Living In the Fullest Expression of Yourself- What It Means and How To Reach It For A More Meaningful Life with Jim Phillips

 

 “We are way more powerful than we give ourselves permission to be. The time is now to give ourselves permission.”  – Jim Phillips

Listen to the podcast here:

Highlights:

01:17 Where Journey Starts 
07:53 S-O-U-L: Source Of Unconditional Love
11:56 Awareness- The Key To Everything
16:06 How to Live in  Full Expression
26:54 Nurture Your Soul
31:16 Expand and Deepen Your Impact
37:35 How To Make Better Decisions

 

Did you know? The people behind these programs and platforms we see on the web won’t let their kids into the world they, themselves created! Join in as @myexpectation and @inspired10 talk about how we can reclaim our power to live in alignment… Click To Tweet

 

Resources:

• The Key To LIFE: Living In Full Expression by Jim Phillips

Quotes:

05:14 “Let people come to their own conclusion, make their own choices, and live the life the way that they’re intended to live.” – Jim Phillips

14:33 “Once aware, all else falls in place” – Jim Phillips 

15:06 “Our feelings are the true guidance system within us.”  – Jim Phillips

16:50 “Living in full expression is always about allowing that core essence of who we are, that divine spark, to live through us.” – Jim Phillips  

38:25 “When we live from our heart, we’re going to make decisions towards other people or towards all things, it’s going to be more compassionate, it’s going to be more accepting, it’s going to be more forgiving.” – Jim Phillips

42:03 “We are way more powerful than we give ourselves permission to be, and the time is now to give ourselves permission.”  – Jim Phillips

 

Meet Jim:

Jim Phillips is a highly respected business leader, entrepreneur, L.I.F.E. Strategist, L.I.F.E. Coach, inspirational speaker and author. He wrote the new book, The Key To LIFE: Living In Full Expression. As an entrepreneur and business leader for over 40 years, Jim has empowered people around the world to a higher level of achievement, to learn how gratitude helps us to receive an experience that we desire in life and in the lives of others, and how we can fulfill our life’s purpose. One of his passions is the exploration and application of spiritual law as it applies to prosperity and overall quality of life. One of Jim’s gifts is his ability to help others understand and apply complex spiritual concepts to their personal life.

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Transcription:

Art Costello: Welcome to the Shower Epiphanies Podcast, today, I am honored to have Jim Phillips. Jim is joining us today to talk about the power of how words shape our lives, and how becoming and more conscious of the power of language that can help you make a positive impact on inequality and the depth of your relationships. Jim is a life strategy speaker and the author of the new book, The Key to LIFE, Living InFull Expression. As an entrepreneur, and this is [naudible] for over 40 years, Jim has empowering depot around the world to higher levels of achievement and have gratitude to helps us to receive and experience which we desire in life and in the lives of others, and how we can fulfill our life’s purpose Jim, welcome to the show. It’s an honor to have you on here today.

Jim Phillips: Oh, it’s my pleasure. I’m looking forward to the conversation.

Art Costello: We’re going to have a good day, because we’re going to talk about soul and all kinds of different things today.

Jim Phillips: All that good stuff.

Art Costello: Yeah. Can you tell us how this journey started for you?

Jim Phillips: I was born. I mean, that’s the best place to start. That’s where everybody’s journey starts, when we’re born, but I know what you mean. As far as my becoming aware of this information and getting more engaged, I guess my whole greater understanding of who I am, why I’m here, why any of us are here. Looking at all the life experience that I have had, what that means to me and my soul’s continuous growth and evolution. But I had a situation when I was 13 years old sitting at church, and while I was in church, I was looking around and fidgeting, I guess like any 13 year old with fidget and not really paying a lot of attention but aware of what was going on around me. And I noticed the minister up front, there were some folks over to the left of me, they were getting ready to pass an offering basket. My parents were sitting on either side of me and I have siblings, but they weren’t with me for some reason that day. So I was just thinking about how this felt very uncomfortable to me. I wasn’t really sure what the discomfort was, where it came from, but I just knew that something felt off to me. And as I was sitting there thinking, all of a sudden, up here on the right hand side of my head, I heard this loud voice say, you’re going to be doing this someday. I jerked my head around it. I’m looking, see if anybody else responded to it. Nobody appeared to have heard the voice. Of course, one of my thoughts is, okay, I’m crazy. That voice didn’t really happen. So I’m sitting there looking around and I’m just wondering, I’m going to be doing what? Because it wasn’t going to be sitting in front of, or standing in front of a church, leading a congregation. As soon as I was sitting there thinking about that, it was a couple of minutes later, that same voice said: “You’re going to be doing it differently.” And I went back to, okay, doing what differently? Because I don’t know what this means. And I certainly know that I’m not going to be leading a congregation, that is not where I saw myself going. And I was 13 years old so really none of this made a whole lot of sense. So I never said anything to anybody about that until I was 60, and my parents didn’t know nobody knew about it.

I held that in because, to me, it was one of those personal experiences that I couldn’t explain. I couldn’t actually say that it happened, although I believe it did. I heard the voice, I got the message and I’ve reflected on it all during my life. I’ve had experiences that have come up that have led me to believe that what I was doing is really a part of what that message was. I’m going to be doing this being in front of people, sharing information of a very spiritual nature, helping people understand why they’re here, what they’re here to do, really cutting through all of the misinformation, the untruths that we hold about ourselves and that others are more than happy to throw at us. It’s not because they’re doing it intentionally, but they’re having their own, they’re dealing with their own untruths and misinformation. And so we’re all kind of in this world trying to figure it all out. So just continuing throughout my life, I got involved in real estate when I was 24 years old. Been involved in real estate for over 40 years now that led me into becoming a broker. I’ve got 55 agents that I manage. I did a lot of coaching with them. Out of the real estate, came the opportunity to speak in front of large groups, develop training programs, but there was always this spiritual bent to everything that I did. And it just grew from that. It just got to the point where that became more and more the message that I was sharing with people. And then the book came out, The Key to LIFE, Living InFull Expression. And I have a companion book to that as well that’s called, From Inspiration to Intention. It really elaborates on one of the key aspects of The Key to LIFE, Living InFull Expression. And really, over the past 20, 25 years, I’ve just been sharing information that I continue to receive that I think could be a benefit to people. What I don’t do though, is I don’t tell people, this is the way your life is. I don’t tell them, this is what you have to do. I share my information, I share my experiences, I let people come to their own conclusion, make their own choices and live the life the way that they’re intended to live–

05:14 “Let people come to their own conclusion, make their own choices, and live the life the way that they're intended to live.” - Jim Phillips Click To Tweet

Art Costello: Something free, you know, make judgements on some people.

Jim Phillips: I’m not going to say that because that’s one of the things, we’re all here to work through is judgment, we are to become nonjudgmental. And the first person to be nonjudgmental towards, is ourself. And that’s one of the hardest things to do because we are very hard on ourselves. I mean, we all have these thoughts going through our head on a daily basis, just ongoing telling us what we can’t do, why do we think we can do this? Why do we think we’re this or that, we’re denying ourselves a lot of the opportunities that are presented to us to help us gain this greater understanding of who we are and what we’re here to do.

Art Costello: What’s the difference between being critical of yourself and judgmental of yourself?

Jim Phillips: Well, I think critical has a more negative connotation to it. To me, when you said that I had a voice and it sounded harsher, it was probably more unrelenting in what it’s saying. I think judgment, we can say judgment is opinion because somebody’s opinion of something is their judgment of it, but you’re not being critical of yourself, you’re just saying, well, maybe you don’t like something, so that’s your judgment, you don’t like it. It’s how you feel about it, but it’s also your opinion. So I think that’s the difference, I think it would just be that more critical aspect of it.

Art Costello: It’s interesting because I’ve heard people say, he’s so critical of himself, but you rarely hear somebody saying, he’s so judgemental of himself. We’re always judgmental towards other people versus ourselves. But see, I kind of have a little bit of a different take on it because I see being judgmental as being more harmful in a way, because your judgments kind of stick and opinions come and go. Think about it, but it’s really interesting because you and I have so much in common. Because when I was nine years old, I think we talked about this one time a while back when we first hooked up. But when I was nine years old, I was abandoned. I had to figure out life on my own. I went to a hilltop, laid on my back and had a conversation with God. I heard that voice in me, do I know what you need? It scares you because you’re kind of like the, Whoa, where did that come from? It’s so out of the realm of everything, but I know that you write a lot about soul, soul searching and knowing who we are. What exactly is our soul? What do you perceive our soul as? Or what is your definition of a soul?

Jim Phillips: I’m going to use the word soul as an acronym. And this came to me, then I’m going to get more specific into the definition. I take very early morning walks, and that’s when I am most connected. I ask questions, I get my guidance. And I get guidance that has been very profound. In fact, in my book, there’s like 40 or 41 quotes. All of which came from those morning walks for me, just asking for guidance on certain things. And typically, the guidance is going to come in the form of a quote or a word that I can expand on. So this one morning I was asking the questions about the soul and what that all means. And what was interesting is that I looked at the word soul and a message came out of the word. And if you think about what we think of as being the soul, and a lot of people will say, it is the divine spark within us, that it is an aspect of God. All of which I believe is true. But then the word soul, when I was looking at it and we think of God, or spirit, or all that is as being unconditional love. So the word soul is the acronym for source of unconditional love. And to me, it was such a profound awareness for me to get during that walk, because it really summed up to me what I believe the soul is all about. It is about loving everything and everyone, and understanding that we all are of the same source of energy, if you will, or the same divine essence. And that is what is living within each of our physical bodies, and it’s what’s trying to, I say trying to, because we block it with our personality self, but it’s what is here to experience and express through us and as us. And this whole journey that I think we go on is about the personality, ego, self, human self, whatever terms somebody wants to use. Really stepping aside and allowing that divine essence, our soul, if you will, to be what is really experiencing and expressing through us and as us as the primary expression, instead of having the interference from the ego that we pay way too much attention to.

Art Costello: Would you say that soul is the purest form of our essence?

Jim Phillips: Yes. Yes, because I believe that everything is of God. Again, whatever term anybody wants to use for that divine energy, you cannot get any more than source. In fact, a lot of people use the term authentic. They say, you’ve gotta be authentic, you gotta be transparent, but they use you gotta be authentic. We use words all the time that we have an idea of what they mean. And when I’m writing, and maybe when you’re writing too, I want to make sure the word I’m using gives the meaning that I’m looking for. And often when I look it up, there’s an additional meaning to it. It’s even more profound and more applicable to what I’m writing. So when I was writing and I was using the word authentic. And the definition that I found was, it said, it was authentic, not far removed from source. And I thought that was a really cool definition given what I was writing about.

Art Costello: Yeah, it is. It is. It’s profound actually. Really, really enjoyment. You’ve touched upon something in our conversation a minute ago and I wanted to bring it up because this actually fits in perfectly. I want to read it from your book and I want to plug your book to the audience right now. The Key to LIFE, Living InFull Expression is an extremely well-written intelligent book that I believe should be on everybody’s bookshelf so that you really have an understanding of what it means. Jim and I will get into this in a little bit about full expression, but that’s what I want all of my audience to live in. I believe that Jim wants everybody in the world to live in full expression, but you talked a little bit about awareness. In your book on page 74, out to start it as this, I’ll read it from it, “As you practice awareness, be aware of following without judgment or attachment. Be aware of your thoughts, be aware of your feelings, be aware of the relationships or correlation between your thoughts and feelings. Be aware of the correlation between your thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and experience that life’s presents you. Be aware of the resistance you have to what life offers. Be aware of all that is happening around you and within you. Be aware of those moments when you are not aware. Be aware of judgment, be aware, be aware.” This raised every hair on my body because it resonated with me so much. I don’t think I’ve ever seen nine elements listed about awareness that are so profound. Because when we raise our awareness, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me say this, and if you follow me a lot, but I have the same about, I believe in the possibility of everything, so everything becomes possible. That is the essence of what you wrote, because when you’re opened and you’re aware of who you are, and you have an openness to learning new ideas, new things, new ways of thinking about things, it just raises your awareness. And when you raise awareness, you actually enhance your ability to live in full expression. What is your definition of full expression?

Jim Phillips: Well, I want to just comment on something you just said when you’re talking about awareness, and it’s at the back of the book, if I’m not mistaken, it might even be in the little note that I wrote at the back of the book. And that is, once aware, all else falls in place. Because the whole awareness thing, and then I’ll get to the definition of living in full expression. The whole awareness thing is that is being present, to absolutely everything. When you say, be aware of your thoughts, well, that’s your thoughts. So your thoughts, thoughts about happened in the past, so it’s keeping you out of the present moment of your thoughts, thoughts that are limiting beliefs that you hold that are preventing you from doing what you know you can do, or they thoughts that are keeping you from actually living in full expression of your truth, or even getting to your truth. And then feelings, being aware of our feelings because our feelings are the true guidance system within us. That’s what tells us whether or not we’re on what we might consider our right track. And if we pay attention to that, we’re not going to be led astray by that internal guidance system. So the awareness piece is something, whenever I’m giving a presentation, I usually lead with this. I’ll say, if you leave here with anything, let it be more awareness and just pay attention to what’s going on, and then you can make whatever decisions you need to make that are beneficial to you as you continue along your life’s path, in whatever direction you choose. Because it doesn’t matter whatever direction or whatever choices somebody makes. There is an inherent benefit, and experience is going to come from that. That is whether we want to say it’s on our right path or not. It is, because your path is your path. There isn’t, you’re not on your path and then take a left, now you’re on a different path. Turning left is a part of your path, and that’s going to take you to whatever that experience might be, that I believe your soul has intended for you to have during this incarnation.

14:33 “Once aware, all else falls in place” - Jim Phillips Click To Tweet

Now, you ask about living in full expression. I’m just going to hold up a copy of my book just to make this point. You see the title of the book is The Key to LIFE, Living InFull Expression. The word LIFE is the acronym for living in full expression. So to me, the definition of living in full expression is allowing that, which we are, that true essence as you said, to fully experience and express through us and as us, that is what I believe it’s all about. And it’s in whatever form or whatever, well, whatever form of manifestation that we choose for it to be, because that’s where we have choice. We can choose how we want to live lives. We can choose what we want to do. We can choose how we want to interact with people. But to me, living at full expression is always about allowing that core essence of who we are, that divine spark to live through us and as us. That’s where intuition comes in. And not intuition, but inspiration comes in because I believe the inspiration that we’re given our nudges from our soul as to the experience it wants to have, and we all too often deny that. A lot of times, it comes as an inspiration that we may feel as silly or maybe nobody else would believe it, or nobody else would want it or whatever. But that’s not the point, the point is it was an inspiration given to us. And if we don’t honor that, that’s where stress comes in and that’s where the struggle comes in because we’re not really allowing what we’re here to do to be done. Again, letting that divine aspect of us to be able to live through wasn’t expressed to us.

15:06 “Our feelings are the true guidance system within us.” - Jim Phillips Click To Tweet

Art Costello: It’s very similar. I mean, I’m sitting here thinking, you know my area of expertise sits on expectations, and I believe that every action that we take is preceded. Every thought we have proceeds with an expectation. And when we think about being in touch with our soul and being aware of our soul, it really makes sense that our expectations affect how the perception in our brain is made. So the action matches the perception. Does that make sense? You understand what I’m trying to say?

Jim Phillips: It does. However, I’m going to say that that’s where part of our, I’m going to say challenges, but I’m also saying it’s a challenging opportunity because I think there is an expectation that our soul has, which would be the intention, I think. But then I think we can choose otherwise, which is where we start to have struggle, or we start to suffer because we’re not allowing that to come through and to have that experience.

16:50 “Living in full expression is always about allowing that core essence of who we are, that divine spark, to live through us.” - Jim Phillips Click To Tweet

Art Costello: I call that free choice.

Jim Phillips: Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. And the unfortunate thing is we allow outside opinions to interfere with our decision making process. Somehow, thinking that other people know us better than we do, and we buy into that. Whether it’s positive information or negative information, we buy into that. And then we make decisions based on it. Or we look at what society has said to be successful, you have to do this, or you have to be this way. And yet, that really has nothing to do with anything. That’s just society’s idea of what it means to be successful.

Art Costello: You’re right on that issue. Because that’s one of the things that I preach is, if you’re in touch with your soul, you’re in touch with your intentions, if you’re aware of all that, then you shut out all of that outside chatter because that’s exactly what stops people from being who they are, being their truthful self, it stops them from all that. And it’s sad because they don’t really understand. I think that you and I do, I think we’re very alike in this. We’ve lived long lives, we’re both, I don’t want to say the word, we’re both seniors now.

Jim Phillips: That’s true.

Art Costello: But we have all this experience that we’ve called upon to come to the conclusions we have now. Young people don’t have that, but they also are so influenced by everything that’s around them, that they don’t listen to the wisdom of people who have traveled this journey before. And see, that’s why I think our senior community that we have, sitting in the rocking chairs on the porch, sitting in the nursing homes, if we could move them out and into the community where kids could actually meet them, I believe that the wisdom that they could pass down could change this world to better. It’s if we don’t let it happen, we just fight it all the time. We live in an advertising world that is, Hey, we gotta have Air Jordan shoes, we gotta have some things kind of clothes that we wear and all that, when all of that is just physical, unimportant. What is important is what is in your heart and soul, and what comes out of your mouth, and how you affect other people. Would you say that that’s a fair definition of what you call soljourn?

Jim Phillips: Well, the whole idea of soljourn came because as I was writing the book, I was just thinking about the period of time we’re here on the planet. And looking at the soul being what’s here, embodied in this body, this Jim Phillips and you’re thinking, okay, well this, and then we talked about the journey all the time. And I said, well, that’s interesting because the word SOJOURN means a short stay. So I just threw the L in there for the soul, for soljourn, which is really just the short stay on the planet for whatever timeframe we have for this given incarnation, it’s the experience of the soul. I personally feel that I have had many soljourns. I believe that most of the people on the planet had many, many soljourns. I believe that all of us here right now, we have this incredible opportunity given everything that’s happening on the planet right now to really kind of hone in on the truth. Now, the challenge with that is, there’s so much misinformation that’s being thrown at us. That we’ve gotta be really careful and very discerning with what we allow in, and what we allow to influence our thoughts, and our beliefs and subsequent actions that we take, because it’s too insidious right now. You can’t get away from it because of social media, primarily, because you’re just bombarded. And then I don’t know if you’ve watched the Netflix movie that’s called Social Dilemma. It gets into, and actually the people that are in it are the people who did the programming and the algorithms for companies like Facebook, Instagram and all of those. It is very alarming when you see what is happening behind the scenes, what’s happening is not what was intended, but it’s what has happened. And that is that we are influenced by all of this misinformation. The algorithms don’t know whether or not what they’re sending your way is true or not, it quite frankly doesn’t care. Sending you information based on your behaviors so it’s going to constantly be reinforced again whether it’s true or not. And we’ve gotta be really careful with that because we can be influenced in a very detrimental way if we’re not aware. And that again is where awareness comes. Awareness of your thoughts, awareness of your beliefs, awareness of what you’re allowing into your mind that’s going to influence you, or can influence you in a way that you don’t want to be influenced.

Art Costello: Do you think kids today are even cognizant of what you just mentioned?

Jim Phillips: I don’t know. What was really interesting about this program was that these engineers that created it or ask flat out, do you have children? They all said, yes. Do you allow your children to get on social media and to have screen time? They said, absolutely not. So it’s interesting. The people that are making all this money off of it don’t allow their kids to participate, so what does that say?

Art Costello: Says a lot. It does speak volumes about what they’re doing. But you know, I’ve always been interested in how, one of the ways that I got started with expectations was that advertisers use expectations subliminally. They use them covertly. I mean, we’ve gone from everything from fear of loss, if I don’t buy this car today, it’s going to be gone tomorrow. I don’t buy these shoes, about blah, blah and all that. They are psychologically so aware of these people that write these algorithms and write the advertising. They are so aware of how they can psychologically control people. And my belief is, once you control the expectations of people, you control them. That’s what they do in all the election stuff we’re going on now, everybody wants to control, control, control. I mean, literally the church, government, schools, you name it, they all want to control because that’s how they get their point across. That’s how they do it.

Jim Phillips: That’s why they’re powerful. Well, that’s what they believe the power is, and yet we lose sight of the fact that power is us. It is inherently our power and we give it away by allowing ourselves to be drawn into these dramas, as you’ve been talking about the advertising. That’s the scary thing about social media, and what’s happening is that’s all artificial intelligence, which has no emotions attached to it so it doesn’t care. It’s just running the program. And if we aren’t mindful of it, then we get drawn into it. And it’s hard to get out because the beliefs become so ingrained because of all of the information that supports it. Again, whether the information is true or not, it gets supported and it gets accepted by our conscious mind.

Art Costello: Yeah. Now that we’ve talked about this, how do we nurture our soul? We’re going through all these things, but how do we nurture our soul?

Jim Phillips: I think the first thing is to accept that we have one, or that we are one. Because I gave a presentation one time and this woman really surprised me when she said: “I hear everything you’re saying, but I’m not so sure I have a soul.” And I said: “Well, what do you mean by that?” She said: “I don’t know that I have a soul.” And I said: “Well, what do you think animates you?” Or anybody, what do you think is within the body that gives that energy or that spark? I said: “If you have something that’s run by a battery, you take the battery out and it no longer runs. When we die, and it’s been proven that when we die, there is something that leaves the body. And that to me is the soul. So it’s our energy source. So how could you not have that, and yet you’re here on the planet in physical form.” But they get back to your question, I do think it is number one, acknowledging that we are a soul in a physical body. I think it is honoring and respecting that, which is this divine aspect. I guess it gets to the point of whether or not somebody believes that there is a greater force, that it’s not just what we see, what we feel, what we experienced, that there is, I believe, a benevolent force that is in everything, certainly within us. I think that’s what is experienced and expressing through us, but we get to direct it because we’re here in the physical form. And again, you mentioned free will, that’s where free will comes in. We can make whatever choices we want. We then have the consequences of that choice. Be what we might consider a good or bad, but we still have the consequence of it. And regardless of the consequence, there is an inherent benefit in it. Then we have the experience of what it was that we gained from the consequences, or what we had to go through because of the consequence.

Art Costello: Yeah. Listening to you, I keep on calling back on my experience with expectations and in what I’ve learned, looking and doing the research that I have, we get into the physics aspect of it. We’re all putting out impulses all the time. And you talked about having this energy inside of us, whether we call it soul or whatever we want to call it, there is this energy and it can be measured. They’re doing really great research at a University in Texas here in Austin with that right now. And then there’s physicists all around the world. And finally physicists, they’re starting to believe in the spiritual energy aspect of our soul, and our energy and all that, which before was totally shut. But it’s really interesting when you look, because when I was nine years old, I spoke at Harvard in 2017 to the faculty. One of the physicists said to me, he came up afterwards and he said: “Art, I’ve been around a long, long time and you are the first person who I have ever had the pleasure of talking or listening to, that has actually been able to document their journey. From nine years old, you looked just gone full circle with it. I believe when you were nine, you put energy into the world. And even though it took you to the age of 63 to really recognize what that energy was and how it was operating, you still did it. It’s just amazing for me to hear you because I studied this and I understand how this energy flows out. And I understand the butterfly effect, how it affects everything around all the people that you’ve affected in your life. All the people that have had an effect on you to bring you that full circle back around to where you are now. Over the next 20 or 30 years, you’re going to complete that cycle and go back to whatever form of energy we think we are, after death.” I was really, really intrigued by that because I had never thought of it that way, that life really is a journey. It really is.

Jim Phillips: Yeah. You mentioned from the age of nine until 63, it took you that period of time to gain an understanding of what your journey was about. My belief is that the reason for that is you have to have the experience. You can’t just all of a sudden start talking about something. So everything that happens during our lives or your life, if we’re using you as the example, it is to help us gain that greater understanding. And then I think we finally get to a point where enough of it makes sense that we can articulate it. We can really put it out there in the world, but it doesn’t stop because I know that even when I still take my morning walks, now I’m still getting new information. Or I could gain something from our conversations today that’s going to be an aha moment for me that could influence what I talk about tomorrow. And it’s just an ongoing process. But again, we talked about awareness, that’s where the awareness comes in. The awareness of this opportunity that’s always there, the awareness of whether or not I’m allowing it in, or I’m blocking it, or what am I doing with it. Am I gaining from it what I possibly can? A lot of people would say that that sounds like a lot of work. Well, once you’re aware, it’s not work. It’s just, okay, it’s there. It’s not like you have to flip some switch and say, okay, now I’m going to be aware. Once you get to a certain point, I think you’re just engaged.

Art Costello: Where the work starts is, it’s okay to be aware. It’s absolutely beautiful to be aware. But you can be aware of your personal growth to be great, but I think we’re here to impact others. So the work comes in when we start trying to take what awareness we have, refine it into a message that we have, and then be able to take that message and deliver it to the rest of the world so they benefit some, and that’s the beauty of all of it. That’s what you do, that’s what I do, that’s what so many people do that are in this field that we are in.

Jim Phillips: I want to see if I can remember the page, I want to share something with you that is in my book, it’s long, it’s on page 17. I’m just going to read this really quick. Because to me, this was one of those things that I wrote, and it didn’t have that profound effect on me until somebody else who read it brought it to my attention and said, this is something they said, this is something that is really had a tremendous influence on me because we all do have this really strong desire to have an impact to make a difference. That’s where everybody says, I want to be happy, I want to enjoy life and I want to make a difference. So this is what I wrote in here, “We have a far greater impact on the world and the lives of others than we could possibly imagine. We might not be consciously aware of the difference because most often it’ll happen through what appear to be random disconnected events that somehow come together to reach a benefit for those for whom it was intended.”

Art Costello: Beautiful. It’s actually one of the pages that I had. I’ve got about 30 posted notes of things that I was going to talk about, and all that so I’m glad you brought it up because this conversation has gone to where I think it was supposed to go for the audience. I believe that we’re really delivering some great information to them.

Jim Phillips: You know what? Just one other thing real quick about having an impact, making a difference, what I really hope people understand is that you cannot not make a difference. You’re always making a difference regardless of what you’re doing. You could be doing something that you might consider to be out of alignment with what you think you should be doing as a spiritual being, or as a soul, or whatever the case may be. But if you’re doing something, let’s just say, society would say that’s against the rules. Well, somebody else could see you doing that and say, I don’t want to do that. I don’t want to be that way. I don’t want to end up with the consequences of being homeless, as an example. And while that person might have done something that resulted in their experience by witnessing it, we make a different decision that’s gonna allow us not to go down that same road and end up with that consequence. So that is how other people impact us. It’s not always that somebody is going to impact us because they did something wonderful and beneficial. They’re impacting us because they’re here, as we impact everybody just because we’re here. Regardless of what we’re doing.

Art Costello: And we have the ability to take negative situations that drive meant to positive just by doing that. That’s where real growth happens because we’re going to experience those extreme negative positions or even any negative position. As long as we have the awareness and the self discipline to look at it without judgment and say, okay, this isn’t what I want to do, and make the decision to turn it into a positive by helping yourself and others is the ultimate really for me. Because none of us are perfect. We make all kinds of mistakes. It’s how we rebound from them, and what we learn from them, and what we teach others are from those mistakes that we make that make the big difference. So I agree with that. One of the things I wanted to talk about is, how do we move out of our heads into our hearts? How do we do that?

Jim Phillips: It’s a conscious decision. And again, I think it’s the awareness that we’re in our heads. I think that we have to come to terms with that. And I know a lot of people, when they think about what they said, well, I have to be in my head because that’s where I think. Well, I’m going to disagree with that. Yes, that’s where the processor is, and that’s where all of our thoughts and what not get processed. But when we move down to and into our heart, we’re actually tapping into what I believe is our core essence, because I think that’s where it all resides. I mean, that’s true, I’m just going to say what came to my mind, that godlike nature which I think is benevolent, which I think is compassionate and what I think is all loving. When we live from our heart, we’re going to make decisions that are way towards other people or towards all things. It’s going to be more compassionate. It’s going to be more accepting. It’s going to be more forgiving. It doesn’t mean we’re not going to have challenging times in our lives. That’s going to happen regardless of how high up the spiritual hierarchy we want to believe we are. We’re here to have those experiences so we can gain that greater understanding and to move through it. And then I also think it’s, I don’t like to use the word test, so I’m not going to say that word tested, but I think it’s an opportunity. Anytime we’re given a real challenging opportunity in life like, some of the things that you’ve gone through recently, it’s up to test you, it’s for you to be able to show to yourself how truly powerful you are. I mean, I really think that’s what it’s about. It helps us expand our understanding of our true innate power, which in my belief is it is nothing that we can’t do.

38:25 “When we live from our heart, we're going to make decisions towards other people or towards all things, it's going to be more compassionate, it's going to be more accepting, it's going to be more forgiving.” - Jim Phillips Click To Tweet

Art Costello: It’s interesting you say that. One of the conversations I had with one of the doctors, for those of you who don’t know, July 5th, I had back surgeries on my back, and then on September 18th, which was just four days ago, I had thyroid surgery where they were moved back to probably. And one of the things, both nights, both days or most situations, I have not spent one night in the hospital. I have gotten off of the recovery room table and literally walked out of the hospital and home. Both of the doctors that I had, both up the surgeon said: “You’re going to spend the night.” And I said: “No, I’m going to be able to get up and go home.” I put that on my mindset and that’s what I’m going to do, and I did it. I believe it’s because I believe in the power of healing, I believe that we heal ourselves, and I believe that we can really have control over how and what goes on with our bodies. The mind is powerful. It is a really powerful tool. It’s just a blessing to live this life and be able to share it with people.

Jim Phillips: Yeah. Yeah. We were talking a few minutes ago about how we all serve as examples to other people of what’s possible. So by, you, going through what you went through, by you saying, I’m not going to stay in the hospital, by you getting up, going home, and by you sharing that right now, you’re showing, you’re telling, you’re demonstrating to other people, this is also what you’re capable of doing. And that’s where I think we really influence a lot of people. It’s not because we’re telling them what to do, it’s through our sheer example of what we have gone through, what you have gone through. And anything that anybody has gone through and they’ve overcome it, it’s available to everybody. There isn’t just one person who is deserving of whatever that experience might be. It’s available to everybody.

Art Costello: Well, we’re nearing our time and I wanted to give you the opportunity, first of all, I wanted to ask you if you could leave us with any words of wisdom, anything that you feel, absolutely on your mind and heart that you want to get out to the audience.

Jim Phillips: I’ll just share what just came to my mind and it really, I think kind of sums up what we’ve been talking about because it is all about our personal power, what we’re capable of doing. It’s about getting out of our own way. It’s about allowing that divine essence that is operating, working experience and expressing through us and as us to do that, it’s a couple of things. One is we are way more powerful than we believe ourselves to be. Number two, we are way more powerful than we give ourselves permission to be. And the time is now to give ourselves permission. And then just let it rip because we have this incredible place that we get to do this, and we get to play, we get to do anything that we want and we’re in control of that. I know people say, well, that’s not true. There are things that happen. There are random events that happen. I’m not going to suggest that there’s not, but how we experience it is up to us. And that’s where our true power lies. We choose how we’re going to respond to every event that takes place in our lives, and then we also choose how we’re going to be influenced by it. We can be influenced in a negative way. We can be influenced in a very positive way and continue our growth process.

42:03 “We are way more powerful than we give ourselves permission to be, and the time is now to give ourselves permission.” - Jim Phillips Click To Tweet

Art Costello: It’s beautifully stated. How can our audience get a hold of you? Where can they get a hold of you and anything you have coming up that really is important that we should know.

Jim Phillips: I can be reached by email at jim@livinginfullexpression.com. Or you can also just go through my website, which is livinginfullexpression.com. I’m on all the different social media channels. I mean, you can find me on that, if you go to YouTube, you can find my channel just by typing in Jim Phillips. Same thing with Facebook. I think my Facebook page is jimphilllips/author, if I’m not mistaken. And then as far as upcoming events, I have a book that I’m participating in. There’s 25 authors that are part of a book that’s going to be published in November, and it’s 25 Different Ways or Tools That People Can Reduce or Eliminate Stress From Their Lives. It’s a very appropriate book because of the times we’re in right now. I think most people experienced some level of stress because of everything happening around the planet. Here in the United States, obviously, we’ve got the elections and all the other stuff that’s going on, and COVID, that I think is giving people a lot of opportunity to experience stress. But that book comes out in November, so if anybody is following me and you go on my website, you can sign up for my weekly newsletter, which is called THOUGHT, MUSINGS & UPDATES, all of the information about the book will be posted on that.

Art Costello: Well, that’s great. I want to thank you for being on, Jim, it’s been a pleasure, I’m going to invite you back. I think we could actually talk several more hours on the subjects that we have before us. I think the audience would really appreciate it so I’m gonna have you back on.

Jim Phillips: I was surprised when you said the time was up.

Art Costello: It does go by fast.

Jim Phillips: Yeah.

Art Costello: That means that we had some meaningful things to say, and that we really were doing some thought provoking communication that I hope everybody appreciates.

Jim Phillips: Yeah. I appreciate the opportunity to be on.

Art Costello: I know you do, and we’ll do it again. And with that being said, everybody, wrapping up for another week, I’m going to let Heather White take us out of here and we will see you next week. Have a great week and expect the best everyday.

 

 

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