Physical health practices, for me, are essential for my mental health and well-being. I find that no amount of positive thinking or positive affirmations will make up for a lack of physical practices. For example, I was feeling a bit down earlier today, and I thought lots of positive things and did lots of affirmations. Then I went and got a massage, my God, a whole body massage for 90 minutes, and my whole body felt so much better afterward. The better my mind feels, the better my body feels, and the better my body feels, the better my mind feels. It's a feedback loop. If you're struggling mentally, one of the best things you can do is turn to physical health practices that are uplifting, that give you the ability to instantly feel better no matter how you're feeling in your head.
Things like breathing techniques can be very helpful. One of the most basic things to do is take a deep breath in through the nose, nice, long, and slow, and then a deep breath out through the nose, nice, long, and slow. Breathwork techniques are physical practices that can make an instantaneous difference. I noticed that when I was getting sober, for example, I felt like I was suffocating, and I actually was, because my body kept holding its breath. My body almost continually held its breath over and over again, and that left me feeling like I was suffocating.
What I Mean By Physical Practices
Physical health practices are anything you do to help your body feel better. It doesn't have to be specifically intensive physical activity. I'm talking about practices that will engage your physical body. A whole body massage is a relaxing physical activity, kind of like the opposite of going for a run. It's something that deeply engages and heals the body.
Now, of course, anything you can do to stop damaging physical practices immediately makes a huge difference. For example, it doesn't matter if you're getting massages and running and doing all that stuff, if you're then smoking a bunch of cigarettes, drinking a bunch of alcohol, taking lots of drugs and pills, and eating a diet that's not very good. Often the very fastest thing to do is to clean up the negative stuff you're doing to your body, and then the physical health practices will benefit you a lot. Sure, it can be great to do some positive and negative together, but what's most effective is to almost immediately focus on clearing out anything you're doing that's making your body feel worse, and then, as soon as possible, focus on adding those physical practices in.
For example, when I realized that as long as I drank, my physical health was never going to go anywhere. I could never get control of my diet. When I would get drunk, I'd throw my diet out the window. I wasn't going to try anything like massage as long as I could get drunk and relax that way. And I would often not be able to exercise because I was so physically sick from my hangovers. I'd spend days in bed with hangovers, and then I'd often over-exercise on the other days. Physical practices like massage are about relaxing your muscles so they work to get stronger. Physical isn't always going for a run.
My Physical Practices
Here's what works for me. These are my physical practices. I do a whole body massage for 90 minutes once a week, which is extremely helpful. I take a walk of at least 30 minutes on average every day of the week, unless I do some more intense exercise that day. Often I'll take a walk of upwards of an hour. I find that exercise is one of the most consistent things at promoting a change of state. If you're in a negative space in your head and you're looking to feel better, exercise is one of the most consistent ways to feel better. These bodies are not meant to just lie around and do nothing. These are worker bodies. These bodies are meant to be used, and that's why children are often so happy: because they're using their bodies, they're exercising a lot, they're running around, they're playing, they're getting out, and they're balancing their energy and their health that way.
A massage will absolutely help your cardio, too, because what we need in order to regenerate is to go into a deep state of relaxation. A lot of us, especially if we're doing intense exercise and pushing ourselves, are often pushing into those zones of stressing the body. But what we really need, in addition to stressing the body, is for the body to truly relax. When I get a massage, my resting heart rate goes down afterward, which is helpful for the heart to relax a bit, and that encourages the whole body to heal and to regenerate. Then every single system works better, the blood flow is better, and, because your body is a whole unit, you don't want to separate parts of it out and say, well, just look at one system or another. Your body is a whole, and I find that for me, massage helps my mind relax a bit because it helps my entire body work better and be better connected.
Ideally, what you want is a variety of physical practices. You want some very relaxing physical practices. Stretching can be relaxing, meditation can be relaxing, massage can be relaxing, and yoga can be very relaxing. Even a walk after an intense workout can be very relaxing. So what I do is combine a bunch of physical practices. I consistently take at least a 30-minute walk every single day. A couple of days a week, I do a more intense workout class for about an hour with more high-intensity activity. For example, we'll do a circuit of six different exercises for two minutes each, and we'll get our heart rates up toward the maximum, let it slow down, and then get the heart rate up again. It's important to have some vigorous exercise and not just do walks. For a couple of years, I did mostly just walks, and that's great for a baseline, but these bodies seem to work best if you also get some more intense physical activity in there.
Food, Water, and Sleep
For additional physical practices, I consider the way I eat and drink water. Those are important physical practices. No amount of being positive and cheerful and thinking happy thoughts is going to make up for poor eating habits. If you're overeating, that single-handedly can take a mood down. If you're under-eating, that can lead to a lot of anxiety. If you're eating foods that you believe are bad for you and not healthy, that can lead to the same mental state. If you're eating foods that are good for you and that you believe are healthy, that can lead to a positive, nourished mental state. Same thing with water. You can be all kinds of positive all day in your mind, but if you get behind on drinking water, your body and your mind state will often go downhill.
Getting sleep is the same. Sleep regenerates your entire body, and I find that about seven or eight hours of sleep every night leaves me feeling very well rested, leaves me feeling energy all day, and that is a very powerful practice.
Stopping the Damage First
You can absolutely help all kinds of health conditions by stopping any damage you're doing to yourself. For example, I used to drink alcohol. I would drink a gallon or more of vodka a week, and I'd often split that into two or three days of drinking, drink it all up, and then have a hangover. As long as I was doing that, all the other physical practices I was doing were greatly limited in their ability to uplift me. If you're doing things to beat yourself down, that is something that needs to be stopped immediately, because then all your other physical practices will be more beneficial. Now, yes, if you drink a lot of water while you're drinking alcohol, like I used to do, it might make the hangover less severe. But why have a hangover in the first place? If you're doing drugs and things like that, there are alternatives. For example, massage helps me relax as much or more than a drink ever did, and without any of the consequences.
What's important is to figure out your unique body's balance. Some of you can drink coffee and that will feel just fine. Others of you, like me, prefer not drinking coffee. For me, water feels very nourishing, whereas coffee feels kind of like I'm stimulating myself with a bunch of caffeine, and it leaves me with more potential for things like anxiety and out-of-control energy. It helps a lot to figure out what the best practices are for you in your life, because everyone's physical routines aren't the same. Our bodies, as a general rule, want to be nourished and active, and that's something all of us could agree on. Most of our bodies don't appreciate being poisoned with one thing or another.
What You Have To Give
The idea is that I do the most I can to keep myself physically healthy, because that helps me feel good mentally, and it's a feedback loop. The better I feel mentally, the more I will help myself feel good physically, and the more I feel good physically, the more I feel good mentally. And the better I feel, that's what I have to give to others. Whatever you are, however you're living, is what you have to give to others. Back when I was drinking a whole lot and not doing as many physical practices to take care of myself, I was often aggravated, often in a negative space in my mind and body, and that attracted me to situations where other people felt the same. I'd get into car chases with people because of things in driving, running people off the road, and them tailgating and honking at me. These are things that, if you're taking care of your body and you're relaxed and you're peaceful, you just don't get into at all. Now that I do all these physical practices, I've got a lot more peace and love to give away instead of aggravation, instead of negative energy, and that makes a huge difference.
A long deep stretch, a short walk, and a cold shower really change your day. They do. Cold showers are a physical practice that can be very useful, and I apply a cold shower whenever it feels right. A cold shower also helps when I notice that sometimes I don't want to really feel anything. A cold shower really helps me consciously work through any discomfort instead of avoiding it. It helps wake my body up. It's beautiful.
What a liter of vodka a day cost me
When I drank a lot, I was generally drinking about every other day or so, and I would have about a liter of vodka, like 70 proof vodka. Sometimes I'd switch it up and have half rum, half vodka, but my baseline was about a liter of 70 proof liquor. Some days I wouldn't have that bad of a hangover. Other days I'd have a miserable hangover.
I remember one day, seeing my wife when she was pregnant with our daughter, and she was throwing up and sick in the bed. This was after I'd been sober about a year. I thought, wow, she's going through this to bring a child into the world, which certainly seems worthwhile. And I used to put myself through that once or twice, sometimes three times a week, just to try and have a little bit of fun. That's because I didn't know a better way to have fun. I didn't realize that you don't have to pay a price to have a good time. You just need to learn how to have a good time without alcohol or without drugs.
You don't have to pay a price to have fun
I can relax today, and if you're taking good care of yourself, you will naturally be able to have fun. My kids don't need a beer to run around and act crazy. Adults who take care of themselves, who are full of self love and self worth, don't need a beer or a drug to have a good time, to laugh, to get silly. It's normal for a healthy human being that has a sense of self worth, loves themselves, and is connected with God or a higher power or some kind of higher awareness. It's very easy and natural to have a good time.
My wife can tickle my armpits and I'll be just laughing and cutting up instantly. I can listen to stand up comedy on Netflix and laugh. I can hang out with my friends and play some games and have a good time. Before I drank, I was very aware of all these ways I could have good times. But the more I drank, the more I forgot how easy it was to have a good time sober. Sometimes I put alcohol into my body and it took my physical health down.
So the goal is to get your physical health as high as possible, which means eliminate anything you're doing to take it down. For me, overeating has been one of my recent issues that I'm just finally doing so good with. I'm eating just the right amount because I've overcorrected. I did under eating for a while, where I did intermittent fasting and I wouldn't eat that much, and I found I'd get really anxious if I did that.
There is always hope if you surround yourself with the right people
Here's the thing: there is always hope for you. If you can find someone who's been where you've been and now is where you want to be, all you need to do is surround yourself with enough of those people, and you will find that you become like them. That's what I did going to Alcoholics Anonymous. If you find you can't stop bringing yourself down physically, then you need other people to show you another way.
When I went to Alcoholics Anonymous, and I still consistently go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, I'm going to one tonight in about an hour. When I went, I found people there who were able to have fun and dance and laugh and go to weddings. I got to know them and I said, okay, I've got a wedding coming up. How did you deal with weddings? I surrounded myself with people who got out of the situation I was in, and they left me knowing that was possible for me too, if I would do what they did and take some of their suggestions and accept their help.
I love talking about this, because this helped me a lot and it helps me. I'm teaching and sharing these things so that I really internalize and master them myself. The most we can do for the people around us is to lead by example. That's where, for me, there's a deep motivation to master myself and to take the best care of myself, because that's where I can teach from.
Seven years ago, when I was drinking a gallon of vodka every week, I was very often in physical pain and miserable mental pain, aggravatable and irritable and overweight. That's what I had to teach and give away. If I tried to talk about anything besides where I was and what I'd experienced, I was teaching hypocrisy: well, you should do this, but I'm not doing it. You should eat healthy, but I'm not. You should be sober, but I'm not. That's why I'm so motivated to do these, because I love being around people like me who take care of themselves, who love themselves, who have a sense of self worth. Being around people like me gives me hope for the future.
Loving yourself is what makes recovery possible
I know there are lots of people like me on this planet. I've been able to come to this point where, having felt at my lowest physically and mentally, I surrounded myself with people that didn't feel that way, and they lifted me up. You might think, well, that's not a good deal for the people who are feeling good to be around you. Well, it actually is, because I feel so good reaching my hand out today and lifting someone else up. That leaves me feeling really good, with a sense of purpose in my life. So I've dedicated the whole rest of my life to lifting as many as I can up, and it really helps to get into action.
I know a nice person can still not like themselves. That was me seven years ago. If I was really brutally honest, I would have been able to say I knew deep down I was a nice person, but I had all these reasons I didn't like myself. What helped me was to go through Alcoholics Anonymous and work the steps, especially to write down all the reasons that I didn't like myself, all the things I thought I'd done to people, and then to talk with people in Alcoholics Anonymous and share those things. This is what I did, and this is why I hated myself. When I heard their experiences, they'd say, whoa, let me tell you what I did. And I'm like, wow, you can actually love yourself having done that? Well, yes, I can, because I've learned what not to do and now I can help people.
It doesn't do any good to beat yourself up. In fact, the more you don't like yourself, the more it's okay for other people to treat you the same way. The more I take good care of myself physically, the more I'm in good shape mentally, and I also have no tolerance for people around me who are not in that space and who are directing that at me. Therefore, my life is filled with people that love me and support me, because if you're not on that wavelength, I love and respect myself and I will not tolerate anyone that doesn't treat me as good as I treat myself.
That's why it can be hard, if you're beating yourself up, if you're mean to yourself, to get rid of anybody else in your life who does the same thing, because deep down you feel like you deserve it. Today I don't. I know I don't deserve to be abused or mistreated. I deserve to be loved and respected, because that's what I give to others.
Concrete acts of self love
The beauty of doing all these physical practices is it shows me in a concrete way that I can do it. You can think, oh, I love myself, and I'll give myself a hug all day. But when I take an hour and a half out of my day to get a massage, I know I must love myself to do that. When I take two hours out of my day to do a fitness class and a yoga class, that is a concrete way I can point to and say, I do that because I love myself, because I want to feel good. When I take a walk at night with my dog, a 30 minute or an hour walk, same thing. It gives me time to listen to a book, and it gives me time to say, look, this time's for me.
Some of us think we need to make sure everybody around us is happy first. But that's like the oxygen masks on an airplane. If you're fooling around putting everyone else's oxygen mask on, and maybe some of them are struggling and fighting you, and all of a sudden you pass out because you didn't put your own mask on, then you're of no use to anybody. A lot of us as human beings on this planet spend all this time trying to tell other people what to do, and meanwhile we're not taking care of ourselves. Have you noticed how resistant people are when you tell them something that differs from what you're doing? Have you noticed when your parents told you to do something, like not swear, and they didn't do it themselves? The hypocrisy.
Feeling bad is a message to change
Quitting smoking, drinking, all of it works the same way. The more you take good care of yourself, the more it tends to make taking even better care of yourself easier and easier. The worse you take care of yourself, the only benefit of that is getting a really powerful desire to do something different. The last day I had a hangover, I had a massive desire to get sober, and that was the benefit.
So the way you can forgive yourself, if you're thinking that you're just not worthy, that you're an awful person, is to say: look, now I know what I don't want to be. I don't want to be like this, or I don't want to be like that. And then you can say, okay, how do I want to be? What kind of person do I want to be? How come I stopped playing Warzone? Because I wasn't feeling good when I was playing Warzone. The more I take care of myself and feel good, the more obvious it is whenever I'm doing something that is taking my energy or taking how I'm feeling down.
The way I look at it, our emotions and our bodies are guidance systems from our highest selves and our highest powers, and we feel bad when there's something that needs to change. When I had that last hangover, I felt absolutely terrible, absolutely miserable mentally and physically. And the message from that was change. Stop drinking and do whatever it takes to stay sober.
One message I finally received loud and clear, after a whole bunch of other messages that never landed, was this: start your day with a cold shower, stretch, and walk outside. Then make a small list of a couple of easy things to get rid of. I've come to believe that the worse you've been beaten down, the more you hate yourself, the greater the desire is also there for something different. If you are all the way at whatever you think the bottom is, and you're utterly miserable, there will be an equally strong desire there for relief from that. When you lean into that desire, like I did with that last hangover seven years ago, "Oh my God, please, I'll do anything to get sober and stay sober," then the thought comes that going to an AA meeting might be a part of anything. If you really want something, prayer is the first place, and then it involves getting material, physical help. It's not enough to just say, "Oh God, please help me get sober," and then lay on your bed and keep doing the same things you've been doing and expect to get different results.
Changing a habit means rewriting your programming
When you first change a habit, it's normal to feel like you're fighting yourself. You are in this place where the way you've programmed yourself previously is conflicting with your new programming. In my experience, you are the immortal god soul consciousness that is operating this body. The body and the mind are the result of your previous programming. My body and my mind operate now based on every single moment that I've programmed in the past.
What happens when you're trying to change a habit? When you first start trying to rewrite the code and say, "Look, I want to quit smoking, I want to be a person who's not interested in cigarettes, who takes deep breaths of clean air instead of dirty air," all that previous programming is still coming at you. For example, with drinking, I programmed myself that when I play Call of Duty Zombies, I drink. I drink when I'm upset. I drink when my wife is out of the house. I drink when I move. I drink when I go hang out with friends. I drink when I want to have a lot of fun. I drink when I'm feeling kind of sad. I drink when I need to relax. I drink when I'm anxious. I programmed all of those at one point.
When I then decide, "Okay, I want to unprogram those, I want a new set of instructions here," then it's up to me, as the operator, as the controller, as the consciousness, to go reprogram each of those. At first it can be a little difficult, because you can only really get in and program one thing at a time. Okay, now when I get anxious, what am I going to do? Now when I want to relax, instead of drinking, I'm going to get a massage. That programming in my mind was set at one point, in the middle of the night, when I said, "Okay, I want to relax, I drink." I set that at one point, and then I changed it to, "When I want to relax, I get a massage." That still left all the other programs there. So I went through and programmed every single one of those individually, one thing at a time. Now I don't associate hanging out with friends and drinking. Now I don't associate relaxing with drinking. Now I don't associate having fun with drinking. It took a while.
By the way, if you'd rather listen to something like this on a podcast, I've got the Jerry Banfield Show podcast, where I'm taking these recordings and putting the audio up there. That way I don't have to edit it, I can just stick it up there.
Resistance is just your old programming
It's normal to run into what I'd call resistance, and resistance is really just your old programming. If you know that, you can go through the discomfort of adjusting all the programs until they all line up. A normal program is the belief that you're not going to be able to program yourself to stay sober. For me, I had hundreds of other little programs that told me, "Okay, if this happens then you drink," or "when that happens you drink," or "drinking is a lot of fun when doing this." When you first try to make a change, it's kind of daunting to look at all the other programs, but you just fix one thing at a time. Okay, I can play Call of Duty Zombies sober. You know what, if I can play that sober, I can probably play Call of Duty multiplayer sober. And you know what, I can probably play any game sober. You just go through and reprogram all those, one at a time.
When the truth being spoken makes your mind itch and want to turn away, that's normal too. When you set up programming on things, you will set it up so deep that you also program in any resistance to be blocked. For example, the way my drinking was programmed: if someone suggests staying sober, block that. If someone starts talking about going to Alcoholics Anonymous, block that, don't be friends with them anymore. If someone around you gets sober, stay away from them, you might catch it. Our programming is often so effective that we will actually have in our own programs a command to block out anything resistant.
When you see that you can override any programming you have, then you know your truest self. You know that who you are is really not this mind or this body, because no matter what your mind says, you have the ability to veto it. If your mind says, "I have to do this right now," you have the ability to veto that and say, "I don't care what you think we should do right now, I am going to do this." That's when you really get to know yourself.
When I see people going to Alcoholics Anonymous, their mental programming will often block them from any of the help received. For example, I went with a new guy once, and he was really getting excited, and then he said, "You know, Jerry, this is just too much." That's your old programming, that's your defense mechanism. Is it too much to want to be healthy? Is it too much to want to have the best life you can possibly have? Is that too much? I mean, what are you doing here? Are you just trying to live as long as you can before you die?
Honesty is the first step
When you can see that your mind is trying to push and block things out, and you can actually stay present with it, that shows the number one thing. If you are going to make any change and live your best life, the first step is honesty. That's in Alcoholics Anonymous too, the first principle is honesty. The last time I had a hangover, I also had honesty. I looked at myself and I said, "I'm going to take my own life very soon if this keeps up, and given what I've seen in the past, I don't know any way that this won't keep up."
It doesn't matter if you want to change your programming; if you try to make a change, your programming will suck you right back into it. That's where I discovered my true strength, in praying to God to do anything to get sober. I was really connecting with my highest, most powerful self, and then through that highest, most powerful self, I was attracted to be around the help I needed. When I focused, and I still am focused, my life became full of people who help me. My massage therapist, where I have great conversations. I discover new podcasts, new people to connect with, new health practices. My yoga instructor and the people in my yoga class. The people at my Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. My family, my friends. Everyone around me lifts me up, and it's beautiful, because that's what I want. That's what I've begged for, and asked for, and worked for.
I go out here every day with the hope to give you that same knowledge: that you are an all-powerful, immortal creator. You've made this body, you're here, and your life can be however you want it to be, as long as you're willing to do what it takes and get the help you need to make it however you want it to be, and to push through that resistance. I'm so grateful today for getting sober, because getting sober was so difficult that every other change I've made by comparison since then has been relatively easy. I've been through lots of changes since. Some of them have taken longer, and many of them have felt just like getting sober, like my finances a year and a half ago felt just like getting sober.
If you're in a bad place, you can't even picture how good your life can get. If you would have told me seven years ago, "Jerry, you're going to be playing video games and having little chat sessions, and you're going to be playing video games for your job, and you're going to make more money doing that than you did risking your life as a police officer and going to college and trying to make a career. People are going to just give you money, without you having to ask or beg or hustle. People are going to give you more money to do what you absolutely love than you made trying to do what you thought people wanted you to do." I never could have pictured it.
Picturing how good your life can get
You're going to have a wife who loves you and is more at peace with you than ever, and I'm so grateful for that. You're going to have two children you love so much and you're there for every single day. Your health is going to be better than it's ever been in your whole life. You're going to love the way your body looks more than you have since you were a child, since you were a baby. You will have physical health and ability. You'll have energy all day, every day. You'll be able to do anything you set your mind to. You will have friends who uplift you. You will feel good almost all day, almost every day. You will have people who give you compliments.
There was a friend of a friend who said, "Jerry is the nicest person I've ever met." You will get compliments you would absolutely not even believe were possible for you to receive. You just can't picture how good your life can get. A lot of us are very good at picturing how bad our life could get, picturing our physical health going down and getting worse. But what I do differently is I picture how good my life can get. I really care, and I'm very interested in the answer.
I'm rocking these Jerry Banfield show shirts, and I'm going to get these up on Spreadshirt soon.
The physical practices that add up
I forgot to put that sex is a very powerful practice. Regular sex is one of my most powerful physical practices. I have sex every other day with my wife, and it's fabulous, and I love it. I've set an intention that I want to have amazing sex consistently. I've seen studies that show people who have consistent sex, at least every two or three days, are much happier. No wonder I feel so good. When you put all these physical practices together, it changes everything.
My dad passed. A lot of times I can hear him in my ear saying, "I'd have been a hell of a lot different father if I'd have had massages every week, yoga, sex every couple of days. My God, what a father I would have been." Today I'm very grateful for my father exactly as he was, because sometimes an example from somebody can show you powerfully what you don't want. My dad held on to smoking. He said, "I gave up alcohol. I gave up sex with any woman besides my mother. I gave up drugs. I'm not quitting smoking." And my dad died of an illness related to smoking. My mom has now been on her own for seven years. That was a powerful example to me. I will give up absolutely anything that is bad for my health, that takes my health down, or that might take away from time with my loved ones. I'll quit playing Warzone if it stresses me out.
Getting sober and asking for help
My parents were alcoholics. I've seen a lot, but I've also seen the changes when a person asks for help, and when a person changes spiritually. It's still a struggle, but you get better every day. Trust me. Live life, be smart and healthy, and thrive. It's a pleasure to share all of this. If you'd like to keep the conversation going and get to know me, I'd love for you to join the Jerry Banfield Family.
Someone asked what my wildest drinking story is. Listen to my book, Officer Banfield, on Audible. That has my wildest drinking stories in it. I can give you a quick summary. One night I was watching Fight Club and wrecked my car. Pretty wild drinking story. That's the real quick version of it. I almost took my own life drinking a bunch of other times. I had all kinds of drinking stories. Going to the strip club, dropping my gun when I was a police officer, and it came falling right out of my pants. The stripper was giving me a lap dance and saying, "Is that a gun?" I'm like, "No, it's my wallet," and then I'm shifting my gun into the back of my pants because I was paranoid. I'd been watching Scarface a whole lot, and Training Day. Just like, "I don't care if I'm drunk in the strip club, I'm a police officer, I've got my gun." So listen to Officer Banfield. I've got all those stories in great detail.
All there is, is life, and more life
Someone asked what comes after death. This, what we're living now, is after a death we've had in the past. All there is, is life. There's life, and more life. If you'd like a detailed experience, I've remembered some deaths pretty clearly through different methods, from dreams to hypnotherapy to just feeling so much. And they're not bad. They're so good. What's cool is, the better you feel, you can have experiences you might think of as similar to LSD or trips. You can have experiences sober, in a regular state of mind, that are kind of like that.
After you die, a pretty common experience is you kind of go into the grave void, which is actually like a vacation. There's nobody who expects anything of you. Utter and complete total rest. Often a spiritual guardian or angel will come get you. For example, after one of my lives, I ended my own life, and it looked like a Jesus figure came down to get me, but really it was my spiritual guardian, not Jesus. It kind of looked like that. He came down to get me and take me on to my next adventure. Often when you pass on, you'll be greeted by people who have already passed on, who will essentially hold your hand in whatever kind of experience is most meaningful for you and take you on to more life.
All there is, is life, and more life. To me, that is what really promotes treasuring and taking care of this life, because there's no getting out of life, generally. You're going to be alive here or alive somewhere else. Maybe it's in a different body, and it could even be an alien body. I've had dreams where I've been disincarnated, just in a kind of energy ball. So you're going to keep living one way or another. And someday you will shed all these things that are painful, all these habits, all this baggage, one way or another. The question is, are you going to do it now or are you going to do it later?
We are all drops of God
We are all pieces of God, is how I see it. Each drop of water — the ocean is water, and the ocean is water. To me, God is like the ocean, and we are each drops of water. You could look at it as the ocean being made up of drops of water, and the drops of water individually are the same as they are collectively. So we're all drops of God. And yes, everything we are made up of is immortal. You are made up of energy that can't be created or destroyed. It can only change forms. That's what promotes me to take good care of myself, because I remember how much energy and focus it's taken me to bring this physical body into where it is. I have a respect for how much more it would take to do it again. And I also have a desire to do it again.
Living without crutches
Someone said the things we don't give up because we believe we need them are never worth it. Yes. I like to go through life with as few crutches as possible. To me, things like alcohol, drugs, and cigarettes are unnecessary crutches. I already need food, I already need water, and I already need human companionship and a connection with God. That's enough crutches. And I need all these physical practices. That's enough. I remember somebody telling me that as long as they could have their beer and their cigarettes, everything was fine. I'm like, that's lame. Imagine that you could be fine without any beer or cigarettes. Crutches can get you by for a while, the same way a wheelchair can assist you on a temporary basis. But wouldn't you like to walk? Being free of crutches is a gift. I just have so much gratitude that I don't have to drink to get through the day again.
Prepare yourself to receive
Someone told me they've always wanted to have great sex, and because of these words they felt like they could accomplish that. You absolutely can, if you set the intention that this is what I really want and I'm going to let it happen. What a lot of us do is say, "I really want this, but it's not going to happen." Like I said, I wanted a beautiful girl to have great sex and make a life with, and I've wanted that since I was a little kid. What I did for most of my single life was block it. God would offer, "Here you go, how about her?" "Oh, no, not that one." "How about her?" And it'd be one thing or another. This girl talks on her cell phone too much. This girl is too prude, she won't have sex. This girl has too much sex, she's done half of the ROTC unit already by the beginning of the school year — now that's too much sex. How about this girl? Well, she's a bit too difficult to get into bed. This is ridiculous. How about this girl? Well, she's a bit too forward, I don't know if I really want it. How about this girl? She's a bit too fat. How about this girl? Well, she lives in a different state. How about this girl?
If you prepare yourself to receive, to say, "This is what I want and I'm going to get ready to receive it," it means stripping away any of the habits that are based on not having it. I love being able to share that. The idea of having energy, friends, a partner, having your life back, the will to socialize, the lack of anxiety — with all of the above as the inspiration you need, you can have all of that and a whole bunch more.
You will get everything you want
You can have all of that. You will get every single thing you want. The only question is, when will you be prepared to receive it, and how patient are you willing to be? I know that I could do anything I want to in this universe. If I wanted to be a professional basketball player, I could do that. Now, I don't know if it would happen in this particular body, or if I might need to die and be reborn in a different body that's more suited to being a professional basketball player. When you've got that level of awareness, when you know you're going to get whatever it is you want, then the question becomes: okay, what's practical? What would I really like to have right now or soon? I'd love to have grandkids, but I don't need that right now. What I really want to do is enjoy my day.
Love yourself first
Someone brought up that pleasuring yourself saves money. It does, but it also isn't something you would probably do if you were with a partner. It's certainly a good thing to enjoy yourself and your own body. If you can do that in a way where you look at it as practicing, so that when a partner comes along you're going to be ready for them, that can be good. But if you're doing it from a mindset of, I'm so sick of being alone and this is all I can get, then that actually blocks the flow of getting a partner into your life. So it's all about loving yourself. In my experience, there's nothing better you can do today than to love yourself, because when you love yourself and take care of yourself, you are much better equipped to go help somebody else. And if you hate yourself and take yourself down, you're much worse at it. It all balances out.
The best you can hope for, if you're hurting yourself and knocking yourself down, is to be a bad example that someone else looks to. I have a friend whose cousin killed himself when he was 17. That bad example was so powerful for my friend that he did not do that himself. So even if you go all the way down the drain and pass on before you get to have any joy or pleasure, even then you can still help other people by being a bad example. But what I've found is that it's much more joyous to take good care of myself, love my life, and show what it looks like by living it, by showing how amazing life can be. The beauty of it is that I then tend to be surrounded by people who feel the same way. And the people who aren't feeling that way often want to. I get great joy out of showing, hey, this is how you do it.
Saying goodnight
It's time to say goodnight to my family and go to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. So thank you all for being here, and thank you for listening to this. If you prefer just the audio, I'm putting this on the Jerry Banfield show, which is my podcast, and you can find it anywhere. You can also go to my website if you want direct links to it, along with more of what I share in my Life playlist. I'm recording this, putting it on the show, and setting the intention to show up and try to help somebody here every day.