You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. This episode is titled, The $11 Billion Self-Help Lie That Keeps You Trapped. Question, you ever wondered why the self-help industry wants you addicted to fixing yourself? Maybe you’ve never even thought about that. But did you know that the entire industry and the billions of dollars that’s generated by the industry is all about literally you feeling good, but you know what it’s really not about? It’s not about you actually healing yourself at a deep and core level. So in this episode, I want to talk about, and when I talk about healing, I mean healing your money, healing your relationship with yourself, healing your external relationships, healing your health. I mean, complete healing. In this episode, I’m going to talk about how this billion-dollar industry the books, the podcasts, the webinars, and all of this is unknowingly by most people, but also designed to keep you trapped in what I call the cave of your mind. 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.

Personal development and self-help industry to a large degree keeps you trapped. Before I dig into that, also, thanks for your patience. I just moved into a new home, as you may or may not know. I’m still getting my office set up. Where I live, I live in a small Colorado town, and Amazon Prime does not exist here. Generally, in other places, you can get stuff pretty quickly, whether it be art or different things, lighting I need for my office. It’s taking a while to get here. So thank you for your patience while I’m getting all this done. As I said, that was a bold statement that I made, especially coming from me, where for many years, my podcast, this podcast, was ranked literally in three countries in the top 50 podcasts in these three countries in the self-help and personal development industry. So I know it’s a bold statement. However, What I recognized, I was talking to a friend of mine one time. This was many years ago. His name was Brad. And I said, you know, Brad, I think the personal development industry is broken. And I will also actually, I’m going to go a couple of different places in this episode. And he said, what do you mean? And I said, well, the industry is designed in a way that once you air quote fix something, now you got to fix something else. And then once you fix that, then you’ve got to fix something else. And Brad said to me, he goes, the industry’s not broken. It works perfectly. It has people coming back for more and more and more. Now, in my mind, at this point in my career, a lot of the industry is nothing more than motivational bullshit, stuff to make you feel good for just a bit. But you know what? Once you stop feeling good 10, 15, 20 minutes later, you’re right back into your old crap again. This new direction that I’ve been talking about, because I’ve been talking a lot about brainwashed, and we’re going to talk about you in this episode, but you may be wondering, and I know I’ve covered it, but I want to cover it a little more, is what prompted all this shifting in me? Well, I’m no different than you listening, and I go through my own evolutions, my own shifts, my own epiphanies, my own ahas, my own awareness, my own growth, etc. I’m just going to put it in my own words. The personal development industry and the way that pretty much everyone does it and the way that I’ve done it for many years keeps people trapped in the illusion of the 3D human ego and identity. And that’s simply a trap. And so for the last 18 months or so, I have been on a journey of self-discovery. If you’ve listened for any amount of time, you know that I moved out of Sedona. My family’s still there. I moved to a very small Colorado town. I was looking for a new version, a reinvention of myself. And as I was reinventing, it’s one of the reasons I decided to move. I’m reinventing in a way that literally I can help you guys even deeper and even further.
Okay, so the personal development industry. This industry last year is believed to be about a $50 billion, with a B, a $50 billion industry. And the thing about this industry that I’d recognized a while back is that the industry strives not on you healing yourself. It strives on, I’m just going to say it, repeat customers. Meaning people coming back and coming back and coming back and coming back. Now that may work for some people. And you know what? I did that for many years. But at this point, it doesn’t work for me and it doesn’t feel good for me and where I’m going. And the way that I look at this, if all the books, and trust me, I’ve read thousands of books over the years. If all the books and the programs and the morning routines and all these kind of things, If they permanently freed you and they brought you the health, wealth, abundance, and peace of mind that you wanted, you would stop buying. So think about it from that point of view. If you’re a business person and you’re wanting to make money, then you want people to keep buying things. And for me, I’m more about at this point in my life, and I’ve always been here, but I’ve really gone to a different level for myself. sorry, I’ve went to a different level for myself, is that if I could work with somebody for one time for a couple of months and help them completely leave what I call the illusion of their human identity, and I never saw them again, meaning other than just a cordial hello or whatever, when I say I never saw them again, what I mean is if they didn’t need to keep coming back to me for a tune-up or a repair or an upgrade, I would feel like I’ve done my job. Why? Because they had, air quote, a problem. I helped them fix the problem and they’ve gone on and they’ve went on with their life. I think for me, that fits where I am right now.
But the personal development industry, what I noticed, the entire industry is engineered around conscious self-repair, meaning you’ve got to keep striving. You’ve got to keep progressing. You’ve got to keep repairing something about yourself. And I remember back to what I was just saying, I remember an Instagram post I saw a while back. I’m sure you’ve seen something similar where this doctor, at least the doctor on Instagram, was saying, if everyone knew or everyone took, and I don’t even know what they were talking about. Basically, it was a holistic remedy or whatever it is. And this doctor was saying, If everyone knew this, it would put me out of business. And he was saying this in a good way, meaning I want more people to know about this. But where I am is, in my mind, that’s a great place to be, is when so many people have healed themselves physically, mentally, emotionally, monetarily, spiritually, that so many people have healed themselves that I’m out of business. To me, that would be, I would feel like I’ve used my life. And I don’t have any grandiose vision or like I’m going to heal the world or any of that. But what I do know is that for people listening to the podcast, I can help them from my little small corner of the world.
The thing about self-help is to a large degree, the self-help industry keeps people addicted to the feeling of progress. And we’re taught to do things like journaling. And many people go to really high-end, high-energy events and pay a lot of money and jump around and all these kind of things and stay up from 7 in the morning till 2 in the morning. They do all these kind of things. But many times what they do is they go because they want to be associated with whatever that speaker is or they want to be around like-minded people. But many times These people experience what I call very limited transformational success at a core level. And I think what a lot of people do is they mistake the effort of being in the process of air quote fixing themselves. They mistake that for being actual freedom from a psychological perspective or they mistake that for actual transformation. I’ve even noticed in this industry over the years, and I’ve been in this industry for 33 years now, I was one of these people that a fair amount of people get into, and they will call themselves this. I would call myself this many years ago. People would say they are self-help junkies, meaning they are constantly into improvement and improvement and improvement. And I’ve got to progress, and I’ve got to become more, and I’ve got to do more, and I’ve got to have more, and I’ve got to create more, and all these kind of things.
When I had that epiphany, or I had an epiphany one day that, you know what? No matter what I create in the external world, no matter how much money I have, how much money I don’t have, no matter what my health is, no matter what my health is not, no matter what anything in my external world is or is not, If I didn’t have any kind of external validation, I wouldn’t know whether that was air quote good or bad. I would have nothing to validate it or measure it against. And I recognized in that moment, I had an epiphany that, you know what? And this applies to you as well. It might not resonate in this moment, but it applies to you. And I had an epiphany that I’m okay. I’m okay exactly as I am today. I’m okay exactly how I am today. And the reality is all of us are okay exactly as we are today, but we become so brainwashed, so to speak, so programmed by culture, by media, by commercialization, and especially commercialization, that if you want to be prettier or you want to be healthier or you want to be more successful or perceived as more successful, then follow this prescribed path that people give you. And then when you follow that prescribed path, guess what? You’re going to go from point A to point B. And when you get to point B, you’re finally going to be good enough. But my question is, how come you’re not good enough right now?
Now, when I was thinking about all this, I realized that it’s all about context. You might have heard me before talking about content versus context. And what I’ve recognized, if you think from inside the context of being human, I’ll repeat, if you think from inside the context of being human, you will always be broken and you will never be good enough. What we have to do is we have to think outside, beyond the context of being human. Because outside the context of the identity of the human ego, that is where we find true awareness and recognition of our true self from a spiritual perspective and spiritual way. And that is where peace and freedom That’s where they finally happen.
So you may be wondering, okay, Jim, you know, that was a big statement you made when you opened this episode, but how does the personal development industry keep people trapped? It’s what I call upgrading the cage or upgrading the cave, either one. Basically, my position is that, and this is something that I did another program of mine called Brainwashed. where I explain Plato’s allegory of the cave. Now, this allegory is thousands of years old. And in the cave, I’ve talked about it on the podcast, in the cave, these people were chained to a wall and all they could see was shadows. And they learned to believe that these shadows were actual reality when they were simply just shadows. So they spent their entire life chained to the wall. In traditional personal development, for the most part, not all of it, but most of it has us chained to the human container, meaning the 3D human ego, how we identify as a human being. And we’re taught that we have to actually, the ego has to think more positively. The ego has to build better habits. The ego has to shift and needs a better identity. And the ego needs more discipline. And the ego needs more responsibility. And the ego needs more of these things. Well, from an ego perspective, yes, yes, yes. Those can be very powerful and very helpful things. No question about it. So do not get me wrong. All of that stuff can be good. And the person will be better off. The ego, the container will be better off. But the problem with that is that it improves the container. But you know what? The next five alarm fire that comes along, the container, meaning the human ego, the human identity, again, has another problem. It’s akin to, you’ve heard me say this before, and it’s nothing I coined. I heard from one of my coaches many years ago, the phrase, like moving chairs on the Titanic. And I think that’s what a lot of the personal development industry does is it has you moving chairs on a Titanic. And I would rather get off the Titanic and get onto a seaworthy vessel as opposed to one that’s sinking, one that always needs repair, or one that is going down.
Now, let me share a core paradox of this human ego identity self-improvement model. Number one, As Einstein said, something along the lines is that a problem can never be solved at the level it was created. So your container, your ego is what created the air quote problems in your life. So what I find is, okay, so I’m the one who created all these problems, which means I didn’t have the ability or skills not to create the problem in the first place. And I’m going to use the same tools from the same mind. That created the problem to try to actually solve the problem. We’re trapped. And we have to go to a higher level, which is what I call basically a higher context. We have to start operating from consciousness, not the human ego and the human identity.
But let me share something else with you. One of the major, in my opinion, one of the major pitfalls of trying to improve yourself is this. And when I say it, this is going to give you a really big aha. Trying to improve yourself reinforces the root subconscious assumption that something about you is fundamentally wrong or broken or lacking or is incomplete. Basically, let me just say that in a simpler way. The second you say, I want X, Y, Z in my life. I don’t like what I have. I’m at point A. but I want to go to point B, and I want what’s at point B, and I’m going to start doing things to take me from point A to point B. In that moment, what are you automatically telegraphing energetically in your consciousness without even recognizing it? Well, what you’re automatically telegraphing is, are you ready? I do not yet have that. And as the universe corresponds to your consciousness, What you’re projecting is, I do not have that. So what happens is the universe metaphorically air quote hears that and the universe says, okay, you do not have that. It’s my job as the universe to create circumstances in your life to fulfill that. Therefore, you will not have that. So what we do is we try to work harder and harder and harder and harder to have, but the whole time we’re working harder and harder and harder. to have something, we’re actually working against ourself.
So from a spiritual and energetic perspective, when you think, and we’re conditioned, we’re brainwashed to think there’s something wrong with us. When you think that you’re broken, or there are things in your life that needs to be fixed. Now, mind you, many of us have things in our life we want to improve. That’s a whole different ball of wax. However, When we think, I am broken, I’m not good enough, there’s something wrong with me. In that exact moment, we are actually reinforcing the belief that we are broken, and then we get into a broken cycle of, I’m broken, I have to fix. And the second you say you have to fix, it reinforces that you’re broken. And then you think you’re broken, so then you go back to, I got to fix. And it’s this completely broken cycle that keeps us feeling bad about ourselves. It keeps us broke. It keeps us struggling. And that’s a large part of the personal development industry.
And that’s why I decided, candidly, you’ve heard me talk about this a little bit. I was at a point a few months ago where I decided maybe I just want to retire. I’m just done with every bit of all this nonsense in the world. The noise online, the bullshit online, you got to achieve. All these, you know, I made $50 million this year and I got 87 million followers and all this shit that people get into. And the people that aspire to that, it robs them from their peace of mind. It robs them from their sanctity of mind. And they’re constantly chasing something. And the more they chase something, the more they’re actually pushing it away. But to show you how pervasive this is, even in your own life, what if we were sitting across from each other and I said to you, What if there was nothing, I mean nothing wrong with you right now? What would you automatically, when I say automatically, I mean, what would you nanosecond automatically think? Well, you don’t have to guess. Notice where your mind went. When I said, what if there was nothing wrong with you right now? You might have entertained that a little bit, but where most people, where they went here is, No, there is something wrong with me. My leg hurts. My arm is broken. I’m broke. I’m lonely. I got evicted. I have bad health. Blah, blah. We go into all these places because we’re so conditioned. But just what if, just take a few seconds. What if, despite the appearances and despite the circumstances, which are all influenced by how you’ve been brainwashed to think, What if in this second there was actually nothing wrong with you? How would that change things?
So in the personal development industry, the entire industry, and I keep giving myself a little bit of a caveat here, for the most part, polishes what I call the human container. Call it what you will. The meat suit, the bag of skin, the human ego. the human identity, but the entire industry polishes that mask, that container. And the challenge is, whatever the capacity of the container, you simply just keep polishing things in the container. And my whole approach now is you have to recognize you are not the container, which is why I created this new program called Brainwashed. Because I knew, and I’ve done it, I’ve helped thousands of people all around the world make more money, improve their health, better relationships, all of this. But I didn’t know that I was doing it. We did it all within the container of the human ego and the human identity. And what if we recognized, we recognized, I’m not the container. I am the awareness. I am the observer of the container. I am the consciousness that keeps the container alive. When we recognize we are the consciousness that keeps the container alive, we go to a whole new level of being at that point. And that is true power. That is freedom. That is authenticity. That is recognizing ourself as a spiritual being, not a human identity trying to have spiritual experiences.
So as I said, we’ve all been brainwashed. To believe we are the human container and the human container has to keep upgrading itself. It has to make more money and better health and better relationships and be liked by everyone. It’s got to be perfect and all these kind of things. And the true power comes in recognizing the brainwashing that the human container has endured, again, by society, by church, by media, by school, by family, by all these things in the world. And when we remember, here’s an operative word, when we remember that we are the consciousness behind the container, we are the consciousness keeping the container alive, that’s where the power is.
So what I noticed, and I’m going to throw myself under the bus, I have no problems with that. I’ll explain a little bit more about that. But most self-improvement work, and even a lot of transformational work, really just means that the container, meaning what you’ve learned to identify as, simply just does a better job of coping with the world, a better job of maybe managing the story of the container, a better job of some way getting the container to perform. And again, I did that. I didn’t know any differently. And I did that for 30 years. And in fairness to me, throwing myself under the bus, I’ve helped many, many, many thousands of people all around the world. Even the podcast has millions of downloads. But I knew for me, and my own personal evolution of my being and my consciousness, if I’m going to do this in good faith, I’ve got to take you guys deeper. I’ve got to take you guys to where no one has taken you guys before.
You know, I’ve said it a couple of times, but in a great deal of personal development work, most of that work for most people keeps us in the perpetual cycle of human trauma and processing. and fixing the past, fixing the stories, and in particular, managing our fear. But notice this, everything I just said, the trauma, fixing the past, the stories, and managing the human fear, none of those belong to your soul. It all belongs to the human container and the human identity that you call you. Insert your name here. Jim or Susan or Bob or Mary or whatever the name is, when we identify with the container, which I’ve said before, we then inherit every single limitation of the container. And this is why I created the program Brainwashed Exit the Human Lie. Because real freedom comes when we stop trying to build a better trap and a better container and we exit the container. True freedom comes in recognizing the container, is itself an illusion. The Buddha found out that there was no trap to get out of except himself. What the Buddha thought was is that trap and trapped are one. And when you understand that, there isn’t any trap left.
So recognize this. You don’t need another strategy to air quote, fix the container. You don’t need another strategy to fix your life. You don’t need another strategy to help you feel better about yourself. What you need is an exit strategy from the false identity, the container, the human ego identity that you were conditioned to accept, brainwashed, and believe that you are.
Okay, so at least for this episode, what is next? a place for you to start. Hold us in your thinking. You aren’t your past. You’re not your trauma. You’re not your bank account. And you’re not even your name. Because see, all of that creates an identity. And when you step out of that identity loop, you drop any need in that moment and any necessity for self-help or personal development altogether. Why? Because when you recognize that you’re not your trauma, you’re not your bank account, you’re not your name, you’re not your human ego identity, then the question arises, what is there to fix?
So your ultimate shift in this particular episode is this. The moment you stop trying to heal, fix, and improve a narrative, a story that isn’t who you truly are, it’s of the container, the subconscious conditioning, it’s simply… it collapses. You move from being a perpetual seeker to operating as pure awareness and consciousness. In that moment, you’re doing what I call two words, two of my favorite words. You are operating or learning to air quote, just be. And mind you, you’re not a human doing. You are a human being.
As I’m putting all this together for you, I hope that it makes sense. I hope that I’m speaking in ways and sharing in ways that are simple, ways that make sense to you, ways that you can actually start loosening the illusion of this container that you call you, loosening the lid on it, so to speak. And you can start to see your life and your world in different ways. You can start to see life from a higher. perspective. So for now, if you would just keep listening, keep integrating, keep thinking about things that I’m sharing with you and keep recognizing even you listening to this podcast, you identify as the container listening, whether your name is Eric or Oscar or Susie or Mary, you identify as the container, but you are not that container. You learned that identity and you learned all the labels of that identity. And all that identity and all those labels of that identity are your trap. And those are the things that steal your peace of mind and steal your joy and your happiness.
So keep listening. And as I’m doing this for you guys, hopefully I will become more cogent in my delivery. And I’ll be able to deliver in ways that will make even more sense to you as we go. And a reminder, in a couple of weeks, I’m going to be changing the name of the podcast. From Transform Your Life from the Inside Out, I’m going to change the name of the podcast to Brainwashed Exit the Human Lie with Jim Fortin. So keep an eye out for that. We’re going to probably do two more episodes with the old name, Transform Your Life from the Inside Out. And in a couple of weeks, we will be changing the name of the podcast to Brainwashed Exit the Human Lie with Jim Fortin.
If you like this episode, would you please go to Apple and leave me a five-star review? Anything less than that is not going to help me. And a way that we can truly actually make a difference in the world is to help more people and reach out. And we can do that by sharing this episode. So if you would please share this episode with people that you know that would find benefit just like you have also found benefit. Thank you for listening and I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye-bye.