You’re listening to the Transform Your Life from the Inside Out podcast. Soon to be renamed, Brainwashed, Exit the Human Lie with Jim Fortin. This episode is titled, Shatter the Illusion, Why Everything You’ve Learned Hasn’t Set You Free.
Let me ask you a question. Smokers, they know that smoking kills, but they still light up. The question is, why? How about dieters? Many times when people are dieting, they know they shouldn’t eat an entire tub of ice cream, but they still do it anyway. The question is, why? Doomscrolling. We know we shouldn’t do it, but many people still do it anyway. Why? Well, we know that we shouldn’t do things, but what we generally do is we seek more information to stop doing these things. But my question is, where did you learn that knowing more is going to set you free and help you create the life that you want. The truth is, knowing more often does not set you free. In many cases, it just confuses you even more and increases your frustration. And in this episode, we’re going to explore the lie. And that lie is, if I learn more and learn enough, I’ll be free. 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 this will be the last or the next to last episode of this show, Transform Your Life from the Inside Out as you know it. Next week, everything starts changing. And what I mean by that is some things will be obvious, other things will not be as obvious, things behind the scene. But you may have heard me talk before that we’re going to start moving from transformation to transcendence. Right now, also, I’m still getting set up with my audio, my lighting, my sound, my background. I even have landscapers outside my window right now making noise. So I apologize if things are a bit discombobulated. But hang tight a little longer because we’re getting there. And I promise you that is going to be worth it.
Now, what I’m going to start doing, you might have heard me say before, I’m going to start moving from transformation to transcendence. In the past, I’ve helped people transform their human 3D ego identities. And we’re going to start moving from that going forward because I want to help people start transcending the human 3D ego identity and all the limitations that the 3D ego identity has. So today, I’m telling you why we’re starting to change. And what I’ve noticed in all of this transition is that I got something wrong. And it took me a while, actually years to notice this. What I got wrong was, you ever heard the phrase before by Maya Angelou? And that phrase is, very simply, know more, do better. We’ve all heard that phrase before, you do better when you know more or know more do better. And I heard that many years ago. And the truth is, I used to believe that.
But in the last, I don’t know, several, the last year, I’ve realized that that’s a lie. Look at your own life. Think back one year ago. How much more information have you accumulated? How much more have you learned in the past 12 months? Basically, you’ve learned a lot more in the past 12 months. But the big question is, how much has your life changed? You know, about knowing more and doing better, knowledge isn’t enough. Many years ago, I used to drink a lot, a lot of alcohol. And of course, I read and I heard and doctors, not my doctors, but just I’m speaking generally, they would say that drinking a lot is bad for you. And I still did it. Now, the truth is also there are some biological components to that and the eating and different things. And I understand that. But the truth is, I learned more, as many of you have learned more about different things in your life, but it doesn’t change anything. And actually, I’m kind of laughing at myself because even as I was learning more, there might have been times in the past where I might have been drinking a beer many years ago as I was even learning more.
Okay, so when it comes to creating change and your life experience, we have to recognize, we have to come to know and realize that many times knowing more doesn’t really do anything other than maybe entertain us. Maybe it might inform us a little bit. When it comes to changing behavior and shifting our life in a significant way, many times knowing more really doesn’t do anything at all. And I’ve come to recognize that for me, at least many years ago, even though I thought that my life was progressing because I was learning more and air quote, knowing more, when I look back over the decades, many times it was nothing more than entertainment. And I was fooling myself. I was fueling myself thinking that, okay, I’m learning and I’m learning. And because I’m learning, I’m progressing and progressing. But the truth was, I was just compiling more information, but not much was changing in my life.
Many times, as I look back at my life, and I know it pertains to a lot of people, as I was learning more, as I just alluded to, and I wanted to learn more to solve problems in my life, as I was learning more, it really wasn’t solving any problems. What it was really doing is just filling my head with more information and confusing me even more. So the truth is this. The first lie we’re going to start dispelling, and by the way, I’ll talk about lies in just a moment and where the podcast is going to go, but recognize this. I’m going to say it very slowly. The truth is this: Learning more and gathering more information often changes very little in your life. Meaning often it just doesn’t change a whole lot in your life.
Speaking of knowing more, I talked about that in the introduction, but you know, for example, you know that healthcare professionals and meditators and all different kinds of professions say that you should not grab your phone first thing in the morning, yet you do it anyway. You know you should not react to people. You might have been taking, you know, an emotional maturity class or some CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy or something. And you know that you shouldn’t react to people. But yet, you know what? Thanksgiving’s rolling around, and your mother says something, and boom, you’re right back into your old thinking and your old patterns and your old habits of thought again about your mother.
So the truth is, knowing more has never been the answer to creating the life that you want. What I’ve recognized over the years is that most people who listen to the podcast, predominantly they are spiritualists, and they love spirituality. But what I’ve also recognized, and I don’t know how many episodes you’ve listened to, and I am grateful you have been listening, but what I do know is people, I’ve had people say they’ve listened to every single episode multiple times. But what I’ve recognized is they’re listening and they’re learning, but they’re not integrating. They’re simply doing what I call decorating the cage.
Another metaphor for that would be moving furniture around on the Titanic. And when I say the cage, I mean the cage of the human ego and the human identity and the way we think of ourself as a human being and all the limitations of being human. And then what we often do after we listen to a lot of content or we read a lot of books or listen to a lot of podcasts or watch a lot of videos, we often think, well, you know what? I now know more. And it’s making me more spiritual or maybe more financial savvy or whatever it is. And I’m awake now because I know more, but that’s just not the case. Again, it’s just information.
So really what it is, back to that word I use, cage, it’s simply we’re still in the cage of the human ego and the human identity. It’s just a nicer, more pleasant appearing cage. You know, as I look at my own life and many people that I know, many of us have been voracious readers and learners and gathering information and seminars and podcasts and all these kind of things. And some of the people that I know that are really the most trapped people also have the biggest bookshelves. And it’s all a lie. It’s a lie that to learn more is to do better.
I was fed that lie and I lived that lie for many years. And as I look back, I find that to be true. I might have made incremental changes, like many of you listening. Many of us might make incremental changes, but we’re not making dramatic changes in our life. We’re not transcending all the limitations of the human ego and the human identity. And as I’d mentioned, I’ve said it before, you know, in different episodes, I’m not kidding. I’ve read over 5,000 books in my life. For me, most of those books were about money and success and achievement, psychology, all these kind of things. Over the years, I’ve read thousands of books. But as I look back, even while I was reading the books, very little changed in my life, despite the fact that I was acquiring a lot of information and a lot of knowledge.
And, you know, as I think about doing this podcast, what I know is that doing this show for many years, I’ve had many, many, many people send emails. People I’ve talked to have said, you know, Jim, your podcast helped me with all kinds of insight. And I appreciate, I’m deeply grateful for all the five-star reviews. Seriously, I am honored and blessed to be able to do this work. What I’ve also noticed is a lot of people will gather the information and they’ll have the epiphanies and the insights, but really not a lot changes.
And for quite some time, I used to watch people and I really care about you and I care about people and I really want to help people. And I’d beat my head against the wall. And I would think, what can I do? What, what, what? What can I do or say to get them to change? Metaphorically, and I’m just kidding. I don’t know if you’re listening to this audio only, or video, watching video clips. But as I look back years ago, there were times, and I’m just kidding, I’d want to grab people by the collar and just slap them in the face and go, wake up already, get it already, do something fucking different in your life, change already. And of course, I’m just kidding, but I would rack my brain thinking about what can I do to get people to change.
And I recognized a long time ago, I won’t talk a lot about it here, but you can give people content all day long. You can gather content all day long, but it’s not about the content. It’s about the context. And the context is the frame through which you experience and see your life. And the content that most people live from, and we’ll talk about this later in the episode, the content that most of us live from is I am a human being. And you’ve heard me say before, when you identify predominantly as a human being, you then inherit all the limitations of being human. So that’s all content that we live from, but we have to go to higher context. And what are we? What are we beyond the simple 3D egotistical human being.
Because you’re listening for one reason only. You want to create progress, movement. You want to add something. You want something different in life. There’s no other reason to listen to this podcast or any podcast unless you are explicitly saying, I’m doing this for entertainment value only. When it comes to personal development, you’re wanting something. You’re wanting growth. But generally what we’re doing is we’re just adding more content, but we’ve never changed the context. And what I did for years, I would help people change the context of their human identity. I no longer want to do that because that’s limiting. I want to help people change the context of how they even understand what it means to be a human. But beyond that, what are we as beings beyond the identity of being human.
And I noticed what a lot of us content creators do is we keep handing you metaphorically a map. Hey, here’s your roadmap. Take your roadmap and go do XYZ. But I recognized an old phrase that I learned 30 years ago. I’m an NLP trainer. NLP is Neuro Linguistic Programming. And in NLP, there’s a phrase. And that phrase is: The map is not the territory.
And what I mean by that is a shaman, a shaman doesn’t read about the journey. They take the journey. If you want to learn to swim, reading about swimming won’t keep you afloat and it’s not going to keep you from drowning if you do not know how to swim. So you have to get in the water to know how to swim. Mystics will tell you, truth isn’t learned, it is seen, it is experienced. And once seen, it cannot be unseen.
So realize this, you don’t shatter an illusion by fighting it or studying it. Now, when I say illusion, what I mean is the illusion that you are air quote, only human, because you’re much more than that. You shatter it by seeing through it and experiencing it. And once you shatter the illusion, you will never see it in the same way again.
Let me give you an example here. I don’t know for how long you’ve listened to the podcast, but you may know or may not know that I had a very, I’m a little reluctant to use this word, but brief near-death experience in 2020. When I say brief, brief is something different to the soul than it is the human identity and ego. That’s why I stumbled there a little bit. Anyway, I had a near-death experience. And anyone that’s had a near-death experience will tell you that they have completely, completely changed their relationship with what we call death as a human being. They know death in a way that other people that have never had that experience, they don’t know it. Why? Because they have walked the path, the path of knowing.
So trust me when I tell you, there’s a huge difference between reading and hearing about a near-death experience and having one. And I can tell you that from personal experience. So the question is, or a question for you, if information doesn’t free you, what does?
Well, what does, I talked about it a bit ago. I said there’s a difference between information, which now I’m going to add, information is content. And there’s a difference between information, which is content, and context. And context, meaning the context of your being, higher awareness of you and what you really are, is what sets you free.
So the truth is, you can gather information all day long. Like I said earlier and I’ve said before, I was an expert. I mean, I read thousands of books. I mean, it was mind-numbing the amount of books I used to read and audios. If I wasn’t reading a book, I was listening to an audio incessantly. I was like this walking encyclopedia of personal development. But yet, as I’ve said before, I was still broke. I was still waiting tables. And I could recite all the information because I’m a relatively smart guy and I can learn and I can retain. I could recite it all, but jack shit didn’t change in my life.
So it’s not about gathering more information. It’s not about learning more. It’s about being more and shifting the context of your life, which is why this podcast is going to start going in a new direction. Hopefully you come with me. If you do, that’s great. If you don’t, I’m always here for you and I wish you well. And I thank you for the time you’ve been here. But yet for me, soulfully speaking, I need to go, as I’ve alluded to, a different direction.
So what I’m going to do, I don’t know when you’re going to be listening to this podcast. I don’t even know if I’ll be doing it in 2028. I don’t even know if I’ll be on the planet in 2028. My intention is that I will be. But anyway, right now it is September of 2026. And my intention is for the next 16 weeks, each and every week, I want to dispel a lie, a myth, but it’s a lie that we carry as a human container, a human being, a human bag of skin. And the first lie this week is that gathering more information, learning more means we are going to have a better life. As I’ve already, I think, plainly expressed, that’s absolute, I’m going to put it candidly, absolute bullshit. To learn more doesn’t mean you’re going to do better.
And even though I’m going to be giving you more information, I’m going to be giving it to you in a different way. My objective each and every week is to create a new and higher awareness for you. I want to keep it simple each and every week. But in this awareness, as we start putting them together, and they’re going to get more, they will become more complex as we go. These new awarenesses will help you experience yourself and start seeing yourself beyond the container that you call Oscar, or Susan, or Gary, or Jane, or Eric, or Margaret, or whatever you have named or other people have named the container that you call you.
Okay, I’ve mentioned for some time, I haven’t mentioned it in a few weeks, we have a new quiz coming. So right now you can go to jimfortin.com/brainwashed and take the brainwashed audit to see how brainwashed you have become by the world we live in, or we’re going to have a new quiz up next week as well. So you may want to wait for that. I don’t know when you’re listening to that. But when you take the quiz, whether you take the current one now or the one we have in about a week or so, what’s going to become obvious to you is that you’ve been living your life on faulty programs. You’ve been living your life by how you’ve been programmed. You’ve been living your life by how you’ve been brainwashed. And I’ve talked about this a lot in the prior episodes.
And when I was talking about it before, I just want to share this. When I was talking about it before, I kind of thought, okay, this is a direction I want to go. Now, I’m firmly aware. I know this is the direction I want to go with the work that I do. I want to go and I am going beyond transformation into transcendence. Transcending again the human ego, the human identity, and all the limitations of even identifying as predominantly a human being.
So this first episode, it wasn’t really air quote deep per se, but I’m laying a frame. And to recapitulate, that frame is the biggest lie, one of the biggest lies you’ve ever been taught and we live from is to know more is to do better. So recognize, please, please recognize knowing more is not going to change anything until you or me, you know, working with me here, we shift your context, meaning how you even experience you.
So for right now, we’ll leave it at that on this episode. And remember this, when you identify as only human, you then inherit every limitation of being human. And this is what I want you to know and this is what I request you take away from every single episode going forward. You were never only human. You were just taught to be that. Stay with me as we exit the human lie that we’ve all learned.
And remember before we go, next week we will have a new name. And so I’m not sure how you see my podcast, whether you’re watching on Spotify, Apple, or wherever. But remember, keep a physical eye out. Keep an eye out that we are changing the name to Brainwashed, Exit the Human Lie with Jim Fortin. Thank you for listening. Remember, we covered lie number one today, and I’ll catch you over on another episode. Bye-bye.