You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This episode is titled, “Use Your Imagination to Get Anything You Want.” In this episode, I want to share the perhaps radical idea that your imagination just isn’t a place where you daydream and you fantasize, but it’s literally what some may call the God power within you. When you realize this and you realize the power of your imagination, I once heard someone say—a very, very well-known spiritual speaker from 100 years ago—say that your imagination is your salvation.

When you come to understand what the imagination is and how to use it, you’ll realize that that probably is true. Your imagination is your salvation. As I understand, Einstein said, “Imagination is your preview of life’s coming attractions.” And in this episode, we’re going to talk about how to use your imagination. 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-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.

Okay, so we’re talking about imagination. And I think back to my college years. I had this printout on my wall my junior year in college. And this printout was a quote by Henry David Thoreau. And the quote was, “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours.”

Around that same time, I remember—now I was also a psychology major in college, I was a dual major, political science and psychology—but I remember reading something by William James, who’s recognized as the father of American psychology. And William James once said something along the lines, “We become what we think about all day long.”

What a lot of people don’t recognize: when you are thinking about something, you are simultaneously imagining something. Ponder that. When you were thinking about something, you were also simultaneously imagining something. So if you are thinking about going on a trip, notice what happens. It’s not just analytical. You are already in your imagination—your feelings, the associations to the feelings, the smells maybe. Maybe you’re planning on going to the beach and you’re imagining the sunshine, or the waves, or maybe food from a particular country you’ve been to, or a language in a country you’ve been to. So even though you’re thinking about it, simultaneously, you are imagining about it.

Many years ago, I read a quote by a spiritualist from also about 100 years ago, and he said, “Imagination is the language of God.” Now, you can use “the divine,” you can use “consciousness,” whatever. But even consciousness—think about this for a moment—let’s take God out of the equation. Even while you are imagining, you are the being using the consciousness that flows through you to facilitate the imagination. And this is why I do subscribe to that passage I read many years ago: imagination is the language of God.

Please excuse any sniffling or backtracking or anything today. Allergies have hit me pretty hard this morning. The weather’s changing quite a bit. And even that being said, I’m going to tie this into imagination. When I moved to Sedona seven years ago, I did not have allergies, and I never had allergies in my life. I never understood the impact of allergies. And a couple of years ago—well, seven years ago, but two years ago—allergies started. And they’ve gotten progressively worse each year. And we did not have a long winter this year, so allergies returned a lot quicker this year than last year. And they affect my pronunciation, my ability to speak with clarity. So I mentioned that because of the podcast.

But what I want to share about this episode… what I have not done, and I will and am starting to do as of today because I have to get serious about this in my life. I generally don’t address things because I know things take care of themselves. I know things clear up. But I also know that I can use my imagination through self-hypnosis. I can use my imagination to heal, and I’m going to start doing that today.

Now, when we’re talking about imagination, let me take this to everyday practicality. What happens is—let’s talk about money, for example. We can even talk about health. And the reason I use money and health is because they’re very tangible things. Money actually is the most tangible thing because you can qualify and quantify it, meaning you know if you’ve got $100 and you know when you have $90 and you know when you have $200. You can literally quantify the money. Now, I’m usually talking in bigger terms—making $100,000 a year or $200,000 or whatever it is—but it’s very easy to quantify.

So what most of us do is we look at the external world, meaning you go to the ATM, and then you check your balance. You get this little sheet that pops out, and then you look at that. That sheet is external. Money is external. And then what we tend to believe is the money and the sheet are the truth of our reality, when yet they are external.

But yet, let’s backtrack. It is our imagination prior to the event of getting the ATM sheet receipt. It is the imagination that created the money or the lack of money in that account. I think back many years ago—I miss her dearly—my integrator was named Nikki, and she managed all functions on the team. Nikki was phenomenal. And a couple of years ago, she decided to move out of the country and different changes in her life and further embrace motherhood. I adore Nikki. I love Nikki.

And I remember her telling me one time before she started working with me, she was waiting tables. She was making—I don’t know what kind of money, but not a lot of money—waiting tables. And she walked up to an ATM and there was somebody’s receipt prior to her using the ATM. She pulled the receipt out and looked at it. And this person had $80,000 in their checking account. And that was mind-blowing to her. And she thought, “Oh, my God, $80,000. I’m a server. That’s crazy money.”

And I recall Nikki, in probably the second to last year she worked with me, she said, “You know, Jim, I want to share a story with you.” And she told me this story about the $80,000. And when she worked with me, she was paid on a base salary and bonus, and she made a significant amount of money leading my team. And she told me, she goes, “I checked my ATM balance—you know, my checking balance—and I had over $80,000 in my bank account.” And she attributes that to becoming the kind of person she needed to be in her mind, in her self-talk—this is all imagination—in her thinking to be someone that would have that kind of money.

And the reason I tell you that is because most of us look at the external world, meaning that ATM slip, our bank account, our physical body, whatever it might be. We look at the physical world and then we treat that as a fact. That is not a fact. That is an effect. The cause of the effect is your imagination.
So please take this with you. Think about this. Your circumstances right now—your bills, your health, your relationships, everything in your life—even though it may appear to be a fact, it’s simply a circumstance. Not only that, it is a temporary circumstance. And we create our circumstances through our imagination.

Now, you could say—maybe prior to this podcast—you could say, “Well, I create my circumstances based upon my thinking.” But as I talked about earlier, all of your thinking has corresponding imagination to it. To prove that, imagine that you’ve got to go to a party you don’t want to go to. You really don’t want to go. Now, notice you may be thinking about it, but more than anything, what you’re doing is you’re imagining: “Oh my God, shit, I got to go. It’s going to be so boring. I couldn’t think of a worse group of people to hang out with. I don’t want to go.” Notice this: you’re not even there, but you’re imagining how you’re going to feel when you’re there, and then you’re talking to yourself about how you imagine you’re going to feel when you’re there, but it all starts with imagination.

So please remember that. If you remember nothing else from this episode, remember that many people accept the appearances—meaning the ATM slip, the health, whatever it might be. We accept the current appearances as truth when it’s only an appearance or a circumstance. And here’s the good news: you are not your circumstances. You are the creator of your circumstances. You are the consciousness that created the circumstances.

And being a conscious being, you imagine constantly. You imagine all day long. You imagine what you’re going to get for your birthday. You imagine what gifts you’re going to get for Christmas. You imagine—as I talked about—going to dinner. You imagine going to the doctor and what the doctor is going to say. You imagine a date you’re going to go on. You imagine a vacation you may take. You imagine giving somebody bad news. You imagine what sex might be like with someone. (Doesn’t mean it’s going to be any of that for any of you guys!) But the point is, we are in our imagination all day long.

And this is how I came to understand that, you know what? Yeah, imagination is the language of the universe. Imagination is—I’m using them interchangeably—God and universe. Imagination is the language of the universe. Why? Because imagination is not words. Imagination is not analytical. Imagination is imagery and specifically feelings. And we go from thoughts to feelings to vibration to frequency. Frequency is the language of the universe, but imagination precedes frequency.

You know, I want to share this thought about a trap, and I fell into this trap for many, many years. And that trap is that we look at the world of appearances, as I’ve already talked about—the external world. We don’t realize—I want to go back to a quote, I’ve said it two or three times on the podcast—Ernest Holmes, who wrote Science of Mind back around, I guess, 1903 or so. And he said, “Imagine your mind so plastic, so receptive, that it receives the slightest impression of your thought. Not some thoughts, but all thoughts are taken up and acted upon.”

But let’s look at that a little different way. When he said, “Imagine your mind,” notice that right there: “Imagine.” Imagine your mind. Let’s take the word “mind” out of there for a second and look at what you are imagining. And that’s the metaphor that he’s trying to convey: the world around you is like soup, so to speak. It’s consciousness. And you are in the soup. And what you imagine is picked up by the rest of the, air-quote, “soup.”

And as I alluded to earlier, every thought you have—and I gave you some examples of going to a party, giving bad news, going on vacation, having sex, whatever—thought is imagination. And that is the foundation of your life.
Now, a mistake that a lot of us make is thinking from versus thinking of. Most of us think of what we want. We imagine what we want. We imagine our desires from a distance. When we imagine our desires from a distance—meaning I am here and my new home is over there at some point in the future; I am here and my new car is over there at some point in the future; I am here and my new lover, boyfriend, girlfriend, whoever, is at some point in the future—well, in that moment, we are imagining longing, wanting, and lack without even recognizing we are imagining longing, wanting, and lack.
So what we want to do instead is we want to imagine from. Imagine from.

Now, I’ve said for years the mistake that a lot of people make is all of us are at point A and we want to go to point B. But most people try to work from point A to get to point B. But the problem is you are the person who created point A. You don’t have the skills to get to point B or the ability to get to point B because you are the person, the being, that created point A. And you are thinking from point A. You must start thinking from point B. You must operate from point B.

So what I mean about this is we have to start living from and imagining from the mental state as if what you desire is already your current reality. Now, if you’ve listened to any amount of episodes, you’ve heard me talk many times about the power of imagining something as already true. When you imagine something as already true, there’s a part of your brain that doesn’t know that it’s not already true, and your brain starts to operate on that premise.

Now, what I’m telling you right now is very easy to dismiss. You can even say, “Jim, I’ve heard this before. Other people have said this before.” And I’m sure they have. This is nothing new. I’m telling you, I’m sharing with you: your imagination is your salvation. No matter where you are in life right now, no matter what your money is, what your money isn’t, it doesn’t matter.

I think back—and I don’t know if this is true or not, I don’t know the guy, and I’m not even a fan—but Jim Carrey. I read one time where when he was in his early 20s or thereabouts, Jim Carrey wrote himself a check for $10 million. Every day, he would imagine that he would be able to cash that check at some point. Notice—and go back to the Henry David Thoreau quote at the very beginning—you meet with success in uncommon hours. He imagined and imagined and imagined.

And I’m going to just share this whole episode right now—I could summarize the whole thing, but I’ve got more to share with you. See, you think you’re thinking, and you are, but you’re also imagining. And what you imagine over and over and over and over and over again, with the feeling as if it’s already true, you’ve got an extraordinarily good chance of that becoming your reality.

Now, speaking of reality, to create the plasmating of this, the materialization of this, what we need to do is bring reality—even though it’s imagined reality—into the imagination. Now, the best way to do this—you might have heard this before, and this is not motivational, rah-rah, mumbo-jumbo—it’s bringing the real-life details into the imagination.

Now, what I mean by that: let’s say, for example, that you want a new home. Maybe you want a new apartment. Maybe it’s a new car. Maybe it’s a different or a new lover. Maybe it’s more money. What many of us do is we do the opposite of what we actually should be doing. There was some research done—I mentioned it once or twice on the podcast—I have some book up here on my bookshelf, it’s about brain facts and brain research, and it’s probably a 25-year-old book. But the book was talking about what people think and imagine and then what outcomes they get. And the book wasn’t about that—there was one chapter in the book. And the book had a study in there that showed that poor people think about being poor and staying poor. Rich people think about being rich and staying rich.

But go to the whole basis of this episode: poor people imagine staying poor. Rich people imagine staying rich.

But let’s go to bringing the imagination alive. And I remember reading this in a book many, many years ago, and it’s helped me tremendously. And I’m sharing it with you, and I don’t think I’ve ever shared it really in the podcast—maybe I have. Pretty simple. And you can hear a lot of motivational speakers talk about this. And I know that I’m going a spiritual direction with the podcast. I’m not talking about motivation. I’m talking about the language of God, the language of the universe, the ultimate power in you, which is your consciousness—and even you are imagining your consciousness.

And by the way: never want anything. When you want something, what you’re telling the universe automatically and simultaneously is, “I want that.” And when you say you want that, what you’re simultaneously saying is, “I don’t have that.” The universe corresponds and says, “Okay. You are projecting and broadcasting you don’t have. I, being consciousness in the universe, it’s my job to correspond to what you are projecting and broadcasting, so I will make sure you do not have.”

Yes, you want to imagine over and over and over what you desire, but not as if you do not have it, which I talked about earlier. Here’s the whole simple thing: imagine over and over and over as if it is already true.

Now let’s add some details in. And this is really important. Let’s say that you want a home. And I opened that loop a couple of minutes ago. You want a new home. Well, what you do not want to do is what a lot of us do (and I did for many years): we bitch and we moan and groan and complain. “I hate where I live. I hate where I live. I hate where I live. I hate my neighbors. I got nasty neighbors. I want to move. I hate my neighborhood. I hate my street. I hate this town.” We’re so full of what we don’t want, which means we actually create more of that because that’s where our attention is.

Here’s where the discipline comes in, and it’s not hard to do. What we simply do is we imagine the outcome that we desire. So let’s say that we desire a new place to live. Now, right now, we have two bedrooms, but we want three bedrooms. So what we do is we imagine in detail—not seeing the three-bedroom home, we imagine (here’s the key) already living in that three-bedroom home. Move into it in your mind. If you want old wood floors—some people like that—imagine you can hear the creak of the 100-year-old oakwood floors as you’re walking. Imagine if you want a fireplace—imagine you can hear the crackle. You can smell, you can feel the heat coming off the fireplace. Whatever it is that you want that house to represent, imagine you already have it and it’s already true. But the key—the absolute key—is building in the details.

Now, the way that I had learned this 30 years ago—the example I gave, well, I haven’t given you the example yet, but was about having a new car. And the example was: if you want a new car, imagine you pick up the car keys and you have the car keys in your hand and you can feel them in your hand and you can hear them jangle. And you walk outside and you shut the door behind you, or the garage door goes up and you can hear the garage door going up. You walk out in the car, you put your hand on the door handle, you open the handle, you get in, the door closes behind you. You can feel the suction of the air in the vacuum when you close the door. You can hear yourself fumbling and putting the key in the ignition or pushing the button. You can feel your foot on the brake. You hear the engine start, hear the engine roar, or whatever kind of car you have, you hear the engine. You can feel the temperature system, the heating, the cooling, whatever. You hear the radio in the background and you can—oh my gosh—you can smell, if it’s a brand new car, you can smell that new car smell.

What you have done is you have brought it to life. You have literally brought the car to life, the car you desire, in your imagination. And I teach this, but in a different way, in the Transformational Coaching Program. By the way, if you’re listening to this anytime after 2026, I no longer, after a decade, I no longer do the Transformational Coaching Program, which was a 13-week program that I used to do. We’re doing our final one starting in April of 2026; doors closed forever after that.

And the TCP about a year ago, there was a guy in there—his name was Luke. And Luke said, “Jim, I’ve been waiting for this whole three months. I listened to you. I did what you said. I’ve been listening for some time.” And he was in TCP, the Transformational Coaching Program. And he goes, “Prior to enrolling in TCP and learning all this, I had a bad fungus on my hands and it wouldn’t heal. No matter what I did, no matter what prescriptions and creams and lotions, my hands would not heal. And I started doing what you told me to do with my imagination. And I got to tell you, I got to show you now.” And he pulled up his hands—and we were on a live Zoom call with several hundred people—and he goes, “Look, my hands are all clear.”
That is the power of imagination. And you can use it for anything in your life—health, wellness, anything, money. As I said: sex, anything. You can use it for anything in your life.

Okay, so now how do we do this? I’m going to give you a crash course in this. You ever noticed that when you wake up in the morning—let’s say that you got the old-fashioned clock radio, and if you don’t, think back to many years ago when you did. And you wake up in the morning and maybe your clock radio goes off to music. Mine did in high school, which is why I bring you this example. You ever notice that when you wake up first thing in the morning, you’re just starting to open your eyes. You’re not all the way awake yet. You’re in this groggy state. And maybe—maybe Abba and the song “Dancing Queen” is playing on the radio back when people use radios. That’s how old I am, okay?

Anyway, so then at noon, you’re like, “What the hell? Why can’t I get the song ‘Dancing Queen’ out?” or whatever song—Barry Manilow, “Copacabana”? Or Red Hot Chili Peppers? I don’t care, okay? Anyway, Amy Winehouse or what—I don’t know what her name is. Whoever that was. Anyway… you get up and you hear this song, but you’re not paying attention to the song, but you biologically hear the song. And as you’re getting dressed, you might be humming the song. And at noon, you’re like, “What the hell? Why am I still humming ‘Copacabana’?” or, you know, I don’t know, Red Hot Chili Peppers or whatever song you hear.

The reason why is we go through brainwave stages. Right now, you are in beta, which is full brainwave alertness. The level below that is alpha. The level below that—which would also be hypnosis, which would be lucidity in and out of awareness—would be theta, and below that is delta—you are out.
When you are in the daydreaming state, you’re in alpha. When you are in the sleepy, drowsy state, you are in theta. In these brainwave states, you are most receptive subconsciously to whatever is imprinted upon your subconscious mind. That can be music, it can be an audio, whatever it is.

But what I’m sharing with you is when you imagine what you want, you’re in a physical and mental relaxed state. When you imagine what you want in that state, you do not force it. You do not do anything other than simply imagining it already being true. When you are in that state, guess what you’re doing? You are literally impressing that upon your subconscious mind and basically telling your subconscious mind, “Hey, make this happen for me.”
Also, another way to do this—and I’ve talked about this in the podcast before—is when you’re in that groggy state of sleep and you know that you’re about to just pass out and drift away, in that exact nanosecond, in that moment, simply imagine what you desire as already fulfilled. And the reason you want to do it then is because you’re handing it to your subconscious mind, like handing off a football, and you’re handing it to your subconscious mind and saying, “Hey, in dream time, run with this.”

So what I want to share with you here is your imagination is your bridge between the gap of your internal and your external world. Your internal world is your imagination. Your external world is the world outside of you. So make a note of that. That is really, really, really powerful.

Also, let’s use this in a different way. Let’s say you’ve had an absolutely crappy day today. We’ve all had those days where we’re like, “Shit, I am so glad this day is over because this day has gone sideways.” Flipped upside down today. Worst possible day. Well, what do many of us do? We go to bed with that. Metaphorically, it’s like carrying that into bed with us.

Just popped in my mind—reminds me—I’ve got an 18-month-old pup. (Not 18-year!) 18-month-old pup. I got him when he was eight weeks old. And he is by my side 24-7. That dog is glued to me. He’s an Australian Shepherd. And that dude is glued to me. And if we’re in the den at night watching TV—I mean, I’m watching TV and working—he’s passed out. But when I get up, on the opposite side of my house is the bedroom. It’s a long house—it’s about 5,000 square feet—and it’s a walk to the other side of the house from where the den is.

The dog will follow me. And what he will do is as he’s following me, he will also look for a ball of his. Because he is attached to the ball and he’s got to take the ball to bed with him. So what I’m telling you here, kind of in a joking way—he’s got to take the ball to bed with him—what I’m telling you is be careful what you take to bed with you. Because you take your imagination to bed with you. And if you’re imagining the crappy day that you had, you’re taking that to bed with you. And then you’re literally prompting your subconscious mind to literally percolate and marinate on that crappy day that you had.

So what you may want to do at the end of every day is a mental cleanup. At the end of every day, simply through imagining, rewrite in your mind the events of the day, but rewrite them as if they happened the way that you actually desired them to happen, not the way that they did. So you simply replay your day as it was an amazing day, even though physically it was not, because everything’s imagination. Replay your day as if it was an absolutely amazing day.

I can’t guarantee you… but I guarantee you, you’ll wake up tomorrow feeling a lot better. And you might even have some solace, some peace, maybe even some ah-has and answers that have come to you that says, “Oh, okay, now here’s how to prevent ever having a day like that again.” Because when you’re in dream time, your subconscious mind goes to work with it. But like my dog, my puppy Milo and the ball he takes to bed every night: be careful what you take to bed with you every night. Because what you take to bed, again, is going to expand.

You know, as I share this with you, a mistake that a lot of people make is they hear this and they’re like, “Okay, Jim, I’m going to do this.” But the problem is when they get the result, they dismiss the result as, “Well, that’s a fluke. That’s a coincidence.” No, there are no coincidences. It’s not a fluke. You have literally planted this—what you desire—in your consciousness, and then you fertilized it and watered it through your imagination.

Okay, so here’s your transformational takeaway, and it’s a recap.
Number one, as I talked about: specificity. Know exactly what you desire, whether it be the car, the home, whatever it is. Know what that looks like in your mind, in your imagination, in details, okay?

So then what you want to do is you want to create a mental scene, mental imagery. Some people use the word “visualize.” You can visualize it. I use the word “imagine.” Not everyone can visualize, but everyone can imagine because even thinking about a song you heard before is imagination. Thinking about a good date or a bad date you had before is imagination.

Next, what you want to do: number one is know exactly what you want. Number two, create the imagination that implies that that desire has already been fulfilled, meaning it’s already completed.

Next: give it texture. Meaning, and I talked about this earlier, smell it, hear it, feel it—physically, mentally, and emotionally.

And then from there, if you’re doing this in bed, let yourself drift off to sleep. That is it. Because you’re taking that imagery, that language with you. And if you’re simply doing this during the day, then take a deep breath, count from one, two, three, open your eyes, and be back fully alert and fully aware.

I didn’t create this. This is thousands upon thousands of years old. All the ancient text, all the ancient wisdom says the exact same thing. And I could go on for hours about this topic—I love talking about this—but there’s no need to. I’ve given you the nuts and bolts. I’ve given you the foundation.

And the truth is, you already—notice this—you already use your imagination to create and have everything you have in your life right now. Everything you have right now is created through your imagination. So start using your imagination to get and create anything you want in life.

Thanks for listening. I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye-bye.