My friends, in my experience the universe tests you before you get what you want, and I've come to believe this is to prove how badly you want it. If you're struggling to manifest something, if there's something you've really been wanting that feels like it's just not coming to you, then you're going to love hearing about my experience passing the tests the universe gives you in order to confirm that, hey, I really do want this, and I'm willing to do what it takes to get it. If you want to look at the biggest test of my life, I'll give you two examples and then some stuff I'm working with right now.
The biggest test of my life: finding my wife
My wife and I have the best relationship I've ever seen anybody have. We've been married since 2012. We've been together exclusively for 13 years now. We are very happy. We really understand each other. And when I was in elementary school, like first or second grade, I used to imagine what it'd be like to be with my wife. Especially before bedtime, when I was laying in bed and about to fall asleep, I was thinking, where's my wife? I wonder what she's like. I imagined the romantic things we would do together. That was in elementary school.
Then I struggled for a long time, being mostly single throughout my teens and early 20s. I had one of the worst dating experiences out of any of my friends. Many of my other friends found girlfriends and were not single most of the time. Me, I'd go out with all these girls, I'd constantly try and pick girls up and get their phone numbers, and they'd give me fake phone numbers, or we'd go out and it was a disaster. I did online dating back on Hot or Not originally, in the early 2000s, and it was one disaster after another, one failure after another. I did have a girlfriend for a while in college, but we weren't that into each other and I didn't know how to deal with it. She then cheated on me and left me, which was a good move that helped both of us move on. Then for years I struggled to even say the word relationship.
But through all of that, I still had a very clear idea in my head of exactly what kind of woman I wanted to be my wife. I held this idea that there was the perfect wife out there for me, and that if I would just refuse to settle for anything less and position myself for success, then the perfect wife would come to me.
Where I finally positioned myself for success was moving to Tampa, Florida, in 2010 for graduate school. One of the big considerations I had in moving to Tampa was the dating odds. I looked on Match.com before I moved. Previously, in Columbia, South Carolina, I ran an experiment: I'd search as if I were a man looking for a woman, then switch the criteria around and search as if I were a woman looking for a man. In Columbia, there were more than twice as many guys that met the search criteria as there were women, which means it was insanely competitive for dating there. That's where I was from 2002 to 2009 — a competitive environment where the odds were stacked against me.
Then I moved to Tampa, Florida, and I did the same search on Match. It was two-to-one girls to guys. There were maybe a thousand guys that met the search criteria and over 2,000 girls. That's roughly four times easier of a ratio. And within a few months of moving here, I met my wife.
It didn't happen immediately. I went out with a girl that we both weren't that interested in, and I'm glad I broke up with her, even though she made it a little difficult. The girl I went out with right before my wife, we were not that compatible either. I remember right before I met my wife being so disappointed, like, man, is this all it's ever going to be — disappointment, loneliness, frustration? And I told myself, no. As long as I keep trying, it just has to work one time really well, and I'm good. And the girl I went out with after that was my wife. As soon as I went out with her, I'm like, oh my God, this girl is everything I've been looking for. It's just perfect — a 10 out of 10 in appearance, a beautiful personality compatible with mine. Wow, my life has been so good since then.
The universe tested me thoroughly, and I refused to take anything except exactly what I wanted. Now I have the happiest relationship out of anybody I know. Meeting my wife has been the best thing that's ever happened to me. This is exactly the kind of thing I talk through with everyone inside the Jerry Banfield Family.
Getting prepared to receive what you want
Where I've seen a lot of my friends go wrong is that they settled. They knew they were with somebody that wasn't that great, but they were afraid of being single. They were afraid they couldn't do better. So they stayed out of fear. In other cases, people haven't got themselves prepared to receive what they wanted. It's unreasonable to expect that you're going to be attractive to someone who's really, really beautiful and fun and has a great personality if you don't have those things yourself. If you're not taking care of yourself, and you're poisoning your body, and you're overweight, and you hate yourself, then why would the person you want to be with be attracted to you?
I'm glad I got prepared before I met my wife. I had lost like 20 or 30 pounds living at home with my parents. I had got my life together, I was in school, and I was making myself better. That made me attractive to my wife. And she did help me work on a lot of the issues I had. A big part of why I'm here now is from her.
So in my experience, the universe will give you some serious tests. If you fail those tests, it just proves you didn't really want that thing. If you take less than what you wanted, then the universe is making sure: hey, do you really want that? It's important to be able to say no. If you know exactly what you want, a big part of it is saying no. No, I don't want that. That's not what I want. Then you get more and more specific. Sometimes you don't know what you want that well until something close to what you want is given to you. You date someone that's almost right, and that helps you get more clarity. I dig into more of how I think about all of this in facing harsh reality versus healthy fantasy.
The test I'm going through right now: restoring my eyesight
Let me put this in terms of something I'm going through right now. I am in the process of trying to restore my eyesight to 20/20. The last time it was tested, my glasses prescription was something like 20/60. That started when I was maybe in eighth or ninth grade. I remember one day looking out in the schoolyard and realizing that my distance vision was blurry, and I remember the horrible feeling that came with that. The prevailing opinion from the established medical sciences was that you're screwed — once you have myopia or nearsightedness, your vision never goes back to how it was before, and you just have to get glasses and contacts and deal with it. And that's what I did, from approximately 1998 all the way up until 2019. So for 21 years, I basically just wore glasses and contacts all the time and accepted that my vision is what it is and there's nothing you can do about it.
Then I started reading stories. I remember Wayne Dyer mentioned in one of his talks that his eyesight changed several times throughout his life. It went back to 20/20, then it had gone away from it, and then it went back to 20/20 again. In his 70s, he said his vision was now perfect again, and he could read and see very clearly. I heard a few other similar stories, and I came to believe that there are steps I can take to help my vision go back to 20/20 — because when it first changed, it changed without any medical intervention. It just changed as a result of my lifestyle and my behavior.
I remember seeing a hypnotherapist and having a cry and looking into the future, and I saw that one day I would have a story to share with people about how I got rid of my glasses and restored my eyesight to 20/20 — something a lot of the current medical literature and a lot of optometrists believe is not possible. Imagine that: this is something a lot of people don't even know is possible, or think is impossible, and I'm doing it.
At the time, I just stopped wearing my glasses, which were required for me to drive. I figured I'd quit wearing them and my vision would just go back to 20/20, and that all I had to do was intend it and not wear glasses. After driving a few times at night with the vision I had, it was good enough at slower speeds to see things clearly, but at night it was starting to feel a bit dangerous. So I resumed driving with my glasses on. From 2019 to 2024, I kept wishing and thinking about how nice it would be to get my vision restored, but I wasn't doing any actual work or learning related to facilitating that.
Here's a thing I've learned about making your life how you want it: there's manifesting, and thinking about exactly how you want it to be, and making a vision board. But that's really the minority of it. The bulk of it is doing the work in this reality to arrange things, make opportunities possible, and get the information you need and the people you need, and then executing on all of it to make the vision a reality.
Finally, a week ago, after five years of thinking about how my vision would one day be 20/20, it occurred to me how this connects to getting sober.
What getting sober taught me about doing the work
When I got sober in 2014 in Alcoholics Anonymous, I felt hopeless and desperate. I felt there was no way for me to get sober and like it, and I was sure of that. I made a desperate prayer to God — which to me is just a simple way of doing manifesting or intention setting. The prayer was, please God, I'll do anything to get sober. If you don't want to use the God word in there, you just say, I intend to do whatever it takes to get sober.
After that, my mind gave me a thought that going to an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting would be a part of "anything." So I went to AA meetings twice a week and started reading the book. It became clear that two meetings a week was not enough, and then the obsession to drink came back. This, in my belief, was the universe testing me: do you really want to get sober? I remember weeks of praying to God to get sober, and thinking about things people had said in AA, and then my mind flooding me with drinking thoughts afterward, and feeling like a completely insane person.
Then I finally passed the test by saying yes, I'll do anything it takes to get sober. I'll go to five meetings a week. I'll get massages to relax, because without drinking I didn't know how to relax, and massage is a very effective way to relax the body — especially if you don't know any other way to really relax without drinking or taking something. Massage showed me that you can get the same kind of effect you were looking for out of alcohol through other means that are all natural: massage, exercise, being careful about the books you read and the music you listen to. I passed the test by doing the work. When my mind was chanting drink, drink, drink, I did the work to stay sober. And I still, after almost 10 years sober — it'll be 10 years in April 2024 — I still go to five Alcoholics Anonymous meetings a week, because I don't want to forget. My mind goes to fear, and I keep choosing faith, which is the whole story I tell in my mind went to fear, but I chose faith.
Applying the same lesson to my eyesight
So a week ago I remembered that when I got sober, there was work required to reprogram my mind and my lifestyle in order to facilitate sobriety and make it comfortable and normal. I did that in Alcoholics Anonymous. And I realized: with my eyes, I can't just wish them into 20/20 vision. I clearly did things that got them out of 20/20 vision, therefore I need to do the work to get them back to 20/20 vision.
Not once in five years had I actually searched for a book about how to naturally improve your eyesight. So I went on ChatGPT and told it what I wanted to do, and it gave me a list of several books, some of which were written in the 1940s, others even earlier than that. These are books that have been sitting there since before my dad was born, that discuss how to keep your eyes healthy, how to naturally help your eyes if they've gotten into nearsightedness or farsightedness, and how bad eye habits contribute to bad vision. Staring is the number one offender for me. It's not like you stare at something once, but when you're used to staring all day, that's a way to get your eyes all stressed and to have them not seeing at long distance. The eyes are relaxed when they see at a distance clearly; it takes the eyes more effort to see up close. So all the video games I was playing, and all the daydreaming I was doing in high school — just blankly staring so I wouldn't get in trouble like you would if you had your eyes closed — contributed to it.
I've now read my way into my third book about natural eyesight healing, and my eyes are naturally shifting and moving around so much more. Over the last few years I'd just been staring. People have often commented that when I would talk to them, I would just stare into one of their eyes and hardly move my eyes, and that's not normal eye movement. It gives people a creepy, weird vibe, because normal healthy eye movement is looking from place to place, from spot to spot. I'm practicing that now. While I'm doing this work on the computer, I moved my office in the house with the intention that I can look past my camera, where I can see maybe 10 feet outside, and I can even look up into the sky. I change my focus from near to far, from near to far. At yoga, I'm looking all over the place with my eyes — up, down, around — and I'm paying attention to my peripheral vision. I'm putting in the work to manifest what I want.
Is my eyesight instantaneously going to 20/20? No. But what I'm seeing is the little improvements, the little glimpses. I remember a few years ago, after a massage where I'd had a good cry, sitting up on the table and for a moment looking outside and seeing all the blades of grass. I'm like, I'm seeing 20/20 right now. Almost as soon as I realized it, it went back to what I'm used to, maybe 20/40 or 20/60. So I'm so excited now, as I'm doing the work to reprogram my eyes and my mind to have healthy seeing habits, because I believe the universe is giving me a test: how badly do you want your eyesight restored through purely natural behavioral, lifestyle, and mental changes? I want it really badly, and I'll do the work every day. I'll go around and look all over the place. My wife usually looks from eye to eye very naturally, and I tried to keep up with her, and it felt so weird, like so much work.
Why the work feels weird at first
A person who's been in a wheelchair for a long time, who tries to get up and walk, feels like it's hard and weird and abnormal. But for those of us that are walking all the time, it feels normal, because we've done the work since we were a baby, lots of times, to strengthen our legs. A lot of people who are in wheelchairs — depending on the other physical issues going on — if they'll put the work in to start walking again, their muscles will develop and they'll be able to walk. My massage therapist has a dog that couldn't even hardly walk when she adopted her at 14 years old, and the dog is walking 12 blocks with her now, slowly walking more and more, because the muscles came in.
So in my experience, you need to understand that the universe tests you before your reality changes. Once you realize that — well, most people are not clear in the first place about what they want to manifest. A lot of us spiritual, manifester kind of people think that we should just think of something and it should instantly manifest. But that would make this reality boring, wouldn't it? If I instantly just thought, well, I want my eyes at 20/20, and they shifted instantaneously, I'd be bored with that. Like, well, now I want the world to blow up — and the world blows up — all right, now put it back together. It's the test that makes life interesting. It's the journey that makes it exciting. If you want more of how I approach this, I keep these conversations going in my Life playlist, and I share my fuller framework in how I hacked reality to get anything I want.
Sometimes the test shows you don't want it that badly
I hope this helps you pass your tests. The universe will give you tests in all kinds of areas, and sometimes the tests are there to reveal that maybe you don't want that thing that badly. For example, I was playing Marvel Snap the other day, and I lost a bunch of games, and the universe was testing me: do you really want to be a pro Marvel Snap player? And I'm like, no, no, I don't want to be a pro Marvel Snap player. I'm going to go play Returnal. I'm going to play a casual game and relax.
So here's to helping you pass those tests and make a life that empowers you, that you're really proud of, that you love and enjoy. I trust this helps you reach your peaks in your spirituality and your life. Much love, and I hope to see you again.