Intro
You’re listening to episode number 72 of the transform your life from the inside out podcast. This episode is a Monday Q&A episode. And the question this week, which I’m sure resonates with a lot of you is, how do I have more peace and not live in fear? Stay tuned.
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 a 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.
Security is an Illusion and Fear Comes From Loss
Fear, fear, fear. It consumes so many people. And Barbara’s question that just was basically she’s recently through a divorce. She has a couple of kids, she wants more, you know, for her family, obviously, as all parents do. And she says, I want peace of mind. I want to stop living in fear. And then she said, “I just can’t seem to turn my thoughts off.” Well, I picked this because even though I’ve talked about it and talked about it and talked about it in many different ways, fear becomes all consuming for so many people. And in this episode, I want to give you a different perspective on fear. Now, before we go there, the first thing I want to look at is, what is fear? For the most part, and let me back up here- It’s both biological and psychological.
Now, when I say it’s biological that is brain based, and the amygdala in the brain is responsible for regulating fear. Now, when I say it’s brain based, that also comes from the reptilian part of the brain, which is the fight or flight survival part of the brain. What I want to share with you is that the world we live in today, for most of you, I would say, 99.9% of people listening to this podcast, you have no immediate fight or flight fear in your daily activity. I mean, you’re not dodging bullets, like you live in a war, you know, a war torn country on a daily basis. You’re not being chased by a saber toothed Tiger if you’re going to go out and you’re going to hunt and gather for food. Most fears that people get into are some kind of social fear. And I’m going to get into those in just a moment, but what is fear?
For the most part, fear is plain and simple; it’s the fear of loss. If I quit my job, oh my gosh, I’m going to lose my paycheck. Here’s another big one. If I quit my job and I become an entrepreneur, oh my gosh, I’m going to lose my security. When in truth security is an illusion because there is no security in a corporate job. And for any of you that, you know, can remember 2009 or 10, look at all the people that worked at companies for 20 years mid level VP’s, and they were laid off. So, so much for security. Also, people I see this so much. And definitely, I think if you’ve been listening for any amount of time, and if you’re new, what I tell people is go back to the very first episode and start there. It wasn’t intentional, but what a lot of people say is that the episodes build on each other. But a huge fear that I see, and predominantly, and I think it’s just cultural over the over the years, but a huge fear that I see is that women, and they’ve been, they’ve been housewives and moms and caretakers for you know, 5, 10, 15, 20 years they’ve not been in the workforce and they are afraid to leave a counterproductive or abusive relationship because of the fear of loss of “You know what, at least I have security, I’ve got a roof over my head, the kids have a place to sleep”. So let’s go here first and then I want to give you a paradigm shift.
All right. So for most people, fear comes from the fear of losing something. And again, I want to talk more about that socially in just a minute. But for now, the fear comes from the fear of loss of losing something. Now, if you’ve been with me for any amount of time, you know that I often talk about my brother in law, the shaman and something I remember the phone call, I’ve always remembered this and it’s etched into my mind. In 1996, he called me and we lived, you know, half a continent apart. I lived in Atlanta, he lived in Dallas. And he called me and I don’t remember the entire conversation, I took notes, but something I remember- and when you embrace this, and you literally wrap your mind around it, around that, and you embrace it, and you know it, it is life transforming. And he said to me, he said, no matter what happens to you, it doesn’t matter. It can be what you think is a blessing. It can be what you think is a tragedy. But no matter what happens to you, everything that happens to you, so that you can grow and evolve spiritually. So I just said, the definition of fear is the fear of loss. I do not operate from that place at this point in my life. Where I operate from, is that every single thing that happens to me, even if it’s something that I would deem an air quote, “loss”, it’s not a loss. It’s a gaining, it happens to me so that I can evolve and I can grow spiritually. So when you start looking at your life from the perspective of gain instead of the person Instead of the perspective of loss, everything shifts for you automatically. So I don’t get into the fear of losing money or losing relationships or losing anything. Why? A couple of reasons. One, a practical reason I’ve already created pretty much everything I want in life. And you know what if I want more, I just go create more. If I were to happen to air quote, “lose” everything, so what I just go create it, you know, recreate it again. But what I would ask myself is, which is where I went with a different thought here, what I would ask myself is, oh, okay, I lost x, y, z. What can I learn from this? And what lessons are here for my higher learning and my higher growth and my higher evolution? So notice, as I was just saying, out of the, what people call a loss, for me, is the gain. And I want to share with you I look at every single thing in my life like that. Everything, everything that happens to me, it doesn’t matter what it is. Everything that happens, happens so that I can grow and evolve.
So back to the fear, as we talked about. So some of you like “oh my gosh, I, you know, I can’t leave a job because I’m going to lose security,” which security is an illusion anyway. There is no such thing as security. I mean, you could work for 40 years and have all this money to bank and 401 K’s and you know, money market accounts and all the security so that you can retire, and a person could get smacked by a bus tomorrow. And that’s the end of it, because security is no longer necessary because you’re no longer on the planet. I remember my brother in law and I also talked to him one time. And he said to me, and I’ve contemplated this over the years and it’s so powerful. He said to me that fear is the most dreadful disease. Those were his exact words. Fear is the most dreadful disease. Now you probably know that the definition of disease is dis ease, meaning something is out of harmony, something is out of sync. And, you know, I don’t know which speech writer wrote it, but he hopefully got a raise many years ago, when FDR said in his inaugural address, there is nothing to fear but fear itself. Fear is an illusion. It’s something that people get into whether they’ve gotten a negative medical diagnosis or they’ve gotten a termination notice at work or they’ve gotten something. Interestingly enough, the first place that most people go, literally look at your life, look at your friends, look at your family, look at people around you. When somebody has some kind of news that’s perceived as a loss, the most the place that most people go is boom, automatically right into fear.
Now, I think I mentioned about two podcasts ago, I was watching a Netflix documentary on like World Class athletes, it was Jack Nicholas and Nadia Comăneci from the 70s and Martina Navratilova, the you know, the nine time nine time Wimbledon champion and now what I didn’t know was that she was also, I don’t know how many years ago, diagnosed with breast cancer. And what she said literally is the same air quote “mindset” that made her a world class athlete. Let me give you the mindset first of World Class athletes. The mindset is, is that you know what, I just missed the point I missed a goal I missed whatever I missed, you know, something, and let me get my mind right back in the game again. What people do that pulls them out of the game mentally is they’re like, Oh my gosh, I just missed that shot. Oh, no, I missed the shot. Let me focus, what did I do wrong, etc. Now, Martina was saying that she was diagnosed with breast cancer. And she she said it was such a fluidity that I knew she really believed what she said. And she said I was diagnosed Okay, I had a problem. What’s the solution? Most people when they have any kind of negative diagnosis, the first place they go is they go to fear and then they go to, let me wallow in fear and that’s a very counterproductive place to go. Now, for Barbara and everyone else and I see this a lot especially for people that want to be entrepreneurs, everything that you want, consider this for a moment, everything that you want is on the other side of fear. But yet, what most of us, we can’t find in ourself is we can’t find courage, courage to stand up and to actually move through our fears. So our fears quite literally are a comfort zone. They’re a prison and here’s like, here’s the crazy part. And it’s so simple the most of us miss it. If you never leave your comfort zone, okay, so consider this, if you never leave your comfort zone, you will never leave your comfort zone. Why? Because if you never leave your comfort zone, you never what I call “adaptively learn” that you can leave your comfort zone. And if you never, you know, you never learned that, hence, you never leave your comfort zone and your comfort zone keeps you trapped in your comfort zone- every single bit of it is about fear.
Now, I had mentioned social fears, okay, and I’ve mentioned this before, but it’s definitely worth mentioning again, because maybe you’ll hear it differently this time or, or in a different way. But the two biggest fears that people get into for the most part, and we learn these literally as toddlers, 2,3,4 years old. The two biggest fears that people get into are social fears. And those fears are either number one, the fear of abandonment or rejection, or the fear of inadequacy., meaning people are going to castigate me or they’re going to reject me, this is why selling professionals won’t make sales calls because oh my gosh, somebody’s going to tell me “no”. Well, they’re not rejecting you, they’re rejecting what they might consider to be an intrusion on their time, or your product or your service. So number one is abandonment and number two is inadequacy. And I tell you, let’s look at these for a second, I’m going to go here. I’ve said this many times, and I’m going to say it again, is that people will not put themself out in life, because they’re afraid of being judged and then whatever that loss means to them, a loss of face or a loss of respect or a loss of whatever they think people might be attributing to them. So people are afraid to be judged, and people won’t put themselves out there and that, as well keeps people trapped. But this is what I tell people. No matter what you do, doesn’t matter. Whether you’re a rock star or a movie star, or you’re laying cement or you are an architect or a dancer- doesn’t matter. Even what I do for a living. Trust me go look at the reviews at the podcast. I’m being judged all the time. Now, fortunately, many of the reviews are positive, but there’s also some negative reviews. Neither the positive or the negative people, for the most part know me personally, but people are judging. That is what people do. Now, a phrase I’ve heard before is that humans are meaning making machines, which means they are judging. So no matter what you do to give you an example, think about a Matt Damon movie. You’ve judged it. Yes. No. You might not even like Matt Damon. What about Beyonce or Kanye West or Elvis? I mean, people will say things like, “I love Elvis” or “my God, I hate Elvis” or “he was so overweight”, or “what a waste of talent”. I mean, the guy’s a global icon, and people are judging him. So don’t you think if they’re going to judge Elvis, who’s been off the planet 40 years, they’re, they’re not going to judge you. And even look at you.
The irony is that you don’t want to be judged, but you spend 90% of your day judging other people. And I’m not even saying it’s malicious that you’re judging people or in any kind of way you’re wanting to harm anyone, but you’re making meaning of the world. I mean, “look what that idiot did over there”. “Oh, she’s so sweet”. “Oh, they’re really selfish and stubborn”. “Oh, he’s really kind”. “Oh, those people, no, they’re bad for you”. “Oh, yes, these people are amazing”. But see, that’s what people do. So what I want to share with you, and I’ve said before, probably a half a dozen times in this podcast- no matter what you do, you will be judged by people- positively, negatively, or not at all. People just don’t care. So why not just go do what you love to do and be who you are, because you’re going to be judged anyway. You know, I don’t watch a lot of TV and I do watch YouTube at lunch sometimes just to pass the time and just for, you know, kind of numb the mind a little bit when I’ve been doing, you know, a lot of work. And there was a clip of Ellen on today. Well, it wasn’t on today, it was on YouTube when I was having lunch today. And look at Ellen, when she was judged back in the 1990s or what you know, whatever year it was, I never saw her TV show. But she was literally ostracized from the entertainment industry when she came out. I mean, she went from I think a hit TV show to nothing. No job offers nothing. I mean, tumbleweeds. Now she has one of the most successful talk shows that, you know, we’ve ever had here in the United States. And for many people, she’s a very beloved character. Either way, people are going to judge and even today, people love her. People hate on her. You know, the episode she had today that I watched literally five minutes go was Ellen and Oprah. And I mean, Oprah read some of her hate mail one time on The Oprah show many years ago. And I saw the episode and I mean, my gosh, I mean, she got some hate mail. I mean, the stuff that I get is trivial compared to some of the stuff she got. I mean, I just find that like, reprehensible. But guess what? She’s Oprah. And she does what she does, because she’s going to be judged positively and she’s going to be judged negatively. And the same thing with you. So if Elvis is not immune to it, and Beyonce and Matt Damon and Barack Obama and Donald Trump and Oprah and Ellen, then why in the world would you be immune to it? You will be judged. All right. So just go do what you love to do. I do what I love to do. This is my dharma. This is what I do. Some people like me, some people don’t. So what I have a good time doing it, I love what I do, and I change lives for those that allow me to.
Okay, the next one was the fear of inadequacy. And that is I’m not good enough. Well, that’s another illusion. And that’s another fear, Barbara, that people get into is the only way that you can be an adequate. The only way to be inadequate is to compare yourself to other people. And this is what I tell people. This is what really released me a couple of things. I don’t know why it clicked this day. I have no clue why it clicked at this level. But when it did, it clicked. And this was about 15 years ago. And my brother in law and I were talking and he said who cares? Who cares what other people think of you? Now I’ve watched him walk that talk as long as I’ve known him. I’ve literally watched him be congruent with that. And when he said that, I’m like, yeah, yeah, that makes a makes a lot of sense. Because I could sit here and obsess all day long comparing myself to other people. Am I good enough? am I helping enough people? Is my content good enough, etc, etc, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And it’s nothing more than head garbage. But the only way I can get inadequacy, and I used to, is to compare myself.
And there’s another phrase that I read many years ago and an ancient healing book, and boom- game changer for me. And I just shifted in that moment, is because I firmly believe for those of you that have listened to enough episodes, I mean, working with a shaman, this is sorcery. It’s literally interdimensional it’s it’s non ordinary. It’s cosmology. And by the way, what’s interesting is the next episode on Wednesday is going to be titled, something along the lines, I don’t know yet, but what is the cosmic being? Because you’ve heard me say before, we’re not spiritual beings, we’re not human beings, we are cosmic beings. And when you work from that place, all the nonsense human stuff that people get into really has no value. Anyway, that’s going to be two episodes from now. But where I work from is actually I lost my train of thought. Let me go back there for a second. Oh, inadequacy. Here we go. Where I work from is that we all have karma. And every single person on the planet has different karma. You don’t have my karma. I don’t have your karma. And that being said, I look at, why in the world would I ever compare myself to you when we’re living completely different karma? And by the way, off note, that was a good save on my part that I picked up where I left off because I forgotten where I was. And I was like, Oh my gosh, I’m on a roll here. And now I don’t know where I cut off. But anyway, that was a good save on my part. So now, sometimes Else. Fear is an emotion. Now what I want to share with you is emotions come from the reptilian part of the brain and the limbic system, the middle part of the brain. But here is a tool. What happens? And this is happening to Barbara because she says, “I just can’t seem to turn my thoughts off”. Well, Barbara, what what you’ve done is you become a victim to your thoughts. And you probably have some belief. I mean, if this is the contextual thought, meaning an overriding belief that you had that you can’t turn your thoughts off, then what do you think your abilities are going to be?
So fear is an emotion. As I said, it comes from the reptilian part of the brain and the limbic system. But this is what you may have heard me say, provide, I don’t know how long you’ve been listening, foundational thinking. I say it over and over and over and over again, is that we must learn to move our attention. Now, if you’ve not downloaded that yet, go over to my website, JimFortin.com and download the master thought formula. And my interpretation, it’s one of the best pieces of content that I’ve ever created. I have had massive amounts of people tell me it’s like a 90 minute video training, I believe. They’ve told me that that content has literally transformed their life. There’s no charge, it’s free, go download it. And the whole, the whole premise of that program is that you are not your thoughts. You are the thinker of your thoughts. And when you have thoughts that don’t serve you, then move your attention. So you’ve heard me say before is that you are where your attention is. So even if the fear pops up, as it does in a lot of people and the fear is I’m not good enough, or they’re going to abandon me or this or that or blah, blah, stop and move your attention. Now, I heard some guy yesterday, I was watching something and he says, “well, we can control our thoughts”. Well, he doesn’t really understand that’s not correct. We can’t control our thoughts. Now to approve that, how many times, like Barbara here, have you had thoughts pop in your mind and you’re like, “go away, go away, get out of here, get out of here” and then you fight the thought. And what happens is because you’re fighting a thought it actually becomes stronger because that’s where your attention is, but see, these thoughts are nothing more than habitual. Whether it be fear or inadequacy or, or anything that pops up as habitual and brain based. And this guy said, “Well, we can control our thoughts”. Incorrect. Because look how many thoughts like Barbara pop in your mind, you’re like, “well, I don’t want this thought”, but what you can do is you can choose your thoughts. Meaning, you have a thought that pops in that doesn’t serve you, move your attention and choose a new thought. When we do that, we start retraining the reptilian part of the brain because everything is a habit.
What’s obvious at this point is If you’re in fear, now as much as you may not want to hear this, if you’re in fear, you’re choosing it. If you have fear, that’s human, that’s that’s neurological. If you stay in fear it is because you are choosing to stay in fear. Let me give you another perspective here, is I had a one to one client many years ago. Very, very successful real estate agent. And early in our coaching, which I talked about this in the master thought formula, is happiness is a factory setting. I mean, babies very early and they don’t know the exact month, but baby start to smile and they start to giggle. I mean, a baby never stopped to say “well, okay, humans, you adults, and you know, adolescents and teenagers, and my older siblings, teach me how to be happy”. No, happiness is a factory setting. Babies don’t have to learn to be happy. And so many people have said to me, “Jim, how do I be happy?” and here’s the conundrum that’s confusing for a lot of people. But it’s so simple that it’s confusing. And this also many years, my brother in law’s worked with me on this. And it’s very simple. The way to be happy is be happy. And this real estate agent that I was talking about, she’s like, “Well, can you show me steps? Can you show me how to you know how to be happy?” And I said, unfortunately no, the way to be happy is the way to be happy. Now, where am I going with this? You may want to look it up on YouTube and I post this in my transformational coaching program every single time I start program, I post this- there was a Bob Newhart video, Bob Newhart, the comedian. You’ll find it on YouTube. So go to YouTube and search Bob Newhart, “stop it.” And this is the what this is what and how I’ve learned being with a shaman for so many years, is I don’t need processes to stop something. Simply, when I know that I need to stop something or start something I’ve been trying That I can stop and start anything at any given moment. And in that video, which number one is, is pretty funny. But secondly, it’s one of the most powerful videos that I’ve ever seen. So Barbara could say, well give me the steps. Tell me how to stop being fearful. The way to stop being fearful, because you have conscious choice, is to stop being fearful and to move your attention. And the more that you do that, the more that you condition yourself out of fear. Or you can move your attention to, also the way to stop being fearful, is to move your attention from “oh my gosh, I’m in fear”, which is an emotion (most people go into fearful thoughts about fearful emotions). What we could do, is move our attention to get you know, guess what, what’s happening to me right now is actually a blessing for me so that I can grow and I can evolve.
A couple of more thoughts here is, the perspective I work from. You heard me mentioned karma earlier. Doesn’t even matter what my opinion is, science proves that you will never die. Physics proved that we are all energy, E equals MC squared. By Einstein’s law, the conservation of energy and the conservation of matter, you know what energy just changes form. Like non physical will become, I mean like non physical comes from, well let me back this up, physical comes from non physical meaning you can have no acorn tree, then you have you know you get an acorn you plant an acorn the acorn grows tree grows, it drops an acorn, you actually plant that acorn then it grows into a tree and and you cut it down and you burn it it turns back into pure heat. Yet there’s a constant amount of energy in the universe. So when you kick the bucket and you leave the planet, you might leave the bag of skin, you’re walking around in a bag of bones, whatever you want to call it, because that’s what it is. It’s just carbon. But you know what the constant amount of energy in the universe remains the same. So where I work from is that I am never going to die. I am simply on a continuum of energy, which we’ll talk about more in “What is a Cosmic Being” a couple of episodes from now. And when you work from life is a continuum and you work from that place, really, what is there to be afraid of? So, consider that and ponder that.
Now crossing the bridge of fear, in a recent training I made reference to an Elton John song that I really like, and it’s called “The Bridge.” And basically, the gist of the entire song is that there’s a bridge and everyone has to cross the bridge. You, every one of you listening for whatever your fears are, you have to cross the bridge. And if you don’t cross the bridge, like a comfort zone, you will never cross the bridge. But then what people do is they get into self delusion thinking, “oh, something’s going to change. You know what I’m going to progress in life. But you know what, I am never crossing that bridge”. Well, if you never crossed the bridge, you never crossed the bridge. So another little tool that might help you also. I remember many years ago, I used to to be a platform speaker. This day and age, it doesn’t do anything for me. But for a long time, I was a platform speaker and, and I ascended to the height where I was, I worked very big stages with very big names, and I’ve trained thousands of speakers. This day and age I’m rusty I mean I have not worked a platform, meaning a stage, in a lot of years. But I remember many years ago as I was invited to an event, and they said, “You know what, we think it’s going to be a big event, we don’t know.” And I was kind of just starting out in speaking. And I remember them saying, “Hey, Jim, we have 100 registered”, I’m like, “whoa! 100”, then they’re like, “we have 200, registered 300, 400, 500.” And when I got the 500, I’m like, I went in the fear. I’m like, wow, oh my gosh, I’ve never spoken in front of 500 people before. And as it ended up, there were 1000 people that that showed up. And I was actually one of the main speakers. And I guess I did a pretty good job because once I just go into zone and start working things kind of disappear. And I just get in the zone and I go, but I look back on that a lot of years ago. And guess what? Even though I was in fear when I started, guess what? I did it anyway. So what I wanted to share with you is a little bit of a tool here. And that tool is, you know what, when, when you’re coming up against fear, ask yourself this question. Can I do it anyway?
And I get a good kick out of people in my programs, my transformational programs, because I also ask them to introduce themselves in the group. It’s all a private Facebook group, you know, share your experiences, you know, things that have been holding you back, share. And a lot of people initially early on, will say, “Hey, guys, you know, I know we started two weeks ago, but I’m not done a live yet because I’m afraid to do a live.” And then what’s interesting, I invariably almost always hear, “Oh, my gosh, that wasn’t so bad. Now I like doing lives and I can do lives in my business.” What I want to share with you is when you say can you do it anyway and you do it? You literally in that moment, transcend the fear and you learn that the fear that you had was simply an illusion.
There are other places that I can go just very very quickly here is that which you may want to look into as well. I’ve mentioned a lot, you know, in these episodes is self hypnosis and you may want to just google self hypnosis eliminate fear and see what comes up in terms of audio. Alright, so and there are other places I can go and more things. Some people work from fear also that let’s say for example, they leverage fear. What I mean by that is, let’s say for example, that you’re a salesperson, but you’re afraid to cold call people or call on people because if you do, oh my gosh, oh, no, they may tell you “no”, and they may hang up when you so people get into these little bitty fears. Now, I call this leveraging a larger fear against the smaller fear or leveraging a smaller fear against the larger fear in that you know, what, the fear you have of cold calling is keeping you from making a really decent living which is keeping you from building any savings. So let me ask you, which fear would you rather have? The very, very temporary short term fear of picking up the phone and calling somebody, which by the way, you can reprogram yourself through subconscious reprogramming not to be afraid to cold call, whole different topic, or it’s kind of related. But which fear would you rather have the fear of picking up the phone and being told “no”, or never actually building any lifetime income, and then looking at the last 20 or 30 years of your life, with no income or savings to fall back on? Which is the greater fear.
Okay, so the transformational takeaway is this- is that we get into fear because of the fear of loss. And as I mentioned, when I started this episode, any and everything that happens to me is not about loss, everything, everything that happens to me is a blessing. Therefore, it is a game to me. So what’s the point of getting into fear because there is no loss there is only gain. Okay, so that’s your transformational takeaway.
And as I alluded to a couple of times earlier, the next episode is going to be titled “What is a cosmic being?” And I’m going to share with you, you were somewhere before you hopped in that bag of skin that you call Mary or Sue or Habib or Kyoko or Ishmael or Prabhu, or whatever your name is, wherever you are in the world, you were somewhere before you hopped in that bag of skin, that you now identify as you which is really just not you. It’s just a vehicle, but you were somewhere. And that’s the topic of our next episode. Okay, thanks for listening. Stay well, and I’ll catch you later. Bye bye.
Conclusion
Thank you for listening to this entire podcast. If you’re the kind of person who likes to help others, then share this with your friends and family. You know, if you found value, they will too, so please share via your social media channels. Also, if you have questions, I’m here to assist. You can email me questions to support@jimfortin.com and I may even use your question for a future podcast episode. Also, if you want transformational content like this daily, connect with me on Instagram. My Instagram name is @iamjimforin. Finally I do have a personal request. I believe that we’re all here to help others and to grow and evolve ourselves. Together, you and I, let’s help more people. If you would, please leave a review on iTunes and a good one by the way. I’d be grateful and through your assistance together, we can transform more lives. Thanks for listening.