My friends, today we're going to talk about the top five ways to feel better. This will change your life if you are feeling bad a lot. I'm not saying these five ways will eliminate every single bit of bad feeling in your life, but the goal is to increase the ratio. I have maybe an 80/20, 90/10, maybe even a 95/5 ratio of feeling fantastic and empowered and royal and majestic and loved and cared for versus feeling depressed and sad and anxious and miserable and scared. I have a really high ratio in my life of feeling good to feeling bad. I have just enough bad to actually find it valuable. Feeling a little bit of bad really helps me appreciate how good I feel.
I'm going to go through these top five ways to feel better. I literally don't know exactly which ones I'm going to say in which order. I'm just doing this off the top of my head because I know this stuff and I live this stuff. These are in no particular order, and they're most effective when combined. If you do all of these, that's ideal, but you may substitute one or another out. My advice and suggestions are always something to be considered along with everything else you know. I'm not big into making any one person a guru or a god that just tells me what to do. I see how I feel about something and I go from there.
Number one: get out of isolation and into community
The number one way to feel better is finding a place you really belong, and more generally, only being at places where you feel like you belong. I read a book called Mind Over Medicine, written by a doctor who initially went into the regular general practitioner experience, got really burned out, and stopped being a doctor altogether because she thought, what good am I doing? Our healthcare system is basically a sick-care system, so why even bother? And then she was drawn back to being a doctor again from a holistic approach. She wanted to actually help people feel better and not just help make companies profitable by using herself to make a profit off of sick people.
The number one thing she said in all her research that helps people live in better health is being part of a community, being a member of a very close community. In her book, she used the example of how you'd think about a community roughly 60 years ago at this point. Think of an Italian community in New York — and you could really substitute anything, but I'm painting a specific picture in your head that she used in the book. So picture an Italian section of town where almost everybody works together with people from the community and then they come home. They have a house full of people. Maybe eight people live in the house. They go to work or go to school in the community with lots of other people they know, and they come home and they have a big, huge cookout, big, huge parties, and just huge family dinners with 30 or 40 people over for dinner like every night. They all get together, and then they go to bed and basically do that kind of a lifestyle every day.
She said that community effect was so powerful that even if those people ate a diet you might not think was very supportive for life, and even if they drank and smoked, the community provided such a strong protective health benefit that it was like quitting smoking and quitting drinking and eating healthy all put together. Those are huge things you can do to improve your health, and all of them combined equaled the effect of living in a community — a community where you're not isolated, where you're not just around your family and then you go to work or school with people you mostly don't know or don't connect with, and then you come home and just watch TV and play video games. What I just described there is the opposite of living in a community.
So the number one suggestion, if you want to feel better, is to get out of isolation and get into somewhere you belong. This has been massively powerful for me, and I'll tell you how I did this myself. This is the key point: when I joined Alcoholics Anonymous, that is when my entire life trajectory and my health — every single thing — went positive. And that's because what I really got going to AA is a community, a connection with lots of people. Most of us are way too isolated today, and the system has very much encouraged that. What I think we're collectively getting back into is seeing the necessity of community, and that you will almost inevitably be sick unless you do drastic things. If you do drastic things across every other area of your life — like you eat whole-plant vegan, you don't drink, don't smoke, don't do anything risky — all of that equals being in a very loving and supporting community. And if you put that community together plus all of that stuff, now you're looking at living healthy and happy for 70 to 100-plus years, which is where I'm at.
So my mom is moving next door. I live with my wife and two children, just two blocks away from my wife's parents and from my wife's sister and her daughter. I go to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings every day. I go to yoga at the same place almost every day, and AA almost every day — maybe five or six days a week for each. If you want to feel better, in my experience there's nothing more powerful you can do than get out of isolation and get into community. And I don't just mean doing one thing once a week. I'm talking about surrounding yourself with other people all the time. These bodies are not meant to live in isolation. Almost all of your depression, anxiety, fear, and suffering — almost all of it — can be eliminated by living in supportive communities. Not all of it, and there are other practices I'm about to mention, but nothing is more powerful if you want to feel better than getting out of isolation. If you're looking for a place to start, one community you're always welcome in is mine — you can join the Jerry Banfield Family and connect with the rest of us there.
Someone raised the point that it depends on whether you're an extrovert or an introvert. I'm going to say that there's a community no matter what kind of person you are that will be supportive for you, and certain situations will bring out introversion or extroversion. For example, I'm often very quiet. If I'm not streaming, I'm often pretty quiet, especially around people I don't know. So if you saw me outside of this, you might think I'm an introvert. And in community, there are lots of opportunities for people to listen, because there are plenty of people who want to talk.
Number two: be conscious of the intentions you set
If you're thinking, "Jerry, I don't even know where to start with community, I live in isolation right now" — probably that isn't you, but if your whole life consists of caring for a parent or children and working and just watching TV and streams online, you might think, "Well, I'm not an alcoholic, I can't go to AA, so what can I do with myself?" Set an intention. An intention is an aiming point for your life. If you know what will help you a lot, then you can aim for it and say, "Okay, Jerry said that a community is going to help me feel better. I'm willing to do whatever it takes to feel better." You could set an intention like, "I'm going to be open to and ready to receive the communities and groups that will be most supportive for me, and that I will also make the biggest contributions to."
If you feel bad and you're sick, setting a simple intention or prayer — saying, "God, please, I'll do whatever it takes as long as it respects other people and as long as it respects myself, I'll do whatever it takes to feel better" — that is intention setting. So if you want to feel better and you don't immediately know what communities or groups you could join, set an intention. And even if you already are part of a community, setting a clear aim and a clear focus for where you want to go will help you get there. You just want it to be something that doesn't hurt other people or hurt yourself in order to feel better.
The intention setting is massive, because of the point you aim at. If you feel bad and you think about how bad you feel and you simply hate how bad you feel, your mind is continuing to pay attention to how bad you feel, and on a subconscious level you're actually looking for more things to make you feel bad, because you've trained your mind to look for things that make you feel bad. So if you want to feel better, you need to train your mind and consciously decide, "I want to be sensitive to and notice things that will help me truly feel better."
Number three: avoid short-term solutions and aim for the long term
The third thing I'll say to feel better is to avoid short-term solutions and focus on feeling better in the long term. When we want to feel better, we often reach for short-term solutions, because that's how we've grown up and been programmed. We'll say, "Oh, I'll tell you how to feel better, Jerry — I'll just have some drinks, or I'll smoke some weed, or I'll take these pills my doctor gave me, or I'll go do something." In the short term that might provide a little bit of a high, or a little bit of relief, or a little bit of a distraction. But in the long term, it actually leaves you feeling worse.
That's one of the huge sections of our world today that are stuck in this trap, where you're trying to feel better all the time in the short term and it's sabotaging how you feel in the long term. For example, in my experience, going to your doctor and getting some drugs because you're depressed can help you feel better in the short term, but in the long term it usually doesn't do anything to solve the problem and actually makes things worse in one way or another. Going to the liquor store and buying a bottle of liquor, in the past for me, used to help me feel better in the short term. But in the long term, it left me feeling consistently worse and more isolated.
I've seen a lot of you on my live stream who are addicted to smoking marijuana, and marijuana is the same kind of thing. You smoke some weed, you feel better. But because it works so well in the short term, you then start to become dependent on it. If you were to just smoke it once, feel better, and never do it again or never want to do it again, it wouldn't have been a true problem. But when you use things outside of you, like alcohol, drugs, and addictive behaviors such as eating a pint of ice cream, you are sabotaging your health in the long term. So don't take shortcuts. And some of the things you'll need to do to feel better may actually feel worse when you get started with them.
For example, doing the Alcoholics Anonymous steps and going to an AA meeting. I was afraid to go to my first AA meeting. I felt disgustingly vulnerable starting off doing the steps. So in the short term, you'd look at it and say, well, that's not making you feel better. In fact, you can almost see how it'd be logical to just take a drink and have a little bit of fun at home instead of facing my fear of the unknown and going to an AA meeting. And I made that choice a whole bunch of times. Just take the drink and feel better today and screw tomorrow. Then I'd wake up the next day and think, I hate myself. I hate how I always screw tomorrow over. I'm not going to do it again. And as soon as I'd feel better, I'd do it again. So avoid any short-term solutions and focus on long-term feeling good.
Sometimes the change is as simple as moving
I'll give you another example: moving. One of the easiest things you can do to change your life is to move. If you're in a place where you think everybody's toxic, everybody's nasty, you might be able to literally just move and change almost your entire life. If you're in a place like my mom is now, where she's very isolated and alone, she moves next door to me and it's a totally different life. And the trick is, you have to essentially focus very clearly on what you want in order to be motivated to do it. Because in the short term, my mom is not feeling better by moving. It's a lot of work. It's a lot of new ideas. It's a lot of fear of the unknown. It's a lot of challenges. It's a lot of money. But she's making a move to feel better in the long term, to be a part of a community, to get to see her family.
Often, if you want to feel better, you need to make changes where in the short term you'll suffer to make those changes. You'll end up having to face your fears. You'll have to be embarrassed or vulnerable, like doing AA's fifth step. But in the long term, you're going to get a massive gift of feeling better. So think long term instead of short term. Set a clear intention of where you want to go, and be a part, constantly, of communities and groups everywhere you go. Avoid isolation. If you want a community that will hold you to that, I'd love for you to join the Jerry Banfield Family and be around people who are doing this work alongside you.
Tip number four: be conscious of what you eat
Tip number four that'll help you feel better is to be very conscious of what you're eating and how it impacts your body and your mind. One of the best things I've done, after going to Alcoholics Anonymous, getting into community, and setting an intention, is to pay attention to my food. Actually, the intention setting is what got me to Alcoholics Anonymous. I said, God, please, I'll do anything to get sober. And from there, I went to Alcoholics Anonymous and got the community. Then from there, I expanded my community greatly. And then I had the strength to go through short-term pain and short-term discomfort in order to make long-term changes. Don't take that drink, try something new like a massage instead. Instead of taking a drink, go to another AA meeting. Instead of taking a drink, talk to somebody about why I feel so bad that I think I need to drink, and be honest.
So the fourth key thing, once I went through those processes, is that I'm conscious of how what I eat impacts how I feel. I noticed six and a half years ago that I could easily eat myself into a depression. If I ate too much, if I ate too much of anything, it would knock the entire energy of my body down. And if I eat a whole bunch of animal products and processed foods that are full of added sugars and salts, not a little bit, a little bit is not a problem, but eating to excess, eating anything to excess will knock me down. If I eat a bunch of processed foods and added sugars and salts and animal products, then I'll feel really depressed.
This was shown to me very dramatically. I was at the airport with my family one day, my wife and daughter. I was feeling great. Everything was all good. I ate this massive meal with like five different kinds of meat that had been killed so I could eat it, a whole bunch of added oils, salts, and sugars, and just a massive portion on top of all that. I went from feeling great all the way down to suicidal depression within 20 minutes after I finished the meal. The progression was kind of like this. Man, I love my life. I'm so happy we're at the airport with my family. Gobbled up this huge meal because I was really hungry. Then I start thinking, man, I'm kind of tired, this is annoying. Ah, why is our plane going to take so long? My body starts to feel weak physically. I look at the airport bar. A thought comes across my mind, at about two years sober, that it might be nice to have a drink. I think, man, I'm two years sober, I'm doing all this work, and I'm still thinking about drinking. It's hopeless. I might as well end it all. That happened within 20 minutes of finishing the meal.
Then I saw what happened. I thought, wow, what I ate just contributed to how I'm thinking. If I eat better, I'll think better. Now, I'm not saying you should never have any meat or animal products and never have anything just for fun. I'm saying that in my experience, if you want to feel better, the majority of what you eat needs to nourish your body. If you eat anything for fun, you take it in small proportions. You have one or two cookies instead of six. You have a little piece of candy instead of a whole candy bar. You have one small piece of cake instead of three. You don't have dessert after every single meal unless it's a tiny one. You never binge on a whole pack of Oreos like I've done or eat a whole thing of ice cream. You don't do that, because you just know beforehand, if I do this, I'm going to feel worse, and I'm willing to do whatever it takes to not feel bad.
Mostly whole plant foods, in the right sizes
What I've been learning lately is to control my meal sizes. After eight and a half years sober and six and a half years on a whole-plant-based diet, what has worked for me is to eat mostly whole plant foods, which is fruit, vegetables, nuts, grains, and beans, generally. If you have some issue, please figure yourself out and make adjustments accordingly. That's what I eat. That's what the book I read called How Not to Die, written by a doctor who has dedicated his life to figuring this stuff out, recommends. It works really well for me and I follow it. Occasionally, once a month or a few times a year, I might have a little bit of meat, and maybe once a week or so I'll have a little bit of animal products like ice cream, eggs, and so on. The majority of what I eat is fruits, vegetables, nuts, grains, and beans that have been minimally processed or not processed at all. They still have the water, they still have the fiber. Those are the key things you want to help feel good.
You can see how all of this works together. If you're in a community and you're not isolated, you're always around other people, and you're truthful and you don't have secrets from other people and you can be really honest and open. You be yourself and don't make two personalities, like a work personality and a home personality. You can just be yourself all the time with other people in community. You set a clear intention that I'll do anything it takes to feel good as long as it doesn't hurt myself or other people. You stop thinking short-term euphoria and pleasure and you think long-term consistent happiness and health. You get into your diet and say, look, I need to stop putting mostly crap in my body and start putting mostly healthy, nourishing foods in my body. I don't take any medications or supplements. I personally believe that is the best way for me to be healthy. Again, this is an area where you need to decide for yourself. For me, I find medication and supplements consistently usually make me feel worse than better. You can see how, when you put all these things together, you start to just become a super person.
The last tip: body movement in community
Now I'll give you the last tip from me. Body movement practices in community are extremely powerful for feeling better. I don't think any health practice is going to be complete without some kind of physical movement. If you do everything I just said but you sit on your butt all day, you're probably not going to feel that great. That's what's challenging about feeling better, because you often have to put all this stuff together to really get this huge effect. Like today, where I feel so much better than I used to nine years ago, it's hard to even believe. I have no physical pain. I feel loved and connected all the time. My life is pure joy 90-plus percent of the time.
The last practice I've gotten into recently is consistent physical body movement. I think yoga is the number one practice I recommend in this area. I find yoga fun. It's far superior to going to the gym. I went to the gym for years, and certainly going to the gym and doing exercise machines or weights is better than nothing. But in my experience, doing yoga with other people is at least three times more effective than going to the gym and doing my own workouts. Going to the gym and doing my workouts would help me feel better. Hiring a personal trainer helped me feel better. But doing yoga is extremely supportive for my health. I think yoga is by far the best exercise.
That said, it is your life. If you love playing sports, by all means, play sports. If you love going to the gym, keep going to the gym, and maybe try a yoga class. If you love running, then by all means, run. For me, the mental discipline along with yoga, doing it with other people, having the stretching and the flexibility combined with the exercise, is extremely powerful. Yoga used to be reserved just for the elites and the upper class. Today, we all have access to it.
Five Suggestions to Feel Better
If you want to feel better, these are five suggestions, and especially if you apply all of them and you're excited to apply them, in my experience you can feel so good it almost seems unfair sometimes. It seems insane to me now that I used to feel so bad when I was perfectly capable of feeling so good. I hope this was useful for you.
I originally filmed this live on Twitch, and you can also find it on the Jerry Banfield Show podcast, whether you listen on Spotify or iTunes or wherever you get your podcasts. If you want the best experience and you'd like to come hang out and keep this conversation going together, today the best way to do that is to join the Jerry Banfield Family.
If you want to keep going with more like this, you're welcome to watch my Life playlist for the rest of these conversations. I'll have another one out soon, and I'm grateful you spent this time with me.