You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is a throwback episode to episode number 132, “Five Random Thoughts to Change Your Life, Volume 3.”
These five thoughts that I dig into in the episode are: number one, being careful of your emotions because your emotions will drive you into the ditch. Number two is life is this way or that way because we tell ourself it is this way or that way. We’ve got to actually start paying attention to our self-talk. Number three, mastery is repetition. Number four, changing your life (and I love this thought) changing your life is really simple, but it requires devotion. Most people think changing a life is hard. No, it’s not hard at all. It’s simple, but requires devotion. And finally, if you don’t have humbleness, you lose everything. All really good things. And the reason I actually I did several episodes like that is because many of you guys said that you really like this format. It’s easy to digest. So hopefully you like this one just as well. And please 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 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.
I’m kind of laughing at myself right now because many times I will say, “you know what, guys, this is going to be a short podcast.” And the reason why this one I intended to be short, and hopefully it is short as I’m traveling in the morning and I still have not packed yet, which is par for the course for me. I know that many times when I say, “hey guys, this is going to be short,” it ends up being 40 minutes long. So hopefully that’s not the case today. Because what I do a lot of times when I create a podcast episode, I’ll just jot some notes down and I’ll just think, “okay, I want to do that one this week and this one next week,” et cetera. And when I thought today, what could I do that would be a really concise podcast, the random thoughts popped into my mind again. So when I’m done with this, we’ll know how long it took me today.
Okay, so what I want to do is I want to cover again five random thoughts and make them easy for you guys. Make them bite-sized. The thing about us human beings is we love to complicate things, and especially people that are overly analytical, people that are overly left-brained, people that are like, “you know, Jim, it can’t be that easy.” I remember one time, one of my clients, she said, “Jim, I just want to be happy.” And she goes, “show me how to be happy.” And I said, “unfortunately for you, the way to be happy is to be happy because you cannot be happy if you’re not being happy. Being happy is (air quote) the way.” And it took her a long time because she said, “no, I don’t want that. I don’t want that. Give me three steps, three steps so that I can be happy.” And again, I had to go back through it again is the way to be happy is to be happy because that’s a factory setting. For the most part, that’s how we’re born as human beings. Happiness is a factory setting. You know, you don’t look at a baby when they start smiling and giggling and you don’t think to yourself, “hmm, I wonder who taught that baby the three steps to being happy.” It just came naturally because again, it is factory settings. So when I give you these, these five random thoughts, and they’re really not random (I mean, they flow through my mind all the time, but I give them to you in no order, and I want to simplify as much as possible).
Okay, some of them are from my brother-in-law, the shaman. Some are from a couple of my coaches, and I’ll just kind of discern as I go through here. One of my coaches one time, she is a master trainer in neurolinguistic programming. She’s coached the mega high levels in life. I mean, American presidents when they were in the White House, et cetera. And many years ago in 1994, when I was (I had to think there) in 1994, when I was in NLP training with her, I said, “why is it so hard for me to stay committed to things?” And she said, “well, that’s very easy.” She said, “you’re run by your emotions. And when your emotions change, your thoughts obviously change, your actions change.” And let me back up there. Now, I don’t know how she told it to me because actually our emotions come from our thinking. What we think is how we feel. But she told me some rendition of this. And basically what she was saying is that it’s hard for you to achieve your goals because when your feelings change about anything around your goal, then you abandon your goal. Which means we could say, for example, “I am committed to XYZ.” And then what happens is what, our feelings change about XYZ. Why? Because of something external. It was raining outside or it was cold outside or, you know, sniffling. “I have a cold,” or, “you know what, I just don’t feel like doing it today.”
Anytime we get into our emotions and we’re not feeling it, then what we do is we’re like, “ah, I won’t do that today.” One of my other coaches said (and I found this, she was a very direct, no-nonsense coach, and I found this very valuable) she often said that when you let yourself be driven by your emotions, you will find yourself in the ditch. So what I want you to look at is I want you to look at your own life and ask yourself (I mean, really, you know, take a hard look at yourself) and notice all the things that you think that you want to do, that you think you’re committed to. And notice when your feelings change about that, “how I feel about XYZ, or how I feel about writing copy today, or prospecting or whatever it is for you, or getting in shape.” Now, these all come from your identity as well, but for now, let’s keep it simple. Notice, when your feelings about something change, so does your commitment. And when your feelings change, very quickly, your goal, as my coach Lori said, is you will find yourself in the ditch.
I’m not going to go into commitments here, but I remember reading a story about a young Navy SEAL. And he said that he had committed to run two miles every day for a certain amount of time. I think it was two or three months. And one morning he woke up. And he said, “you know what? I’m not feeling all that well.” And then he said, “should I run? Should I not run? Maybe I’m getting sick. And if I’m getting sick, I don’t want to get sicker. I just need to balance here what I’m going to do.” And what he did is he ran. He got up out of bed and he ran. And he later said (I don’t know where I read this or where I heard this story) but he said, “you know what? If I got sicker, then you know what? I would get over that. But if I broke my word to myself, which is self-integrity, and if I didn’t keep my word to myself, you know what? It would be harder to get over that.” He worked from what I call an unbreakable standard, meaning that when you make a commitment to yourself, it’s unbreakable even when your emotions change around the commitment. You make an unbreakable standard that no matter what, I commit to doing XYZ even when my feelings change. So what you have to do is you have to work from the commitment, not how you feel about your commitment, unless the feeling is creating positive emotion driving the commitment. So hopefully that made sense to you. And the first takeaway, the first random thought is: when you run your life by your emotions, you will soon find yourself in the ditch.
Here’s one that is extremely profound and very simple. And as I alluded to when I started this episode, we humans like to make things very simple. And also as a result of that, many times we will miss the simple wisdom right in front of us because we’re trying to make the simple wisdom difficult. We’re trying to take it, massage it, and make it fit our model of reality when really what’s going on is the answer is right in front of you. This is something that I learned from my brother-in-law. He was talking to me one time, and he said something so simple and so profound. And it is the random thought number two. And that is: your life is this way or that way because you tell yourself your life is this way or that way. Let me repeat that and let that soak in. Your life is this way or that way because you tell yourself your life is this way or that way.
So you’ve heard me say a lot of times in this podcast is that your life is a reflection of you. But the question is, how are you telling yourself that your life is? And I know that we have that choice, which you hear me mention a lot here in the podcast, because I can put two people in the very same situation, and the two people will think very different things about that situation, which means they are actually thinking one way or another or a different way about the situation that they’re in. I can put somebody in a project that’s, I would say, on a hardness scale (meaning how difficult it is) maybe it’s a five, which is even arbitrary. Some people can say it’s a seven. “It’s really easy.” Some people can say it’s a three. “You know, it’s harder for them,” or vice versa. However you want it. I’m just making this metaphor up. Some people will say, “oh, it’s really hard. It’s a seven,” which was different than what I said a little earlier, or a three, and it’s really easy. However, whatever end of the spectrum you want to put your threes and your sevens. But basically, I’m meaning some people will find it hard. Some people will find it easier. But yet it’s the very same task or situation.
So the question for you right here is (I’m going to slow down) how do you tell yourself that your life is? Consider that. Is making money a struggle? Is attracting money easy? Is working in corporate America really hard? Is working in corporate America really easy? Look at what’s going on in the world right now. COVID, corona, whatever you want to call it. What does it mean to you? What interpretations are you making it? Is wearing a mask hard? Is wearing a mask easy? So I want you to expand this to all of your life and just sit down and just sit for a few minutes and think. Think about this. As I said, my life, my life is this way or that way because I tell myself it is this way or that way. Because again, I can put two different people in two different situations and one person will say, “there’s no way I can do that.” And the other person will say, “absolutely, I can do that,” even if they’ve never done it before. Why? Because their life is this way or that way based upon what they tell themselves their life is.
So wherever you are in life, wherever you are in life, is because you have told yourself your life is a particular way and your external circumstances actually correspond to that, to that. Not that, but that. Like I said, it’s really late. I’ve gotten into the bad (everything’s a habit) I’ve gotten into the bad habit of recording these very late. All right, so let me give you an example here. A friend of mine many years ago, I lived in New York, and I used to meet a lot of very interesting people. I had famous clients. Being a hypnotist many years ago, I had a list of very famous people. I mean, at one time I had three cast members from Saturday Night Live. And these are people that you know. And also guys, one reason I’m kind of tripping over my words, I’ve got to find a new microphone. This one here muffles me out and I can’t hear myself. So it’s not that I can’t talk. It’s that I can’t hear myself talk with this headset. So I need to get a new headset. Anyway, back to what I’m saying is I had three cast members from Saturday Night Live one time and they were all well known and I worked with movie stars and everything else. And one of my clients was… heard conversations between them. One of my clients was friends with the president of the United States. And I was telling our friend about all this one time, and he said to me, he goes, “Jim, how do you meet the kind of people that you meet?” And I said, “oh, that’s very easy.” And I said, “I don’t know. I just expect to meet these kind of people.” And because I held that anticipation for myself, I held that model of reality. And that’s what I talked to myself about. Well, that was my external experience. I met people because I knew I was the kind of person who would meet people. So my life was the way that it was because I told myself my life was that way. And that’s called self-talk also.
But if you look at Muhammad Ali. Muhammad Ali always used to say what? Muhammad Ali used to always say, “I’m the greatest fighter who ever lived. I’m the greatest fighter who ever lived. I’m the greatest fighter who ever lived.” And of course, that’s debatable. But you know what? You can also look at him and put him in the category as one of the greatest fighters who has ever lived. So look at your life. You know, stop whatever you’re doing right now and just pay attention. And look at right now, take a three-minute survey. Look back in your day-to-day and tell yourself and recognize what are three negative things you said today that are counterproductive and they hold you back. “I can’t do anything right. It’s so hard to get ahead. Only XYZ people get ahead. Only those kind of people can do it because I can’t do it or I’m not smart enough. Or you know what? People are going to judge me and judge me and judge me.” Even though they might do it, your reaction to it is based upon your interpretation of people judging you. So right now, take a couple of minutes and look at how much negativity you have actually directed back at yourself today.
Thought number three: mastery is repetition and sacrifice. You know what’s interesting, though, is that very few people in the world, as I notice, as I’ve seen, really want mastery in life. Most people are spending so much time just trying to get by in life. And I mean this kindly because it’s not my place to judge anyone, but what’s always been… always been a goal for me is excellence, meaning being not the best because there’s no such thing, not being perfect in what I do, but mastering what I do and working from excellence. But this day and age, we live in a world of mediocrity. People are just trying to get by. Financially, people are struggling in this world. But most people quit way too early and too easily. As a matter of fact, most people in life quit way too early because why? “Oh, I just don’t want to do it anymore. Or I’m out of energy. Or I’m going to go watch Netflix,” or whatever it is.
One of my good friends, according to LinkedIn, she’s one of the top 10 marketers in the world. She’s been a long-term friend of mine. She has a best-selling book. She’s a social media, I mean, entrepreneur, CEO, owns a very large company. She’s in her mid-30s now, but as long as I’ve known her for 10 years, every year, for example like, I don’t know, it’s a business week that every year they publish, you know, top 30 entrepreneurs in the country under 30 and under 25 and all that, and she’s been in issues, like many issues for many years. And she and I were talking one day and she’s like, “you know, Jim, most people, they just won’t put in the work.” Meaning the like (and I don’t think, you know, I’ve said before, I don’t think that getting ahead is about hard work, but it’s about where you keep your attention). And that’s actually something I’m going to get to in just a bit. But I find that to be so true is most people quit way too early. They really, if they don’t get what they want when they want, like right away, like Amazon Prime (you know, boom, you order and it’s here tomorrow) if people don’t get what they want very quickly, they just quit. And I’ve seen that over and over and over again.
And you look at people that are masters at what they do. You know, I’m literally having my house in Sedona, Arizona renovated right now. I have a lot of master craftsmen working in the house, and you watch them work on something you think would be really simple, and they spend time doing it very, very well. The author Malcolm Gladwell (I believe it was Gladwell) who said it takes 10,000 hours to master anything. I don’t agree with him because, for example, Mozart wasn’t even 10,000 hours old when he started writing his own concertos and everything else. So some people are born of just natural talent and natural skill. But the reality is this: most people won’t spend the time and invest the time in developing the mastery. And that’s not always because (I mean, for example, nobody recognized Van Gogh as a master while he was on the planet). But I tell you this, if you develop mastery and excellence in what you do and you have high prosperity consciousness, you will be paid very, very well in life.
But right now, we live in a world where people want everything right now. “I’ve got to have it right now, now, now, now, now. I’m in a rush to get it.” And because I’m in a rush to get it, “hell no, I’m not going to put any time into mastering something.” And that goes back (you’ve probably heard me say a lot of times) is where do you put your attention? Many years ago, I was with Don Javier, my brother-in-law, in Jackson Hole, which is a very powerful place. Now I’ve got family that actually they own a home in Jackson Hole as well, so I go there often. But I remember one time, and this was 20 years ago, they had this little raffle at the airport, and you fill out this little raffle thing and answer questions and all this, and they entered you into a drawing to win a free airfare back to Jackson Hole. Now, do they do that? I don’t know. I mean, I assumed it was legit and everything. But Don Javier looked at me, and he said, “as much time and attention into other things that would grow you spiritually as you did this raffle, you would be surprised and amazed at what you become in life.” Because back then, 20 years ago, even though I was working with a shaman, it was kind of like a (air quote) kind of like a hobby for me. And I wasn’t fully devoted like I became over the years. But I always remember that story. And I look back and I’m like, well, where do I put my attention in life? Seriously, do I devote things to mastery? And it does not mean excellence. It doesn’t mean perfection. But I mean, just being very good at whatever craft I’m doing. Do I put my attention there or do I go for the quick, right away, bam, bam, let me just do it and get it done.
You know, my final takeaway here is what I noticed running transformational programs is that most, when it comes to sacrifice… most, and I do say most because I know my statistics and numbers and everything else, is most people will not sacrifice their time and their money to become the highest and best possible version of themselves. Because many people also want something right now. And if I can’t have it right now, then guess what? I’m not going to do it.
Okay, number four is: changing your life is very simple and requires devotion. And it goes a little bit to the lines of what I was just talking about. But the reality is this (and I know that you may or may not believe that right now) but change is very easy. Seriously, change is very, very easy. And to give you an example of that, it wasn’t hard for you to become who you are now. Think about that. As a child, it wasn’t hard for you to develop your personality because you learned that from your environment and your parents and your church and your school and everything else. So notice, you didn’t fight. You didn’t fight to become who you are. You learned to become who you are. And get this: you became who you are with repetition.
Now, right now, many people, as I said, in the world, they won’t actually, they won’t devote themselves to transformation. They will devote themselves to inner growth. And even though there’s tons of books out there on personal development, as you guys know, I think 90% of books that people buy go unread. And then the rest, basically, I think people read one or two chapters and they don’t go into it. So what I want to share with you also is it’s easy to be repetitious about things because look at your life right now. Your life is simply repetition. This is brain-based. Your life is repetition day in, day out. However, it’s the repetition that keeps recreating each and every day, the same day, Groundhog Day, over and over and over and over, times 100, over and over and over again. It’s easy to create repetition if you’re paying attention to where your attention is.
So let me give you an example here. Track your day-to-day. Seriously, track your day or pick tomorrow whenever you want and track your day for 24 hours. And notice where you have your attention for that 24 hours. Is it on the computer all day long? Is it on Facebook? Is it on Instagram? Is it on Netflix? Is it on the TV? Is it on the news? Where is your attention? Because it’s very easy for you to change your life. For example, what if you went back to one of the first episodes, like number five here in my podcast? I think it was five, six, something like that, where I talk about subconscious reprogramming. What if you devoted your attention for 30 days? I mean, you did it, so you became in the habit of it, but you devoted your attention for 30 days to transforming your subconscious identity. How do you think your life would be in 30 days? However, most people are not devoted. They’re also not committed, but they’re not devoted to transforming their lives. They’ll do something for a day or two and then boom, they’re off track and they’re off doing something else. And then a year later, they wonder why their life hasn’t changed. Plain and simple, it is pretty simple: changing your life is as simple as thinking, which you’re thinking right now and you’re thinking what you’re going to do next and you’re thinking what’s for dinner and you’re thinking about picking up the kids and you’re thinking about writing an email and you’re thinking about texting someone. Notice how easy it is to think. So changing your life is as easy as thinking, yet you must be devoted to the thinking that’s going to get you the outcome that you want.
Okay, the final one (and I might have gotten my numbers mixed up because I’m just going through these in my head basically) but here’s the final one: if I don’t have humbleness, I lose everything. Consider that. If I don’t have humbleness, I lose everything. Now, it took me a long time to understand what this means. Again, this was something taught to me by my brother-in-law, the shaman. As best I could put this together in my mind over the years is something else he said to me is that “the common man is hooked to other men and the warrior is hooked to infinity.” I’ll repeat that. “The common man is hooked to other men and the warrior is hooked to infinity.” What that means is that the common human being is hooked to all the world around them and the warrior is hooked to literally spiritual evolution.
What I recognized is that if I’m not humble, that means I’m in my ego, which is my 3D self, which is hooked to the rest of humanity and all of the mental toxicity that humanity gets into. So the only way to release myself from the mental toxicity humanity gets into is to like to lessen my ego. And that means being humble. And for me, humbleness is literally, I’m no better than anyone else on the planet with anything that I have or any of that. I’m no better than anyone else. The way that I look at us human beings on the planet relative to humbleness is that a first grader and a seventh grader, they’re both the same. They’re learning different things, but guess what? They’re both in school. The seventh grader is no better than the first grader. The seventh grader is just learning different lessons. And so (and I’m working on it, guys, I mean, I’m human as well) but I’m working on, let me see how humble that I can be.
Now, honestly, I get a lot of accolades in my transformational coaching programs. A lot of people are like, “Jim, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you. Like, thank you times a hundred for helping me transform my life.” And the reality is, is I’m humble. I just say, “thank you very much.” But I don’t get into, “oh, I’m a big banana and I can do this and I can do that, and these people say all these wonderful things.” No, I don’t get into any of that. I just do what I do. And as a result of doing what I do, then the results happen. But it’s really not about me. It’s just me being the guide for these people and all the people that are in my transformational coaching programs. So where I work from is, you know what? Just like you listening to this podcast and you’re here for a reason, I am the same but different. I’m also actually learning my lessons. Also, I heard somebody one time say (a speaker, and I disagree with him) he said, “nobody got ahead in life by being humble.” Really? I just don’t buy that. Because what I think is this about humbleness: humbleness is not thinking less of yourself. Humbleness is thinking of yourself less. Humbleness is not thinking less of yourself. Humbleness is thinking of yourself less. Meaning I don’t put so much attention on myself, so much ego on myself, so much self-importance on myself. Because when I do that, I lose myself, which is the connection to the higher part of myself, or what you guys would probably say, my higher spiritual self.
Something else here, then we’ll wrap up, is that most of us in life don’t give to give, we give to get. If you look at somebody, for example, that gives all this money to a hospital and they want their name (John Smith Memorial Wing or John Smith Pulmonary Cardiovascular Wing or whatever) is that John Smith is really giving the money to the hospital to put John Smith’s name on the side of the hospital. And that’s not humbleness. I learned many years ago, true humbleness is doing things for other people and other people not even knowing that you’re doing it for them. That is humbleness. So your takeaway here is that we’re all learning our lessons. Be humble and remember, you’re the same as everyone else, just at a different lesson in life.
Okay, very quickly, let’s recap these. And they are: When you run your life by emotions, you will find yourself in a ditch. Next one is, life is this way or that way, because you tell yourself life is this way or that way. Next one, mastery is repetition and sacrifice. Next one, changing your life is very simple and requires devotion. And the final one is, if I don’t have humbleness, I lose everything.
Okay, that wraps up this episode. Thank you for listening, and I’ll catch you on the next episode. Bye-bye.