You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast this is a throwback episode episode number forty one which is titled Are You Being a Hundred Percent Responsible for Your Life. Many many years ago when I used to wait tables I used to listen to a lot of cassette tapes a lot of Nightingale Conant tapes. I was listening to a guy named Brian Tracy and I was waiting tables at this point back in the early nineteen nineties and I was talking to myself about how much I didn’t like my job. And I was at work, literally pre-shift, getting ready for the evening dinner that night. And I was listening to Brian Tracy. Now, mind you, as I was listening to Brian Tracy, I was like, I hate this fricking job. I don’t want to be here. I don’t like Raymond life. I’m not making enough money, blah, blah, blah. And Brian Tracy said, when you accept 100 and responsibility for everything in your life, you can then create the life of your dreams. And I thought right on, I love that idea, not even recognizing that I wasn’t being responsible for where I was in life. I liked the idea, but I wasn’t exercising it. If you wanna create more in life, you wanna be doing have more in life, it’s vital that you be 100 % responsible for being and doing and having everything you have. There’s no other way. And you want to learn to do that? Listen to this episode, take notes, and start acting upon what you’re going to learn here. Be responsible so that you can have more, be more, and do more in life. 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’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. You know, in the intro, I said that it’s something that most of us think that we are and that’s the concept of responsible. I mean, I don’t know, if you’re like me, you know, even when you were a kid, your parents were talking to you about responsibility. So there’s not a single person listening to this episode that has not heard pretty much throughout their entire life that we need to, you know, air quote, grow up and be responsible and, you know, make responsible decisions and all this kind of stuff. Yet the concept of vulnerability is something that so few of us demonstrate to the nth degree in our lives. And when I say the nth degree, being 100 % responsible for our lives is something that very few of us exercise. And you know what? I’m not tossing any stones here because at least now I recognize, and I know this concept, but I remember many, many years ago. Back in the early 90s, And I’ve always been into personal development. And obviously it’s my career. I really prefer to call it transformation at this point, not personal development. But in the 80s and in the 90s, I was one of those people that had the Walkman. And I was constantly listening to those audio programs you could get from Nightingale Conant. And it had like 12 cassette tapes on it. And all the people back at that programs like Zig Ziglar and, you know, Earl Nightingale and Deepak Chopra and Wayne Dyer and Marion Williamson and all these people. And I was always listening to the 12 cassette series programs on, you know, all the ways of success and all this kind of stuff. I remember when, and by the way, I’m college educated. I have a couple of college degrees from a really good school, but I floundered for a few years. And in the, you know, early to mid 90s, I actually decided that this was the path that I wanted to be on and I started my NLP, which is neurolinguistic programming training. I also have a degree in psychology and political science, and I’ve always been interested in politics, but not from a partisan perspective, more from, you know, what kind of good can you do in the world. And I was also at this time working at the Carter Presidential Center, which is Jimmy Carter’s, well, that’s his center, but I mean, I was working in the executive offices there and the development office. So I was doing that, I was getting my NLP training also and apprenticing with that and was waiting tables at night at Roof’s Chris. And the reason I tell you this, I remember one night I had during setup, anybody that’s waited tables know that you have setup before your shift. And I had my Walkman on and I was listening to Brian Tracy’s, I you know, one of his programs, the 12 keys to success, or something, something, blah, blah, and I just, this burned in my mind. When Brian Tracy said that one of the master keys to success is responsibility. We must be, and we must accept a hundred percent responsibility for the outcomes in our life. And I Remember thinking, mm-hmm, yep, yep, yep, I get it, I get it, makes perfect sense. And I fell into the category that, you know, something I say to a lot of people, there’s a difference between understanding something and knowing something. Everyone listening, every one of you understands the concept of responsibility, but the bigger question is, do you know it? And when you know it, that’s when you live it. And so that night, because there were things in my life that I didn’t want to be the way that they were and my money and everything else. And I really resonated, but I didn’t know that if I were literally embodying the concept of 100 % responsibility, even my circumstances in my life at that time would have been different. So I want to keep this simple, but the definition of responsibility, And you can find several, but one I found I think on Miriam Webster a couple of years ago was the act of making something happen. Now consider that the definition of responsibility is the act of making something happen. Now if you look at your own life, what this means is is that if something has not happened, and plain and simple, you have not been responsible for making it happen, or you can flip that and say that you have been irresponsible in the creation of that. When I looked up that definition of responsibility, which was probably, you know, six, seven years ago, it really just hit me, the simplicity of it, the act of making something happen. If something happens in my life that I want to happen, Well, guess what? I have been responsible for creating it. And if it doesn’t happen, then I have been Irresponsible for creating it now. Here’s the interesting thing and you probably see yourself here is that when we have the you know We have the thought that we want to create something What most people do is they actually they’re not 100 % responsible for creating it and then what they do which we’ll talk a little bit more about in just a moment, is they actually blame something outside of themselves. Some person, some circumstance, some external, some, you know, some external variant. And that’s not being 100 % responsible. Let me give you a couple of examples here. I remember, which I don’t do so much anymore, I do very little, but one of my one-to-one coaching clients, this was about four years ago, he was a mortgage broker, and I might have mentioned him before, but his company, you know, I think he wrote like, I’m pretty much in the ballpark, he wrote like $50 million in business back in loans back in 2015. And he was in coaching with me back then, and he went through a week on responsibility with me. And today, you know, he’s actually doing, I mean, he’s still in the mortgage business, but he’s grown so exponentially, he left the company he was with, he in which some of the people created a team with an inside a company. And I think now, as of last year, he said his company wrote something like $500 million in loans. But when he really came to know the concept of responsibility, I remember that time in our call. And he says, you know what? He goes learning this and really coming to know it, not just learning, but knowing it. When I embody this, he goes, “That gives me so much power.” Because it’s a simple phrase, and one of my coaches used to say, and you know, these are one of these little things that we just ignore on Facebook, but it’s the phrase, “If it is to be, it is up to me.” And his name was Michael. Michael got it in that moment that when he decided to be 100 % responsible for every aspect of his business growth, and that does mean the external things like, you know, employees and prospecting and late generation and all the aspects of business, and all of the mental game as well. He recognized that when he would, you know, he became 100 % responsible, then he could hugely, hugely, you know, influence the outcome in his business. Now, ironically, another story I want to share with you is another mortgage, actually another LO, mortgage broker, that I was working with, I don’t know, three or four years ago. And, you know, I, I work, so people, such one I add here, people who ask, why don’t I use more examples of women? And the reason why is, until a couple of years ago, 95 % of my clients were men. and now the last 18 months, they’ve become women. And because of the transformational coaching that I do, but when I taught persuasion and influencing the coaching, 95 % of my clients were entrepreneurs and there were men. But I wanna give you a story here that will really hit home with a lot of you to some degree. Remember another client of mine a few years back, three, four years ago. And by the way, he was in a really, really extremely unproductive, unhappy, unhealthy marriage. And by the way, I’m not a marriage counselor. It’s not my place to tell people to stay married or not get married. However, I do lead people to find answers on their own and answers that are healthy for them and ecological for them and answers that take them to higher ground. And he was in a relationship where he and his wife had not had any kind of sexual and over a contact and over a decade, not content, but contact and over a decade. And he was even suffering some health problems. And he said, you know what, Jim, if I, you know, if this gets any worse, I don’t think my wife is gonna be there for me. Now, obviously she wasn’t wanting to leave the marriage for whatever reasons, because she didn’t file for divorce, she didn’t want to leave. But his biggest fear in that moment was, is, oh my gosh, which is what a lot of people get into, is what happens if I leave? And then a lot of people get into, well, the money and the visitation and all these kind of things. And I remember saying to him, I said, “You know what? You’re really worried about what the result of your divorce is going to be should you get a divorce. Let me tell you what the outcome will be.” And this is what I said to him. I said, “Whatever is going to happen is a result of what you are being 100 % responsible for making happen.” And hopefully these two stories, they hit home with a lot of you because so many people go into so much fear about what’s going to happen tomorrow, yet you have responsibility in your own life, and they give that responsibility away to external things, to circumstances and the people and everything else. And I even know in my own life, whatever’s going to happen in the next month or six months or a year from now or whatever in my business and in my life is what I am responsible for making happen. Now also I want to point out is we can’t, that’s just colloquial, making something happen. I mean, we can have the intention, but it doesn’t always mean that it’s going to happen that way. But the mental place that I play from is that if it is to be, it is up to me. You know, another place to look at this is, so when people hear this concept, and I was the same way the very first time I heard it from Brian Tracy, and of course I probably had heard it before that, but it really resonated when Brian Tracy said it. If you don’t know who Brian Tracy is, He’s a personal development guru, peak performance. He’s been in the field for, I don’t know, probably 30, 35, 40 years. All right, so another question that I have is when we talk about responsibility, we’re also, many of us look at external responsibility. Are we responsible with our money and our prospecting and our lead generation and doing our resumes and all these kind of things? But a place that I look at is to what degree Am I responsible with the evolution and growth of my own conscious awareness?” When it comes to growing ourselves and transforming our lives, we don’t transform our lives from the outside in. We do it from the inside out. And then what I look at is, okay, what mental faculties or ways of being do I need to be? And then guess what? But if I’m not, you know, working on being those ways, then the reality is, is I am being irresponsible. Now, let me go back years ago, when I was waiting tables. So I waited tables at Roofs Chris in Atlanta for about a year, and then I moved to a place called Chops, really, really, pretty much high in Steakhouse in Atlanta. And I remember, I don’t even know why I told you the names anyway, maybe I should ask for a product placement fee. But anyway, I remember this guy at chops and we were talking and he said this was pre-shift also And he’s like I hate this place. This is exactly what he said And I said well then how come you’re here and and he looked at me and he snapped at me And he was he had a college degree also and he snapped at me and he said do you think I want to be here? He goes I don’t want to be here. I have to be here because I have to have a job and I need the money.” Now, in that moment, I really didn’t think a whole lot about it. I mean, it really didn’t register, you know, in the way that would be if I heard it today. And when I look back at that time then, he was being an absolute V word. And this is a word that a lot of people do not like, but a lot of people are. And I’ve been there before and it’s circumstantial, but he was being an absolute victim to his circumstances. Notice in that comment that he made, he had no power, none. Even the simple thing we’re talking about, if it is to be, you know, it’s up to me. He had none of that mentality or ways or way of being even in his mindset. So he was a complete victim even to his limitations in his mindset, which kept him in that environment and kept him in those circumstances. The question that I have for you, who do you blame? If you do not have what you want in life, who are you blaming or what are you blaming? I guarantee you, you know, if you look at your life, you’re probably blaming someone or something. And I’ve seen it just all across the gamut. People will say things like, well, you know what, and I’ve seen this is they blame their husband, you know what, I got in a marriage with him, we had kids, and he always controlled me. And now they’re out of the marriage and they’re blaming the husband. And I see so many people that blame people, but yet they’re the ones who made the choice. You know, at least here in the United States and in many places where people are listening to this podcast, you have obviously as a human being, you have free will, but you also have choice. You know, you might live somewhere in the world that has, you know, arranged marriages and stuff like that because, you know, this is the world we live in. We live in a global world right now, but there’s a 99.9 % chance that everything you have in your life right now is a result of the choices you have made. Now, those choices can also be unconscious, hold different podcasts, but make no mistake, wherever you are, you’ve made those choices at some level, and you’ve been conscious of the choices at, you know, to a large degree also. But what many people do is they blame. It is not my fault that I’m here. It is my mother, it’s my husband, it’s my wife, it’s my kids, it’s my brother, it’s my boss. It is the way that I grew up and the list goes on and on, but people from the most part, they blame other people and other things. My position is this, is that responsible people are 100 % responsible for their thoughts, emotions, and how they respond to what happens to them. You know, and you can find pictures of this online, Harry Truman, he had a little plaque on his desk in the White House when who was president, and he said, “The buck stops here.” Well, in your own life, the buck stops with you. Doesn’t stop with other people, it stops with you. And if you look at other presidents, there are other presidents who actually, they constantly pass the buck. It is never about them, it’s always about someone else. This party did this, this party did that. These people did this, those people did that, and the buck never stops at the desk in the Oval Office. But I do admire Harry Truman very much and for many reasons. If you actually, you know, watch any of his biographies, very solid man, very, very solid man. And, but I’ve always admired that, you know what, Harry Truman’s like, I’m the president and the buck stops here. And he was a hundred percent responsible for what happened in his administration. Now, I do want to point out I’m not a professional historian, so somebody else could hop in here and say, “Well, no, that’s not true, blah, blah. I don’t even want to go there. I’m just using this as an example.” So, I remember also to share with you, my family. You know, my family, my entire family was working class, my dad, my uncles, everyone. They were all working class. and I remember in 1981, because I was already talking about going to college. In 1981 I was in 11th grade and I remember my uncle brought me the newspaper one Saturday morning. I just remember this clear as day and he said to me, he goes, “You know what? You have all these dreams about going to college and all this. Well, you need to wake up and you need to actually, I don’t remember what he said after that, but basically it’s like you need to get real.” When he put the paper in front of me and tossed it down, he goes, “Look at the economy we live in, and you think that you want to go to college.” And when I look back, I’m like, “Wow, how supportive of him.” Not, but I look back, and that’s the way that a lot of people live, well, obviously now, and a lot of people live that way, you know, then and now, is that it’s about something outside of themselves. And what he was doing is saying, which I What he would and paid my and worked through college and got two degrees and was out in four years And I went to a good school not that it matters anymore because if I could redo it I mean I can’t what happened happened, but this day and age I don’t actually air quote use any of my education That’s a whole different podcast as well But so many people actually blame things outside of themselves and I want you to look at that in your own life What does victim mentality look like to you? Look at your own life, and where are you saying that something can’t be done because of something else? Where are you blaming? Where are you saying, you know what, have my parents not done this or not done that? Or if my kids were not this or that, or my wife or my husband or my job or my boss, take a good look at So, what I want to share with you is this, is, and I have been there in this day and age, if I am there, which it’s, you know, my, my, my place that I want to work from is to be a conscious transformer, means that I’m 100 % responsible for my life and I’m always actually working from a place of, I’m a conscious thinker, I’m making conscious choices and I actually just do the best that I can in life to use all the gifts and all the skills that I have. And I do know that anytime that I blame anyone, anytime, let me share with you here, my definitions of how a victim would be. Is anytime that I blame anyone, I’m being a victim, anytime that I feel, and this is a big one for a lot of people, and I’ve been there before, I’m not there now at all, but anytime that I would feel powerless, then I’m in victim Any time that I would be judgmental or project, that would be victim mentality. Any time that I feel hopelessness, and I see a lot of that, and as a matter of fact, I’m creating an episode on that soon, which is possibility versus resignation. Any time that you resign yourself to life, and you are hopeless, and meaning it’s not chemical, okay? Meaning it’s not something going on in the brain. Any time that you feel hopelessness, Well, guess what, you’re in victim mentality. What you’re really saying is that you are not being a hundred percent responsible for the outcomes in your life. Also, anytime that you’re justifying everything, it’s not my fault I’m this way, it’s because of this, because of that, because of this, because of that. Well, guess what, you’re justifying and that is not being a responsible, a 100 % responsible person. or when you’re enduring and making excuses, you’re also being a victim. You know what? Oh, I just have to put up with this. There’s just nothing that I can do about this. Well, you’re being in victim mentality. Also, just caveat there. I learned this many years ago from a friend of mine, and this was very powerful for me, and it’s very simple, is there’s a difference between resources and being resourceful. You know, many of us actually what we want is resources and we consider it to be resources in the context and I’m talking about as a tool, we consider it to be money. However, you look at some companies and they will start and they’ve got tons of resources and tons of money and three years later they’re broke. You look at other companies and they actually are bootstrapping it but you know what, they’re full. And because they’re resourceful, they figure things out. And what I want to point out, if I had a choice of having a lot of resources or to be resourceful, what I would choose is to be resourceful. But yet what I see in the general population, and you may want to look at the mirror on this, is how resourceful are you? Just looking over email a bit ago, And there’s a friend of mine that I’m working with right now. Actually, I heard her company for some PR. And when I met her, this was 2009, I was one of her first four clients. Today, she owns and runs a very large digital marketing firm, PR, anything having to do with growing a business and being online, online presence. She has been, when she was under 20, when she was 24 when I met her, Business Week and and One of the magazine named her top 25 entrepreneurs in the nation under 25 a few years later She was named like almost every year top 30, you know top 30 in the nation under 30 for like business week and etc She’s been written up an ink magazine I mean, I like even right now LinkedIn calls her one of the top 10 marketers on LinkedIn Her books been the top selling book for many many years on Amazon She’s, you know, in the Wall Street Journal and all these big publications. And she and I were, you know, we were chatting one day and she says, “Do you know what separates really successful people from people who are not successful?” And we were just chatting about this. And she goes, “What I think it is, is that really successful people, when they hit a wall, they figure it out. Unsuccessful people, when they hit a wall, they quit. And I look, you know, in context of what we’re talking about right now, that is true is that many people that actually when they quit, they’re not being resourceful and therefore they’re being irresponsible because they’re not actually not in the act of creating the outcome that they want. Okay. On the flip side, what does responsibility look like to me. What it looks like to me is power. It looks like power and freedom and honesty and even peacefulness to me. But when I say power, what I mean is, is like what Michael said earlier, the loan officer, is when he actually, you know, when I worked with him for a week on this, and he’s like, you know what, I just, I recognized that when I step into the power of responsibility, this is exactly what he said to me. He said, “I feel like I can do anything.” So right now I’m sharing with you as we wrap up here, is that when you accept and you are being 100 % responsible for the outcomes in your life, that is power. Okay, so the transformational takeaway in this episode is this, is that what happens in your life is what you are responsible for making happen in your life. Okay, that wraps up this episode and the next episode Monday Q&A is I’m going to be interviewing Katie. Katie has been, She actually enrolled in my transformational programs last year, and when I met Katie, when she enrolled, Katie was, and by the ways I’ve said multiple times, I am not a doctor, I am not a licensed medical professional or a healthcare professional. And we talked about this in Katie’s interview. But Katie was in ill health. She was on six medications and really just not physically doing well in life. Today, she’s on zero medication as a result of what and how she learned to use the power of her mind to heal her body. So I’m going to share that story with you in the next episode, the Monday Q&A, or it’s actually Transformational Story Monday. What I want to point out also is when you hear what I just said, is that she healed her body with what I taught her. She’s no longer on medications and she was on six, I believe, when she said she met me. If you’re not in ill health, most people say, “Well, that’s okay. I don’t have to listen to that episode.” Well, what I want to share with you is this. You want to listen to that episode. And the reason why is because prevention. You want to keep yourself well. And in that episode, we talk exactly about how Katie did it. Okay, I’ll catch you over on the Transformational Story Monday episode and do what you can to make it a great day today. Bye-bye.