Stop Fighting the Negative and Start Channeling It
You're going to love hearing how to stop fighting the negative in your life and start using it to propel your life forward. If you're wondering what I mean, let me give you an example, a story from today. The last few days, I've been feeling down and annoyed and sad and aggravated about my business, because I've made a total of $7,500 in profits so far in about a half year of work as a full-time YouTuber and Twitch streamer. All of these negative feelings came up about that. What I've learned is that I want to look at those negative feelings and channel them into learning and growth.
What I've noticed is that the people who are struggling the most with physical sickness and mental illness and a lack of meaning in their lives are always frustrated. They're always fighting, and they're always fighting themselves. They're trying to kill these negative emotions, go to their doctor and get drugs to flatten out their personality, complaining and trying to bring everybody else down. What I've come to believe is that when I feel sad, that's an opportunity to learn and to grow, because when I feel fantastic I often will not change anything. If I'm feeling great and life is going smooth, then I'm going to be fine. Obviously, I've got it all figured out. It's the down times that have helped me innovate and be creative.
When you're a creative, business-driven person like me, where my business is creation, these videos I make are my work. My business is creation. If I have nothing to create, then I have nothing I can do. I have to create to have a business. I know, as a creator and an entrepreneur, that all the negative feelings and emotions are there to help me. They're there to help you too. This is why in getting sober and in Alcoholics Anonymous, the first step is about honesty and surrender. It's about taking a look and saying, hey, you're fighting with alcohol. Surrender means stop the fight. Quit that fight and go live a better way of life without that fight anymore. I'm grateful that I'm learning in my life to stop fighting with my emotions.
The Difference Between Fighting and Channeling
Let me give you an example of the difference between fighting versus channeling. Fighting your emotions looks like this: as soon as you start feeling bad, you start praying, God, please take these emotions away. I hate these emotions. I don't like them. Why am I sad? Why is this happening to me? Fighting looks like trying to end the emotion, trying to debate with it, trying to push it away, trying to ignore it. One of the ways people do this is blaming. Well, I feel bad because somebody else did something. That's the victim mindset, when you take on that outlook of, well, I've been victimized, and therefore that's why I feel bad. The opposite of that is taking 100 percent responsibility for the things that you're doing. Taking 100 percent responsibility for your life. At that level, I see that when I have negative emotions, I've brought them up to serve me, to help me.
For example, a week and a half ago now, I had a back injury come up. In the past, when that happened, I went to the doctor and took all these drugs. I made a video about it, but long story short, I fought the back injury. I hated the back injury. I was annoyed with the back injury. And it took weeks just to get back to functioning decently again. When my back got injured this last time, yes, the moment it happened, I was like, come on, really? But then right after that, I thought, I did this to myself. I did this on purpose. My body did this to try and keep me in the present moment, to help me accomplish the goals I've set for myself. My body intentionally put me in the present moment, in the situation to injure my back, and to help me learn and grow and teach from there.
Turning Frustration Into Action in My Business
I see that I've done that very much with my business. I've put myself in a place where I have the chance to channel my negative emotions into creativity, and to channel myself into taking action that I wouldn't take if I had made $70,000 in profit this year instead of seven. After years of people asking for merchandise, I finally took a few hours today to change my website URL so I could get Jerry Banfield merchandise up on my website. And after years of people asking, I finally set up a Cameo, where for about 20 bucks you can get a personalized video directly from me. In a world where things are often very impersonal, things like that are really cool. People had been asking me for merch and Cameo for a long time. But as long as I was making plenty of money in my business, I wasn't interested in listening to what people were asking for. I'd think, ah, how much is setting up a Cameo going to make? I can't be bothered with that. Oh, do y'all want Jerry Banfield shirts? Well, I'm busy.
Well, after looking at my business finances, another reason I was frustrated is because I had planned on making all this money from selling online courses. But after doing that, I realized I don't want to sell online courses. And instead of fighting with the emotions that came up, I honored them and said, look, trying to get people to pay me money all the time for online courses makes me sad. It leaves me feeling sad because I want to put out everything I create for free. All my educational content, I want to share that with everybody, so that these brothers in Nigeria can hop on and watch my videos on YouTube. People in the poorest parts of the world, in China, in Russia, people who barely have internet can download a video at low quality and listen to it. They can hop on my Twitch and interact with me. I don't want to make educational content that's locked up behind paywalls, and then try and sell people on that, because most people in the world cannot afford to buy a $300-and-some crypto course that I'm selling. I want everybody to be able to get all of the educational information I can offer. So I stopped creating online courses and switched to giving everything out for free, because of my negative and sad feelings.
But what a lot of us do instead is fight those feelings. We say, I shouldn't feel like this. We deny that we do feel like this. I find that for me, sometimes it's hard to just acknowledge and say, I'm sad right now, I'm angry right now. Our feelings and the negative things are there to assist with creativity, and I hope this will help you drastically in your life to get this concept down. The things that you think of as negative are not there to be fought, because you can't defeat them even if there's a temporary victory. They say in war that the victor only appears to win, even when you defeat whatever enemy it looked like was there. If there's no real transformation from within, the enemy just comes up again in another form. The enemy you conquer in war will suddenly come up from within and be within your own country, and yes, it may not be the same bodies, but it'll be the same mindset. That's what I've found. People who are struggling the most tend to be fighting themselves all the time. There's this massive internal conflict going on, and the end of that conflict is accepting that there are many different parts of Jerry Banfield.
Bringing All of Myself Into the Light
There's the human part, the spiritual part, the husband, the father, the businessman. There are many different ways and possibilities that Jerry Banfield exists, and I want to acknowledge and bring all of those different parts of me into the light. I just filmed a video on my Jerry Banfield crypto channel talking about why I sold one Ethereum, which is about $1,800 today, and it looked like a drastic move that went against what I'd said before. I didn't want to make that video, but that video was honest, and when I'm struggling is when it's most important to be honest. When I'm struggling is when I most need other people. When I feel great is when I have the most love and energy to give to others, but when I feel bad I have the most compassion and empathy for others. Therefore it is useful to feel good and useful to feel bad, and they go together.
It's nice that as soon as I feel bad now, I don't start immediately going, God, please take these feelings away, what did I do, I'm sorry, I don't deserve this. Instead I start thinking, what can I learn from this? What is the opportunity in this? Why did this manifest according to my own desires, and how can I better serve other people through this knowledge and understanding I'm getting? Often, in my good moods, I can have a hard time finding what to do next, but when I feel bad, when I feel sad, when I'm confused, that's when I get clear with my desires. That's when I think, I want to write a book about this subject. Often it's when I feel bad that I'll listen better. In Alcoholics Anonymous, the first couple of months I didn't listen very well, because I still felt too good. I'd had this huge surge of fear about losing my wife, and as soon as I did something about it by getting sober and going to Alcoholics Anonymous, I felt so good that for a couple of months I couldn't hear very well. But then when I started to hurt and the obsession to drink came back and I was scared for my life, my ears opened up. I started to really listen to people, because I realized that if I listened to them, maybe I'll live. Whereas when I felt good, I figured I didn't need what they had to say, because clearly I've got it all figured out.
I'm grateful that today I embrace all the different ways of my being. I'm honest, and I just share where I'm at every day. I hope this has been useful for you in your life, and if you're trying to understand me, it can help you understand you better as well. You don't have to be a certain way all the time, and not only is it okay to not be happy, but you can make that a useful state. Ironically, I find that the more I can embrace sadness and depression and anger and confusion and frustration and despair and grief, the more I'm able to hit new levels of joy, happiness, transcendence, and peace, and I can do it all without alcohol or drugs or any medications. I can do it all naturally.
I've got that experience to share here with you, and much more of it lives across my Life playlist if you want to keep going. And if what we talked about here resonates with you, the best way to go deeper with me on it today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family and come hang out with us, where you can chat live, share where you're at, and message me directly. You can find it — join the Jerry Banfield Family.
Thanks a lot for your love and support. I'll look forward to seeing you again soon.