Today I'm saying thank you for this relationship challenge, and I'm very happy to share this idea with you, because so often when we have relationship challenges, when we come up against a disagreement or a hurt or a fight or something happens, we are not saying thank you. We're saying F you. We're saying this is all wrong, I hate it, stop it. But what I've found is that getting through challenges is the real test of a relationship, and if I pass the test, the relationship actually gets better. My wife and I are coming up on our 12th anniversary of being married, and we've been dating almost 14 years, and we've been through so many tests, so many challenges, and each one we've gotten through together has made our relationship stronger.
I recently had a couple of challenges I'll tell you about here, because this will help you navigate the next challenges you have in your life, and it'll help me do the same, because I don't want to forget. This is my first video on my new Jerry Banfield You Experience channel, and this is a channel for me to talk about things I want to remember that maybe you can too.
When you interpret attention as love
I had two relationship challenges in the last week. One of them was getting upset at a family member because of the way I was interpreting their behavior. I was interpreting their lack of communication, not having much of a conversation with me, not paying much attention to me, and as a YouTuber and somebody who's like this normally in real life, clearly I'm somebody who thrives on attention. I equate attention with love, and if you're not giving me attention, my programming is that you don't love me. Even if you're giving me negative attention, that still gets perceived as love.
I grew up in a family where we all talked over each other and interrupted each other, and we got upset, we hollered at each other and fought, and I got spanked as a kid sometimes and hit, and I hit my brother. I look back now and it's like the worst punishment you could get was to have the silent treatment, or to be put in your room, or to not get any attention from the family. That's how I still interpret behavior today. So I've surrounded myself my whole life with people who give me attention, and if you were the kind of person who didn't give me attention, I wouldn't be friends with you. We wouldn't hang out. There would never be a relationship that would develop, because my interpretation was: you don't love me, you're not a friend if you don't pay attention to me. And attention is talking, physical touch, doing stuff together, and so on.
I have a family member who went on vacation with me, and that's not how she operates. She operates so that if she's comfortable with you, she's often going to be quiet and she'll listen to you, but she's often not going to ask a whole bunch of questions. I got really frustrated, because I've had this family member about as long as I've been with my wife, and the entire time I've struggled with what I thought was this family member not liking me, not paying attention to me, not including me, being rude to me. I got all frustrated and upset about that this weekend, only to realize, after asking for help, asking other family members for help and saying, hey, what is going on here? They helped me see, after hours of conversation, and lots of hours of conversation have passed now, that I finally had a breakthrough.
I realized my programming is so, so hardcore that attention is love, which works good for being a YouTuber, because when I see views and I see comments, you all are loving me. And it has been a big challenge with this family member, because they don't think like that. I've never encountered someone I've had a relationship with, in any way that I've been aware of, that thought like that. From their view, everything's great with me. I'm a trusted member of the family. They're very happy with where things are in their relationship with me. But in my head, they hate me and they wish I wasn't around.
Wow, I'm so grateful for this learning opportunity now, because now I can apply this to people all over the world. I've always just interpreted it everywhere, that if you're not paying attention to me and talking to me and having a great conversation with me, then you must not like me. Like in an AA meeting, I'll talk to someone and they give one-word responses, they don't pay much attention to me, and I figure this person doesn't like me. But I realize now that's not necessarily true. Sometimes it might be, but other times a person might actually really like you, they just don't come talk to you, and when they do talk to you, they might not even seem that interested. But that's just the way it is. And I'm so grateful for that, so grateful for a different personality than mine.
It leaves me feeling like, wow, it's the things you don't question in your life that you take absolutely for granted. That if I get attention, that equals love. If I'm not getting attention, that equals hate, that equals apathy. It's those unquestioned beliefs that you're so sure are how the world works that you never even calculated what could happen if it's different.
Thank you is the number one prayer
I'm so grateful, even though this was a challenging weekend. I have a lot of good days. My life's really easy. I'm a YouTuber. I haven't been sick in two years. I'm in my best health ever. I have a great marriage, wonderful kids, and a house I love living in. I make plenty of money on my Jerry Banfield crypto channel. I make music. I do yoga. I play tennis. I'm telling you, my life is great. And this last weekend, I got about as screwed up mentally for about 24 hours as I get. My mind was in fear. I woke up in the middle of the night and I'm like, God, how are so many of y'all living like this? This sucks. I'm not normally in this.
But even in the middle of it, I was able to say thank you. Thank you for this experience. Thank you. To me, that's the number one prayer, to say thank you. Because even praying to God, being like, please God, remove this, I hate it, make it stop, that also leaves you being kind of the victim of the fear. I'm big into being the creator of my universe. You didn't do this to yourself, I did. And the best prayer I can do is thank you. Thanks a lot. I'm so glad I created this. This is fun. I'm learning. I'm having a nice time here.
It's amazing how fast the breakthrough can come in relationships. Now I feel like all of my relationships improved, because yes, it's a bit uncomfortable, and I made some others a bit uncomfortable this weekend with my discomfort. But I feel like all my relationships are stronger with my family because of this. With my wife, with my in-laws, I feel like my relationships all advanced, because I passed this test. I passed a test of what happens when I misinterpret someone else's behavior and then take action on it.
The second challenge: a hurt in my business
Then I had another relationship challenge in my business right after that, and this one was a bit different. I have my community on OpenChat instead of Discord or Telegram, because I love how OpenChat's fully on the blockchain, and it's on Internet Computer Protocol. That's the place I found that you all following me seem to like to talk the best. If you want to be part of what I'm building and talk things through with me, the best way today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, and it's free to jump in.
I did a project recently for a team where the DAO, technically the Decentralized Autonomous Organization that I submitted a proposal to, gave me about $4,000 at the time worth of their coin in exchange for me guaranteeing I would deliver videos that would get them more than 1 million impressions on YouTube and on X combined. Which I did, within a month, on 22 videos. And I was upset by the way one of the team members said that it didn't look like my videos made the metrics move.
I try not to get upset and butthurt over every little thing that happens in my life. I could see the validity of the team member's point of view, and I knew it hurt my feelings, but sometimes things can hurt my feelings and I can just move on, especially if it's a stranger. Somebody cuts me off in traffic, it's easy to forgive them and be like, you're probably having a crappy life, you're in a hurry, this isn't anything personal, right? It's often in our closest relationships, when we get hurt, that we can't let it go, we can't stop it from festering.
So this happened a few weeks ago on OpenChat, and then all the haters on there, because when you're a polarizing emotional figure like me, one kind of attention you attract is negative attention, and the haters were all just quoting this guy from the team. See, he said your videos didn't do anything, you just ripped off the DAO. And I found, weeks after this little interaction happened, that I was getting more upset, and it was screwing up my relationship with the OpenChat team and community.
Yesterday evening, actually, I felt all upset about this, and I'm like, now's the time to do something. It's weeks later, I'm still upset. So I wrote some posts in the governance in there where I showed where they had posted metrics six days after my proposal was done, after my videos came out, and they showed that their metrics were at all-time highs. I'm like, that looks like my videos did do something. I can't say exactly how much they did, but I think that was a worthwhile contribution. I also wrote in the message, and shared the message, then shared the videos I did, and I spent like an hour messing around with this. And I made sure to write in there: I'm hurt by those who minimize what I've contributed.
Then I went on to private message the team, especially the person who made the actual comment. I just said, hey, that hurt. That hurt my feelings. I'll read the message I said: your response to my motion thread showing my proposal results hurt a lot, after all I've done for this app. And then I also said what I would love to happen. I said, what I would love for you to do is retract the previous statement and make a new one indicating that, at least coincidentally, maybe his videos did something. Just pull that last one off and add some clarity.
I told the team that I'm very happy with them and enthusiastic about promoting this app, and that I would love to get back to that. I also said I'm open to hearing if anything I've done has been hurtful, so I can make it right. Because what I've noticed most of the time when I'm hurt is that I've also hurt someone else. Not always, but a lot of the time when I'm hurting, it's mutual. And it's amazing when it actually isn't mutual, when I'm hurt and the other person isn't. I love that. Like in the case of the family members' weekend I mentioned, the family member did not appear to be affected at all, but I was all hurt and made the whole thing up in my own head. And I think that's awesome.
In this case, though, the person I sent the message to immediately put out a response saying, "Hey Jerry, we really appreciate your videos. The metrics are at all-time highs in proximity to your videos. We can see you made a big effort. We wish we could clearly separate what is the result of what you did versus everything else, but we appreciate your effort, and it looks like it did do something, and we're happy with it." Then another team member followed up right behind that saying, "Hey, we really appreciate your videos, and it looks like it did do something, and we really appreciate you here. Let me clarify a few things for you."
Seeing My Own Part in It
And then I saw what I did. I'm like, what? I see my part. I just jumped in and I sent the team member a message saying that I had jumped in and created a situation where they were on the defensive with my proposal. I easily could have just sent them a message and gotten some feedback and asked for help, instead of blasting forward on my own and then putting them in a position where they have to defend themselves.
So the point I'm making is this. The final message I got back, in private, was, "Hey, I'm sorry I put you through this." And that's where I got the idea for this video. My reply was, "I'm grateful for this experience, because my best relationships have all grown through a challenge." And then I told them what I just told you about, "Hey, this is what I did to put you in this situation, and I'm going to make sure I don't do that again myself." That's where your relationships really thrive, because anytime one person's hurt, usually it's something that involved both people.
What I'm really happy about today is that I love whenever there's a challenge in a relationship and we get through it. I know it's scary when you have a challenge in a relationship, and the fear that comes up with it, that we're not going to get through this, that we're never going to talk again, that it's going to be over. And that happens sometimes, especially dating people.
When a Relationship Doesn't Survive the Challenge
I left a girl's house one time all pissed off, and I have not seen her again, and probably never will, in 14 years. Yeah, that stuff happens. But even in that scenario, it's helped me appreciate and take better care of and be more committed to working through challenges with my wife. Because I realized how much it hurts when you build up a relationship and then you're not going to get through it. You build up this relationship and then one challenge just annihilates it.
The only positive I've found to look at in that scenario is that who you are is an infinite capacity to love. Every relationship that ends because of a challenge makes space for a new one. And in that space for a new relationship, you can apply all the learning from previous relationships.
With this business relationship, I'm very glad it's going to continue, and I feel like it has advanced. This is actually a good thing, that when I see how much the team really cares, and when my feelings got hurt, they're willing to address it. I've had this lesson so many times: Jerry, some of your big, bright ideas, maybe you should ask somebody about them first. Especially if you have a partner manager or a direct contact, maybe you should ask every single team member on DM before you come out with your next big idea. That's a lesson I've repeated several times in several painful conditions, and I'm glad for the chance to learn it again today.
Why I Started Sharing These Experiences
I started this new Jerry Banfield experience channel because these are things I need to talk through and remember and learn myself. And I find I learn so much when I listen to other people's own inner dialogues and learnings along these same lines. So I really hope this first video on the Jerry Banfield experience channel, and all the similar videos that will follow where I tell you about what I'm learning and experiencing every day, help you draw on my learning and apply it to your life. This is awesome, and I'm so glad I get to share it with you today.
If you want to go deeper on this with me, the best way to do it today is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where we can talk through these challenges together and I can hear what you're working through yourself.
I've got other YouTube channels as well that I think you'll enjoy, including my Dating playlist, where I share more of what I've learned about love and relationships. And I hope to have a chance to have a challenge in a relationship with you. Bye bye.