The Jim Fortin Podcast

In this episode of Brainwashed: Exiting the Human Lie with Jim Fortin, host Jim examines one of the most common pursuits: power. Most people want more of everything. Whether it’s money, influence, respect, or control, they’re constantly striving to gain more. But those who seem to have it all are rarely free. Why? Because these things only represent external power. To make his case, Jim looks at the wealthy, the famous, and the politically connected to show how much effort is spent guarding falsities. He explains that when you believe something gives you power, the sudden urge to protect it is strong. He draws on a lesson he learned from a shaman during his stroke recovery about how easy it is to give up your power.

From childhood, most people are taught that power exists outside of themselves. Doctors, bosses, banks, governments, and anyone with a bigger title or following seem to hold it. So people spend their lives chasing power, asking permission for it, and fearing those who appear to have it. Jim shows how a simple phrase like “this is controlling my life” hands away personal sovereignty in an instant. He also explains why fear is actually what it feels like to give your power to something outside yourself.

Listen in to discover why you were never powerless, and why the only true source of power has been inside you all along.

What You’ll Discover in This Episode:

(02:19) Why the people society calls powerful often spend their lives defending and fearing the loss of what they have.

(10:13) Jim breaks down what most people learn as children, from money and titles to muscles and social media followers.

(13:33) A story about George W. Bush and a cup of coffee shows that anything that can be taken away was never real power.

(18:00) Jim shares how he handed his power to a neurologist after his 2020 stroke, and the childhood conditioning that made it feel automatic.

(26:24) Two simple metaphors point to consciousness as the one true source of power.

(30:08) Fear and freedom: Why fear signals that you’ve handed your power away, and why true power means needing less control rather than more.

Listen, apply, and enjoy!

Transformational Takeaway

Every time you say something is controlling your life, you give it a power it never had. This week, simply notice when it happens. When a bill, a headline, or a diagnosis starts to feel like it’s running the show, ask yourself whether you’re looking at the lamp or the current. You don’t need to fix anything. Awareness is how your power comes back to you, and in truth it never left.

Let’s Connect:

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With gratitude, Jim

In the fourth installment of his Exit the Lie series, Jim Fortin takes on one of the most common beliefs people live by: their feelings. Emotions can influence our decisions, but that doesn’t mean they are always true. Jim explains that sometimes your feelings are more like circumstantial evidence instead of facts. He admits that they are valid, but somewhere along the way, validity became equated with accuracy. That one mix-up lets old feelings make decisions, shape self-worth, and quietly build an identity around stories that were never true.

Jim walks through how feelings are made, starting with a trigger from your past. Something as simple as a partner’s look, a silent dinner, or an envelope from the IRS can start the process. He explains that the mind reaches into the past to legitimize the feeling. He shares stories about childhood dread of the principal’s office, constantly thinking that he was in trouble, and his years of dealing with depression, anxiety, and panic attacks. Each experience influenced how he approached new experiences later in life. Throughout the episode, Jim references a metaphor about a storm and the sky. He explains that the sky doesn’t take orders from the storm, just as your soul shouldn’t abide by your feelings.

Listeners will learn how to feel an emotion fully without obeying it and how to start making choices from awareness instead.

What You’ll Discover in This Episode:

(04:50) Valid is not accurate: Jim explains why feelings deserve to be acknowledged but rarely deserve to be believed without question.

(09:21) Jim shows how a tone, a silence, or a glance triggers old history, and how a call to the principal’s office taught him to assume he’d done something wrong.

(13:56) Jim reveals how the mind collects evidence to justify a feeling until it hardens into an identity like “I’m not good enough.”

(18:15) The sky and the storm: Jim asks who or what is noticing your feelings, and explains why that observer is your soul.

(22:54) Jim describes when feelings can protect you, and how he digs beneath them before acting.

(27:00) Two simple practices: Jim offers a phrase to say out loud and one question to ask in the body that help step outside the story.

Listen, apply, and enjoy!

Transformational Takeaway

A feeling can be completely real and still be wrong about you. The tightness in your chest when the bill arrives, the sting of a partner’s silence, the old voice that says you’re not enough: each one is a storm passing through, often stirred up by something that happened decades ago. You don’t have to fight it or fix it. You only have to stop taking orders from it. The next time a strong feeling shows up, ask yourself whether it’s accurate, then notice who is asking. That noticer is the sky, and the sky has never been harmed by a storm.

Let’s Connect:

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LIKED THE EPISODE?

If you’re the kind of person who likes to help others, then share this with your friends and family. If you have found value, they will too. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more people.

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With gratitude, Jim

This is an episode that I’m truly passionate about. The fact that the mainstream world is indoctrinated into mediocre and powerless thinking has long bothered me. The mainstream world keeps people unhappy, broke, overweight, lonely, and sick. Many people find this statement shocking, and they are most likely blind to what’s really happening in the world and to what is being done to them.

Want a much better life? Learn to see outside all you have been mentally “fed” in your life.

Transformational Takeaway
Be in this world, but not of this world.

Mentioned Resources
EPISODE 8: Reprogramming Your Subconscious Mind For Health, Wealth And Happiness

Let’s Connect:

⁠Instagram⁠ |⁠ ⁠⁠Facebook⁠ |⁠ ⁠⁠YouTube⁠ |⁠ ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠

LIKED THE EPISODE?

If you’re the kind of person who likes to help others, then share this with your friends and family. If you have found value, they will too. Please leave a review on⁠ ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ so we can reach more people.

Listening on⁠ ⁠⁠Spotify⁠? Please leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you!

With gratitude,

Jim

Your personality is unique, but what if I told you it wasn’t unintentional? The third installment of Jim Fortin’s series on exiting the human lie answers that exact question. In this episode, Jim takes on one of the most widely accepted beliefs about personality to prove that much of who we become isn’t up to us. He explains that everything around us, including family, culture, and society, molds and shapes our personalities.

As Jim puts it, the person you call “me” was built by strangers. Even more compelling, he argues that a great deal of who you are today is simply what you have learned to be. He uses regional accents as an example, explaining that how we speak is directly linked to where we are in the world, just like the way we behave.

There’s also the idea of the "old recording,” which Jim says comes from decades of inner training and how it comes into play when we judge ourselves. He shares the first-grade moment a teacher told him he was “just not good at math,” a label he carried until a sophomore geometry class proved otherwise. In this example, he shows why the inner critic is usually someone else’s voice and why decades of conditioning can’t fix present-day problems.

Jim invites listeners to question their identity on a deeper level. He leaves them with a simple prompt asking them to get curious about who they are beneath the surface, beyond the conditioning, and under the layers of brainwashing, to meet who they really are.

What You’ll Discover in This Episode:

(02:49) Jim explains how the personality people call “me” was put together by others, many of whom are no longer alive.

(09:10) The generational chain: Jim shows how beliefs about money, guilt, and scarcity get passed from great-grandmother to child, long after the original circumstances are gone.

(15:30) Jim recalls the first-grade comment that shaped his identity for a decade, and what finally broke it.

(23:13) Jim explains why people have only ever met their programming, and how mystics, shamans, and the Toltecs each named this false self.

(27:12) Why the conditioning that created a problem can’t be used to escape it, and why the instructions are always on the outside of the box.

(31:18) This week’s homework: Jim offers a simple practice. Every time the thought “I’m the kind of person who…” shows up, stop and ask, “Who taught me this?”

Listen, apply, and enjoy!

Transformational Takeaway

Every “that’s just how I am” was handed over by someone else. The anxiety about money, the voice that says you’re not enough, the belief that life is hard: none of it started with you. You picked it up as a child the same way you picked up your accent, without knowing it was happening. That means it can be put down. The next time a limitation sounds like a fact about you, pause and ask who taught it to you. The one asking that question, the one who can see the programming, is the self you have never met.

Let’s Connect:

Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | LinkedIn

LIKED THE EPISODE?

If you’re the kind of person who likes to help others, then share this with your friends and family. If you have found value, they will too. Please leave a review on Apple Podcasts so we can reach more people.

Listening on Spotify? Please leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you!

With gratitude,

Jim

Are You A Turkey, Otter, Badger, Skunk, or Something Else? In all my time doing the podcast I’m surprised that I’ve never talked in depth about “Animal Medicine.” So, here you go. I was introduced to “Animal Medicine” two decades ago and I have consistently used it over the years for healing and guidance. Many of the students in my transformational program initially had not heard of it and when they start using it they become surprised at the true guidance it can help us within life.

In this episode, I talk about how to use Animal Medicine and I share the various engagements I have had over the years and what that has done for me. Almost all of us humans have heard, “We’re all connected” and for most of us, it’s hard to get our mind around that. Let’s go further and it’s not just us people that are connected, all consciousness on the planet is - and that includes the animals.

Animals can be incredible guides as they each have different abilities than humans and they are amazing at providing life wisdom/guidance if you just observe and learn from them. I mean, heck, your dog alone, if you have a dog. What could you learn from your dog? Specifically, most of us look at the fact that our dogs are absolutely happy all the time, even when they don’t feel well they most often wag their tails.

There is so much to learn from life and in particular the animals and I dig into it in this episode. I talk about the meanings of certain animals that cross your paths and I talk about your lifetime animal totem and that’s what I mean in the headline, “What kind of animal are you?”

Transformational Takeaway
Let the animals in your life be your guide to higher wisdom, knowledge, and guidance.

Mentioned Resources
Medicine Cards

Disclosure: Some of the links above are affiliate links, meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you make a purchase.

Let’s Connect:

⁠Instagram⁠ |⁠ ⁠⁠Facebook⁠ |⁠ ⁠⁠YouTube⁠ |⁠ ⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠

LIKED THE EPISODE?

If you’re the kind of person who likes to help others, then share this with your friends and family. If you have found value, they will too. Please leave a review on⁠ ⁠⁠Apple Podcasts⁠ so we can reach more people.

Listening on⁠ ⁠⁠Spotify⁠? Please leave a comment below. We would love to hear from you!

With gratitude,

Jim