You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This episode is titled The Anti-Self-Help Approach to Life. Now, when I say anti-self-help, the irony is this podcast is one of the top in the world for personal development and self-help. Logically, I would want to keep promoting self-help. No longer. As I mentioned, I’m shifting a lot. I’m changing a lot. The thing about self-help is oftentimes it’s exactly what keeps us trapped. What I mean by that is when we get into personal development or self-help, the underlying premise is many times we are saying, there is something wrong with me. So then because we think there’s something wrong with us, then we think we have to fix it. Well, the problem is, is what we’re trying to do is we are trying to optimize the human experience and the human identity. But as we’re trying to optimize the human experience and human identity, the flip side of that coin is that we are simultaneously telling the universe we are not and we do not have blank. So even though we think we’re trying to help ourselves, what we’re inadvertently doing is we are hurting ourselves. So if you’d like to learn more about that, 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 going to talk about the anti-self-help paradox, or the anti-self-help approach. You may notice if you’ve listened for any amount of time that my voice tone is off today, my diction is off a bit, etc., etc. The reason why, today is Thursday, but on Sunday I had a seizure. No worries, it was nothing significant, even though it was significant in the moment. I was rushed to the ER, had to call 911. And basically what all the testing and the CT scan and all that found was that my electrolytes were really, really off. Long and short is my potassium was really high. My sodium was really low. I’m not going to get into why they think that might have happened. But the reality is basically it was simply just an electrolyte challenge and threw me into a seizure, which wasn’t fun. But anyway, they had me for a few hours and they, as I said, did the CT scan and all that and let me go. So I’m still a bit loopy to some degree. It’s an after effect. The doctor told me a lingering effect. It’ll last for a few more days. And then you know what? Back to normal again, my rambunctious self.
Anyway, what I want to share with you in this episode is we get so caught in wanting to improve ourself. And I was there for many, many decades. I mean, damn. I mean, I have a personal development podcast and one of the highest rated ones in the world. But we get so caught in personal development, we don’t even recognize that as we’re actually trying to develop personally, which is the wrong approach. I’ll talk about that in a moment. When we’re trying to develop ourself personally, we’re simultaneously saying, I am not that. Meaning we’re trying to develop into something, but as we’re trying to develop into something more in life, while we’re trying to develop into that by working on ourselves, we’re simultaneously saying we are not that. And that is the trap that I want to actually start pulling you guys out of.
And I don’t know about you, but for many years, we wake up in the morning and we scan our reality. We start thinking about, oh my gosh, my bank account. And we think about, for example, our body or the pain in our body or tension in our relationships or whatever it might be. And then what we do is we identify with those things. And then because we identify with them, that’s what we create and that’s what we perpetuate. You know, every morning for me, for many years, it was like pulling out my personal development toolkit. And I would do my affirmations and my journaling and my breath work, all these kind of things. I would do it to air quote fix the problem or the trauma in my life.
Now, I’ve never been one to use the word trauma a lot. And I know that a lot of people listening do use that word. But when we’re trying to fix something like that, whatever it might be, your money, your health, your relationships, what we are simultaneously doing is we’re treating the body like a broken engine. And then we’re acting like a mechanic and we’re constantly listening for like that weird noise or trying to figure out where is it broken? Where is it broken? Why is it not running perfectly? Where is that hum coming from? And we’re trying to fix something.
And by the way, I’m not telling you not to fix anything, but I’ll give you a different approach in just a bit. But that word trauma that I used, I remember talking to Don Javier one time. And I went to this trauma workshop maybe 15 years ago, and he never tells me what to do, but he kind of sometimes tells me, well, don’t do that. But I went to a trauma workshop, and he said, don’t do that. And I said, why not? And he said, when you go do those psychodramas, that’s what they’re called, psychodramas. When you do those psychodramas, you are bringing up the energy from all that old trauma again. And you’re literally bringing that old trauma right back into your energy and your experience now. Don’t do that.
And that’s kind of what I’m talking about here. We relive things over and over and over again, or things that haven’t happened, we live it over and over and over again in our mind, the bank account and the money and the relationships and the health and the wellness and all those kind of things. And then what we do, again, third time, we start creating an identity out of that. And then we literally attach ourselves to our identity and that becomes our life.
You know, even right now, I’m fully cognizant and I recognize that my diction is off a bit, my rhythm, my timbre is off a bit. But what I know is this is the circumstance today. It does not mean it’s going to be the circumstance tomorrow. And it’s even a little harder for me to talk because I, when people have seizures, sometimes do, I bit the inside of my lip. So my lip is tender as well. And for some reason, the experience literally exacerbated an old case of TMJ. So this container that I call my body is in a bit of pain and a bit of a slowness right now.
And many people, when things like that happen, but again, you can apply this to your money, anything in your life. When this happens, they identify and they say, I am blank. I am sick. I am unhappy. I hurt. I don’t feel good. And they use these words, which by the way, is the name of the divine, I am. They use these words as their identity, and it’s not their identity. It’s not your identity. It is your experience.
So I know, even though this physical body, not my, this physical body is having the experience of discomfort, that is not my identity, and it’s simply temporary. Hopefully, instead of me explaining more in the podcast, and I will, and I might even be a little bit brained and muddled today, meaning this brain might be jumping around a little bit, use this as an example. You’re not the experience. You are the circumstance. But we constantly say we are the circumstance, and then we own it as the identity, and then we try to fix it, and then we actually become more of that identity.
Hopefully that makes sense. And even as I’m talking about this, I don’t just mean the physical healing, because that may be how you’re interpreting this, but it can also mean emotional heart healing. It can mean financial healing. It can mean any kind of healing in your life. But we so identify with the circumstance that we perpetuate the circumstance. And as I said, like fourth time now, so we perpetuate the circumstance, then we identify with the circumstance. The circumstance becomes our constant thinking, and then we try to fix it.
But here’s something that I would like to point out. When we identify with the fear or the circumstance, what we do, been there, done that, we go into fear, we go into worry, we go into anxiety. But here’s what I want to point out. Notice this. We literally, when we go into the fear, the worry, and the anxiety, we are not focused on the inside of us, meaning our mind and our soul. We are focused on where? The outside of us. We are focused on the world of appearances. And you, listening right now, you’re not an appearance. You are the being that’s having the experience that also experiences the appearances.
You know, even as I’m recording this right now, hopefully, if you’re new, you give the podcast a chance. I assure you I’m generally on my game. And if you’ve listened for any amount of time, I’m just being transparent with you. I’m being honest. I don’t know any other way to be of service to you than to be exactly who and what I am in any given moment.
As I’ve mentioned, the identity trap at level one, or what I call level one, that’s the human identity. And we’re always trying to make it better, trying to be the better human, you know, the better mindset, the better body, less flaws, more money, better life experience. But that right there, that is the invisible cage. And so then what we try to do is we don’t even recognize that when we’re living from that place I just mentioned, we’re living in an invisible cage, then we’re trying to polish the cage. We’re trying to make the cage that we call our human identity, we’re trying to make it high-performing. We’re trying to make it rich. We’re trying to make it healthy.
But here’s a big takeaway, and hopefully I’ll get this ball across the plate. It’s still a cage. It’s still a container. It’s still limited by every human limitation. As long as you identify with the cage, the human container, then you identify with every limitation of the human container. And that’s what I’ve said many times before when you do that. It’s like being on the Titanic and you’re simply trying to rearrange the furniture.
And what we want to do, are you ready? We want to become the observer, meaning we want to actually leave the character of the identity, whatever your name is. So for a moment, think about what your name is, Eric or Bob or Susie or Mary or Joe or Helen or whoever. That’s the character. But step outside the character and become the observer of the character because the observer is you soulfully. The observer is universal consciousness.
And guess what? Universal consciousness is already whole, already perfect, and already complete. Universal consciousness doesn’t need to be healed. As a matter of fact, universal consciousness needs you and your human identity to get the hell out of the way. And to get out of your ego identity of, I’m sick, I don’t feel good, I’m depressed, I’m this, I’m that, universal consciousness needs you to get out of the way.
So how do we do that? And that’s what I call the radical act of non-interference. That’s the highest spiritual state. The highest spiritual state, which doesn’t make any sense to us, is doing nothing more, meaning not trying to fix anything. The best example that I can give you is when you cut your finger in the kitchen, you have a little bitty cut, you put a band-aid on it, you set it, forget it, you leave it alone. So what we need to do is get out of the way, get out of our mind, stop thinking, get out of the fear, get out of the worry, which is all ego-based, and let divine mind and spirit do what it does best.
Basically, you need to fire yourself as a manager of your own life, as a manager of your own reality. Get out of the way. Open your heart. And don’t worry about it. I’ll be talking more about this as we go in different episodes. But you get your damn ego out of the way and let divine energy and divine consciousness come through you. Because what happens, as I mentioned earlier with the finger, when you get out of the way and you stop the noise, in that moment, universal consciousness begins to express itself through you.
But trust me when I tell you I know how hard that can be because I assure you, I used to be addicted to effort. If you’ve listened for any amount of time, you know that I’ve told you and I have, you know, in the 1990s, I read over 5,000 books on personal development and achievement and success and money and health and wellness and all these kind of things. I was the consummate obstacle in my own life. Because the human mind thinks, like mine did, oh my gosh, if I don’t do anything, oh my gosh, I’m not going to heal. I’m not going to make any money. And I don’t mean not do anything physically. I mean, getting out of the head. We think we’ve got a plan and we have to organize and we have to do all these kind of things.
As I mentioned, the universe does not need your help. What brings me here is Khalil Gibran. He said, your heart knows in silence the secrets of the days and the nights. Think about that. Your heart knows in the silence the secrets of the days and the nights. And I assure you, that’s a tough one to get your mind around. It is for a lot of people, and it was for me. There’s no question about it.
So until you’re ready to stop doing the heavy lifting, because you’ve spent your entire life doing the heavy lifting, and that’s mastering the rules of the cage and mastering the rules of the game, you’ve got to leave the cage behind. And to show you how much of a cage that you’re in, you’ve heard me talk about this before, go on over to [jimfortin.com/brainwashed](https://jimfortin.com/brainwashed) and take the 10-question unbrainwashed audit. And you’re going to see how much society, the world, your parents, the economy, all these things have literally, they brainwashed you into doing all the mental labor that you do. And all this mental labor that you do, you convinced yourself and the world has convinced you, here’s how to create. Here’s how to have. Here’s how to heal. Here’s how to be healthy. So then you do all those things, but all those things are noise. All those things are basically the human being and not the witness. When I say the witness, I do not mean that in a religious kind of way, but divine mind and source.
Okay, I realize you being a listener, I am cogent enough to recognize that it may have been a harder episode for you to get through. And if you’re brand new to listening, I apologize. Normally, I’m very fluid, very cogent. I’m showing a little grace for myself, not beating myself up. It is what it is. And I’m doing this because this is what I do. This is what I love to do. I love to do it when it’s a little easier to do. But hey, it was due today and I had to get it done. So hopefully you found some value in here.
But the main takeaway for you, is you got to get out of the way of universal mind, of divine mind. And something I said earlier, hopefully that caught a bit, and maybe that stuck with you a little bit. I’m going to use the word for effect. Let me use the word, a couple of words, source, universal consciousness, divine mind, a quantum field. But here’s another word that everyone will immediately understand, however you understand it. God. And what I want to tell you, not the God of religion, consciousness. Because actually, God, in the human form, is simply a recognition of universal consciousness. God does not need your help.
If everything I just said was babbled to you, that’s fine. But notice what I said. And when I had the stroke and heart failure in 2020, Don Javier taught me that. He said the surest and easiest way to heal is to stop trying to heal. Well, trying to heal is all the mental interference. It’s all the energetic interference. But when I stopped that and recognized that I was already whole, already complete, already healthy, even though the body had not yet caught up, that’s when I became healthy very, very quickly.
So the whole approach here was about the anti-self-help approach. Stop trying to fix the cage. This is why now more than ever in this crazy world we live in, it’s vital that we learn to go inside. We learn to quiet the mind. We learn the higher and true essence of our being. We learn we are not the container. We are not the cage. We are simply inhabiting the container while the container is on this planet.
And again, I tend to be a person who wants to do things well and to make this easy for you guys. So when I say again, I apologize for the third time. I know this wasn’t as cogent as it could be, but hey, I got it done. Okay. Do what you can to make it a great day today. I’m sure this body will be tip-top next week and raring to go. And I’ll catch you on next week’s episode. Take care. Bye-bye.