Michel Fortin Interview Part 4 of 5

Michel Fortin: Well, it’s the same idea. Jim Rohn said, “Don’t become wealthy at the expense of oth­ers. Become wealthy in the ser­vice of oth­ers.” Every per­son who is hap­pi­est in this world serves others.

Whether you’ve built wealth because you pro­duce a prod­uct or pro­vided a ser­vice that was at the ser­vice of oth­ers or you gave value to other people’s lives or you gave your life to char­ity serv­ing oth­ers, to me that is so important.

By doing that it is like for­give­ness in a sense, where you can get out of that this huge feel­ing in your­self that you’ve accom­plished some­thing that is true to you, not some­thing that is going to be a goal that you reach in the future, not some­thing that is going to be true to the other peo­ple around you who you’re serv­ing and you’re think­ing that you’re just doing this for other people.

No, you’re doing it for your­self. Gosh, you know, it’s so impor­tant for you to under­stand and I’m speak­ing to the peo­ple lis­ten­ing to this call. It’s so impor­tant for you to under­stand that when you give of your­self, the law of karma is there.

You get back, and some­times ten times more, what you give out. It’s the same thing in a bad way. If you are bad to the world, if you don’t serve oth­ers, if you with­hold the good­ness that you can put out in the world, it will come back and bite you in the butt. So yeah, I believe in being at the ser­vice of oth­ers, absolutely.

Ralph Zuran­ski: How impor­tant is it to main­tain a sense of humor in the face of adversity?

Michel Fortin: The great­est cure for pretty much all dis­ease that has actu­ally been sci­en­tif­i­cally proven. Although it’s pre­ma­ture now, but there are more and more tests prov­ing that laugh­ter is the great­est immune sys­tem kicker.

I don’t know where these tests are, This is anec­do­tal so I can’t back this up. I read so much about it, but there are tests that have proven in the moment of laugh­ter that your endor­phins get kicked in. The dopamine in your brain and your body gets kicked in.

Your hor­mone lev­els get kicked up a notch and those things in turn increase the immune sys­tem. Those things help to fight off dis­ease. I’m not say­ing that that’s true in every case. I mean, I don’t want to say a per­son who has can­cer should laugh their way until they’re healthy again.

Michel Fortin: That’s not my point. But, maybe if they’re hurt­ing while they have can­cer, laugh­ter is a good way to take their mind off of it. Michel Fortin: It is basic and fun­da­men­tal to being able to help cure your­self. Laugh­ter is the source of good­ness in the world but it is also the source of good­ness in your own self, body-​​wise as much as mind-​​wise.

Ralph Zuran­ski: Yeah. Other than Jim Rohn, who are the other heroes in your life?

Michel Fortin: Oh, my good­ness, do you have a cou­ple of hours?

Ralph Zuran­ski: Sure.

Michel Fortin: I have a lot of men­tors in my life but I think there’s quite a few of them. I’m not a reli­gious per­son. I am a very spir­i­tual per­son. I read a lot of spir­i­tual lead­ers because I believe they have a lot to teach us… whether it’s Jesus or the per­son actu­ally I’m really refer­ring to is the Buddha.

I’m not a Bud­dhist, but I enjoy read­ing a lot about the Bud­dha. I’ve read the Dharma­padda and the Bodghivad Gita, for exam­ple, and other books of other spir­i­tual lead­ers. They’re men­tors to me because they show and they lead by example.

They’re the per­fect exam­ple of love and good­ness in this world. What they teach is important.

Now, I’m not going to say that you should not believe in the vir­gin birth and the cru­ci­fix­ion and all that stuff in Jesus’ life but, did you actu­ally take the chance to stop and just read the words that Jesus uttered, for exam­ple, on the Mount?

The lives that they led were inspi­ra­tional and I don’t mean to say that from a reli­gious per­spec­tive. I’m just say­ing, “Lis­ten to what peo­ple teach you. Lis­ten! You want peo­ple to real­ize you are say­ing, “Yes, I hear what you’re saying.”

Those are the men­tors that mean a lot to me. Another few men­tors, modern-​​age men­tors… I’m a big fan of Brian Tracy. I’m a big fan of Jim Rohn, of course Tony Alessan­dra. And, the funny part about it is I have learned a lot of things from cur­rent spir­i­tual lead­ers. I do believe that Joseph Camp­bell, who is prob­a­bly one of my biggest men­tors in that realm, has taught me so much about the power of the inner self. Joseph Camp­bell is the one who uttered those famous words, “Fol­low your bliss.”, He is one of them.

Michel Fortin: Flo­rence Scovel Shinn is another and John Ran­dolph Price. Those are more of the spir­i­tual kind of guys, but also Louise Hay. I read a lot about that stuff. Now, you can say it’s all “meta­phys­i­cal mumbo-​​jumbo.” The point is not to believe in whether it’s meta­phys­i­cal or not.

The fact is I just lis­tened and learned to apply what­ever I learned in the way I want my life to go. That’s the whole point of any reli­gious, philo­soph­i­cal and think­ing process. It is not to believe in what peo­ple tell you. It is to make use of it.

Ralph Zuran­ski: Do you feel that there are any real heroes in our soci­ety today that aren’t get­ting the recog­ni­tion that they deserve?

Michel Fortin: Absolutely, but you know, those who are the real heroes are peo­ple who don’t seek recog­ni­tion in the first place. They’re not heroes for the sake of recog­ni­tion. They’re heroes because they’re heroes.

To answer your ques­tion with a very blunt answer, “Yes of course there are heroes out there today in the world that do deserve more recog­ni­tion!” But when you ask them that ques­tion, what do you think they’ll say? “I don’t care. I do what I feel is right, point, period.” And that’s the more impor­tant thing about that.

Ralph Zuran­ski: Why are heroes so impor­tant in the lives of young people?

Michel Fortin: Every­thing that’s going to hap­pen in this world, even today, is molded, cre­ated, pre­pared by, built on by first of all peo­ple. And peo­ple were once children.

They were once kids. Their lives today very often are molded by the things and the peo­ple and the instances and the events and the cir­cum­stances of their child­hood as much as what is going on in their lives today.

I was lucky. Well, I guess I’m not lucky because I believe every­body has that capac­ity. It’s not luck. But I was lucky. I guess a bet­ter way to say it is, “I was for­tu­nate to look at my lessons in my life and look at them as the most beau­ti­ful gifts in the world, and to have men­tors and heroes in my life that have helped me.”

But there are so many kids out there that fail to go through this “for­tu­nate” process that I went through. So if they have an oppor­tu­nity to have heroes in their lives, boy oh boy, can you imag­ine the good­ness that we can unleash in this world? They will be molded. Their future will be molded so that they will be the mold­ers of the future.

Michel Fortin: So today the peo­ple that make dif­fer­ences in people’s lives is because they had dif­fer­ences made to them in their own lives when they were young. It is when you are young that your entire life is almost dic­tated. Now, good or bad, you can have bad stuff hap­pen to you and it dic­tates your life in a good way.

You know, there’s an old story about the two sons of an alco­holic father who grew up. One became an alco­holic and one became a very suc­cess­ful busi­ness­man. When an inter­viewer asked them the ques­tion “why are you who you are today?” and they both answered the same answer, “Well, I didn’t have any choice; look at my father.”

One blamed his father for being the way he is. The other one looked at his father and used that as a spring­board for not being like him. So for­tu­nately, they might have had heroes in their lives that made them go that way, espe­cially the one that’s pos­i­tive, but the thing is whether it’s true or false. The thing is we all need heroes but the kids need them the most because they are the mold­ers of the future.

Ralph Zuran­ski: How does it feel to be rec­og­nized as an Inter­net hero?

Michel Fortin: I would be very mis­lead­ing if I said it didn’t feel good, because it does feel good. I think that’s the ego part of me. But what I feel best about is I have tes­ti­mo­ni­als on my web­site about the lives that I’ve changed. And that makes me feel good. But what I put on my web­site, what I put out in the world as a way to prop my own self up is just the tip of the ice­berg of what I get every sin­gle day.

We talked at the begin­ning of this call about all these emails I get every day. A good per­cent­age of those emails are just tiny lit­tle words from some­body who I made a dif­fer­ence to in their lives. It doesn’t have to be this huge thing that I can actu­ally use as a testimonial.

It doesn’t have to be an actual busi­ness or a suc­cess or what­ever. I had peo­ple who emailed me after the big sem­i­nar and said, “Michel Fortin Fortin, you’re a per­son that I’ve been fol­low­ing for so many years and it was such a huge honor and plea­sure to have met you.”

Michel Fortin: That bright­ened up my day. To me I don’t need to have recog­ni­tion in the other way where I actu­ally have to put out stuff in the world to get rec­og­nized. One tiny lit­tle email made the dif­fer­ence in my life just as much as what we were talk­ing at the beginning.

About spend­ing just five min­utes with some­body at a sem­i­nar some­where, how much of a dif­fer­ence you made in that person’s day. And that’s the kind of recog­ni­tion I enjoy, even more than the actual pats on the back that I get in the pub­lic way. I pre­fer the small pri­vate lit­tle ones because they put a smile on my face.

Ralph Zuran­ski: How are you per­son­ally mak­ing the world a bet­ter place?

Michel Fortin: By being me. That’s prob­a­bly the best answer I can give you. I fol­low what I believe in. I am true to myself and most impor­tant, I do what I love to do. When you do what you love to do, we were talk­ing about giv­ing good ser­vice or being at the ser­vice of others.If you love doing what you do, how much bet­ter are you going to serve the peo­ple around you?

How much more pas­sion and zest will you have for not only what you do but what you expresses about ser­vice to oth­ers. If you had a choice to buy a prod­uct from two dif­fer­ent ser­vice providers or two dif­fer­ent stores and one per­son hates their job and the other one absolutely loves their job, how much more will­ing will that sec­ond per­son be to help you.

How much more in ser­vice of you will that per­son be? Of course, a lot more. So, how do I expect to make a change in the world just by being me? Just by being Michel Fortin! Just by being the per­son who loves to do what he does because that will give all these byprod­ucts of every­thing we just talked about on this call.

Ralph Zuran­ski: There’s a lot of prob­lems fac­ing soci­eties all over the world today, like racism, child and spousal abuse and vio­lence among young peo­ple. Do you have any good solu­tions for those problems?

Michel Fortin: Edu­ca­tion! Edu­ca­tion. We can­not change the world by forc­ing it but we can change the world by edu­cat­ing it. I was once a col­lege teacher. There’s such a great sense of ful­fill­ment that one gets when they teach other people.

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

• Foreword
• The Inner You
• Your Values
• True Motivation
• Thinking in The Certain Way