen in the
future. And this is a slippery slope concept. But please stay with me because I
think, I I don’t think I know there’s gonna make a huge difference in your life,
is that time is an illusion. It was created by humans. And something I want you to
understand is that there is nothing but now. There’s nothing but right now.
Even what I said three minutes ago is already gone, because right now I am in the
now saying I am in the right now. And something else that I want you to understand
is that anything that has ever happened to you, anything that will ever happen to
you will only happen in the now. It cannot happen in the past because there is no
past and it cannot happen in the future because there is no future. There is only
now. And that’s really a mind bender when you actually, if it’s even possible to
get your mind around it, that your entire life exists in the right now. But what
most of us do is we actually, even though our entire life exists in the right now,
we spend our right now, actually not right now, but thinking about the past or the
future. Therefore, that’s where our attention is. And we are never present as a
being. And when we’re not present, we don’t have power. So I want to go into two
stories here that I think will help you tremendously about managing your attention,
one, and then secondly, existing in a now. So the first one was, is my brother -in
-law many years ago, when he was talking to me, he says, you know, he goes, you
don’t have a center. He said, when I watch you, and basically he can read my
energy at the deepest levels of consciousness, and he goes, you know what, imagine
for example, a bicycle spoke, and he says, you have the hub, you have the center,
and then you have all the spokes. Now, even though I’m telling you this auditorily
and I’m talking, hopefully you can visualize this or imagine as I’m going through it
because this probably applies to a lot of you. And it says what we want to
maintain our power is we always want to be in our center. And I’ll talk about what
center is also in just a moment. But he says what you do is you leave your center
and then you go to the end of and spoke and then something else pulls your
attention and you jump from that spoke over to another spoke and then something else
pulls your attention and you move that from that spoke over to another spoke and he
goes, you’re extremely inefficient in the use of your energy. What we want to do is
we wanna be in our center and if we wanna actually go to the end of the spoke,
what we do, we come back to the center of the spoke which is our center and then
go to another spoke. But you jump all over the place from spoke to spoke to spoke
to spoke, and it goes, you’ve got all this mass of just nonsense and this noise in
your head. Learn to center yourself and always come back to your center.
Now, I’m gonna share with you guys, you can pick whatever you want. Obviously,
you’ve got free will. So I’m gonna tell you though what my center is and where I
keep my attention. My center is always being happy and being 100 % transparent.
These are still things that I’m working on, but this is right in front of me, and
this is what I keep my attention on. And there are some other things that relative
to my work with the Shaman, but that’s more personal. But I can share with you
where I keep my attention is being happy. And then another place I keep my
attention is, and as you hear this, and as you look at this in your own life, you
will find it to be true. Everything always has been, is now,
and will always be fine. Now, I know that might be hard for some of you to get
your mind around, but if you look at life, life is always fine. But what we do is
we use our attention and we waste it because something happens, and oh my gosh, I’m
going to fly off the handle, or this happened, or this is bad, or this is right,
or this is wrong, or this is good, or this is bad. And where I’ve learned to work
from over the years, and I’ve come to know, there’s a difference between knowing and
understanding, what I’ve come to know is that when I stay in happiness, and that’s
the center of my spoke, and when I work from everything always has been, is now,
and will always be fine, that, to me, gives me peace. And I don’t know if you’ve
ever thought about it, but one of the most powerful states of mind that you can
have is peace. Because have you ever noticed that when you have peace,
peace of mind, it’s very easy to function. It’s very easy to get things done that
you want to get done. It’s very easy to make money. It’s very easy to do things
that you need to do. But yet, when you don’t have peace of mind, which is no
peace, life becomes very difficult and hard and challenging. And I also want you to
look, I want you to look at where your attention is when you don’t have peace.
That’s where your attention is. That’s why it’s so vital that we master our
attention because it’s the master key to always
exhale and stay at Peace so that’s where I live from so I’m not sure what’s gonna
apply to you or what’s what’s not gonna apply to you But I’m gonna tell you These
are foolproof and failproof, and if I can do it you can do it and That is never
letting the external world or things that people do and you know still your internal
peace always be in a state of peace and For me it was it was a great deal of
attention to learn how to get to this place, but when you work from peace,
life becomes so, so easy.
Okay, the second example metaphor that I want to give you is when I talked about
always living in the past or the future, you know what? If you’re like most people
and we’re pretty much all the same because we’re all human beings, You’re like, yep,
right on, I get that. And then if I said, well, how do you do it? You’d be like,
well, I don’t have a clue. I don’t know. I mean, how do I be present? How do I
be in the now? Use your imagination as best you can. And if you’re driving,
keep your eyes on the road and maybe come back and listen to this later. But what
I want you to do is I want you to imagine that you have a yardstick in front of
you. And let’s just say that it’s three feet. And this yardstick represents the
totality of your existence on this planet. I also want you to imagine that you are
at the halfway point in terms of your interpretation years. You’re at the halfway
point in your life. So basically what I want you to do is imagine that you’re
actually where you’re existing right now is right in the center of the yardstick.
And as you’re looking at that, that’s where you are right now. And you look to
your left because the charge stick is in front of you and you’re imagining it if
you look to your left That’s all of your past and then you look to your right.
That’s all of your future So most of us never live right in that center in the
now being present as I said We live in the past and I’m gonna I’m gonna show you
when I say you live in the past anything that you think you can’t do You’ve gotten
from the past any anger that you have. You’ve gotten from the past. Any fear that
you have other than the fear of loud noise and falling, you’ve gotten from the
past. If you’re worried about something, you’re worried about something in the future
and you’re not present now. Okay, so the yardsticks in front of you, what I want
you to do is obviously I want you to imagine you’re looking at that and you see
this totality of your life and this little bitty hairline point. Maybe,
you Maybe you could take a ballpoint pen metaphorically and there’s this little line
in the middle which is your now and you spend all your time in the past and all
your time in the future.
Now I want you to imagine that you actually take the yardstick and you go to
either end and you cut off 1 /8 of an inch of that entire yardstick,
that’s it, 1 /8 of an inch. Now throw the rest of the yardstick away and put that
1 /8 of an inch of yardstick right in front of you. That’s all you have. 1 /8 of
an inch. That is the now. That is the now.
That’s where we live from being present right now because that’s all that we have.
Your past doesn’t exist anymore and your future doesn’t exist. All that exists is
right now in that little bitty one eighth of an inch sliver. So bring your
attention to right now. And when you are in the now, it is so easy to be at
peace because nothing in the past is making you fearful or afraid and nothing in
the future is making you worried. Just be here now. And when we’re here now, we
can experience the love and the joy and the peace and our own good health and all
the great things in life. And that is a place that we wanna work from and that is
a place we wanna move our attention to because when we’re in that place, that is
when magic happens. Okay, sharing this episode and getting it recorded for you guys
was a big bite. I mean, you know, how do I explain this to people? I’ve been on
this path for a lot of years, but if this is new to you, I mean, how do I get
this into your brain in a way where you’re like, you know what, woo, okay. Yeah, I
finally and get my mind around it a little bit. So hopefully I at least got the
ball across the plate and you now understand why it’s so important for you to be
present and to now and to be happy and that everything’s always gonna be fine and
keep your attention on that. And I give you my word, I give you my word, you keep
your attention on happiness and things are fine and peace and you will be shocked
at what happens in your life. Okay, so like every week, there’s a transfer or every
podcast, there’s a transformational takeaway. So your takeaways this week is you are
where your attention is. And I’m going to share with you because looking at my own
self, you might hear that and you might be like, well, that’s pretty cool. That
makes a lot of sense. Right on. Yep. My analytical mind can understand that. That
makes a lot of sense to me. However, what I’m going to tell you, as you understand
that, however, it could take you a day,
a week, a month, maybe even years or decades to fully know what that means.
Another transformational takeaway is, which I think is obvious with the ruler example
that I gave you, is that time is an illusion. The past does not exist. The future
does not exist. All that exists is right now and move your attention.
Also, when I say move your attention, some of you that are more analytical could
say, well, where do I move my attention to? It’s pretty simple. If you’re in a bad
place, air quote, you’re in a bad place, well, that’s where your attention is. Move
your attention to somewhere that is actually a positive place. Even though these are
takeaways, let me go on a little bit longer here. One of my students recently,
she’s in my mastermind program, is getting a divorce. She’s in a messy marriage and
getting a divorce. And when I saw her live a while back at an event that someone
else was hosting, she was crying and upset and all these kinds of things. And she’d
come all the way from Australia.
And I knew in that moment, she was crying because that’s where her attention was.
So what I did is I distracted her and I moved to her attention, getting her to
think about very positive things. And about 30 minutes later, I’m like, “How are you
feeling right now?” And she goes, “I feel really good.” And I said, “Have you
noticed that 30 minutes ago or 45 minutes ago you were crying and you were in the
self -pity and you were upset? Now you’re feeling really good. The only thing that’s
changed in the world is that you have moved your attention.” And that was a great
example for her and a great example for you is that you are where your attention
is. Okay, before we wrap up, and before I tell you about the next episode,
I am doing a live training today. And the training is called How to Think, Act,
and Be Bigger Than You Ever Thought Possible When You Learn to Control Your Mind.
Now, to be 100 % transparent with you, this program, it’s a 90 -minute training.
Well, it’ll be an hour at least. But this is an introduction to my transformational
coaching program because the door is open today, it is a 12 -week program that will
transform your life. So if nothing else, just register for the training and get on
it and learn some more to improve your life. And if my transformational program
works for you, then get registered. And if it doesn’t, well, then it doesn’t. That’s
entirely up to you. But be on that live training today. And as always, I will tell
you, it’s a 3 p .m. central standard time. And as you always hear me say, the link
to that live training will be in the show notes at jimforton .com. Wherever this
episode is, if you’re listening on iTunes, just go to jimforton .com, click on the
episode. And in the show notes, you will find the link to get registered for this
training. Alrighty, so Monday is a Q and A again. And Abigail is the person that I
selected for Monday. And Abigail’s question is, what do I do when I’m tired of
being me and my life. So if you’d like to hear my answer to Abigail about being
sick and tired of being sick and tired, make sure you’re on that episode. And as I
say on every episode, I am grateful and I am humbled and thank you so much for
listening and sharing and being a part of this with me. Okay, stay well,
make it an awesome day and I will catch you on the live training or one of the
other episodes. Bye -bye.