The things I want out of other people, I can give to myself. This is a great realization I've had, and one that many people arrive at after struggling to get other people to give them things they feel they need. For most of my life, I thought I had to get all my love out of having a relationship with a girl. I thought I had to get respect out of having a job and having money. I thought I needed my friends to contribute to having a good time, to feeling happy. I thought everyone else was responsible for giving me what I wanted. Now I've discovered that I can give myself anything I want out of other people, and perhaps more importantly, it's up to me to provide those things in every situation.
If I had to give myself an example, take respect. It's up to me to give others respect. It's not up to me to dictate how everyone else should live, because that doesn't work out very well. When I wait for other people to give me respect, the assumption underneath it is that other people aren't giving it to me. So if you're waiting for other people to respect you, you're often assuming that they aren't doing it, that you can't give yourself respect, and that you don't already have any respect either. That makes life really difficult, because now everyone is supposed to satisfy you, and the thing is, in this life, other people really can't satisfy you for long. No one else can keep you happy for long, because everyone else is going through the same things you're going through. Everyone else is just as much of a human being as you are. So if you expect other people to give you what you can't give yourself, it's hopeless.
At best, what other people can do for you, the best I can hope to do for you, is give you inspiration to look within. That's the best that others have done for me: they've given me inspiration to consider what exactly I'm capable of giving myself. And it turns out I'm capable of giving a lot. I'm capable of giving love, support, and respect. I'm capable of giving myself everything I need. That doesn't mean I ignore other people, and it doesn't mean I deny anyone else the chance to give also. It means I realize other people aren't responsible for my happiness. Other people are responsible for their own happiness.
Trusting others to figure it out for themselves
That realization brings me a great amount of peace, because now when I see another person who isn't happy, I can be peaceful about it. I say, well, I realize it's up to me to figure out what it takes for me to be happy, and if this person isn't happy, it's also up to them. I trust them to figure it out for themselves. With loved ones especially, this can be the most difficult. When you see them unhappy and you're expecting them to give you happiness, it can be quite infuriating. If you're expecting someone to give you the things you need, and they obviously can't even provide those things for themselves, it can seem really frustrating, annoying, and hopeless, and it can lead to a lot of fights and arguments. You start trying to squeeze out of a person everything that you are perfectly capable of giving yourself.
That's often what happens in a lot of relationships, especially dating relationships. People expect, well, okay, I'm dating you, therefore you should now give me everything I want. You are now my sole source of love and respect, and if you can't give it to me, then there's no point in me even living anymore, because clearly I can't get it anywhere else. I'm saying that line of thinking from memory, because I remember living that way, and it's not a pleasant way to live, which is exactly why I'm not going to live that way anymore. I share this so that I may remember it for myself. When I know that any of my own happiness is up to me, then I don't have to depend on one particular person to give me one particular thing. I trust that life will always give me what I need, and that makes it easier to interact with other people. It's hard to interact with people when you feel like they're holding back the very thing you need. It's pretty easy to interact with people when you see they're someone just like you, and they're not keeping anything in the world from you.
Being self-supporting
When I used to look at bosses and employers, I saw them as somehow keeping the money I deserved away from me, which made it a relationship based on fear and often frustration. Okay, I need this money, you're going to give me this money because I need it, and I'm going to give you this money because I need it. And then what happens when they fall through? Today, I realize that I must be self-supporting, and when I see that, I get a lot of peace from it. It's up to me to do things that are valuable to the world, to do things that are valuable to people, and from there I'll get the money I need to do the things I need to do. At the same time, I won't get money to do things I don't need to do. And if I try to use the money I have on things I don't need, that money ends up being squandered. It gets wasted, spent quickly to no avail on things that aren't useful for me. I've been through that cycle a lot.
So how do you go about giving yourself respect, especially if you're in the habit of disrespecting yourself? To me, it all comes down to loving and understanding, and the easiest thing is to practice giving other people what you want. If you're saying, I want to be respected, Jerry, that's what I really want, then practice on your fellow human beings. Practice respecting whoever is around. If you want respect, give respect. This makes a really simple system for living. If you want authority, give authority. Respect the authority that's around you. I wanted authority for a lot of my life, but then I would disrespect the authority around me. I'd disrespect the speed limit. I'd disrespect the rules for the places I lived. And then I would wonder why I always felt like I didn't have any authority. I felt like I had to work really hard for it, because I wasn't willing to give what I wanted to receive. So the solution is always to give what you want to give.
Why I make these videos
When I give you love, and understanding, and peace, when I give you the best I have, then I'm really giving it to myself. I'm really practicing these things. This is a way of loving and respecting myself. From a business standpoint, you could look at these and say, well, Jerry, you don't really need to do these. You don't make any money on them, and they take a significant amount of time. Yes, that's true. But they're an important part of my own practice of loving, caring for, and respecting myself, so they're extremely important to me. When I'm in good practice on those things, I have a life where I'm able to do way more than I could without them.
When you love and respect yourself, and take care of yourself, you make the most out of what you have. If you don't have much money in the bank, it will still be enough money in the bank. If you don't have a relationship, or many people who care about you in your life, then whoever does care about you will be enough. You'll be able to look at them and say, okay, this friend who's sitting in front of me right now is enough. You start to see that any time you sit there and judge another person as not being good enough for you, you're really judging yourself the same way, as not good enough. So it's amazing: once you see that you can give yourself what you need, everyone else starts to seem to work in your favor all of a sudden.
When I used to feel like I couldn't give myself what I needed, that I had to get it from other people, everyone then seemed like they were in my way. I would hover, I would suffocate the people who were giving me what I needed, at least in my view of things. I'd have friends I wanted love and respect from, and then I would suffocate those friends. I'd try to hang out with them all the time, and I'd ask too much of them. Can you do this for me? Can you do that for me? And of course, at some point they would stop. I notice this same thing tends to happen with other people. It's hard to have friendships when there are so many demands made on the friendship. If you're going to be my friend, you have to do this, you have to do that, and if you don't do one of those things, that's it, we're done.
When you see that you can give yourself everything you need, that everything comes from within, then you can see you don't need money, you don't need respect from others, you don't need a fancy car to impress people, and you don't need a beautiful person to date to make you worthwhile as a person. When you see that you produce your own self-worth, you actually end up contributing a lot more to life as well. As long as I couldn't see that I produced my own self-worth, that I was capable of giving myself everything I thought I needed, I couldn't do this. Once I could see it, I started looking around at the other people in my life instead of demanding something out of them. Just as I look at you, I don't demand anything. I don't want anything from you. I'm looking at you, considering what I can give you, what I can help you with today. From that point of view, life is really nice. When I look at what I can give you today, how I may help you today, life is really sweet, because then I know what my purpose is, and I don't feel like the world is against me. When you try to demand that the world give you things, life often feels like everything is against you. If you feel you need the person you're dating to give you something, then what happens when you're not with them? What if you're driving down the highway and everyone is in your way, everyone standing between you and the person you're dating?
On the way to visit that person, you're just miserable, or you're anxious, or you're overly excited, looking forward to seeing them so much. Then it's time to land, and I'm like, what do I do now? And every other person who is around then ends up being in your way. Life is hell when other people, when the only function they seem to have, when the only time you even notice them, is when they're in your way or when they're giving you what you want. Today I can tell you something different. I simply want to give whatever I can. Whatever I have to give, I want you to have it. And that's how I've come to see it: what I give is what I get. Everything I give is everything I receive. So the more I practice giving myself what I need, the more I actually have to give other people.
We're drawn to people who take care of themselves
In fact, many of us are often attracted to people who are very good at giving to themselves, at taking care of themselves. And often everything in life lines up that way. You'll end up being attracted to someone who you can see treats themselves with love and respect. And so you think, well, therefore that person can give it to me. If they can treat themselves with love and respect, then obviously they can do that with me too. Once you see that this is a big part of who you're drawn to be around, then you can turn it around and be that person yourself. You can be the person other people want to be around, because other people will see in you that you take good care of yourself, and then you can help them learn to take good care of themselves also. It's this whole cycle of paying it forward, of getting what you give. It's a beautiful thing.
This also eliminates a lot of the problems that usually come about. In my experience, if you know you can satisfy yourself, you often will be repulsed from people who are looking just to take things from you. And often people who simply want something out of you will be repulsed from you. I've noticed with me that I now attract what I give. So I consistently attract people in the same state of mind. It seems those of you following along are very much in the same state of mind as me. I'm attracting people who are mostly loving and caring and understanding and excited. I consistently attract people just like me.
What jealousy used to cost me
I've also noticed that people who are in what you could call self-seeking mode react very differently. I spent most of my life in self-seeking mode, so I know all about it. People in self-seeking mode are often immediately repulsed by me, because someone in self-seeking mode feels that other people have what they want. If you feel other people have what you want, then you often will be repulsed by someone who already has what they want. You'll look at someone who has what they want already and you'll be jealous of them. That's often how I perceived life. I would see people with full lives, or people who had something to teach me, and jealousy would block me from learning anything from them. As long as I wasn't aware that I could give myself what I needed, I was often blocked from working with other people who could help me get out of things like jealousy or petty grievances.
I often would try to tear people down when I could see, well, this person has the kind of life I'd like to live. What I'd do is try to tear them down, because I didn't feel like I was enough. So I needed to try to tear them down to prove that I was good enough. Today I'm grateful that I can appreciate other people as they are. That gives me the ability to learn from everyone else. I learn from people who are frustrated. I learn from people who are stuck thinking only about themselves. And I have love and understanding for them, for who I look at as my brothers and sisters in this life. Because that's how I spent most of my adult life, too: in self-seeking, easily frustrated, frequently miserable mode.
A prayer to remember what I can give
And that's exactly why I'm here to chat with you now, so that I remember not to do that. I remember to give what I want to give. And I remember that I can give myself every single thing that I think I need, and that I don't have to try to squeeze it out of my fellow human beings. I pray today to remember that anything I think I need, I can give. Anything I think I should have, I can give myself. I don't need to try to squeeze it out of others. I pray today to remember the benefits of starting with what I can give myself, and then focusing on giving that to other people as much as possible. Whether it's love and respect, support, trust, honesty, anything I think I deserve, I want to focus on how I can give that to others.
I pray today that you have the same chance. If you are in a life where you feel like other people have to give you what you want, I hope this shows you a way you can give yourself everything you want. If this way of looking at life speaks to you, you're welcome to join the Jerry Banfield Family and keep the conversation going with me and others walking the same path. You can also find more reflections like this one in my Life playlist. Thank you very much for being here. I hope you have a wonderful day today.