You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is a throwback episode, the episode number 79, that episode was titled You Are Not In Control Your Brain Is.
I know for a fact, you’ve heard many, many times, people talking about your mindset. And people will say, “you gotta change your mindset, you gotta change your mindset.” What they don’t understand is that your mindset comes from your brain set. And your brain set is your brain-based subconscious habits. And also, a part of your brain, it’s an evolutionary purpose of the brain, is designed to obviously keep you safe, to keep you alive, and all this kind of good stuff, to keep you existing on the planet. But that part of the brain doesn’t like change. So that part of the brain sabotages every bit of change for the most part that you want to make in life.
So if you’d like to have a larger influence in your life, because we don’t control anything, but if you’d like to have a larger influence in your life, learn to understand how your brain works, how your brain, not you, your brain controls you, and how to start working with your brain in a way where you can actually start breaking free of that brain control and that brain set. 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 raw, 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 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.
Control control control is something that so many people get into. And you might have even heard me say in another episode that you’re not in control. You’re not. And you’ve heard me say before that control is an illusion. And if you get into control, you are controlled by the illusion of control. Now, that is a thought level, meaning it’s analytical. You think you’re in control and you’re always trying maybe to control people or things or situations or events and to varying degrees. I mean, from trying to control people to trying to control whether or not people have a good time at a party or at your house and you’re making yourself responsible for them or trying to control, you know, your kids or significant other or maybe even yourself.
Now, you’ve heard me say before, obviously, that control is an illusion. And that’s one level. It’s a thought level. It’s a prefrontal cortex, analytical thinking brain level. But I want to go even deeper. And I want to talk about the role that your brain, yes, your brain plays in control.
I want to, I want to, I was gonna say revert, but I want to actually just address a study that was done back, I believe, in 2007. And it was done at the Max Planck Institute in Leipzig, Germany. Now, the Max Planck Institute is one of the foremost research institutes in the world. They have 43 Nobel Prize-winning scientists contributing research. And what they did is they were obviously looking at the influence of the brain in our decision-making. And by the way, when we think about control, that’s decision-making for most of us.
What they did is they put people in an FMRI machine. Now that’s an acronym for a big word, a Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Machine. And what they wanted to do is they wanted to watch the blood flow in the brain. So what they did is they gave people one of two options, pick either A or B, and they watched the blood flow in the brain as people were actually making decisions. Now, as people were making decisions, they were analytically engaged and thought, you know, should I pick A? Should I pick B? Maybe A is better. Maybe, you know, maybe B is better, etc. But What they watched was the blood flow in the brain as the person was actively engaged in the analytical process of making a decision.
What they discovered was groundbreaking. I mean, it’s amazing. But by watching the blood flow in the brain, what they discovered is that they could predict with great accuracy the decision that the person was gonna come to, whether it be A or B, based upon watching the blood flow in the brain. Further, and this was groundbreaking, what they recognized is that you, me, all of us, your brain, your brain makes your decision for you a full seven seconds before you actually even analytically make a decision, which means that you air quote, you think you’re making a decision and and you’re analyzing and contemplating and all this, but that decision has already been made for you by your brain.
So it’s interesting that I also did an IG and Instagram live today, and I talked about habits today. And I said on that live, and I’ve said here before, is that you don’t get what you want in life. You just don’t. I mean, think about all the things that you want, whether it be a new car, a new job, a new boyfriend, a new girlfriend, you know, all these things that you think that you want. And you don’t get what you want, because see, wanting is prefrontal cortex, analytical part of the brain. What you get is you get your habits. And there’s an episode on it here, I believe it’s episode number five. So you get what your habits are.
And you know, I want to sit here and I wish there was some way, whether it be auditory, visually or kinesthetically, I wish there’s some way that I could literally just in a kind way grab you by the shoulders and shake you because see what many of you are doing and you’re saying, oh, okay, well, yeah, No, come on, Jim, you’ve said that before, I get it. But many of you, you get it, but you don’t get it.
And I also wanna point out there also, you know, working with the Shaman for a lot of years, Don Javier. Many times, I remember back when we were on vacation a lot of years ago, and he said something to me, and I’m like, oh, Don, I call him Don for short for Don Javier, I’m like, Don, I get it. And he’s like, no, you don’t. And I’m like, “No, no, no. I really, I do. I get it.” And he’s like, “No, you don’t.” And I’m like, “And he’s being very kind and kind of grinning.” And I’m like, “No, really, I get it.” And he’s like, “Okay, but you don’t.” And about three years later, I recognized that, you know what, I thought that I got it, but I really didn’t get it in that moment. I got it three years later.
The reason that I’m telling you all us is I want you to get, and we’re gonna tie this back to control in your brain, I want you to get that and I want you to please understand is that your habits, it’s your habits that create for you and every single thing that you have in life and every single thing that you don’t have in life. Now consider that again, I’ll say it again, everything that you have in life, whether it be $7 or 700,000 or 7 million or 700 million, everything that you have and everything that you don’t have. And I can tie it to health and I can tie it to many areas of your life. Everything you have and don’t have is a reflection of your habits.
Now, when I say everything, I’m gonna give a little leeway there in that somebody could say, “Well, I have XYZ health condition.” That’s not a matter of habits. Whole different podcast. When I say generally speaking, I mean 99% generally speaking, everything that you have in your life or you don’t have is a reflection of your habits of thought. And that’s where I want to go in this podcast just a little bit, is that even control, even control is a habit.
I mean, no one ever thinks, and you know that no one gets out of bed and says, “Hmm, do I, you know, do I get into control today? Do I not get into control? What do I think about control?” Now, let me back up even further here. If you have a family member and you know, and maybe even you, if you know that they’re always in control, I know you don’t think about it this way, and you don’t think, “Hmm, Susan is in the habit of controlling things.” No, but you know that, “Okay, you look at Susan, and oh my gosh, I’m going to see Susan today, and oh my gosh, Susan tries to control everything around her.” And I have family members like that as well, so I completely get it, and I know what I’m talking about.
I have a brother-in-law. I’ve got actually several brother-in-laws, one on my side and one on my partner’s wside. And I have one, two, three, four brother-in-laws on my partner’s side of the family, and they’re all engineers, except, well, except one. And one of my brother-in-laws has to control, and I mean, has to everything, every single thing in his environment and people around him must be controlled. But what I want to point out is that he learned control as a small child. And then what he did is he habituated habituated it. I don’t know if I enunciated that properly, not habituated it, but habituated like a habit. It just became a habit for him. Now he lives in this like prison of control, and it’s all habits that he learned many, many years ago.
Very quickly here, because there is an episode on habits, but habits literally are, they’re housed by the reptilian part of the brain, and they’re created for multiple reasons, but the main reason is a survival mechanism or one of the main reasons, let me put it that way, and the same energy. What I mean by that is an example I use all the time is imagine if you had to learn to ride a bike every time you wanted to learn to ride a bike. You learn to ride a bike, I think all of you, like I did by getting on it as a kid and back then we didn’t even have helmets back in the ‘70s and the early ‘70s. You hop on a bike, you fall off, you hop on a bike, you fall off, your dad’s yelling at you, pedal faster, pedal faster, pedal faster, pedal faster. And you learn through repetition, which is actually how we learn is through repetition. But you learn through habit and then you habituate it.
And then after you’ve learned to ride a bike, you don’t walk out like me or, you know, my brother and sister and I used to throw our bikes on the front porch and in the front yard. You know, you don’t walk out and pick up a bike and go, Hmm, how do I ride this? How do I get on this thing? You hop on it and the old phrase is it’s simply like riding a bike. That’s because it’s habitual and the brain stores neural pathways to actually reinforce habits that you’ve learned.
So, you know, when we look at habits, please, please take this to heart and just wherever you are, just stop for a second. Even if you’re in traffic. And I don’t mean stop in traffic physically, but stop and just ponder, fully consider. Let’s take some time here, fully consider whatever car you’re driving, whatever house you’re living in, whatever office place you’re sitting in, you look at your bank account, you look at your body for the most part. Every bit of that is an external reflection of something internal, which is a habit. And obviously, what stands to reason here is if you want more in life, it’s not about wanting more. It’s not about the analytical. It’s about actually creating the habits to actually create the outcomes that you want.
Now, let’s look at control in the brain for a second. And by the way, We’re not going all deep dive neuroscience or any of that. But a phrase that I use is to cake or not the cake. And yes, I said the word cake. So let’s say, for example, that you’re sitting there in a restaurant and the dessert tray, you know, rolls by and you’re looking at that cake and you’re a person who eats cake because you also have it in your identity and you’ve eaten chocolate cake for a lot of your life. What happens is to cake or not the cake the Prefrontal cortex analytical part of the brain says nope You’re not going to fit into your size six anymore You’re on a diet or you’re you know your your suits not going to fit anymore. You’re you know your shorts or whatever The prefrontal cortex analytical part of the brain is saying no no no This is the power of habits and even in control.
So what you try to do is you try to control having to cake or not the cake. And you start talking to yourself about, nope, I’m not going to do it. I’ve got willpower. And then before you know it, the more you think about cake, the more you’re wanting cake. And this is also called compounding. And then guess what? The tray, I’m laughing because the dessert tray passes by and you call the waiter back and guess what you order. you order cake.
What I want you to notice with this example is the amount of control that you tried to exercise, because people will say things like, “I have no self-control.” What I want you to notice here is it’s not about control, it’s about habits. And the way that this happens, this little scenario that I just gave you was also mentioned in episode number five, is that Whatever habits we have, the reptilian brain works from the positioning that whatever habits you have are survival mechanisms. Because we have to have habits for survival. I mean, imagine if you had to, you know, you had to relearn how to fill up a glass of water and, hey, by the way, I’m going to learn that’s where the water comes from, out of the false, spigot, bottle, whatever. And we have to relearn and relearn and relearn. I mean, we spend an entire lifetime relearning basically how to eat, walk, yeah, everything.
So, the reptilian brain, the way that it views habits is survival mechanisms. And because it views our habits as survival mechanisms, even what we deem as negative habits are counterproductive, like smoking and things of that nature, what happens is the brain gives us a reptilian part of the brain, gives us urges, which are emotional, and it gives us urges, which come from the reptilian part of the brain, and then they become emotional. And then what happens is we get into a reptilian brain, an Olympic system, which is a mammalian brain, fight against a prefrontal cortex, the thinking part of the brain.
In simple English, what that means is, is the thinking part of the brain starts fighting the emotional part of the brain. And do I have to, (laughs) do I have to tell you what happens when, and by the way, we think it’s us, we personalize it saying, oh, Me, I’m thinking XYZ. No, different parts of your brain are doing different activities. So what happens is the reptilian part of the brain is going cake, cake, cake, cake, cake. We want cake, I want cake, cake. And the prefrontal cortex thinking part of the brain is going no, no, no. And because it might be a habit to eat cake or to eat sweets, what happens is a prefrontal cortex. I mean, I’m sorry, the reptilian part of the brain engages the limbic system, which is the emotional part of the brain.
And like I said, I don’t have to tell you what happens when you get in a tug of war between something emotional and something rational, or not even rational, something analytical. What happens is that the analytical part of the brain and thought process always loses to the emotional thought, which originate with the habits which originate in the reptilian part of the brain. That was a mouthful, but what I want to share with you, make it really simple, is your emotions are stronger than your analytical thought.
So what I want you to focus on is stop trying to control things in your life, because you’ve heard me say before all of the episodes, you can’t control squat in your life. And you’ve heard me say before that you can’t even control your own thoughts. And I see a lot of motivational speakers and they’ll say things like, “Control your thoughts.” And by the way, I did put out a video a long time ago that said control and I had the word control, but that was simply for marketing purposes because it was simpler to explain that way in case anybody sees that and says, “Hey, Jim, yeah, but what about?” But what I want you to focus on is not controlling anything. I want you to focus on your habits.
Now, I don’t know when you’re gonna listen to this episode. And by the way, if you’re new here, welcome. And if you’re new here, like you hear me say every three, four, five episodes, go back to the beginning, start episode number one, and start listening there. Now, the reason I started that conversational thread or that loop is because we’re about to roll into 2020. And I don’t know where you are right now in your But I’m going to tell you this, if you want the best 2020 of your life, stop for crying out loud, focusing on all these things and all the hopes and, you know, wants and wishes and all these kinds of things and start focusing on your habits.
And you know, goals, we’re all taught to goal set in the beginning of the year and we’re all taught to creator in New Year’s resolutions. You’ve heard me say before that, you know, this, I don’t know what percentage of people, but they said New Year’s resolutions. And by the third week of January, 92% of people have actually abandoned their resolutions. Why? Well, based on what we’re talking about, why do you think? It’s really simple is ابتداء we operate by habits. And if you’re not in a habit of eating healthy. Guess what? Even though you have a New Year’s resolution, you go right back to your old habit again.
If you’re not in the habit of working out, even though your New Year’s resolution is, “Oh, I’m going to fit in my size five, or my 32, you know, my 32 or 31 waist jeans, and I’m going to be all excited about it.” And very quickly, it’s kind of like, “Wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” We’re back to our old behavior, which is our old habits again.
So I want to share something else with you here about control. I’m not sure if you put this together in your mind yet, though I did allude to it and I want to reference it again, is that if you are at a air quote, if you are, actually that’d be N, no, anyway, vowels and consonants all that, anyway, I’m thinking here and when I get lost and thought I should keep on going. Oh, I want to point out also, somebody had said over on Instagram, what they liked about the podcast is that it’s really unfiltered to a large degree, and I make mistakes all over the place. I mean, geez, guys, like Martin Luther King said, “It doesn’t matter how you say, just say it.” And I fumble all over the place, and I have sentence fragments, and I’ve got dangling participles all over the place, and I’m not using the right tense at certain points.
And ironically, off topic, many years ago out of college, I was a phenomenal writer, and I was even offered a job on the staff of a United States senator for my ability to write. And my job was to write correspondence to constituents. I mean, low level job, but it was my ability to write and to write, you know, correctly. And this day and age, I mean, it’s a train wreck. But you know what? I put out what I put out. And so I’m telling you that just as an ancillary note is if you’ve got something to say and you can help people stop worrying about all the mumbo jumbo and how good you’re going to look and whether or not people are going to judge you.
Anyway, where I was going there is if you are a control freak, quite literally, you were in the habit because your brain is doing it for you, you were in the habit of being a control freak. Because all of our habits come from the reptilian part of the brain, which is where the habits are stored. And if you are a control freak, which basically means a habit is something that happens automatically. And if you’re a control freak, that happens automatically. I mean, you don’t have to get out of bed and say, hmm, should I get in, you know, should I be a control freak today and have I been a control freak and what habits don’t know, it just happens automatically, which means it’s a habit.
So that’s why I’m tying habits into control in this particular episode to show you, as I said earlier, you ain’t you ain’t in control as squat your brain is. I want to back up here on a point that I made earlier as well. Some people have said, “I don’t buy the science because that means we have no free will.” And I’ve even heard some people try to make that argument and no, we do have free will. What the study has also shown is a split second before we execute a habitual behavior, We can actually, in that split second, re-decide not to do the habit.
So I just wanna share with you, yes, we are not robots. We are not robots to the brain. We do have free will. We do work by habit, and literally for most of us, it’s unconscious and just happens day in, day out. Week in, week out, minute in, minute out, second in, second out. But we do have the opportunity that split hairs second before we execute a behavior to analytically think through what we may or may not do.
Okay, so you’ve heard me say before as well is stop changing the mindset. See, a lot of you, anytime that you say you wanna change your mindset, is that what you’re really saying is you wanna control your brain set, which comes from the reptilian part of the brain. And I’m gonna share something with you here also. Some of you guys might get some pushback, give me some pushback and that’s okay. But what I want to share with you, and I also did an episode on this, is about how beliefs can be completely worthless and how beliefs can keep you trapped.
Because on the opposite end of the spectrum, there’s a book many years ago, I believe, written by Claude Bristol that said that I think it’s called The Magic of Beliefs. Yeah, beliefs can be magic. They also keep the majority of the population all around the world, trapped. Now, the reason I’m doing this is, if I said, do you believe you can make $100,000 a year, you’re probably gonna say, well, you know, yeah, look around me and I believe, and I’m gonna emphasize, I believe I can do that.
I know I’ve told this story here somewhere in the podcast, but I was at a big multi-level event years ago. I was a speaker, it was a very large multi-level marketing company. And the speaker on stage had all these people writing down their goals, all left-brained stuff, and I guarantee you, I’m a betting man, I guarantee you, if we could crack that audience from 2011 or so, I flat out guarantee you, and I’d put $10,000 on the line, that literally 95 to 97% of those people never, ever hit their goals.
Because see what happens is they’re sitting there in the audience and they’re watching these people up on stage and you might be watching people in life and people online and you’re like, yeah, Sally did it. So yeah, if Sally can do it, I believe I can do it. Bob is an internet marketing millionaire. Bob can do it. I believe I can do it. Well, the reality is that is all left brain thinking. That’s all prefrontal cortex. That’s all analytical, stop, stop, stop focusing on what you believe because see whether or not you want to admit it, that’s all self deception because you might analytically believe that you can create that million dollars or whatever it is, but at an identity level and specifically relative to this podcast episode, at a habit level, you do not have the habits to create the outcome that you want that you air quote, believe that you can create.
So what I’m gonna share with you is this, stop focusing on what you believe and cozy up to your brain and focus on your habits. And again, I refer back, go back and listen to I think episode number five or four, whatever it was, you’ll see it in the early episodes and my team probably put a link to it somewhere anyway, is go back and listen to that episode on habits and forget everything else for the most part when it comes to your goal setting and all these things because the habits you can’t, well, let me back up here. Have you noticed that you can’t even control your habits? Consider that. You can’t control your habits, which goes back to the entire title of this podcast is that you’re not controlled. Your brain is. Create the habits and what you want happens automatically.
So your transformational takeaway this week is that you are not in charge and you have no control. Your brain is and your brain does.
Alrighty, next episode I think is going to be, it’s going to be a short episode because I’m on vacation this week, but I know it’s a powerful episode for so many of you is I picked Mark’s question. It’s a Q and A episode and I picked Mark’s question because it applies to so many people. And the question is, how do I increase myself worth? So much of what you don’t have in life is because you believe you’re not worth it and you don’t deserve it. So if that resonates with you in any way, whatever you do, make sure that you listen to next week’s episode.
I do wanna say also, even though there’s an outro when it’s meaning the outro, the last recording here on this podcast, I do wanna say again that thank you so much for allowing me to be of service. And I do ask humbly, if you would please, if you’re getting a lot of value from these episodes, would you please do me the favor and leave an iTunes review? Not only that, and I’m just kidding here, but please, you know, I request leave a positive, leave a positive review, please, if you’re gonna leave a review, but leave a positive review if you would, and if you would, please share with your friends on Instagram and Facebook and Twitter and other social media outlets, because We get a lot of email from the team sends me. We get a lot of email from people saying that this podcast has helped them in so many ways. So I mean, why not help guys? Why not all of us help more people?
Alright, thanks for listening and I’ll catch you over on the next episode on how do I increase my self-worth? Take care, make it a great day today. Bye-bye.