You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This is a throwback episode to episode number 25, and that episode is titled Peace, The Single Biggest Thing That You Want in Life.
I could say a lot of things in this intro, but what I will say is this: working with a shaman for three decades, in the very early days of my apprenticeship, what he worked on more than anything else with me and those that worked with him is silencing and quieting the mind. And that’s where our power is. And I can say that in all the episodes I’ve done, I’m probably at 500 episodes now, the content of this episode is no question about it, the content is some of the most important content you will ever hear. Not that it’s coming from me, because candidly, I don’t even know what I said in this episode. I don’t recall it. This was like seven years ago. But what I’m telling you, this concept of a peaceful, quiet mind, everything takes place, you might have heard before the quote in Zen, “the music is made in the space between the notes.” When you find that peace and you find that quiet mind, that’s where all creation happens. Hopefully you start to understand that a little bit more in this episode. 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.

Okay, so I started in the introduction with obviously that the number one thing that everyone wants is peace. And you may have scoffed at that a little bit, but think about it. Money, a new home, car, a partner, education, health, anything, pretty much anything and everything that you want, you want for one reason only, and you want it because you want peace of mind. And then many people also aren’t at peace until they have what they think that they want that’s going to give them peace.

Now, let me give you an example here. Again, you might have scoffed a little bit, but let’s say money. And if I say to you, you know what, you want money for peace of mind, you might be thinking, yeah, Jim, whatever. But if you look at it, for most people, money actually represents security, which, by the way, security is an illusion that doesn’t exist. I mean, you could actually save your entire life and get smacked by a bus tomorrow. Many people actually, you know, they live in the future. You know, I’m going to make all this money for later, and they don’t make it till later. But anyway, many people think that money, the reason they want money is because they want security, but actually at a deeper level than that is they want peace so that they don’t have to worry about security. Therefore, they think if they have money and they’ve got plenty of it, they have peace. So by giving you this example, you can probably see how most things in your life, and it’s as simple as, let’s say you want a fancy car, and you’re not happy till you get it, which is the way most people actually operate, which is from the outside in. But let’s say you’re, you know, you want the nice fancy car. Well, the peace is, is guess what? People are going to look at you in a certain way, because human beings, something that really drives them is social status. That’s why, for example, you know, here in Texas, you might drive by a trailer park somewhere and you see a, you know, a car out front, an Escalade or something that costs more than the mobile home. But if you really, really, you know, you slow down and you look at it, most things that you want, you want because it’s going to give you at some point a certain level of peace. And that’s generally not true.

You know, as I said just a couple of minutes ago, and it’s obviously the entire point of this podcast, is if you’re wanting external things to give you peace, the reality is, is you’re probably never going to have peace in your life. And the reason why is because if you think, for example, money is going to give you peace and then you get money, then you’re going to, because you’re living from the outside in, then guess what? Next, that’s going to be a new house in the Hamptons or a beach house or a mountain home or another, you know, some person or a girlfriend or a boyfriend or whatever it is. But it’s always something external. And hopefully you’re starting to get from each and every episode that this podcast is intended to be not just informational, but transformational. And it’s my intent that in each and every episode, you see some of yourself in the episode and you start dropping some of your old ego, some of your old, you know, limitations and beliefs and paradigms and things that have held you backwards. Because the entire point of me doing this podcast, and candidly, it’s a lot of work for the team and I to do this. You know, those aren’t things that people say a lot, but plain and simple, it keeps my team busy. We’re doing this to make an impact and a difference in your life.

Something I want to share with you is this, that I learned many years ago, and I talk about pretty much on every episode I mention my brother-in-law, but this is something that I learned many years ago. Something that he said to me, which was extremely impactful, which is what I’m bringing you here, and when you think about it, it’s true, is that it’s really hard to do anything well without peace of mind. Let me give you an example of that. I want you to think back to a time in your life when you had plenty of money. Now, I don’t know if you’re self-employed or you’re a single mother or you’re a dad and you have a family and a wife and kids maybe that maybe you’re the working dad, maybe the working mom. I mean, this day and age, it’s both are fine. Maybe fine is not the right choice of words, but they’re both obviously prevalent in this day and age.

But I want you to think back to when, let me do this first. I want you to think back to when you didn’t have a lot of money. Money was scarce. You look at your bank account, it’s empty. And I want you to look at how hard it is for you to make decisions. Should I pay this bill first? Should I pay that bill? Does the babysitter get paid? Does the mortgage get paid? Does the health insurance get paid? I can’t afford this or that. And I also want you to notice how much stress there is in your life. You have no peace of mind and how difficult things are.

Now let’s contrast that. I want you to look at when you did have plenty of money in the bank, whatever that amount might be for you. And I want you to look at the different levels of peace. When you didn’t have money, you were not at peace. When you do have money or did have money, you are at peace. And I also want you to notice how much easier it is for you to make decisions when, because if you equate money to peace, which most people do, I want you to look at how much easier it is for you to make decisions when you’re at mental peace regarding money. I mean, it’s night and day for most people.
So the question, the old phrase, this $64,000 question that I have for you is what steals your internal peace? And, you know, every podcast, I mean, it’s my intention to bring you like really powerful nuggets on every podcast. But having internal peace is literally transformational. And my students and my coaching programs know, because I use myself as an example, that for the past two years, what I’ve been working on, and in my opinion, my observation, I’ve made some really significant strides, is I work from let nothing steal my internal peace.
The Dalai Lama, I read Dalai, I don’t know if he said it, I just read a meme. I mean, you know, people actually create memes and they say all kinds of things, but I read a meme where the Dalai Lama said, “never let anyone’s behavior steal your internal peace.” And I don’t think that I was out of control compared to a lot of people if I compared myself in this way, but I definitely used to be a person that would let certain things have my internal peace. And I’ll give you some examples because you might be able to see yourself in these examples.
Yesterday, for example, you know, and I’ve mentioned before, so it’s no big deal, I drive a Porsche and I drive that car because I like to drive. And, you know, in years gone by, things that I’ve always kind of had, you know, a Mercedes or nice cars or coupes or whatever, or fast cars. But what’s interesting is there was this person driving really slow in front of me yesterday. I mean, they were like, you know, 10 miles under the speed limit and I was behind them and I couldn’t get around them. And I was okay with that. It’s totally cool. But, you know, in years past, I would have been like, oh my God, this driver is so damn slow, and I wish they’d get out of my way, and, you know, all these things that are not peaceful.
You might have heard me mention before, and I don’t know if I did mention it, but many years ago, I used to wait tables at the Ritz-Carlton. And the Ritz-Carlton sets the world standard for customer service and hospitality. I mean, phenomenal customer service. And so when I’m out in the world, most customer service in most places is not that good. And in years past, I would just kind of sit there, you know, at a restaurant or something, and I wasn’t fuming, and I wouldn’t waste my whole time there, but I’d be like, you know, geez, customer service really sucks here, or this waitstaff is horrible, or they’re slow, or the kitchen. You know, I don’t go into any of that.
One of my other triggers in the past used to be rude people. I don’t know. I mean, I’m guessing. Well, I know that being polite is a very high value to me. Being kind to people, being good to people is a very high value. And when people are rude, of all things, that used to steal my internal peace because I’d be like, wow, that person’s really rude, what a jerk, blah, blah, blah. I just don’t go there anymore. And I don’t think as I started this, I don’t think I’ve ever been out of control. I mean, I used to have a friend years ago, anything and everything would set him off. I mean, the wind blows the wrong direction and he’s ranting and raving about it. I was never like that. And for the most part, I’ve always been, it is what it is. But I had that certain edge when things actually were, you know, like when customer service was really bad or the driver was really slow or the person was really rude, it would annoy me. It just doesn’t because it steals my peace.
You know, on that note, a friend of mine one time, we were talking about this on Facebook, and he wasn’t a Facebook friend, I mean, he was a personal friend. And he said that when people are rude to him, he’s rude back to them. And what I told him is that when people are rude to you, which is where I work from, and it’s all tied into the peace for me, when people are rude to you, that’s a reflection of them. What many people do is they’re rude back. But see, when they’re rude to you, that’s a reflection of them. When you’re rude to them, that is a reflection of you. So these days, it’s very hard to rattle me.
Something that I’ve learned over the years, and I’m finally, and I’m saying this, guys, even though many of you are following me and this is my podcast, I’m on this planet learning my lessons. And even though I’m in my 50s, I find myself constantly striving to mature more and more and more. And I know that at 54, I’m not going to be as mature as I’m going to be at 60. And at 60, I’m not going to be as mature as I’m going to be at 70, 80, 90, and maybe even 100. I don’t know. Where I’m working from now is, you may want to take this in, is like the Dalai Lama said, no one’s behavior is worth you giving up your internal peace.
I want to go a little farther there, is if you really look at it, is no one’s behavior is worth you getting into anger. Now, of course, there are varying degrees of people’s behavior, but I mean in terms of our normal everyday world. Anything that anybody does, if they invoke anger in you, you’re actually giving them your anger. And if you’re, you know, think about this, think about the, you know, the hours before this podcast or think about all yesterday. How many hours have you been through today where people, you’re giving people your internal peace all day long or yesterday, look at your whole day. I mean, did you give up all of your internal peace yesterday? And then the question that I ask you is, for what? What benefit, what reward did you get for giving people your power?
So where do we go with this? And I actually, what’s interesting is one of the earlier podcast episodes was about living from your highest potential. And it wasn’t one of the most downloaded episodes, and I think mainly because the word potential, highest potential is overused. But that whole episode was about internal peace. Because when you go into silence now, I mean, silence of mind, silence of environment, but specifically silence of mind, when you go into that, you are operating at the most powerful ability and potential that you have as a being. Yet, it’s one of the most overlooked things. And in this world, it’s something that literally 99% of people never think about because for most people, their head is full of nonsense, I mean, chatter.
An example that I’ve used before is if you look at monkeys in the trees, you know, I’ve been down in the jungles before in South America and, you know, places like that. And at night you can sit and you can hear the monkeys talking in the trees and there’s just tons of chatter, chatter, chatter, chatter, monkey noise, monkey noise, monkey noise. And most people’s minds are like that.
You might have also heard me say before about many of us want to change the world. We want to do something in the world. And if you’re listening to this podcast, I would bet that not only are you interested in transformation and self-improvement, but you really want to do something in the world. And you may have heard me say before that to change my world, I have to change myself. To change myself, I have to stop my world, which is the internal noise in dialogue and chatter. When I stop my world, I can change myself. When I can change myself, then I can change the world. But most people go about it backwards. They go out into the world trying to do something, not even recognizing, you know, the old phrase that Gandhi said is “be the change that you want to see in the world.”
I also want to point out is that if you really sat back, and you observed your thinking, you just watched the chatter in your head. Like for example, let’s say that there’s this video recorded and you stood back and you watched it. 95% of what takes away your internal peace, and I could actually say a hundred percent, but I’ll say 95% because when I say a hundred, that requires that we think at an even much higher level and letting go of just everything we’re attached to. But let me just say normal life. What air quote, what I call normal every day, just the life we’re living, 95% of what you talk to yourself, just noise. Literally, it’s just chatter about the past or chatter about the future. But literally, it’s like Charlie Brown’s teacher back in the 70s. For those of you that are old enough to remember, if you’re a millennial, I don’t know if millennials watch Charlie Brown, but back in the 70s and late 60s, you know, that time frame, Charlie Brown was always on. And do you remember what Charlie Brown’s teacher sounded like? His teacher sounded like, and talked like this, “wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” Well, that’s most of what goes through your mind all day long is “wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah, wah.” And you have no internal peace.
The reason you want internal peace is because now when you stop all the chatter, and you stop all the things that are stealing your peace, now you start to get more clarity in life. Now you’re starting to use higher function in mind, and you’re starting to allow what I call your higher sense, which is what some people call your sixth sense. Something that I want you to notice also is, and I know this about myself, is that any time that I’m agitated or feeling perturbed, I am not at peace, obviously. And I want to point out that literally 99% of the time, it is because something has happened in my external environment. What we’re doing is obviously we’re responding, most people, and I’m sure you’ve done that and you can see yourself as you’re listening to me now, is that most of us let our external environment steal our internal peace and harmony.
So let me give you some examples. And I’m going to keep this episode really simple because sometimes, and that’s why I keep a lot of the episodes as short as I can. I know most are under 30 minutes, some are 20. I think I only have one episode that’s an hour long, and that was the one on the law of attraction and how people are misusing it. But sometimes, well, many times I believe, you know, I like to keep things simple, but many times I believe that less can be more. And I know because I know me that I put a lot of, so maybe let’s put it this way, I put a lot of things in these podcasts that I know will help a lot of people. And I put a lot of stuff in them. So now there’s a lot of content, but I’m going to keep this one short and wrap up for a second in just a minute.
But what I want you to look at is I want you to look at when you’re worked up, you’re angry, you’re agitated, you’re frustrated, you’re ranting at the world, you’re mumbling under your breath. I want you to look at every bit of that. What you’re probably going to find is because someone or something in your external environment has actually triggered that. When we calm our mind, for example, if you’ve ever done any self-hypnosis, and there’s a podcast here on that, if you’ve ever done any self-hypnosis, what you will find is that when you’re in that state of mind, which is a brainwave frequency, your mind, as a matter of fact, I say that people become hypno-junkies because your mind is very, very peaceful. And when your mind goes peaceful, now, again, we’re setting ourself up to bring in clarity, plus we are healing ourselves. When we go into that state of mind, the body automatically starts regenerating.
Something else I want to say here is that where the way that I got to where I got to was I recognized, and you know, for example, you know emotionally when you’re not at peace. And again, it’s because you’re giving up your peace to something in your external world. What I did a few years back is I actually started working from any time that I am not at peace, number one is I could emotionally feel it, but any time that I’m not at peace, I am miscreating. What I also want to point out is that I learned to not be at peace and to give my power away and everything else, and that was simply, I learned it very young, as all of us do. What I want to point out is it’s nothing more than a habit. And what I’ve had to do is, through conscious awareness, is to rehabituate to metaphorically take a deep breath, exhale, and come right back to center again and stay in that place.
So what I want to share with you is no matter where you are at this point, no matter where you find yourself listening to this podcast in terms of your internal peace or giving it away, it’s nothing more than a habit that you have learned to actually go into your mumbling and your ranting and your raving and your frustrated and your angry and all those kind of things. Those are all habitual. You simply rehabituate. And let me just give you the little process here again. Anytime that I feel bad, meaning I’m stressed or I’m tense or whatever, I know in that moment, number one, that I’m miscreating, and I also know that I’m giving away my internal peace, and that is my cue to stop, take a deep breath, and bring myself right back to center again.
I’m sure that I’m going to create some episodes more on this, on silencing the mind, on meditation, on internal peace. But when you have internal peace, you have what I call well-being. And when you have well-being, you are living the highest version of you. Think about that because, see, well-being is not about homes and cars and jobs and titles and people and blah, blah, blah and wah, wah, wah. Well-being is an internal state of being. And when you have that, you are living at the highest potential that you have as a being.
Okay, so really simple. It’s not so much of an actionable thing, but your transformational takeaway is that you cannot do anything well without peace of mind. So go back to what I said earlier and notice that when you’re feeling, when you’re feeling any of these negative emotions, you’re actually most likely responding to the world outside of you and you were miscreating. And that is your cue to stop or take a deep breath or use a mantra or whatever it might be for you to bring yourself right back to center and right back to peace.
All right. The next episode is something that probably, I don’t know the percentage, but a lot of you are going to be able to relate to. This question is, it’s a Q&A next episode, and this question is from Vivek. And his question is, are you ready? His question is this: “how do I get over the belief that I’m not good enough?” Well, the two biggest fears that most people have are the fears of abandonment, meaning people are going to reject me, or the fear of inadequacy, I’m not good enough. And I’m going to give you a very, very simple, put it this way, I’m going to share some things that are very simple that will help most of you literally leave that belief behind on the very next Q&A episode.
Okay, thanks for listening, and I’ll catch you over on the Q&A. The question is, is how do you get over the belief of I’m not good enough? Take care and make it a great day today. Bye-bye.