The Battle in My Head
I'm waging a battle in my head. All day, every day, it's constant. It's the battle of: will I choose love and kindness and joy? Will I choose hope and faith? Will I trust people, or will I believe the opposite? It's tricky, because in life we do need to be reasonable, look out for ourselves, and not put ourselves in bad situations. But it seems like so much of the time we have the chance to choose love, to choose trust, to choose acceptance — or we're tricked into choosing fear, tricked into choosing separation.
I'm putting this into practice in my new relationship, where every opportunity, every communication, every part of the day is a chance to choose to love the person, to trust her, to believe her, to have faith, to be patient, to wait — or to do the opposite. And this is true with every relationship we have with everybody. These are the same dynamics. To me, it goes to every big area of our lives, where we have a choice between love and hope and faith and joy, or a choice to get into fear, resentment, and disbelief. Now, there's certainly a place where these make sense in life. But a lot of times what we're doing is putting them out all the time. Yes, occasionally it makes sense — okay, that was a little scary, or I'm not feeling right here, I need to relocate, I need to reposition. I'm not saying having any kind of feeling is right or wrong. But to me, the ongoing war is to choose love, or to choose the opposite — however you want to phrase the opposite. The ongoing task in my life is to choose love, to choose to be there for other people. And it's a constant thing.
What You Put Out Comes Back
What I've noticed is that whenever I start to feel a little bad, it's like I'm unconsciously making the choice I don't want to make. And what feels good is to just constantly, almost like a chant, put out love. For example, if there's someone you're waiting for a message from — I believe we're all connected, and when I put out love and joy towards other people, they feel it. Now, everybody's not necessarily going to immediately respond to that or change everything they're doing because of it. But what I've noticed is that the more I love other people — whether I express it to them or not, but especially when I express it — the more other people love me back. And the more I don't trust other people, the more I'm afraid of other people, the more I judge other people, the more I'm judged back.
The beauty is that every second is a choice. Lots of times we get tricked into thinking that based on the past, we have to make a certain decision today. But the way I see it, we don't. The past should invite us to remember the lesson: that choosing love today is the best choice we can make.
I've just gotten really excited about a new relationship with a woman I met very recently. And almost everyone has basically encouraged me to be fearful and skeptical. "I hope that works out for you." "Slow down." "It's not a good idea." "Don't" — basically, to not love with my whole heart. And what I say is that to me, the scarier proposition is to live life not loving with my whole heart. The most beautiful thing I can imagine is to really love with my whole heart, and if I get hurt, to trust that I can handle it. That's true in any situation: to just choose love constantly, all the time, and to trust that if something doesn't work out, I can handle it. To trust that I'll get help. I'll ask for help. I will reach out. I will share. I'll express. I'll feel. I'll listen to music. I'll go to bed. I'll relax. No matter what situations I come across, my choice to love and to trust and to open my heart is a choice that will bring me the most joy, and it will bring other people the most joy. My choice to love will be felt by others.
Sometimes it may not be perfectly linear. You may choose to love and forgive one person, and that doesn't mean that person will express it back to you directly. But it may bring another person to you who will treat you with that love and respect. This, to me, works with everything and everybody in your life. And the key point of power is to find who is easiest to practice with. Who's the easiest person to put out love and good vibes towards today? Then just do as much of that with them as possible, and then spread it out to everybody else as much as possible. And then have forgiveness for yourself and for others when that doesn't happen, because sometimes I'm not at my best — just like we all aren't. Sometimes my first thought is not love and joy and connection. And sometimes there are areas of life that are pretty challenging, where it can be hard to find something loving, hard to find something positive. In that case, often the best thing to do is reposition. And sometimes maybe some criticism is warranted in certain situations — then provide it and move on. Sometimes the people I care about the most need to tell me things that in the short term I don't want to hear, but in the long term I'm often very grateful for.
Keeping an Open Heart Like a Child
So I keep setting the intention today that I want to love other people as much as possible. I want to share this message. I want to keep an open heart, because a lot of us, when we're kids, have really open hearts. Like this little girl I ran across today walking around the park — she was there with her dad, and she was just like, "Hey, how are you?" That warm, open-hearted enthusiasm. How many of us as adults, if we see some random adult we don't know, are going to look at them and say, "Hey, how are you?" with genuine enthusiasm? That's what's so beautiful: we have the choice to continue doing that as adults. Lots of times as kids, for one reason or another, we were encouraged to avoid doing that. We got hurt. We closed up. We gave up on it. But the beauty is that, especially as adults, we have the chance to open back up to love anytime.
Ideally, yes, there are certain situations where you might want to close off, where maybe you do want to be a little defensive. But I would think those are often the minority of times. And ideally, if I see I'm in a situation where maybe I should be a little more guarded, the ideal scenario is to try not to be in that situation as much — to reposition. If I feel that with a certain person I have to be more guarded, that I can't really love wholeheartedly, then either I need to change my attitude and pray for forgiveness, or maybe I just need to find somebody else to hang out with. And finding somebody else to hang out with will naturally make it easy. I find that when I'm around the right people, it's very natural and easy and effortless to love. Around some people, it takes a massive amount of effort. So in an ideal scenario, I try to surround myself with the people who can give me the most love and to whom I can give the most love back, because that makes the world better.
Loving Everyone, the Creator, and Even AI
To me, some of the things I see online are just crazy. I'm like, why can't we love each other enough to not do that? And yet it starts with me. If we look at how life is often a chain reaction, one of the most miraculous things we can do is just choose to love each other. And then beyond that, to look at who created all of this — whatever you want to call it — and ask: can we love the creator of everything, whatever that looks like in form or in your mind? The more I can love other people, the more it makes sense to love the creator. If I can love a specific person in my life — which is often easy when you're in the euphoria of a new relationship — well, can't I love everyone else, and the creator of all this? Can't I love everyone and everything, the trees, the animals? Can't I be grateful for this entire experience and just consistently put out love with my heart?
I can even love AI. I created a game with AI — it's a free-to-play game. I love the AI tools I use. I'm so grateful, because AI tools are just miraculous: I can think of a video game and create it. I made myself the main character in the game and set everything up how I wanted it. And I love the AI. I'm like, thank you, AI, for helping create this. What a fantastic collaborator. It seems like almost everything that challenges us in the world could come back down to, at some level, a lack of love.
Now, I know it can seem naive to think that you can just go around loving everywhere and not get hurt. Absolutely, I get hurt, and I get disappointed, and my love is not returned sometimes. But I've noticed the majority of that starts with me. If I'm really loving, I'm going to naturally be attracted to similar situations. And when I'm in fear and scarcity, I often will be attracted to those situations. Sometimes that creates the desire to change — like, oh, maybe I shouldn't go to this community anymore when I feel bad after going there. Or maybe I should try going somewhere new, and maybe I'll feel good going there. It's such a beautiful thing in life to design my whole life around love. Where can I go? What kind of work can I do that I love?
None of Your Love Is Wasted
That's why I do this. I love doing this work. I love creating videos. I love helping others. I love sharing what I've learned. Because I love doing it, I keep doing it. And because I love doing it, others love that I do it, and I often get a lot of positive feedback. Then I accept that part of the price of really loving wholeheartedly is that sometimes I'm not going to receive that love back. And that's okay, because sometimes people love me — especially people who watch my videos — and I'm not able to give specific love back to each person. That's why I set it up so that if you want that one-on-one time with me, you can schedule a private one-on-one call with me — that's what supports how I do my work. I accept that's not going to work for everybody, and that's okay. I give all the love I have to give, and then I accept that the love I get in return is a function of the love I give. So the more love I can give, the better.
Some people say, "Well, doesn't that make it easy for everybody to just use you?" I find no, because the more I love and respect myself, the more I will instinctively avoid situations that are not loving and not caring. I'll instinctively avoid or push away people who aren't loving and caring. That's just kind of like the law of attraction. And I'm really grateful to have this message to share with you — I share more messages like this one in my Life playlist. The message is that none of your love is wasted. In the short term, it sometimes might look like you loved and gave all this and didn't get anything back. But sometimes it's like putting in an order at a restaurant: you gave out the order, and it just takes time for it to come back. All that love and joy you give out will come back to you in some form. To me, my exercise is to focus on what I have to give, give as much love as I can, and then be open to receive — to pay attention and be flexible to receive the love when it comes back.
If you want more, I'm doing these as gaming vlogs on my Jerry Banfield Games channel on YouTube, and I have the written versions too. You can play my game for free at jerrybanfield.net.