"Part 3: Michel Fortin's In Search Of Heroes Inteview" by Ralph Zuranski
Michel Fortin and Sylvie Charrier found their soulmate in each other and were recently married. Just before their marriage, Sylvie discovered she had a lump in her breast that was cancerous.
She is one of the internet heroes I have yet to interveiw because both my parents are near death and on hospice. It is a full time job keeping them alive.
Sylvie and Michel are sharing Sylvie's experiences with regaining her health in her blog at: BreastCancerVictory Michel's heroes interview was so inspiring, I felt moved to publish it in the In Search Of Heroes Blog.
Michel's response to his wife's health challenges is simply amazing. When you read his interview, you will realize why I chose him as one of my heroes. When you read about Sylvie's pathway back to health, you will understand why she is one of the most inspiring people I have ever met.
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Ralph Zuranski: Boy, isn’t that true? Well, I know that you had a pretty rough childhood. Did you ever create a secret hero in your mind that helped you deal with those difficulties?
Michel Fortin: Well, not necessarily. I have been, I guess, on the Internet for quite a long time and the date, the ages of pre-Internet, like Bolton board services and stuff like that, and there was some games that I used to play that were like Dungeons and Dragons and I guess one of the things that I loved about playing those kinds of games was people didn’t know who I really was so people didn’t have to disapprove of me because I had this huge fear of rejection, this huge need for approval when I was growing up because of the my, the abuse of my childhood. So the people, the friends that I’ve made on those Bolton board services, even though I was lost – I really wasn’t a sociable person. I was a quasi-agoraphobic, I guess, but those people were my heroes.
Michel Fortin: Those people were the people who every time I logged in, and I remember having a 300 baud modem in those days on a Radio Shack color computer 64, which is comparable to the Commodore 64 with a one-line text browser where, you know, you type in one line of text, you press enter and it takes about 15 minutes for you to respond. Well, those people were my heroes and then I guess later on as I grew up and I became a teenager there was a gentleman who became a mentor of mine and he was a big fan of motivational speakers, spiritual thinkers, psychologists and people who actually have made differences in the lives of other people, so I became a fanatical student of Jim Rohn.
Michel Fortin: Jim Rohn is probably the premiere gentleman who has made changes in my life as much as in my business life, which was Dan Kennedy, who’s also a big believer in having a positive mental attitude, in making the best out of your day and so on and so forth. So those were my, I guess if you want to call them secret heroes, they were my heroes. You know, I’ll give you an example. there is a quote that’s hanging above my desk, and I’m looking at it right now as I speak to you, Ralph, and it’s been hanging there for almost a decade and it’s from Jim Rohn and it says, “There are some things you don’t have to know how it works. The main thing is that it works. While some people are studying the roots, others are picking the fruit. Life or success or whatever you want to call it, it just depends on which end of this you want to get in on.”
Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.
Michel Fortin: And that, to me, changed my life around because I was always overanalyzing. I was always trying to perfect. I was always trying to figure out ways to deal with the certain problems I had when I was growing up as a child.
Ralph Zuranski: Yeah.
Michel Fortin: And that made me realize just do what needs to be done. Do what works and don’t question it, and that changed my life around.
Ralph Zuranski: Well, you know there’s a real controversy in these days about goodness, ethics and moral behavior. What is your perspective?
Michel Fortin: There is, you know, there is – I can debate about this and we can go into big philosophical arguments about what is right, what is morally right, you know, and all that stuff. I’m a big believer in something that is very special to me. It is that we all have a, you know, we have three minds.
Michel Fortin: We have the conscious mind, we have the subconscious mind, but we also have the super-conscious mind with a term that was originally coined by psychologist William James, and what happens is that super-conscious mind, your intuition, your conscience, is telling you every single moment of every single day what to do and what is right, and when people feel shame or guilt or something that makes them feel that they’ve done something wrong it is not because it’s either wrong or right, it’s simply because it was not in proper alignment with their own set of values, their own intuitions, their own super-conscious mind.
Michel Fortin: If you want, you know, if you are in the process of thinking about doing something, take some time out to think about it twice rather than just going at it. Sure, sometimes you need to be expedient but look at it from the perspective of is this something that meets and matches my conscience? Is this something that I feel is right? And that’s the point. You know, you can say that we can talk about, you know, the arbitrary gray area of what ethics is and what it ain’t.
Michel Fortin: I don’t think that it’s a legal – it’s not black and white. But everybody has a conscience. Everybody has a consciousness. So to me, if you really want to do what is good in the world, if you want to do something that’s “ethical”, it’s not a religious question and it’s not a moral question. It is an inner question. Does it meet your conscience? Does it follow your intuition? Does it feel right rather than is it just right or is it textbook right or is it, you know, according by the law right?