We Become Who We Listen To
You will want to learn to be careful who you listen to, because when we continually take in information from a certain person — whether it's watching them on YouTube, listening to books, or having a friend that we hang out with — when a person shares and we listen to them and take in what they've got to say and who they are, we often end up copying them and being more like them. That's why you want to choose your friends carefully. Choose the YouTubers you watch and listen to carefully, the podcasts, the books, and always ask: do I want to be like this? What's the purpose of me consuming this? Is this person someone I would like to be like?
My goal in creating my videos is to share myself with you so that if you want to, you can be more like me. I have a wonderful life. I'm extremely healthy. I am sober over nine years, and I've gotten over many different kinds of sickness — from being overweight, to mental illness, to physical illnesses like back pain, neck pain, headaches, and all kinds of other aches. I've got abundant wealth in my life in many forms, from love and connections with others. I have a wonderful wife and children. My mother's next door, and I have a great relationship with her. I share my life and teach you what I'm learning so that if you want a life like I've got — where everything works well, where I feel very empowered, where I love what I do for work — then all you need to do is keep coming back, listening to me, and learning with me, and today the best place to do that is inside my community, the Jerry Banfield Family.
How Bad Information Blew Me Up Financially
I am very careful about who I listen to and learn from, because I've noticed how suggestible I am. I've noticed that sometimes I've spent 10 or 15 hours listening to an audiobook that had bad information in it and it got me off track — took me down the wrong fork in the road. I say "wrong" and "bad," and those are very relative, so I'll give you an example. I listened to a book about making money where the message I took away was: just go for it, spend the money. And I did. Maybe somebody else heard something different from that book. What I heard was: just go for it, hire the people, take the risk. And I blew myself up financially.
In that particular year, 2019, I went from the best financial situation I'd ever been in — 2018, where I actually had a positive net worth and had made hundreds of thousands in profit every year before that for several years — to taking a huge loss in 2019, something like a $60,000 to $70,000 loss, and I got myself into the worst financial position I'd ever been in. I noticed that year I also took in some of the worst information I'd ever taken in. I listened to books recommended from a podcast, from a guy who'd been in prison for scamming and swindling people financially. I listened to several other books about money that clearly were coming from a place of not enough, never enough. I took that misguided advice and blew everything up. That really drove it home. One of the things I did learn is to be careful who you listen to — and you always listen to somebody.
Why Sobriety Depends on Who's in Your Ears
For example, being sober for nine years, I avoid taking in any information about how great drinking is. I avoid hanging out with anybody who loves drinking. I even avoid being friends with people who are into drinking — even if they don't drink around me — because if they have the idea that drinking is awesome and it's something that's fun, that may get communicated on an unconscious level, even if we don't actually talk about it, in little things they say and little things they do.
That's why, in my experience, programs like Alcoholics Anonymous can work very well for things like getting sober: if you listen to people every day talking about how great it is to be sober and sharing tools you can use to stay sober, it reprograms your mind. That's also why I see so many people relapse. They go to Alcoholics Anonymous, they're listening to people who stay sober, and then they stop going to AA — and what do they do? They're back listening to people who love drinking. They're watching TV programs and movies showing drinking. They're programmed back into drinking again, and so they drink.
What I've noticed is that if what I want to do is different from the information I'm taking in, that will produce conflict and discomfort. And if I've done something different in the past than what I want to do today, there's a certain level of discomfort in making that change. After 11 years of drinking, deciding that I wanted to be sober took a while, and it took a lot of support and a lot of reprogramming — choosing to listen to people who are sober tell me how to stay sober. Just like when I started drinking, I listened to people who knew how to drink, and they taught me how to drink.
Your Friends, Your Coworkers, Your Workplace
One of the biggest places of power you have in your life is who you choose to listen to — who you choose to have as friends, family, and coworkers, and where you work. Where you work can have a huge impact on your personality. I see people who struggle to make any real change in their life because they work with a bunch of people who sit around and whine and complain, who are broke and don't like their lives. If you hang out for 40 hours a week with those kinds of people, it's going to be difficult for you to do something else.
One of the best results of hanging out with people you don't want to be like, and listening to people you don't want to be like, is that it gives you motivation to make real change and to get around people who have what you want — just like when I went to AA, surrounding myself with people who wanted to be sober instead of surrounding myself with people who wanted to get drunk. Every little change you make in who you listen to can have a big impact, which is why I am careful about what I take in and who I listen to — because that's what I then have to share with you.
I avoid any kind of advertising as well, because I know it works. I pay for YouTube Premium because I don't want to see ads selling me on stuff I don't need. I don't want to have my time wasted, and I don't want an advertiser trying to condition me to like something and want something that I have no need for.
Choosing Who to Spend Time With
Once you see how easily you can be influenced, the choices come down to: should I hang out with this person or not? Well, it depends. For example, if you want to be sober, you should not be hanging around at bars with people who are drinking — that's a choice that says you don't really care about being sober. You should hang out with people who are sober and appreciate being sober. If you want to be wealthy, you should avoid hanging out with people who are broke.
That's not to say you can't have an interaction, and there are different forms of wealth. I have a homeless friend, and I give him 20 bucks every time I see him. I've sat down and talked with him, sometimes for 30 minutes or an hour at once. What I pulled out of his life is time wealth. Wow. He may not have much financial wealth, but he has an absolute abundance of time wealth. He is free to do whatever he wants, go wherever he wants, all day. Me, with a wife and kids, I have often been in time poverty, where I have very little time — my whole day is responsibilities, and if I'm not in this spot at this time, somebody is disappointed or confused or wondering where the heck I am. So don't judge me. I try to be open-minded, and you can choose to intentionally look at and learn from somebody in just one aspect — but you still have to be careful. That's why I don't hang out with my homeless friend all the time. If I hung out with him all the time, I might have a higher chance of being homeless. That's why in high school — middle school, even — your parents told you to be careful who you pick for friends.
I keep people in my friendships and in my circles that I respect, that I'm proud of, that I want to be like, that I want to learn from. And that has helped me become the person that I love being, and that I'm really happy with.
Take Inventory of Everybody in Your Life
I've made this today with the hope that you can see the importance of taking inventory of everybody in your life. You can even ask about the other people in your life. You can ask your mom, "Hey, do you think this person I'm dating is good for me?" or "Do you think this job is good for me?" — because you might not know what to do if, for example, you've got a job that sucks. If you're stuck working with a bunch of broke people who hate their lives and bring you down, you might convince yourself that you have to save money and keep working until you can leave and be ready to go. But ironically, the longer you stay in a position like that, the more you're actually conditioning yourself to not succeed — because if you hang out with broke people all day, you're likely to be a broke person too.
I hardly hang out for any extended period of time with anybody in my inner circle who has less net worth than me. Almost everybody I hang out with owns their own home, has tens of thousands in the bank, and often hundreds of thousands in investments. I hardly hang out with broke people. You can get away with having maybe one broke friend, especially if you look at them and learn from them — like, "Oh, I see what you do with money, and I don't want to be like that." But it often comes down to critical mass: if everybody you hang out with is broke, you're likely to be broke too. If everybody you hang out with is overweight, you are likely to become overweight.
I remember sitting in a fast food restaurant one night by myself, eating a cheeseburger and fries, and looking around — everybody there was obese, like a hundred to two hundred pounds overweight at least. I sat there thinking: logic dictates that if you eat where overweight people eat, you are overweight or you're going to be overweight. That's why I don't generally eat places where overweight people eat. And it might look shallow to some of you, but I mostly hang out with people who are physically attractive also, because people who are attractive usually hang out with other attractive people. I know this could sound shallow, but if I want to be attractive, I'm going to hang out with the attractive people. I don't want to hang out with ugly people and become ugly. I figure you can always hang out with ugly people at any point, but maybe you can't hang out with the attractive people if you start looking ugly.
So I hope this little vlog is useful for you. It's a good practice for me — just showing up and trying to be useful, instead of trying to think of the perfect viral video I could make with the best thumbnail. Can I maybe just share something useful for you today that's really useful in my life? I trust that if you appreciate these vlogs, you'll come back and watch more of them on my Life playlist. I'm intending to put one out each day on my Jerry Banfield main channel and my podcast, and I recorded this one live on Twitch. Love you. Hope this was helpful. See you tomorrow.