A quick note before I start: this is my own personal experience and what I've come to believe about my health, not medical advice. I'm not a doctor, and nothing here is meant to diagnose or treat anything or to tell you what to do with your body. Please make your own health decisions with the professionals you trust. I'm just sharing what has worked for me.
What if you never got sick again? This is an idea I'm going to explain that I've lived for over a year and a half. I have not been sick a single day in the last year and a half. This is something nobody has probably ever told you or helped you imagine. I want to explain the theory behind how I've been able to be the healthiest I've ever been, and what I believe could help you too.
If you want to hear more of the stories and the individual details of symptoms, and the last time I got sick, I just did a related post called I haven't had one single sick day since October 2022. You can read that after this one. But the most important idea is to just start imagining a life where you never have to get sick again. Because I've gone a year and a half without a single sick day, in my experience I know it's possible that I could go the rest of this body's life that way.
Start with a what-if
As soon as you start thinking this, some of you will feel immediate resistance. Your mind will be like, that's not possible. He's lying. This can't be true. Why? If this was true, why wouldn't everyone have told me about it already? Everybody should know this if it's legit.
Well, I'm a pursuer of hidden knowledge, of the knowledge that is most powerful for me to have, and I've been doing this for a long time. I've found some incredible knowledge about health that has allowed me to achieve a level of health I've never seen somebody else have before. I've read about it. I've heard other people talk about it. There's a book by Louise Hay called Heal Your Body that's been very helpful to me.
The main way to make this a reality of not being sick, of not being afraid of being sick, and of having a really healthy, vibrant body, is to start thinking: how am I going to make this a reality? How would you feel if you woke up feeling great every single day, and how can you feel that way now?
I know some of you have chronic health problems, and your mind is saying that's not possible, my doctors told me so, I know it can't be possible. The first thing I'd suggest is to just go into a what-if, just a theoretical scenario. I have a family member who's chronically ill, and she had literally never once conceived the idea of: what if your health problem suddenly went away, what would your life be like? She wouldn't even dare to try to think about that. So the first way to change, in my experience, is to think differently.
I know it can feel like lying. If you've got chronic health problems, it can feel like you're lying to yourself, or being unnecessarily optimistic and setting yourself up for disappointment to even think that way. But I've had chronic health issues too, and I've shredded them. I used to be sick very frequently. When I was a police officer, I had weeks off of work in 2009 because of being sick, and I went into work sick plenty of other days. If you want to stop being sick, the first thing I'd say is to imagine what your life would be like if you weren't sick, and to know that it's possible. It is possible.
All the miracles you've read about in any of your religious literature that touch your heart — it's not like the ability for miracles stopped happening. I believe they're happening all the time, every day. And often miracles are just science that's not understood. Other times, science has not come up with, or has ignored, logical, simple explanations like the ones I'm about to give you for health that can change drastically.
I hope I've talked through a lot of your resistance beforehand, because an idea like this is so powerful, and you've been conditioned so hard to resist it by the rest of your life. Your mind will often violently resist just thinking, what if I never got sick again?
Why I love the idea of never being sick again
I love the idea that never again do I have to suddenly change my plans because my body is ill. Never again do I have to go to the doctor or the hospital for any kind of sickness. Never again do I have to be in a body that I hate being in and feel has betrayed me. I get to have the rest of my life in health with no chronic illnesses. That sounds fantastically exciting to me.
I'll do anything it takes that is also considerate of others. I'm not going to drain other people's energy and be a vampire so I can be healthy, but I'll do anything that is loving and considerate of myself and other people to achieve that. If I need to change my diet, exercise more, or change my relationships up, I'll do it.
For example, in my experience, if you hang out with people who are chronically ill, it likely means you're going to be chronically ill too, if you're not already. If you hang out with people who are fantastically healthy, you're probably going to be very healthy. I've had to let go of some family members, because I'm not going to hang out with someone who's chronically ill all the time. I can love you, but I'll love you from a distance.
The mental component of chronic illness
What I've come to believe is that chronic illness always has a mental component as well as a physical component, because there are many illnesses you can have physically that won't manifest at all based on your lifestyle. For example, with things like Alzheimer's and dementia, there have been studies showing that people can have the exact same brain scans, and one person, because of their lifestyle choices, can be completely unable to care for themselves, while another person with the same kind of brain scan physically can't even be diagnosed with Alzheimer's or dementia. There are many different things you can have physically that, based on your choices and your beliefs, you won't have to experience. It can be like they don't exist.
We know, with viruses for example, that you can have a virus and it cannot affect you or give you any symptoms at all. There's been this ridiculous thing perpetrated on us of: well, if you have a virus and you don't have any symptoms, then you should stay away from other people. Instead, why don't we investigate why some people have viruses and have no symptoms, while other people have the same virus and die from it or have a ton of symptoms? That's what I'm getting at — the ability to be exposed to something, a virus or bacteria, to have some kind of chronic illness, and to have no outward symptoms, to have it not affect your lifestyle at all. In my experience, that is absolutely possible.
What my sobriety taught me
For example, I am an alcoholic, and I've been sober almost 10 years. But I could not just stop drinking without experiencing a whole bunch of other addictions and suffering and insanity. The transformation I've seen in my own life has been miraculous to me.
Most people who are allergic to alcohol like me — where as soon as I have one drink, this physical and mental craving comes on for indefinite more amounts of alcohol — most people with that die as an alcoholic, or try to stay sober and really suffer a lot. Many people and sciences argue that there's perhaps a difference in genetics between people like me, who have one drink and this craving goes off, and other people who have one drink and that craving doesn't happen. What I've found is that I'm able to live a very happy, healthy life and not miss alcohol at all, and to be a very sane, normal person. You'd have no idea that when I used to have a drink 10, 15, 20 years ago, the absolute insanity would ensue. And even if I wasn't drinking, I still was insane.
The lump I refused to be afraid of
I've also had many minor health issues, and even some more major ones. I had a lump on one of my testicles. This was in my early 20s. I simply refused to believe that it would be anything bad or harmful. I refused to go to the doctor. I didn't even tell anybody about it. I remember feeling it one day, and I remembered all the programming I'd been told, that based on what everyone else said I should do, I ought to go to the doctor and get this checked out. And I'm like, F that. This is going to go away on its own with no intervention. It appeared from nowhere, and it will go away back to nowhere.
It lasted for years. It was there for years. But I refused to be afraid of it. I refused to believe that it could turn into anything else. I continued to be certain that it would be gone one day. And then one day, years later, I went feeling around there again, and it was gone. And I'm like, nice. I knew it. I want to be clear this is my own story and what worked for me, not a recommendation for what anyone else should do.
The man in the X-ray
There was a book I read that talked about a guy who went to the hospital, and they did an X-ray and found this big lump in his lungs. They said, this looks like cancer, we think you're going to die soon. And he was dead within a few months. The doctors, post-mortem, were reviewing his medical charts and records, and they found that 20 years before, the same lump was there in his lungs. No one had told him at that time that it might be a problem, so he didn't get the idea in his head that it was a problem. But it really appeared, in this story, that the doctors had literally done some witchcraft, or cursed him, putting this idea in his head that this lump is bad and it's going to kill you. And he believed it, and he manifested it.
So the key that I've found to my own health is knowing that I am a huge part — maybe not absolutely responsible, but I believe 99.9% of what happens inside this body is a function of me, and what I create, and the stories I tell, and what I believe.
Who profits from your sickness
Now, yes, I think we've all been conditioned to be victims. We've been conditioned by a society that makes a huge profit off of illness, that tries to keep people down through all kinds of ways, from alcohol and drugs to unnecessary medications, and that pushes the belief that other people are the cause of our illness, rather than us taking responsibility, looking within, and seeing how we manifest our own illness.
In her books, like Heal Your Body and Heal Your Life, Louise Hay talked about how she cured what for most people would have been a fatal disease. She was able to cure it herself without using any of the standard treatments. I've read a bunch of other stories like that, which are not often told to people. In fact, there are certain specific things I'm intentionally not talking about, because even in certain areas the guidelines prevent even doctors with medical experience from suggesting that there are alternative treatments that work, beyond the things we're told.
So, in my view, our whole culture has been set up to make us sick, and to make us not take responsibility for the symptoms our body is manifesting. Once you realize that it's profitable for you to be sick, that it's profitable and easier to control you if you're ill — a healthy person who is free is difficult to control. A sick person who feels trapped, who's afraid they can't get pills from their doctor, or can't have the drinks they need to relax, a dependent sick person is easy to control and manipulate. So what I'm talking about, breaking out of illness, is also claiming your own power.
The biggest thing for me that's helped with not being sick is taking absolute responsibility and seeing that this body manifests things because I manifest things. I want to keep sharing these ideas openly, and I keep the deeper conversations going inside the Jerry Banfield Family if you want to go further with me on this.
How my body made me sick before my mother's move
I talked about in my autobiography how my body made me physically ill, because I had an unacknowledged big part of my emotions, a big part of my mind, that did not want to go help my mother move in October 2022. Consciously, I thought I did. I planned on doing it. But there was this big emotion, this big section of my mind, that I refused to acknowledge or look at, that did not want to leave my life — all my family besides my mother, and my friends, and my AA meetings, and my games, and my YouTube studio. There was a big part of me that really didn't want to go help my mother move, and my body made itself sick, because it knew that was the only way I would tell my mother that I couldn't fly out there to help her move.
But then, after I called her and told her that, I'm like, come on, body, I really do want to help my mother move. Please rev your energy back up and get over this. I was so healthy at the time, and I'm even healthier now. I had no other symptoms. It was literally just fatigue. And my body revved up, and just two days later, I flew out to help my mother move. Over the next week, I moved 15,000 pounds of stuff by myself into a truck, out of a storage locker and her house and into the landfill or into places to give away. Then the movers moved like 30,000 more pounds. That was such a powerful lesson to me.
Kids and playing sick
I talked to my daughter and shared this with her too. Our kids are often conditioned that if they don't want to go to school, the only way they can get out of going is to be sick. Some parents send their kids to school sick anyway, and the kids often get the point that being sick is not going to get them out of school. So sometimes they either double down and get more serious illnesses, or they'll just stop trying to be sick and figure out other ways to get out of going to school.
For me personally, growing up as a kid, that's what I had to do. If I wanted to skip school, I had to be sick, so I'd just make myself sick. As a kid, you're often consciously aware that you're doing this, but as adults we forgot. And society often rewards people for being sick by letting them miss work. Oh, you're sick — people are very understanding. Oh sure, you can skip this family gathering, you're sick. That has made it very rewarding to be sick.
So I've told my kids, look, if you want to take a day off, you can take a day off anytime you want to. You don't need to be sick. Last time, my daughter was starting to try to make herself sick. Kids often intentionally do stuff like not eat, or lay in bed, and you can see them trying to make themselves sick. With adults, it's so ingrained that it's just automatic and hard to observe, because they set themselves up the night before by drinking or staying up really late. But with kids, it's often super obvious. I told my daughter, look, just tell me you want to stay home and you can stay home. If you stay home too much, you'll have to get homeschooled, just keep that in mind, but you can stay home whenever you want. Just say, Dad, I want to stay home from school today, and you can. You don't have to be sick. I would prefer you to be healthy and stay home and have a great day at home. She stopped. She immediately stopped playing sick. She ate her breakfast and she had a normal, healthy day at home. It was nearly instantaneous.
How fast symptoms can shift
Once you realize how instantaneous your health can be, it changes how you relate to symptoms. I've observed symptoms in my body, pains. I had a friend last night who was talking about how her body was in horrible pain, so bad she was crying, and her mind was telling her a story that she had some virus and was going to be sick. She refused to just buy into that narrative completely. She went to sleep and felt great when she woke up the next day.
I've had physical symptoms disappear almost instantaneously once I started realizing that, in my experience, I'm controlling so much of this process. For example, I woke up one morning and my throat had a little raw sensation in it. I thought, this is a reminder to thank my throat for all it does — for all these videos I do, for all the words I say — to thank my throat for being such an avenue of creative expression, for swallowing all my food, for doing a great job in helping the rest of this body function. It may not go away absolutely within a second or two; you need to be patient. But a few hours later, I realized that little rawness in my throat had almost instantly disappeared within a few minutes after I did the affirmations. I also set the intention: I'm just going to forget about this.
It's a story you tell. I've been doing these eye exercises, and I felt a new sensation from some muscle way inside my eye. A fear story came up, like, oh my God, your retina is going to detach, you're going to be in the hospital. And I'm like, no, stop telling that story. What I realized is that my eye muscle twitching inside, in a way I've never felt it deep in my eye before, is a sign my natural eye improvement exercises are working. It's like when I do yoga: if I go a little too far — like some of the first times I tried wheel pose, I strained a little muscle in my neck because I was pushing my muscles to the limit. You could tell a story that this is a sign something bad's going to happen, or you could tell a story that you're getting exactly what you want, based on the exact same physical symptom. So I'm like, this eye muscle twitching is a sign I'm exercising muscles I've never exercised before. This is a sign that my eyes are improving. This is a sign that I'm making the changes people think are impossible in my body. I refuse to believe any negative story, because I'm totally focused on never being sick again.
Heal Your Body and the willingness to change
In that book, Heal Your Body, there's a huge list of symptoms and the corresponding mental things that go with them. For example, with the throat: the throat is an avenue of expression, a channel of creativity. The normal, healthy functioning affirmation is that I open my heart and sing the joys of love, that I feel free to express myself creatively, and my throat is allowing me to share my joy with the world. A sore throat is connected with the feeling of the inability to speak up for oneself, swallowed anger, stifled creativity, refusal to change. The affirmation given is: it's okay to make noise, I express myself freely and joyously, I speak up for myself with ease, I express my creativity, I'm willing to change.
This one has been extremely powerful for me. Just the "I'm willing to change" part — anytime I have a little cough, I immediately say, I'm willing to change, I'm changing, I'm willing to change. And in my experience, I have eliminated coughing from my life, all but an occasional cough or two. I've noticed people with chronic coughs are often some of the most rigid, unwilling-to-change people. They'll cough for 30 minutes, and not once will they open up to changing. What's amazing is that I've told them this. I'm like, I've found I've eliminated 99% of coughing from my life, and all I have to do is say, I'm willing to change, I'm changing, I'm willing to change, and mean it. Because often after you say "I'm willing to change," you'll see something to change.
The cough, the money, and acknowledging the symptom
When I first started doing this, I realized I needed to ask my wife for money, because I'd blown my finances up in 2019. I was going to go bankrupt; I wasn't going to be able to make any of my minimum payments unless I asked my wife for money. I felt very unmanly. It felt like an utter failure. I sobbed in the car. And that happened after my body coughed.
What I've come to believe is that the symptom is here to assist me, to help me see something physically that I'm ignoring mentally. If I acknowledge the symptom — I use the affirmation as the acknowledgement — I'm willing to change, I'm changing, I acknowledge the symptom, then the symptom stops, because it has been heard. It has served its purpose. And then my mind changes. I've told this exact process to people with chronic coughs, and their response is often, that's nice, that worked for you, but you don't know about me, and it won't work for me.
I'm like, where do you get these limiting ideas? Where do you get these limiting ideas that you know everything, and yet the things you know keep you sick and miserable? Break out of there. You don't have to be sick and miserable. You have a lot of choice.
You have more choice than you've been told
Now, I'm not saying that if you are very sick and ill every day, you're instantaneously going to shred every one of your physical conditions. What I'm telling you is that if you make a decision now, explore this idea, and stick with it — keep listening, keep reading some of the books I recommend — one day you may find yourself so healthy that it shocks you, as it does me, that holy crap, it's been a year and a half since I got sick. I've never in 39 years on this earth had that level of health before. Not when I was a kid, not as a young adult. Never have I been that healthy. In my experience, I believe you can do it too.
You need to give it some time. But if you make a 10-year plan — like, in 10 years I want to be in the absolute best health I've ever been in, I want to have no sickness, and I want to eliminate any symptoms, I want to be at peak health — you can be at your very best health. I don't care what age your body is. I remember reading a book from a guy saying that in his 60s he was in the best health of his life. If I can be in the best health of my life at the oldest I've ever been, I believe that can be for you too.
If you want to keep exploring ideas like this with me, I share much more of my day-to-day thinking on health, mindset, and life in my Life playlist. You might also enjoy here is hope for your health challenges and Mind Over Medicine by Dr. Lissa Rankin, on whether you can heal yourself, which both dig into these same themes from different angles.
I hope this has been helpful for you. Thank you, and I hope to connect with you again soon, in the best health you've ever been in.