I'm done trying to be somebody else in my life. It's amazing how much this pervades our existence. We're always trying to live somebody else's life, always trying to follow some path that somebody else has set for us. In school it's hard to even think of your own life plan. You're immediately told to be a doctor, be a lawyer, be whatever your parents were. What I've struggled with is feeling like I need to be someone else, that I always need to follow some role model in my life. You know what, I'm done trying to do that. That's why I'm out here in a tube top. I invented this. I've never seen anybody else wear a tube top streaming before. Obviously girls have, but I'm the first person I've ever seen wear a green screen tube top, and that's me now. That's all I can be.
I've struggled and been so frustrated all the time with myself as a creator online, feeling like I need to be more successful. To me, the biggest success you can have is to live in a way that feels good to you, to be authentic. But we're so conditioned all the time to be somebody else's idea of who we should be, to get out here and be like somebody else. You don't even realize how you're doing it. You don't even realize how you're trying to copy some streamer, some guru, some author, some parent, some friend. You don't realize it until you start getting miserable. Until you start realizing, hey, I don't want to be a full-time Call of Duty Warzone streamer. I just copied that idea from somebody else. I don't want to be only a musician. I want to be something you've never seen before. I make music. I do crypto videos. I do Warzone streams. I wear a tube top. I want to be one of one. There's only one Jerry Banfield. And what is Jerry Banfield? I'm not even sure. But Jerry makes music. He plays video games. He's out there playing tennis. He does yoga. I want to get to the point where you'd say, that's Jerry, and you wouldn't even know how to describe me in somebody else's terms. You'd just have to put it all together. I'm different. I'm unusual. Not so regular.
I get to decide how to play the game of my life
This even goes into the music we listen to and the games we play and the way we play them. I was the first person I ever saw playing Call of Duty Warzone not even trying to get kills, but just trying to use strategy and to win, and being proud of the fact that I was using strategy and not being hella aggressive. People are so toxic and nasty about it. You should play like this other guy. You're playing the game wrong. This is not how you're supposed to play. And it's like, I get to decide how to live my life. I get to decide how to play the game of my life and my existence. And so do you. Don't let anybody tell you that you should be like them or be like this. This happens in every area.
I was thinking, well, I need to have my chat open just so everybody can talk. No. Who am I trying to be like by doing that? Jerry Banfield's chat is closed on livestream. You've got to put something behind your words for me to need to hear them. And yet when I go around thinking, well, I need to be more popular like this person, I need to have my notifications going off like that person, it sucks. A lot of the misery I've made in my life has come from trying to fit my life to what somebody else thinks it should be. What's really cool is when you accept that it's okay if your life didn't go like somebody else's. A lot of us feel bad because our lives didn't turn out exactly the way we planned. I was a police officer, and I was so afraid of that not working out. Being a police officer is fun for about the first year. It was a great non-office job, and that was cool. But then it got to be miserably boring, and then just stressful. What a lot of us struggle with is the transition that comes when our life doesn't have meaning anymore and it's not fun.
The top regrets of the dying
I read this book called The Top Five Regrets of the Dying. One of the top regrets is that people didn't dare to be who they really wanted to be. They just tried to live lives that other people would approve of. Here's the thing: other people are never going to consistently approve of you. And even if they do, all you're going to be is miserable if you live your whole life that way, just deciding whether you should do something based on other people's approval.
In that book, there's a woman who wanted to travel. She waited and waited for her husband to want to travel too. Then guess what happens? Cancer comes, and she dies. She never gets to travel. She never gets to live the life she wanted to live. She wanted to leave her husband and divorce him, but all her friends said no, you can't do that. She didn't want to face the disapproval of her parents for having a failed marriage. So instead, she died. What you really need to understand is that you don't have as much time as you think you have. This can be over very quickly. We are eternal beings who never end, but this particular body, this particular incarnation, this particular story can be over very quickly. You don't have time to go around trying to live your life in a way everybody approves of.
I've read some horror stories about people who lived the craziest lives and did the most horrible things to other people. And I try to find a virtue for a person like that. What is one good thing I could say? It comes down to this: at least they lived life how they wanted to live it. They didn't just let everybody else tell them how to live. They lived the life they wanted to live, even if everybody hated them for it, even if they became a villain in most people's eyes. The one thing you can be proud of is that at least they lived the life they wanted to live. Our society discourages this, because where you're vulnerable and weak and where you get exploited is always when you're trying to live how somebody else wants you to. Because then you need to buy this product to be like that person. Then you need to take this course to be like this person, or even like me. I don't want you to be like me. I want you to be like you, and to figure out what you are.
Getting sober and realizing I didn't know who I was
One of the craziest things is realizing I don't even know who I am. I don't even know what I want. I don't even know what I like. Especially when you do something like get sober, like I did in 2014 in Alcoholics Anonymous, it was a shocking realization to think, I don't know who I am and I don't know what I like. I'd been drinking and trying to be like somebody else for so long that I didn't know who I was or what I liked. All I knew was that I played the games I was told to play by other people. I thought the thoughts I was told to think by other people. You might even have the partner you were told to have by other people, prioritizing the wrong things that you don't even like anymore. Maybe you've got a partner who's real attractive, but who has a crappy personality, and you just don't want to face that.
What I'm really proud of in my life is when I'm real and authentic and just out here being me. People told me, you should take down these tube top videos. Don't be out here in a tube top. People aren't going to take you seriously. People aren't going to watch your videos. You should just put a shirt on, Jerry. Somebody asked yesterday in the livestream, do you think people are going to sell the JBBJ meme coin because you're out here with no shirt on? I said, man, if anything, the coin should go off harder, because I'm out here being different. I'm not out here being the same person you've seen and heard a thousand times before. I'm out here being me, and I'm proud.
That's how you really attract people, too. If you're trying to attract a partner, the turnoff is being like everybody else. It can be hard and scary to try to be yourself, because almost everything in life is telling you to be like somebody else. Be like this celebrity. Be like this movie star. Be like this guru. Be like Eckhart Tolle. A lot of times these aren't even overt signals. You're not being told right to your face. But there are lots of subtle things people do. That's what's so awesome about kids. Kids are often just very real and raw and themselves. I try to encourage that in my kids and not tell them they should just be like me or do what they're told. My daughter yesterday kept saying my son is disgusting, and I told her to stop, that I'm tired of that and won't put up with it. But at the same time, what happens to so many of us is that we're so committed to living the lives other people told us to live that we don't even know ourselves. We don't even know what we like. We haven't lived how we wanted to live in a long time.
Just being Jerry Banfield
So what I'm really proud of today is that I'm out here livestreaming Warzone in the tube top, even though it doesn't make sense in a lot of areas of my life. I literally just made a video saying don't be out here playing Warzone, you're wasting your time. But you know what? That's okay. My life doesn't have to make sense. I don't have to be the way somebody else wants me to be or thinks I should be. I don't even have to be the way I thought I should be in the past. I can just be Jerry Banfield. Jerry Banfield plays Warzone in livestreams if he wants to. Jerry Banfield is out here having fun. And being Jerry Banfield is all about loving myself and my life, doing what I need to do today, and trying to help and inspire somebody.
The best way to help and inspire somebody is to lead by example. When you lead by example, people see that it's real. You're not just saying it. You're not making it up. To me, there's nothing more special than being real and leading by example in life. At the same time, I'm not saying you should be like me either. I'm saying you should figure out what it's like to be you. What does the real version of you look like, the one that's not fake, the one that's not just trying to do what everybody else thinks you should do? Do you even know what the real version of you looks like? Do you even know what you really want in your life?
Somebody shared that they used to have a friend who would be super loud in public, saying things that embarrassed them, but they always admired his authenticity in front of everyone and wished they were brave enough to do that. You are brave enough to do those things. One thing that helps is to realize, first, that this body and everything around it is going to pass so completely that someday it'll be as if it never happened. And second, that you can't really be harmed. You can have struggles and annoyances along the way, but to me, the worst case scenario is to wonder if you ever really, truly lived your life. When I pass, I'm going to be able to say, man, I really lived the hell out of that life. I'm not going to wake up wishing I'd been more real, raw, and authentic. I had fun. I did what I wanted to. I was the person I wanted to be. If you want more encouragement like this, I share a lot of it in my YouTube Coaching playlist. I'm reminding myself of this today: don't skip out on that. That's what really matters.