I'm going to give you a very simple way to help yourself be at maximum health, based on what works fantastically well for me, connecting stories of me doing this practice and an entertaining story from my life along with a video I watched by Wayne Dyer where I got this idea. I've made a bunch of videos about this. I've been sick so many days in my life. I've spent thousands of days sick, throwing up in bed with headaches, fatigued, dehydrated, mono, colds, flus. And the vast majority of my days now are lived in the best health I've ever seen. So I know it's possible to be healthy. Even if today you find yourself miserably sick, in my experience it's possible for you to be healthy. And it starts with this: let the sick man say, I am healthy.
The power of "I am"
To me, when I say "I am," I'm praying to God. I am pulling the power of God, the I AM, and I'm putting it into a specific instance. I'm saying I am healthy. And when I say I'm healthy, that means I've got to do healthy. That means I've got to live and feel healthy. Even if I'm sick, I say I'm healthy.
I saw Wayne Dyer do a video on this, which gave me the idea to make one about it. He asked his audience if there was anybody who had cancer, because he'd had leukemia and he went through it. You say I'm healthy, you keep living your life as a healthy person. He noticed that when he first got his leukemia diagnosis, he started living, for the first time in his life, as a sick person. Oh, I'm sick now. I can't do this because I'm sick. I can't do that because I'm sick. You hear that? "I am," because "I am." And then he basically changed his thinking. Look, I'm not sick. I'm healthy. I am healthy. And I'm going to live my life as a healthy person. It doesn't matter what these doctors have said. I am healthy. And he had a woman come up with cancer, and he gives her a book and he says, you are well.
Now I realize if you've been sick and miserable, stuck in it for a long time, this might look like people just don't understand and don't believe you and don't know where you're coming from. But what I hope it looks like is that there's hope, because I've been sick a lot of days in my life and I am healthy. And yet just because I'm healthy doesn't mean I don't have days where I'm sick. In fact, my wife thinks it's real healthy for me to have a sick day so I can get a bit more compassion and empathy for other people. I've been so healthy over the last six years, and especially since I got sober eight years ago, that sometimes I've gotten to be a little bit of a troll with people who are sick. And I want you to know, if you'll say "I'm healthy" even when you're sick, magical things can start to happen. It can all start to make sense.
Health is an identity
What I notice is that being sick or being healthy is an identity mentally, and the mental identity leads to things physically. For example, I identify as healthy. So I don't go to the doctor. I don't take medication. I don't take hardly any supplements. Occasionally I may have a kid's multivitamin or something, but I don't take any supplements on a regular basis. No medication. My blood pressure is 100 over 60. I have not aged a day. My whole body works very well. I have no physical pain on a daily basis. It feels fantastic. All of my bodily functions work properly. I have great circulation. Everything works awesome on my body and I love it. My teeth are doing great. My muscles are strong. I've got tons of energy. It's wonderful. I'm healthy because I'm healthy. I eat healthy.
Being around other people
Because I'm healthy, I'm around other people all the time. I've found that being around other people is one of the best things I can do for my health. I read that in a book by a doctor called Mind Over Medicine: being in community consistently around other people. I've noticed people who are healthy tend to be around other people a lot and have very strong, connected relationships. People who are sick tend to be very isolated, even if not always physically, then very mentally isolated, under the delusion that nobody understands and that you're all alone. I've been there a lot. And I'm out. I'm not special. I'm totally normal. You can get out if this is where you're at, and you can go farther. If community is the thing you're missing, the best way to be around other people with me is to join the Jerry Banfield Family, where we connect and encourage each other every day.
The story of Legoland
Let me tell you the story of last weekend at Legoland with my family. A couple of weeks ago, I watched my wife and kids go through a little gastrointestinal bug. My wife was in bed for three days, and she's very healthy too, so it's unusual for her to be in bed three days. I did about everything around the house, took care of the kids, and took care of her. She was down for a few days. I did not have any of that experience at the time.
Then a week later, we have my birthday, and my body starts to feel all of a sudden very drained of energy one night. I'm like, hmm, I hope this means I'm going to get a good rest and be fantastically healthy tomorrow. I wake up and my gut's starting to feel weird, and all of a sudden I start shitting all over the place. Constantly shitting. I've never had diarrhea like that in my whole life. This started Thursday night, around my birthday. The stomach started to unsettle. By Friday, a week ago, I was up all night just shitting constantly. My gosh. Never in my life have I had that experience. It was crazy. And it hurt. I got dehydrated. Got a little delirious. Got no energy. Laid in bed for most of the day. My wife picked up all the slack.
And I remembered this Wayne Dyer thing I saw: let the sick man say that I'm healthy. I'm laying there, no energy, totally shit out, and I'm like, I'm healthy. And I expect to be healthy tomorrow to go to Legoland with my family. I'm not going to lay in bed for three days like my wife did, because she just stopped eating and drinking anything and then was dehydrated and fatigued from no intake of food. That lasted a few days until she started being able to eat a little bit more and her energy came back. I said, I'm not going out like that. So I drank some Powerade and Gatorade, fueled up, and I woke up the next day. I am healthy. Had a nice big breakfast and lunch.
Turned out my digestive system was still unhappy, and I shitted all over Legoland. I spent at least five hours in the Legoland Pirate Hotel bathroom shitting. At least. Up in the middle of the night. Whew. I'm sitting there in the bathroom shitting my brains out, ass burning. Let the sick man say I am healthy. I am healthy right now, even though clearly we're having some issues with the digestive system overall. Even in that moment, I am healthy. And I focused on that, because what we often get stuck doing is looking at the one thing that's not going well in our bodies. Instead, I'm in there shitting, and I'm like, whew, sure glad I've got the energy to be in here and I'm not fatigued. I'm going to be able to make it tomorrow to the parks with my family. God, please let me learn how I can adjust to this.
Symptoms lead you back to causes
My mom's like, why don't you just take some Imodium AD? I'm like, no. Healthy people don't take Imodium AD. Healthy people know that symptoms should not be fought with, but should rather be led back to investigate causes. If there's a virus causing a temporary disruption to my gastrointestinal system, then the logical thing to do is to be as gentle on my gastrointestinal system as possible, go on a liquid diet for a couple of days until it passes, at which point I can resume solids. That's what I did after taking a few days of research to figure it out. I finally took about 30 hours of a liquid diet with vitamin water, Powerade, Gatorade, and orange juice. I felt like I was going to die. I felt great. I spent the weekend with my family. My ass closed up, thank God for that. As soon as I stopped bloating and having diarrhea, I said, thank God for this. I am so healthy. Thank God for this.
When I was in the middle of being bloated and feeling sick, it felt like a lie when I'm saying, let the sick man say that he's healthy. It felt like a lie. And it might feel like a lie at first. That's where you're getting through the resistance. You're just getting through the momentum of the past. When I'm saying I'm healthy but the body is physically sick, in some ways I'm honoring all the parts that are currently working correctly. For example, most of my body, when I'm spending those hours in the bathroom, was working very well. There was just the gut having a bit of an issue. The heart was working very well. The eyes, the ears, the nose, the mouth, the lungs, the legs, everything else was working very well. So I don't let one part of my body get me down into thinking the whole thing is sick and make an identity out of it.
Let the sick man say I'm healthy. I recognize the parts of my body that are still working very well, because if your heart's not working very well, that sucks, and my heart's always working well. Even if another part of my body goes down or I'm a little fatigued, my heart's still working well, my lungs are working well, my eyes are working well, my ears are working well. Saying I'm healthy honors all the things that are working in the body. There can be a temporary symptom or an illness in a certain section, but it doesn't mean I'm sick. It still felt like a lie at the time I was saying it. But now it doesn't. I'm healthy. Everything is working absolutely perfectly in my entire body, and I am extremely grateful.
When I was in that bathroom, I was projecting this: someday I'm not going to be spending five hours shitting. Someday everything's just going to come out smooth. Man, wasn't it nice when I just ate food and it went through and shitted itself out properly? God, that was nice. And I'm looking forward to that happening again. I'll do whatever it takes to learn my lesson and adjust when I need to adjust. My wife says it's a good thing when I get some symptoms occasionally, because it helps me have empathy for other people.
A sick care system, and choosing health
I know it sucks to be sick. I've put myself in a lot of situations, and from what I see, almost everybody who's sick has put themselves in that situation in one way or another. In some ways you're just incarnated into a country where the situations are brutal and difficult, where there's not clean drinking water and barely any food. It's rough. But if you're in the USA and similar countries, you have every opportunity to be healthy. It seems our healthcare system is actually a sick care system that unfortunately is more interested in making a profit than keeping people healthy. That's why I hope this is helpful for you, because it seems there's a huge need to collectively focus on health instead of sickness. To focus on what I can do to be healthy today and help somebody else be healthy today. Preventing disease and focusing on symptoms of sickness is much different than saying I'm healthy and having a healthy lifestyle.
My body works so well that I shook a homeless man's hand. I shake homeless people's hands, don't even wash my hands, eat my food, and it doesn't make me sick, because I'm healthy. Other people don't make a sick person sick. Other people don't make a healthy person sick. I'm super grateful I'm so healthy today. And I'm grateful I've had the experience of spending thousands of days of my life saying I'm so sick right now, and finally getting to a point where I said, look, God, I'll do whatever it takes to learn from this and not be in this situation again. I'll tell you what, I will never diarrhea shit again for three days. You will not get my ass in the toilet for five hours again like that. If I get some symptoms, I'm learning and I'm adjusting. If you want to walk through more of these lessons with me, you can watch my Life playlist, where I share the stories behind living this way.
Thank you for being here and reading all the way to the end. Your time is really valuable, and it means the world that you're one of the few people who actually made it through the whole thing. I know there's hope for you.