I unlocked "feeling is the secret" five years before I ever found Neville Goddard, and I'm really grateful I came across Neville's books. When you don't realize you're doing something, it can be easy to stop doing it. So I'm going to explain the process I worked to do feeling is the secret, as Neville Goddard explains it, in my real life — to change everything from my health to my wealth to my relationships to my career. It has been extremely transformative for me. I'd heard these ideas in other books, but never put together the way Neville Goddard does until just this last month, when I've been reading all his books, including Feeling Is the Secret and a whole bunch of others. In my experience, they're spot on.
What "feeling is the secret" actually means
If you've never heard of it, here is what the secret of feeling is. If you can feel the way you would want to feel with anything you desire — if you could feel that way now, as if you already have it — that, I've come to believe, is one of the most powerful things you can do to bring something into your external reality.
I'll explain how I did this when it came to wealth, because if you're feeling broke, in my experience that drives an external reality that matches. And if you feel wealthy, that drives your external reality too. Most of us are trying to change our external circumstances in order to generate an internal feeling. The way I've come to understand it, through what Neville calls the law of reversibility, if you change your inner feeling, that feeling will generate external circumstances as well. So basically, if you think being wealthy can make you happy, then being happy can make you wealthy.
The way I've come to see it, the secret to manifesting is understanding that the deepest truth is that you are God — you are the one, you are the father, and this body is the son or daughter you have created. All of reality, all of consciousness, is who you are and what you've created. And the way you create, at least in this current experience we're having, is primarily by feeling. So the feelings you're having will tend to set up your external experiences.
How I felt my way into being broke
For example, when I was in the worst financial position I'd ever been in — the end of 2019 — I was borrowing money on credit cards just to make minimum payments. I ran up personal and business debts to the point where my family, including all our house loans, student loans, and everything else, was $600,000 in debt. We only had a couple hundred thousand in assets, mainly our house. And I did that within a year of being the richest, externally, I'd ever been.
In 2018, I had a crypto portfolio that was worth nearly a million dollars at one point. I managed to sell hundreds of thousands of dollars out of it as it was crashing. I managed to pay lots of taxes, spend a bunch of the money, and somehow put all my money into a new business venture that failed in 2019. And I realized — I remembered — that I had felt my way into that experience.
At the end of 2018, I started feeling broke. Even though no one would have looked at my external reality and said I was broke. I had just made hundreds of thousands of dollars in crypto, but my portfolio had drastically dropped in value, and the project I'd invested in was on its way to zero. Even though I had no credit card debt, no business loans, and my net worth had become positive for the first time in my entire life, I started feeling broke. I started feeling like it wasn't enough. The picture of myself as a crypto millionaire was not enough. I started feeling like I wasn't being fulfilled. And the feeling of being broke is the feeling that you don't have enough.
Within a year, that feeling drove me to make all these decisions. Externally, I thought I was building my next big business idea that was going to take off. But really, I was throwing my money away on bad business expenses in every way you could: paying freelancers to do work that didn't end up being needed, advertising things nobody bought that didn't drive any value. And I realized, at the bottom of my financial situation, that I had done all of this by feeling broke.
Feeling wealthy at the very bottom
So I figured that if I feel wealthy now — despite my external circumstances being the worst they'd ever been, wondering how I was going to get through without declaring bankruptcy — then that would have to change too. For years, at the bottom of my financial situation, I felt massively wealthy.
Because despite all the bad decisions I'd made, which I finally took responsibility for and became transparent about — I told my wife, I asked for help, I shared with everybody online — I realized that in the worst financial situation I'd ever been in, I still had my house. I wasn't going to lose that even if I declared bankruptcy, which I didn't end up doing. I still had food to eat. My kids were still provided for. I even had enough money to get a massage once or twice a month. I looked around and thought: man, that is wealth. When you can absolutely ruin your finances and you still have a roof over your head, you still have enough food to eat, and you still don't have to take a job — even though a lot of people, when I asked for advice, suggested I take one — I said, nope. I'm going to get through this without taking a job. I'm going to get through this without declaring bankruptcy. And ironically, in the worst external circumstances of my life, I felt massively wealthy.
How the money started coming back
As soon as I started feeling that way, money started coming in from all over the place, from unexpected directions. I got really low-interest loans that seemingly came out of nowhere — SBA loans, disaster relief loans. Remember 2020? Out of nowhere, I got low-interest loans directly from the government, and I was able to use the money I earned in my business to pay off the credit cards, then use the loan for business expenses and to pay myself. Pretty quickly, all my credit cards got paid off, and all my higher-interest business loans got handled. The highest interest rate loan I have now is around 3%, and the interest is totally deductible.
Not only that, but in 2020, I had wanted to be a gaming streamer for a long time. I'd quit. I'd given up. And then all of external reality somehow put everything in position for me to make great money streaming video games — which, in 2019, looked extremely unlikely. In 2021, I made over $100,000 playing video games on Facebook. An extremely unlikely scenario from the point of view of 2019. One that I had wished and dreamed for. But when I changed my feeling internally — that I am wealthy, I have everything I want now — I finally started being able to play video games and just feel wealthy. I'd tried to be a gaming streamer before, but I'd felt broke.
Today, my crypto portfolio was zero a year and a half ago, and now I have $60,000 in crypto. My family's net worth is the highest it's been since 2018. We only have my wife's student loans, our business loans, and our home loan left to pay off before we're debt-free. And my house has doubled in value since 2019. So for the first time since 2018, my wife and I are in positive net worth. All of that started from feeling wealthy inside.
The little signs of it started almost immediately. Random checks coming in the mail with money. We got a refund on our health insurance that was totally unexpected — it turns out there's some law that health insurance companies can only make a certain amount of profit, and if they make more than that, they send you a check. And it was Wayne Dyer who got me in touch with feeling is the secret in the first place, because he read a lot of Neville Goddard, even though I hadn't heard the name yet. Now I feel so wealthy still, every single day. I think: my gosh, I have so much, and more and more just keeps coming to me. In 2019, I struggled to find any way to make money. Today, people pay $300 an hour to talk to me for an hour on Zoom through my website. This is one of the clearest examples of how I've hacked reality to get what I want.
The first thing I ever manifested: getting sober
I've done this in every other area of my life as well. With my health, I started to say, I am healthy. Even when I felt sick, I would affirm: I am healthy. And not only affirm it, but make it my identity — that I am healthy.
The first big way I manifested feeling is the secret was getting sober, because I had struggled to get sober for years. When I was trying to get sober, all I'd think about was not drinking. My identity was that of an alcoholic who drinks. I'm an alcoholic. I'm an alcoholic who drinks alcohol. Then my identity had this magical shift. I felt that "dying" that Neville Goddard talks about, and my new identity became: I am sober. That's been my identity for 10 years now. With an identity that I am sober, it is very easy to stay sober. It is only difficult to stay sober if your identity is that you're a person who drinks. Once you change it to "I am a person who's sober," it's very easy and comfortable to stay there. If you want the longer version of that journey, I've written about going from hopeless to happy, joyous, and free after 10 years sober.
Relationships, and being in two places at once
I changed it in my relationships, too: I am in a happy marriage. I am at peace with all the people in my life. And most recently, I've been applying this to things Neville talks about — like the stories of people who said they were able to appear in another place while their physical body stayed where it was. I've just started experimenting with that. Last night, even. The key always comes back to feeling: can you feel now how you would feel if you got whatever you think you want? The way to do that is to imagine that not only do you already have it, but you already are it — that there's no separation. That's why it says in the Bible, "let the weak man say, I am strong." I've made video after video saying: let the sick man say, I am healthy. Because if your identity is health, you will strip away all the trappings of illness.
I don't know any sick people who don't have an identity as a sick person. You ask them and they say, "oh, I'm sick today." I don't know any healthy person who identifies as a sick person. That's why, even when my body has various little symptoms come along, my identity is: I am healthy. I interpret everything that happens in my body as a part of health. It's a part of health. It's a part of being healthy. To me, this is such powerful information that all of us could make videos about it all the time, because it's something we need to be reminded of constantly. What has happened to me at various times is that I unlocked the secret — I unlocked that feeling is the secret — and then, at various times, I forgot it again.
Watch your "I am" statements
When I was feeling broke back in 2018, I was certainly familiar with these ideas. But I forgot them. And I started working really hard to try and make money. But if your identity is "I don't have enough, I'm broke," or "I'm bad in relationships," that's what runs. So watch the things you say to others.
I hugged a girl the other day and she said, "oh, I'm bad at hugging." I told her that's ridiculous. Always watch the "I am" statements you say to other people, and if they're not what you want to be, change them. You don't have to tell anybody you're changing it. It certainly can help to have someone keep you accountable, but sometimes other people will try to reinforce your existing position. I've found that when I change my identity, sometimes it threatens other people, because they don't want a relationship with the new identity — they want me to stay in my existing one. For example, when I got sober and became a sober person, almost everybody who drank with me didn't want a relationship with me anymore. Because if you identify as a drinker and your friend identifies as sober, that often isn't compatible beyond the superficial.
My eyesight: the hardest identity to change
I've done this in almost every area of my life. And any place where there's still a little gap — like with my eyesight — it's honestly hard to even talk about, because you realize that with your words, you can reinforce the very thing you're trying to release. If I tell you the story of my eyesight, in a way I'm reinforcing it. But at the same time, you want to have something to teach from. If I'd just been wealthy and healthy and everything had been perfect the whole time, then I don't really have any teaching experience to share.
So, with my eyesight: I went to the eye doctor in the late 1990s after I realized I wasn't seeing well at a distance, and I got a prescription for glasses. From then on, my identification was that I am nearsighted — for more than 20 years. About five years ago, I started trying to break that and change my identity. I did do feeling is the secret with it. I felt it, I pictured seeing everything clearly, and I cried. But what I didn't do was persist in it.
What's challenging is that often you'll have to repeat it, and go against momentum, and unearth all these unconscious beliefs. If just for a moment you picture "I am seeing perfectly, my vision is 20/20," and you feel how good that will feel when it happens, and you imagine that it's real and that's where you are — that can definitely help for the moment. But sometimes you have to really persist, and clear out, and let go of some old resistance. I've been surprised how much deep, subconscious programming there is, where my eyes will try to find the thing I can't see clearly instead of looking at and appreciating everything I can see. Whenever I set my identity that I am perfect vision, it's like part of me at a subconscious level goes out and tries to prove me wrong: no, you're not — look at that sign, you can't read that. Look at that, you can't read that either.
So with feeling is the secret, you often need repetition, especially when there's something deeply ingrained, a real long-standing identity. You may not be able to instantly change something. I was listening to another Neville Goddard book where people ask: why does this seem to fail? Why do I say "I'm not seeing anything, I'm not seeing anything, I'm not healthy," and then I get sick? Or I say "I'm wealthy," and then I lose money? Neville says it fails because you don't persist in it. There's a certain momentum in life. The same idea shows up in how the universe seems to test you before your reality changes — the gap between picturing it and persisting through the pushback.
The journey of my eyesight has been interesting because of that back-and-forth. I've had moments where I could see better than I've ever seen — I had a moment where I could read text across the room that's been blurry my entire adult life, and I wasn't squinting, and I was crying with joy. And then it slipped back to what's been normal over the last few years. But I got a glimpse of it, so I know my eyes can do that. At the same time, sometimes I wake up and think, what is this crap? I'm perfect vision — and then my eyes immediately go look at something to prove I'm not.
As I keep persisting — I am perfect vision, I am seeing clearly — I even set the intention that I forget I ever didn't have perfect vision, unless I want to bring it up as a teaching example. Because really, letting go of an identity in feeling is the secret means, to some degree, forgetting it ever existed before.
Reinterpreting the symptoms
Often I'll have a little sensation in my throat. Back when I identified as someone who gets sick a lot, that would usually turn into a sore throat. But now I interpret it as a sign to make sure I'm expressing myself creatively and authentically. When I do that, I also imagine that I'll soon forget the sensation was ever there. And then a few hours later, the sensation's gone, and I think, oh, look at that — I forgot it was there.
My throat was a little tense yesterday when I was swallowing — I probably went a little too far back in yoga and tweaked a muscle. Some of the times when I swallowed, it would feel tight. And I thought: I'm forgetting that this was even going on. Today, I realized I haven't been feeling it.
So be loving and be kind with yourself while practicing feeling is the secret. It can be easy to have an experience where it works and you can see that it works, and then to slip back and feel hopeless — like, this is just crap, it doesn't work, this is reality. Persist with it. Persist with it and remember it all the time. If you want to go deeper on how I think and live this way, I keep these conversations going across my Life playlist, and I share what I'm working on most days inside the Jerry Banfield Family.
What seemed impossible 10 years ago
The life I'm living today seemed impossible 10 years ago. I'm 10 years sober. I have the happiest relationship I've ever had. I do work I love for a living. I am abundantly wealthy and healthy. That whole situation seemed impossible a decade ago.
So I look at the future and ask: what seems impossible today? Maybe I can be in two places at once. Maybe I can levitate. I am perfect vision. The things that seem to have an element of impossibility to them now could easily be real, in terms of external reality, a year, five, or ten years from now. So stick with feeling is the secret. I'd love for you to keep walking this out with me — you can join me directly in the Jerry Banfield Family and we'll keep going together.