The Jim Fortin Podcast

EPISODE 41: “Are You Being 100% Responsible For Your Life?”

August 7, 2019

You’ve heard it since you were a kid, “Be responsible,” however, have you ever sat with that concept and fully explored its meaning in your own life?

Responsibility is a master key in life and what you create is what you’re 100% responsible for creating or not.

One of my clients once said, “Wow, when I live from being 100% responsible for my life I feel like I can do anything.” He embodied the characteristic and he 10 X his business growth in 3 years. And, what he did, you can do!

In this episode I talk about:

And, what 100% responsibility looks like.

Harry Truman said it best, “The buck stops here,” and when you embody that characteristic and way of BEing, your life will change dramatically.

Transformational Takeaway

What happens in your life is what you’re responsible for making happen.

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Full Episode Transcript

Intro

You’re listening to episode number 41 of the transform your life from the inside out podcast. And this episode, I’m going to talk about something, a way of being a characteristic of selfthat can totally transform your life.

It’s a simple concept that most of us miss, and most of us think that we are, but it’s the concept of responsibility, and being 100% responsible for our lives. 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 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 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.

Responsibility: The Act of Making Things Happen

You know, in the intro, I said that it’s something that most of us think that we are. And that’s the concept of responsible. I mean, I don’t know, if you’re like me, you know, even when you were a kid, your parents were talking to you about responsibility. So there’s not a single person listening to this episode that has not heard pretty much throughout their entire life, that we need to, you know, air, quote, grow up and be responsible and, you know, make responsible decisions and all this kind of stuff.

Yet, the concept of responsibility is something that so few of us demonstrate to the nth degree in our lives. And when I say the nth degree, being 100% responsible for our lives is something that very few of us exercise. And you know what, I’m not tossing any stones here, because at least now I recognize and I know this concept, but I remember many, many years ago, back in the early 90s,

I and I’ve always been into personal development. And obviously, it’s my career. I really prefer to call it, you know, Transformation at this point, not Personal Development. But in the 80s. And in the 90s. I was one of those people that had the Walkman. And I was, you know, it’s constantly listening to those audio programs she could get from Nightingale Conant, and it had like, 12 cassette tapes on it, and all the people back at that time at programs like Zig Ziegler and, you know, Earl Nightingale, and Deepak Chopra, and Wayne Dyer, and Marianne Williamson, and all these people, and I was always listening to the 12 cassette series programs on, you know, all the ways of success and all this kind of stuff.

I remember when, and by the way, I’m college educated, and I had a couple of college degrees from a really good school, but I floundered for a few years. And in the, you know, early to mid 90s, I actually decided that this was the path that I wanted to be on. And I started my NLP which is Neuro Linguistic Programming Training. I also have a degree in Psychology and Political Science. And I’ve always been interested in politics, but not from a partisan perspective, more from you know, what kind of good can you do in the world. And I was also at this time working at the Carter Presidential Center, which is Jimmy Carter’s Well, that’s his center. But I mean, I was working in the executive offices there, and the development office.

So I was doing that was getting my NLP training also and apprenticing with that, and was waiting tables at night at Ruth’s Chris. And the reason I tell you this, I remember one night I had, you know, during setup, anybody that’s waited tables know that, you know, you have set up before your shift. And I had my Walkman on and I was listening to Brian Tracy’s I don’t, you know, one of his programs to 12 keys to success or something, something blah, blah. And this just burned in my mind, when Brian Tracy said that one of the master keys to success is responsibility. We must be, and we must accept 100% responsibility for the outcomes in our life. And I remember thinking, hmm, yep, yep, yep, I get it, I get it makes perfect sense.

And I fell into the category that you know, something I say to a lot of people, there’s a difference between understanding something and knowing something. everyone listening, every one of you understands the concept of responsibility.

But the bigger question is, do you know it, and when you know it, that’s when you live it. And so that night, because there were things in my life that I didn’t want to be the way that they were in my money and everything else. And I really, you know, resonated, but I didn’t know that if I were literally embodying the concept of 100% responsibility, even my circumstances in my life at that time would have been different.

So I want to keep this simple, but the definition of responsibility, and you can find several but one I found, I think, on Merriam Webster a couple of years ago, was the act of making something happen. Now consider that the definition of responsibility is the act of making something happen. Now, if you look at your own life, what this means is, is that if something has not happened, plain and simple, you have not been responsible for making it happen. Or you can flip that and say that you have been irresponsible.

And the creation of that, when I looked up that definition of responsibility, which was probably you know, six, seven years ago, it really just hit me the simplicity of it, the act of making something happen, if something happens in my life that I want to happen, well, guess what, I have been responsible for creating it. And if it doesn’t happen, then I had been irresponsible for creating it. Now, here’s the interesting thing, and you probably see yourself here is that when we have the, you know, we have the thought that we want to create something, what most people do is they actually, they’re not 100% responsible for creating it.

And then what they do, which we’ll talk a little bit more about in just a moment, is they actually blame something outside of themselves, some person, some circumstance, some external, some, you know, some external variant. And that’s not being 100% responsible. Let me give you a couple of examples here.

Remember, which I don’t do so much anymore. I do very little. But one of my one of my one to one coaching clients, this was a about four years ago, he was a mortgage broker. And I might have mentioned him before. But as come, you know, I think he wrote like, what I’m pretty much in the ballpark, he wrote, like $50 million in business, back end loans back in 2015.

And he’s been coaching with me back then. And he went through a week on responsibility with me. And today, you know, he’s actually doing I mean, he’s still in the mortgage business, but he’s grown so exponentially, he left the company he was with, he partnered with some other people, created the team with an inside inside a company.

And I think now, as of last year, he said, his company wrote something like $500 million in loans. But when he really, when it really came to know, the concept of responsibility, I remember that time in our call, and he says, You know what, he goes, learning this, and really coming to know it, not just learning, but knowing it. When I embody this, he goes, that gives me so much power, because it’s a simple phrase, and one of my coaches used to say, and you these are one of these little things that we just ignore on Facebook, but it’s the phrase, if “it is to be, it is up to me”.

And his name was Michael, Michael got it in that moment, that when he decided to be 100%, responsible for every aspect of his business growth, and that does mean the external things like you know, employees, and, and prospecting and lead generation, and all the aspects of business, and all of the mental game as well.

He recognized that when he would, you know, he became 100% responsible, then he could hugely, hugely, you know, influence the outcome, and his business. Now, ironically, another story I want to share with you,is another mortgage, actually another el mortgage broker that I was working with, I don’t know, three, four years ago.

And,you know, I, I work so people in social want to add here, people to ask, why don’t I use more examples of women. And the reason why is until a couple of years ago, 95% of my clients were men. And now the last 18 months, they become women, and because of the Transformational Coaching that I do, but when I taught persuasion and influence into coaching, 95% of my, my clients were entrepreneurs, and they were men.

But I want to give you a story here that will really hit home with a lot of you to some degree. Remember another client of mine a few years back three, four years ago. And by the way, he was in a really, really extremely unproductive, unhappy, unhealthy marriage. And by the way, I’m not a marriage counselor, it’s not my place to tell people to stay married or not get married.

However, I do lead people to find answers on their own, and answers that are healthy for them and ecological for them and answers, it takes him to higher ground. And he was in a relationship where he and his wife had had not had any kind of sexual content and over contact, and over a decade, not yet, but contact and over decade.

And he was even suffering some health problems. And he said, You know what, Jim, if I you know, if this gets any worse, I don’t think my wife is going to be there for me. Now, obviously, she wasn’t wanting to leave the marriage, for whatever reasons, because she didn’t file for divorce, she didn’t want to leave. But his biggest fear in that moment was is oh my gosh, which is what a lot of people get into is what happens if I leave.

And then a lot of people get into well, the money and the visitation and all these kind of things. And I remember saying to him, I said, You know what, you’re really worried about what the result of your divorce going to be? Should you get a divorce, let me tell you what the outcome will be. And this is what I said to him. I said, whatever is going to happen, as a result of what you were being 100% responsible for making happen.

And hopefully, these two stores that hit home with a lot of you, because so many people go into so much fear about what’s going to happen tomorrow, yet, you have responsibility in your own life. And they give that responsibility away to external things to circumstances and the people and everything else. And I even know in my own life, whatever is going to happen in the next month, or six months or a year from there, or whatever in my business, and then my life is what I am responsible for making happen.

Now also, I want to point out that we can’t, that’s just colloquial making something happen. I mean, we can have the intention. But it doesn’t always mean that it’s going to happen that way. But the mental place that I played from, is that it is to be it is up to me. You know, another place to look at this is so when people hear this concept, and I was the same way, the very first time I heard it from Brian Tracy. And of course, I probably had heard it before that, but it really resonated when Brian Tracy said it. If you don’t know who Brian Tracy is, he’s a personal development guru peak performance he’s been in the field for, I don’t know, probably 30-35-40 years. Alright.

So another question that I have is when we talk about responsibility, we’re also many of us look at external responsibility. Are we responsible with our money and our prospecting and our lead generation, and doing our resumes and all these kind of things. But a place that I look at is to what degree am I responsible with the evolution and growth of my own conscious awareness?

When it comes to growing ourselves and transforming our lives, we don’t transform our lives from the outside in and we do it from the inside out. And then what I look at is okay, what mental faculties or ways of being Do I need to be? And then guess what, if I’m not, you know, working on being those ways, then the reality is, is I am being here responsible. Now, let me go back years ago, when I was waiting tables, so waited tables at Ruth’s Chris and Atlanta for about a year, and then I moved to a place called Chops.

Really, really, pretty much high end Steakhouse in Atlanta. And I remember that I don’t even know why I told you the names anyway, maybe I should ask for a product placement fee. But anyway, I remember this guy at Chops. And we were talking. And he said this was pre shift also. And he’s like, I hate this place is exactly what he said. And I said, well, then how come you’re here? And he looked at me and he snapped at me.

And he was he had a college degree also. And he snapped at me. And he said, Do you think I want to be here he goes, I don’t want to be here, I have to be here because I have to have a job, and I need the money. Now, in that moment, I really didn’t think a whole lot about it. I mean, it really didn’t register it, you know, in the way that would be if I heard it today. And when I look back, at that time, then he was being an absolute V word.

And this is a word that a lot of people do not like, but a lot of people are, and I’ve been there before, it’s circumstantial, but he was being an absolute victim. He was being an absolute victim to his circumstances. Notice in that comment that he made, he had no power, none. Even a simple thing we’re talking about if it is to be, you know, it’s up to me, he had none of that mentality, or ways or way of being even in his mindset. So he was a complete victim, even to his limitations and his mindset, which kept him in that environment and kept him in those circumstances.

The question that I have for you, who do you blame? If you do not have what you want in life? Who are you blaming? Or what are you blaming? I guarantee you, and it’s, you know, if you look at your life, you’re probably blaming someone or something. And I’ve seen it just all across the gamut. People will say things like, Well, you know, what, and I’ve seen this is, they blame their husband, you know, what I got in the marriage with him, we had kids, and he always controlled me.

And now they’re out marriage, and they’re blaming the husband. And I see so many people that blame people, but yet, they’re the ones who made the choice. You know, at least here in the United States, and in many places where people are listening to this Podcast, you have, obviously, as a human being, you have free will, but you also have choice. You know, you might live somewhere in the world that has, you know, arranged marriages and stuff like that, because, you know, this is the world we live in, we live in a global global world right now.

But there’s a 99.9% chance that everything you have in your life right now is a result of the choices you have made. Now, those choices can also be unconscious, whole different Podcast. But make no mistake, wherever you are, you’ve made those choices at some level, and you’ve been conscious of the choices at you know, to a large degree. Also, what many people do is they blame, it is not my fault that I’m here.

It is my mother,it’s my husband, it’s my wife, it’s my kids. It’s my brother, it’s my boss, is the way that I grew up. And the list goes on and on. But people for the most part, they blame other people and other things.

My position is this is that responsible people are 100% responsible for their thoughts, emotions, and how they respond to what happens to them. You know, and you can find picture this pictures of this online, Harry Truman, he had a little plaque on his desk in the White House when he was President.

And he said,” The buck stops here.”Well, in your own life, the buck stops with you, doesn’t stop with other people, it stops with you. And if you look at other Presidents, there are other Presidents who actually, they constantly Pat, you know, pass the buck. It is never about them. It’s always about someone else. This party did this, this party did that.

These people people did this, those people did that. And the buck never stops, stops at the desk in the Oval Office. But I do admire Harry Truman very much. And for many reasons, if you actually, you know, watching these biographies, very solid man, very, very solid man.

And but I’ve always admired that you know what Harry Truman’s like I’m the President and the buck stops here. And he was 100% responsible for what happened in his administration. Now, I do want to point out, I’m not a Professional Historian. So somebody else could hop in here and say, Well, no, that’s not true, blah, blah, I don’t even want to go there. I’m just using this as an example.

So I remember also, to share with you my family, you know, my family, my entire family was working class, my, my dad, my, my uncle’s everyone. They were all working class. And I remember in 1981, because I was already talking about going to college in 1981. I was in 11th grade. And I remember my uncle brought me the newspaper, one Saturday morning, I just remember, remember this clear as day.

And he said to me, he goes, You know what, you have all these dreams about going to college and all this? Well, you need to wake up and you need to actually, I don’t remember what he said after that. But basically, it’s like, you need to get real. And it put the paper in front of me and toss it down. Because look at the economy we live in. And you think that you want to go to college? And when I look back, I’m like, wow, how supportive of him not, but I look back, and that’s the way that a lot of people live? Well, obviously now, and a lot of people live that way, you know, then and now is that it’s about something outside of themselves. And what he was doing is saying which I did go what he paid my and work through college and got two degrees and was out in four years, and I went to a good school. Not that that matters anymore. Because if I could redo it, I mean, I can’t what happened happened. But this day and age, I don’t actually air quote, use any my education. That’s a whole different podcast as well.

But so many people actually blame things outside of themselves. And I want you to look at that in your own life. What does victim mentality look like to you look at your own life? And where are you saying that something can’t be done? because of something else? Where are you blaming? Where are you saying, you know what, my parents not done this or not done that. Or if my kids are not this or that, or my wife, or my husband or my job or my boss? Take a good look at that.

So what I want to share with you is this is and I have been there and this day and age, if I am there, which it’s you know, my place that I want to work from, is to be a conscious transformer means that I’m 100% responsible for my life. And I’m always actually working from a place of a conscious thinker and making conscious choices. And I actually just do the best that I can in life to use all the gifts and all the skills that I have. And I do know that anytime that I blame anyone, anytime, let me share with you here what my definitions of how a victim would be,isn’t a time that I blame anyone.

I’m being a victim. Anytime that I feel and this is a big one for a lot of people, and I’ve been there before, I’m not there now at all. But anytime that I would feel powerless, then I’m in victim mentality. Anytime that I would be judgmental or project, that would be victim mentality. Anytime that I feel hopelessness, and I see a lot of that.

And as a matter of fact, I’m creating an episode on that soon, which is Possibility versus Resignation. Anytime that you resign yourself to life, and you are hopeless, and meaning it’s not chemical, okay? Meaning it’s not something going on in the brain. Anytime that you feel hopelessness, well, guess what you’re in victim mentality, what you’re really saying is that you are not being 100% responsible for the outcomes in your life.

Also, anytime that you’re justifying everything, it’s not my fault. I’m this way, it’s because of this. Because of that, because of this, because of that, well guess what you’re justifying, and that is not being a responsible, a 100% responsible person. Or when you’re enduring and making excuses, you’re also being a victim. You know what, I just have to put up with us, there’s just nothing that I can do about this. Well, you’re being in victim mentality.

Also just caveat there. I learned this many years ago from a friend of mine. And this was very powerful for me, and it’s very simple, is there’s a difference between resources, and being resource full. You know, many of us actually what we want is resources. And we consider to be resources in the context, and I’m talking about and as a tool, we consider it to be money.

However, you look at some companies, and they will start and they’ve got tons of resources and tons of money. And three years later, they’re broke. You look at other companies, and they actually are bootstrapping it. But you know what, they’re resourceful.

And because they’re resourceful, they figure things out. And what I want to point out, if I had a choice of having a lot of resources, or to be resource-full, what I would choose is to be a resource-full. But yet, what I see in the general population, and you may want to look in the mirror on this is how resourceful are you?

Just looking over email a bit ago, and there’s a friend of mine that I’m working with right now, actually, I heard her company for some PR. And when I met her, this was 2009. I was one of her first four clients.

Today, she, you know, she owns and runs a very large digital marketing, firm PR, and anything having to do with growing a business and being online ,online presence. She has been when she was under 20, when she was 24, when I met her business week, and one of the magazine named her top 2500 entrepreneurs in the nation under under 25. A few years later, she was named like almost every year, top 30, you know, top 30 the nation under 30 for like Business Week, and etc. She’s been written up in Inked magazine.

I mean, like, even right now LinkedIn calls her one of the top 10, marketers on LinkedIn. Her books been the top selling book for many, many years on Amazon. She’s you know, in the Wall Street Journal, and all these big publications. And she and I are, you know, we’re chatting one day. And she said, you know, what separates really successful people, from people who are not successful.

And we were just chatting about this. And she goes, what I think it is, is that really successful people when they when they hit a wall, they figure it out, unsuccessful people, when they hit a wall, they quit. And I look, you know, in context of what we’re talking about right now, that is true, is that many people that actually when they quit, they’re not being resourceful, and therefore they’re being irresponsible, because they’re not actually not in the act of creating the outcome that they want.

Okay, on the flip side, what does responsibility look like to me? what it looks like, to me, is power. It looks like power, and freedom, and honesty, and even peacefulness to me. But when I say power, what I mean is is like what Michael said earlier, the loan officer, is when he actually you know, when I worked with him for a week on this, and he’s like, you know, what, I just I recognized that when I step into the power of responsibility, this is exactly what it said to me. He said, I feel like I can do any thing. So right now I’m sharing with you as we wrap up here is that when you accept and you are being 100% responsible for the outcomes in your life, that is power.

Okay, so the transformational takeaway in this episode is this is is that what happens in your life is what you are responsible for making happen in your life.Okay, that wraps up this episode. And the next episode Monday Q&A,is I’m going to be interviewing Katie. Katie has been she actually enrolled in my Transformational Programs last year. And when I met Katie, when she enrolled, Katie was and by the way, as I’ve said, multiple times, I’m not a doctor, I’m not a licensed medical professional, or a healthcare professional. And we talked about this in Katie’s interview.But Katie was an ill health,she was on six medications, and really just not physically doing well in life.

Today, she’s on zero medication as a result of what, what and how she learned to use the power of her mind to heal her body. So I’m going to share that story with you. In the next episode, the Monday Q&A or it’s actually transformational story Monday.What I want to point out also, is when you hear whatI just said, is that she healed her body with what I taught her she’s no longer on medications, and she was on six,I believe when she said she met me.

If you’re not an ill health, most people say, well, that’s okay. I don’t have to listen to that episode. Well, what I want to share with you is this. You want to listen to that episode. And the reason why is because prevention. You want to keep yourself well. And in that episode, we talk exactly about how Katie did it. Okay, I’ll catch you over on the Transformational Story Monday episode, and do what you can to make it a great day today. 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 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 @iamjimfortin. 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.

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Jim Fortin

Jim Fortin

Jim is an international subconscious self-transformation and high performance expert with over two decades of expertise in brain based transformation and high performance. Using a brain based approach coupled with transformational psychology and ancient wisdom Jim has created programs that create long-term core-level life transformation in his students.

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