Michel Fortin Interview Part 3 of 5

Michel Fortin: No, I think if you want to look at opti­mism in the best way is to look at it as an edu­ca­tional process. Learn­ing is part of it… sit­ting down with peo­ple, talk­ing with them, spend­ing time with them, read­ing books, spend­ing your time on learn­ing as much as you pos­si­bly can.

You will be able to go down the right road. Fast or slow doesn’t mat­ter and that’s not opti­mism. That’s just being. That’s just fol­low­ing your con­science. That’s just being a real­ist. It’s not being a pes­simist. It’s not being opti­mist. It’s prob­a­bly an opti­mal point of look­ing at it, an opti­mal point or way to look at things, but it’s not nec­es­sar­ily optimistic.

Ralph Zuran­ski: Do you think it takes courage to pur­sue new ideas?

It absolutely takes courage. You know courage is not the absence of fear. Courage is the abil­ity to take risks when there is fear. As the old say­ing goes for peo­ple who, like speak­ers when they speak onstage, they say you’ll never be able to get rid of those but­ter­flies. Your job is to make those but­ter­flies dance in for­ma­tion and that is courage.

Ralph Zuran­ski: How impor­tant is prayer?

Michel Fortin: If I pray to any one God or any one Spirit or any one process in this world, I pray for three major things strength, courage and wis­dom. I pray for the strength to be able to do what is nec­es­sary, the courage to be able to go ahead and do it, the courage to be able to also accept defeat when you need to accept defeat, and wisdom.

Exactly, that’s the prayer of seren­ity that they use for exam­ple in “Alco­holics’ Anony­mous,” And that’s the most beau­ti­ful prayer in the world because then you have the wis­dom to know the dif­fer­ence, the wis­dom to know what to do, when to do it, how to do it, who to say it to, at what time, and when not to do things, when to shut up, when to stop your­self from doing things that you shouldn’t be doing and stuff like that. So to me courage, yeah, that’s it, absolutely.

If you have a new idea, you’re always push­ing the enve­lope in every day of your life because you’re always grow­ing and evolv­ing. The prob­lem is are you going to be push­ing it by a mil­lime­ter today or are you going to be push­ing it by a yard. And that takes courage. It also takes courage to real­ize that in the first place, not just the courage to do it. That takes strength but to me courage is absolutely nec­es­sary, absolutely.

Ralph Zuran­ski: Do you think that in the process of pur­su­ing new ideas and using that courage that you’re going to expe­ri­ence dis­com­fort in the pur­suit of your dreams?

Michel Fortin: Well, absolutely. It’s going through life. If you’re ever going to do some­thing, you have to take the goods and the bads with it. The good will out­weigh the bad, of course, but there will always be bad. There’s always going to be discomfort.

Here’s the point. If you do what you love. If you do some­thing that you have zest and pas­sion for and you’re so fully absorbed in the process, you tend to not even think of the dis­com­fort even though you are actu­ally feel­ing it. Your body is feel­ing it. If I’m doing some­thing that I love I’m going to fin­ish this because it’s important.

If I do some­thing that I love, the dis­com­fort level will be on the back burner in my mind, although it will always be there. Yanni, a very famous com­poser who writes New Age-​​type music, he’s like me in a cer­tain way. When­ever he writes a whole CD or a new song or even a new kind of sym­phony, he locks him­self in his room for two, three weeks at a time. He for­gets to bathe. He for­gets to eat. He for­gets to sleep, because he is so engrossed in the moment.

Dis­com­fort, yes, but are you actu­ally focused on your dis­com­fort? No, if you do some­thing you love, then you’ll have a chance to look at all the things that are uncom­fort­able, drudgery, per­func­tory or even painful, as things that are impor­tant to you. They’re part of some­thing that gives you pur­pose. You will turn the impor­tant into the urgent.

You will turn the dis­com­fort into com­fort. It’s a nat­ural, phys­i­cal knee-​​jerk reac­tion. I can’t really express it well enough in words. Essen­tially you’ll be able to turn the uncom­fort­able into the com­fort. Or you’ll be able to accept or have a tol­er­ance level higher if you were doing some­thing you absolutely love because that pur­pose dri­ves you. Every­thing that hap­pens to you, that may be bad or may make you uncom­fort­able, is so in the back of your mind, you just trudge along. You will be going wher­ever you want to go.

Ralph Zuran­ski: How impor­tant is the belief that your dreams will actu­ally become reality?

Michel Fortin: First of all it is extremely impor­tant, but it’s not impor­tant to the degree that you might think. I don’t feel peo­ple should believe that their dreams become real­ity because belief is some­thing you can’t change on a whim. How can you believe some­thing that you don’t believe?

Can you force your­self to believe in some­thing? Can you believe in your dream? No, you can’t. It’s not some­thing you can change on a whim. If I don’t like aspara­gus today, do I have to force myself to like aspara­gus? No, I mean, I can’t change the way I feel. If I don’t believe in my dreams today, I can’t switch it just like with one flick of a switch and say, “I’m believ­ing in my dream,” but here’s the difference.

If I have dreams and I do tiny lit­tle things that will make me con­sciously pur­pose­ful every sin­gle day as I head towards my dreams, the more and more this inter­nal switch will flick on for you, not only to believe in your dreams but to know that your dreams will become real­ity. And there’s a big dif­fer­ence between belief and knowing.

Ralph Zuran­ski: That’s a pro­found point. When you are try­ing to achieve your dreams there’s a tremen­dous amount of doubts and fears. And, a lot of peo­ple in your life will try to crush your dream because they don’t want you to change for fear of hav­ing to change them­selves. How did you over­come your doubts and fears?

Michel Fortin: By jour­nal­ing is the one way. The other point is to always con­stantly lis­ten to your­self. Be true to your own self. You know, to thine own self be true, in Shakespeare’s “Ham­let.” And the one thing that you have to under­stand is, this is absolutely so true.

I don’t mean to pros­e­ly­tize for any reli­gion. And I don’t mean to sound reli­gious, but we are all like Jesus, where we’re cru­ci­fied between two thieves, tomor­row and yes­ter­day… in other words, fear and guilt.

The fear of what’s going to hap­pen tomor­row and the guilt of what hap­pened in the past, they are always gonna be. But, like Jesus, he was true to him­self. He did what he needed to do. If you have fears and you have doubts, that’s per­fectly fine as long as you real­ize that the more focused you are on your­self the more you let the “inner you” tell you what to do, guide you in what you’re doing.

Michel Fortin: The more you write to your­self as much as even talk­ing to other peo­ple about how you feel about cer­tain things, that is learn­ing process that will give you the ammu­ni­tion to destroy lack and lim­i­ta­tion.

There’s also another thing. I know, I think it’s the most impor­tant. The great­est cre­ator of fear is a low self esteem. Any lack and lim­i­ta­tion in your life that are there, you know. They’re not just lack and lim­i­ta­tions, because they exist. They’re lack and lim­i­ta­tions because you believe they are lack and limitations.

The only way to cir­cum­vent, to over­come, to destroy those fears, at least to reduce it, is to increase the belief that you have in your own self. The more you work on your own self-​​esteem, the more you have con­fi­dence in yourself.

The more you work on hav­ing con­fi­dence in your­self, all the other fears and all the things that are destroy­ing or attempt­ing to destroy the things that are good to you in your life, the things that you want to do in your life, will almost dis­si­pate by them­selves. The rea­son is because you’ve become a big­ger believer in the best thing that ever hap­pened in this world, and that’s you.

Ralph Zuran­ski: Well, is there any­body that helped give you the willpower to change things in your life for the better?

Michel Fortin: Well, like I said, when­ever I grew up, I had a men­tor. And I’ll tell you one thing that really had the most pro­found impact in my life. He kept telling me every sin­gle day and it may not sound pro­found, but he said, “turn off the tape recorder”. Okay? Now, let me explain what that means. I was a sales­man and as I grew up and I was try­ing to make sales. I had fears and doubts but a lot of times it was because I was say­ing that to my self.

There was a tape recorder in my mind that kept telling me, “I’m stu­pid. I’m a fail­ure. I don’t. I’ll never amount to much. I will always. I’m going to fail. This is not for me. This is too lofty of an ambi­tion for me. Or, this is impos­si­ble for me to reach! Blah, blah, blah.”

My men­tor some­times he would just look at me and I wouldn’t even say a word. He would look at me and say, “Turn the tape recorder off, Mike”.

Michel Fortin: And that is the most pro­found thing that I’ve ever, ever been taught because we all have tape recorders in our minds. We do become what we think about. You reap what you sow.

If you think you’re a fail­ure, if you think that you will fail, if you think that you’re not good enough or what­ever, then you are. You are what you think! And, a big phi­los­o­phy that I go by is by the Latin philoso­pher Rene Descartes. In 1637 he said, “I think, there­fore I am”. If you think you’re a fail­ure, you are!

If you’re think­ing you’re a suc­cess, you are. So that thing that my men­tor kept telling me, “turn the tape recorder off” is just a very mod­ern way to look at it. But it’s so true! And, that has changed my life.

Ralph Zuran­ski: How impor­tant is it to for­give oth­ers who upset, offend or oppose you?

Michel Fortin: Ralph, did you now that for­give­ness is a very self­ish thing? Did you know that actu­ally for­giv­ing is not because you’re doing it for the other per­son? You, you know, for­give­ness is prob­a­bly the most self­ish act you could ever do. And it’s a good self­ish act because when you for­give you are releas­ing all the ten­sion, all the bad stuff that you’re hold­ing on to that’s going to cause you great prob­lems, great turmoil.

If you for­give and you let go, it’s unbe­liev­able the release that you get in your life. I used to be stub­born. I would look at each per­son and the per­son who would do me wrong. I would be stub­born enough to say, “I hate that per­son and I’ll never talk to that per­son again.” But who’s really being hurt here?

Now, I’m doing it because I’m think­ing that I don’t want to give the per­son either the plea­sure of my for­give­ness or I just don’t want to show the per­son I’m really mad at that person.

Once you for­give, you let go. Guess whose life is going to be more enriched? Both of yours, of course, but the most impor­tant per­son is you. So for­give­ness is extremely impor­tant because the more you for­give the more you can let go rid of all the nasty stuff and start work­ing on the good stuff in your life.

Ralph Zuran­ski: How impor­tant is ser­vice to oth­ers as a source of joy? Do you find joy in serv­ing others?

About the Author

Last 5 Posts By Michel Fortin

• How to Capture and Captivate Attention
• The Real Problem With The Flaw of Attraction
• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Changes, Relaunches, and Extreme Makeovers
• Superior Value Equals Superior Sales

Other Related Posts

• The Connection
• Lack and Limitation
• Dealing with Fear
• Two Shining Stars in an Age of Darkness
• Self Management