You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is a throwback episode to episode number 57, and that episode is titled, “Life is Choice.”
Notice what I said there in the title, Life is Choice. Most people say life is a choice. That’s inaccurate. And that every single thing in your life is choice. The choice to incarnate is the ultimate choice, is a choice. The choice to keep listening is a choice, is choice, because you are the one making choice. Anything and everything about your life is choice. Your money, choice. Your relationship, choice. Marriage, choice. Divorce, choice. Everything is choice. And when you learn to understand and harness the power of choice, then you have the power to start shifting and transforming your life from the inside out. 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.

We’re going to talk about choice in this episode. And look at all the choices that you’ve made today. If you think back through your day, and I don’t know what time of day it is where you are in the world and what time you’re listening, but look at all the choices, whether they be unconscious or conscious. Look at your day prior to now. Where did you go to lunch? Did you brush your teeth? Did you have coffee? Did you not have coffee? Did you smoke? Did you go to work? Did you not go to work? Did you watch TV? Did you read the news? Look at your day and everything that you have done today. And I mean, everything that you have done is a choice. And you can say, well, I didn’t want to do XYZ. That wasn’t a choice. No, it was a choice. The only people that this might not pertain to would be somebody, let’s say, for example, in a federal maximum security prison or something like that. But for the most part, everything that you have done prior to this exact second, even by listening to this podcast, is choice. So if you look at that and you let that settle in, what becomes apparent is that you are a choice-making machine all day long.

So let me ask you this. What is the definition of choice? Consider that for a moment. Have you ever really thought about, well, you know, I guess I make choices all day long, but what is the definition of choice? Well, the definition of choice as I use it is to consider freely and then to choose. Now, let me give you a little distinction here. Even though we’re making choices all day long, where I get a lunch, for example, let’s say that I go to an organic shop for lunch, an organic salad or whatever, as opposed to going to Taco Bell, which I don’t go to Taco Bell. But you know what? That is a choice to not go to Taco Bell because there’s one a block from my house and I can go very easily. But where I want to go here for a second is, even though like when I started in the introduction, I said, did you brush your teeth today? Well, you probably didn’t even think about it because you were doing it on autopilot. But you know what? You could have made the choice not to brush your teeth.

That being said, the Buddha said many years ago is first we create our habits and then our habits create us. But even the habit at some point prior to becoming a habit, which we do not consciously think about, even the habit was a choice at some point. To give you an example of that, let’s say that you are a smoker and you smoke cigarettes. Well, at some point before you had that very first cigarette, even though the cigarettes might be habit at this point, before you ever smoked that very first cigarette, stop there and look. You had to make a choice to smoke that very first cigarette. So then what we do is we make choices and then we make the choice again and again and again. And then the choice becomes a habit. And then we get into the habit cycle. And then we don’t even realize that we’re making choices. But that habit actually started with the positioning and the start of a choice.

So again, hopefully this is sinking in that if you look at your life, all of it. Every bit of it. Go to college, you don’t. You’re single, you’re not single. You’re wealthy. Even being wealthy is a choice or not. Your entire life is choice. Let me put it a different way. It’s a process of choice, but all along that process, all day long, second to second, moment to moment, hour to hour, day by day, week by week, you are in the process of choosing something. I want to share something very profound with you here that I was taught many, many years ago by one of my mentors. And he said to me, he said, most of us, we don’t know how to choose. And what he meant by that, of course, we choose. But what he meant was, is we don’t know how to choose what is in our highest good and our best interest. And he said to me, this is the exact sentence he said, and it was just an example. But the sentence was this, as I look at this in front of me, how, how do I choose what is in my highest and best interest? And does my choosing serve me?

So look at your own life. Does your choosing—and by the way, a lot of people actually, this gives you power and a lot of people want to resist this, but every single thing you have in your life, everything you have in your life, you have chosen, whether or not you recognize you have chosen it. Now, I know I told this story before, but I want to share it again. And because it pertains to this as well. Many years ago, when I was waiting tables, 25 years ago, a really nice restaurant, et cetera. And the reason I say really nice restaurant is because prior to that, I had made a choice to wait tables in a lower end restaurant. And I thought one day, well, if I’m going to wait tables, then why would I not choose to work in a place where, you know what, it’s 200 bucks a head to eat here. But anyway, I remember this guy named John, and I mentioned this story before. John was complaining about waiting tables. You know, if you’re going to wait tables, this was a great place to wait tables because of the money. I mean, we made, this was a lot of years ago and the place is still open. We made really good money as a server for, you know, the kind of money you can make as a server. And he was complaining, complaining. And he said, you know what? I just, this place sucks and all this kind of stuff that he was saying. And he says, you know what? I don’t want to be here. I said, well, then quit, go somewhere else. And he says, well, and then he looked at me and he goes, “do you think I want to be here? I didn’t choose this.” He goes, “I went to college.” And as I look back, no, nobody made him walk in the, you know, no one made him park his car in the parking lot. No one made him walk in. No one made him fill out an application. No one made him interview. No one made him go through training. He chose every single bit of it yet was completely oblivious to the fact that he chose, literally, he chose every single bit of it.

And in your life, whether or not you think that you do or you do not, in this exact moment, you choose. Now, you might not have been able to choose based upon where you grew up in the world or as a kid or things of that nature, because maybe your parents were controlling or dominating. But right now, as a reflective thinking human being, you choose. So for example, right now you can choose to continue to listen to this episode. You can choose to turn the episode off. You can choose to stand up or sit down or go left in your car, go right or drink some water or have some ice cream or get a haircut or log online or whatever. But that again demonstrates that you have all of these choices right in front of you. And the interesting thing is this, you know, so many people think they’re trapped in life when even that in itself is a choice to think that.

Now, let me give you some strategies here. Number one, some research, and I don’t know where I found it many years ago, but some research had demonstrated that if we actually make the choice about something before we’re presented with the opportunity to make the choice, we’re more likely to stick to the choices that we want to make. Now, what I mean by that is let say, for example, that every morning you walk in the office and somebody has donuts there and you’re wanting to lose weight. And what happens is every morning you walk in, you open the door, and then you know what? There are the donuts, and you choose to actually have a donut. I do want to point out that part of that is brain-based, and it’s partly habit from the reptilian part of the brain. Yet, research has demonstrated that if you choose, for example, let’s say before you get out of your car, and you habituate this by doing it every morning, and you say, you know what? Before I walk in there, and I see those donuts, I choose that I am going to pass up those donuts and I’m going to move my attention. Research has demonstrated that you’re 50% more likely to stick with the choice to pass up the donuts when you’re not making the choice in that moment. Because when you’re making the choice in that moment, what a lot of us default to is just unconscious programming.

Now, the reason that I gave you that story, I remember one of my coaches one time, he was a transformational coach, and he’s been coaching since the 70s. A very, very, very gifted transformational coach. And he said to me one time, he said, “you know, this is what you want to do, Jim. He says, you want to choose, you want to choose the experience that you want to have of life.” Now, look at your life. You have chosen the experience of where you are today. Now, I do want to back up here. Maybe you were born in an oppressive country or a war-torn country or somewhere where you were actually in survival mode. But you know what? I’m a betting man. And right now, if you’re listening to this podcast, then you are a person that is somewhere in the world that has the opportunity and has the privilege of choice. And wherever you are, just like John the waiter, John said, I didn’t choose. And his body language shifted. He’s like, I didn’t choose this. Well, I didn’t say it back then, but when I didn’t know either, I was a victim back then also, but I said, yes, or I’m thinking, you know, yes, John, you did choose just like I also chose to wait tables there. So wherever you are right now, just get quiet with this in your mind, wherever you are right now, you have chosen to be there. Many times we’ll say things like, well, I wish I had XYZ. It would be nice to have XYZ. Well, the reason that you don’t have XYZ is because you were making the choice not to have XYZ.

I want to share something that just happened to me a couple of minutes ago. I’m currently running the Fall Transformational Program. And we started, I guess, 10 days ago or so. And we asked, you know, and I asked people to do a short introductory video. A lot of people did, I mean the very first couple of days they were excited to be in the group and they did a short introductory video. And then just a few minutes ago somebody posted—and I didn’t know who they were because they’ve not shown up yet—they posted a video and she said, “you know what, she goes, i I kind of sat on the sidelines and I kind of watched everything. And the first week I wasn’t feeling it entirely. So I didn’t do the video.” And then she posted a video today. Obviously that’s what I’m talking about and goes, “wow, I’m so into content and I get it. And I’m enjoying, I’m enjoying watching other people and their transformations and the videos and the content and everything else.” But she said something there that is pivotal and it’s vital that she recognized. And I will assist her with this and you also listening, is that what a lot of us do, what a lot of us do is we make our choices based upon how we feel. And then that’s a default for a lot of us. So the example would be, okay, I want to go to the gym today. And then I’m thinking, okay, well, yeah, but I don’t know. I should go to the gym, but I don’t feel like going to the gym. And then because I don’t feel like going to the gym without recognizing it, then we actually make the choice not to go to the gym based upon how we feel.

And one of my other transformational coaches, she was one of the most influential figures in my life, in my own transformation. And she used to have a phrase, and I love this phrase. Her phrase was, and it was both choice and commitment, and she said, “if we make our choices (and she also again applied this to commitment, but she said) if we make our choices based upon how we feel, we will find ourselves in the ditch.” So look at your own life. And then you look at how many times that you make your choices based upon how you feel. And then if you don’t feel like doing something, then you choose not to do it. And then you don’t get the outcome that you want. Why? Plain and simple, it’s because you don’t feel a certain way, which means you don’t choose in a certain way, which means you don’t get the outcome that you want. And then what a lot of us do, which is what I’ve said before, is we complain about where we are without ever looking in the mirror and saying, “you know what? To be brutally honest, I’m the one who made the choices that led me where I am now.”

So what’s obvious to you is that everything is choice. Now notice again, I didn’t say everything is a choice. Everything is choice because you are always in the fluid process of choosing and that is life. And I think you recognize by this point as well and our time together, you know, you’re listening this episode is where you are right now in your life is a choice. Whether you’re cleaning houses or digging ditches or working roadside crew or working on Wall Street or making millions of dollars or struggling paycheck to paycheck, you, yes, you listening, you are making the choice which actually gets you the outcome that you have now.

Something else I want to point out here, and with the exception of anything medical, pathological, neurological, Alzheimer’s, for example, or dementia, forgetting is a choice. And this is something that I learned a lot of years ago, is a lot of times we’ll say things like, oh, you know what, I forgot. And what I’ve learned a long time ago is that we don’t forget what’s important to us. And there’s a rare instance where people do, but it’s very rare, very rare. And you look at your own life. I mean, if you got to pick your kids up at 3 p.m., you’re there. You know, they’re in grammar school and you got to pick them up. You’re there. You don’t actually say, “you know, oh, my gosh, it’s 5:30 and I forgot to pick the kids up.” Why? Because we actually do what is important to us. So I just want you to actually be self-responsible here that anytime you say, oh, I forgot to do that, most likely, the reason you forgot to do it is because it wasn’t important to you. And you’re the one who made the choice to not make it important to you.

A couple of more things here as well. My NLP coach, Neuro Linguistic Programming, Peggy. A lot of people actually will not make a choice because they’re afraid to make a mistake. And Peggy, you know, she coached me for 20 years in NLP, Neuro Linguistic Programming. And, you know, she was my trainer, my coach and everything else for almost 20 years. And we were just chatting one day at lunch and she’s actually coached a lot of extraordinarily influential people. I mean, people that you know by household names. And she’s a very behind the scenes kind of person. And we were talking about choice one… I just tell you that because this woman is like done well in life and then helped a lot of people. And she’s also extraordinarily wise. She’s about 80 now. And I followed her for a lot of years. And actually now I’m her coach. But we were having lunch back in, you know, 1999, 2000 or so. And she said, “you know, most people actually, they’re afraid to make a choice because they’re afraid to make a wrong choice.” And here’s what I want to actually share with you listening, you know, in this little tangent I went on is what most people never stop to realize is that, hey, if I make a choice and the choice doesn’t get me what, you know, what I want, I can, I can re-decide and make a new choice.

My partner and I, many years ago, we have a house now in Dallas and a house in Sedona, Arizona, which we’ve settled in Sedona, Arizona. Well, we want to settle, even though we go back and forth. And many years ago, we were looking at Asheville, North Carolina. I tend to gravitate… we tend to gravitate towards places like Asheville, North Carolina, Jackson Hole, Wyoming, which one of our family members owns a home there, Sedona, Arizona, Boulder, Colorado. We were looking at Asheville, North Carolina. And I started thinking, I’m like, “you know, we don’t know anyone there. What if we pick up our lives and we move all the way to Asheville and then we don’t like it?” And my next thought was, “well, you know what? You pack up and you move somewhere else.” But a lot of people would say, “oh my gosh, we can’t move there because what if we make a mistake and we move there and it’s not what we want?” Well, what I just shared with you is we decide and make a new choice.

Okay, I don’t know where you are in terms of listening to the episodes, and you know that on pretty much every episode. And if you’re new here, and I’ve gotten a lot of good feedback from this, if you’re new, go back to episode number one and start all the episodes again. You know, this may or may not apply. It doesn’t matter. It’s you and your experience here. But I’ve had a lot of people say they’ve listened to many episodes multiple times, and they take notes, and they reintegrate, and they go back and listen to reinforce the content. But you know, by this point, if you’ve listened for any amount of time, I mentioned my brother-in-law, the shaman. And this may resonate with some of you. It may not. But you probably heard me talk about we’re cosmic beings. I mean, when you leave this body, you’re going to go somewhere. You know, you’re bioelectromagnetic energy being. And before you got here, you were somewhere. Before you incarnated in the body that you’re in right now, you were somewhere.

Now, how does that relate to choice? What I have been taught over the years, and you might’ve heard this in other places, is that wherever we incarnate, we incarnate to evolve and grow our cosmic consciousness. It’s like going through grades in school, grade number one, then you got a grade number two and et cetera. So we’re always evolving, or rather I should say, have the opportunity to evolve. But what my brother-in-law taught me or shared with me is that… okay, here we go. You chose this incarnation. Whatever you’re experiencing this lifetime, whether you are born in Africa or Germany or Australia or you’re tall or you have a lifetime disease or you’re gay or whatever, ever, ever, ever, whatever you have in your lifetime, you chose before you got here to have this experience for your highest good, your highest learning so that you might evolve. And then when you look at it that way, from that position, it really does give credence to what I say is that life is choice. I mean, the ultimate choice. The ultimate choice in your life was the choice to incarnate on this planet. That’s why I say life is choice, because I touched on that a little bit earlier. It’s a fluid process of choice from moment to moment in your life.

So what I want to share with you is this, is, and I think you have it by this point, but wherever you are, and whatever you have, it is by choice. You also look at stations in life here really quickly is, you know, if you ask people on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum, all the way down to the homeless, providing there’s no mental illness or anything there affecting the homelessness is… many times people at the lower end of the socioeconomic scale, poverty level, et cetera, many times they will say, “well, this isn’t my choice. I mean, why would I choose this? I didn’t decide this.” And then if you look at CEOs. You really are going to be hard-pressed to find a CEO that said, “well, how did I become a CEO and make all this money and have a great job and lead this big company? I didn’t choose this.” Well, yeah, you did. Both ends of the spectrum choose. And if you look at people that go from, you know, the old metaphorical phrase, rags to riches, it’s absolutely possible, but it’s based upon the choices that people make.

Okay, so your transformational takeaway is if you don’t like where you are in life, start making different choices.

Okay, so the next episode, I’m going to actually dig into an email that I got from someone. And I see a theme. This may or may not apply to you, but I see a theme, and it’s definitely worth me answering and spending some time on the next episode. When I say, well, let me back up here, is I attract a lot of entrepreneurs. Not everyone’s an entrepreneur, but I attract a lot. Or people that are wanting to start their own businesses. And basically the gist of the email is this. This was a question in there by Susan. She said, “I started my own business and it’s not working out. What do I do now?” Well, I want to share with you guys on the next episode, if you’re like Susan. If you’ve got a business, you started your own business and maybe it’s doing, it’s doing okay, but it’s not doing really well, or you started a business and it’s not doing well at all, I want to share with you what you may want your next steps to be.

Okay, thanks for listening. I’ll catch you over on the next episode or whichever episode you hop around to. Stay well and make it a great day today. Bye-bye.