Hear how I deal with physical pain in my life featuring a story about how a sudden cramp producing an intense pain in the butt helped me learn how to find the humor in the middle of the hurt. Listen to the story of how when the same cramp started last night I quickly paid attention to it and it never got serious. Learn about my back pain history and what worked to break the cycle of trying the numb the pain with muscle relaxers and Advil only to end up in the same pain again the next day. Most of my adult life I have had some kind of ongoing chronic pain whether it be headaches, backaches, sprained ankles, and most recently these random butt cramps. Now the difference is I rarely have pain that is recurring for more than a few minutes. Massages once a week help a lot to prevent the neck and backaches. The strategy for reducing pain I share in this episode I hope will help you see opportunities to get the pain you have in your life to pass quickly first from the mind and then from the body.

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Listen to the story of how my vision transformed from hell to heaven just with doing service work in an effort to honestly share the pain of my life and what I learned from it with other people like me. Hear how I grew up as an idealist seeing a world full of poverty, hate, and pain. As I worked in the middle of it, I turned into a callous critic of the world complaining from my armchair with no hope for the world. Now, I see that all the change I would like in the world must happen in me. My part of the collective means that every little improvement and bit of healing I give and receive makes an impact on the whole of humanity. Today I feel empowered to work hard each day to genuinely improve as a human being and to try to be a role model that other people learn from mostly in seeing how I live and how I feel because I have learned from so many healthy role models myself within the last two years. I seek daily to learn how people with happy and healthy lives act while getting help with replacing anything in my life that causes pain. The world now looks like heaven to me as I see that what I do is enough to make a real difference on all the problems of the world. While I take no pride in the harsh viewpoints I claimed in the past, I share them today to show you the amazing transformation that has happened within me and I continue to remember it today so that it will continue.

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Listen to my inspirational monologue today about learning to fix up the good things I have in my life already first instead of seeking something new to provide a solution. In my online business, I just have realized that all the work I need to do is in making a better business out of the one I already have rather than chasing the next big thing. In five years of failing to do business well most of the time online, I have seen that my tendency to value new customers over existing customers, new money over old, and to seek salvation in the great achievements has cost me a lot of opportunities to help the people that have already asked for and given me the ability to help.

In my relationships and living situation, I find the same is true. I would consistently try to get more friends on Facebook instead of being a friend to the friends I already have. I would fantasize about a bigger house instead of fixing up the one I already had. While I recognize sometimes life requires a move, a relationship change, or a pivot in business, most of the time the work from day to day is in making the best out of what I already have and that work will tend to produce bigger results than house shopping, adding new friends, or launching a new website.

The exercise for today is to find another area of my life where I still have the toxic mindset that I need something new rather than to keep doing the work of fixing what I already have. Thank you for reading this today and I hope you enjoyed it!

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Hear how on a day where I am sick I still show up to do the podcast because it is good for me to do it every day. Listen to a story of two antarctic exploration teams that had a long journey and the difference approaches they used with one team doing the same amount every day and the other doing the most they could every day. Can you guess which group died from exposure and which group completed their journey?

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Hear how I discovered the power of getting out of bed with my wife every morning in producing a happy mood immediately that morning. Twelve months after seeing that my life was consistently happier if I went to bed with my wife, I finally have noticed that if I get out of bed right away and help with my daughter in the morning, my day almost always starts off on a happy note.

The amazing lesson I share today is the power of small decisions on happiness. I see being happy today as the product of making the right choices in life not on major things but on very minor things like when to get out of bed, what to say, when to eat, and when to go to sleep. Being conscious of the impact of these decisions allows me to act in a way that produces a consistent good feeling about life and to see that if I choose in the opposite way, I am knowingly choosing to suffer. Now when my wife gets out of bed, I realize my choices are to get up with her right away or to have a bad mood that morning. Seeing that clearly motivates me to get up right way.

Today instead of a prayer at the end, I am trying a new format by offering an exercise for the day. Would you try to spot one of these small decisions in your life as I do in mine? After seeing the power of making a simple choice to get out of bed promptly in the morning, now I want to find one more choice I have like that each day to discover another opportunity to be even happier.

Thank you for reading this today and I hope you enjoy the episode!

Sincerely,

Jerry Banfield

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Listen to how I enjoy a day being sick and am free from the suffering of wishing I felt better. Hear the habits and ways of thinking today that allow me to accept the cold or flu I have while seeing the benefits to feeling this way like more opportunities to rest and an easier time being mindful.

For most of my adult life, I felt like a victim of the world when I was sick and always was in a hurry to feel better. My basic thinking was that not feeling good was simply annoying and better to minimize the pain while fighting against it to get better. Today I take a loving approach by looking at how I feel and adjusting what I do to match how I feel. This allows me to spend much less time being sick overall and also is a part of eliminating activities like drinking that I used to do which make me more sick than any flu or cold ever did.

Thank you for reading this and I hope you enjoy listening to this episode of my Happier People podcast!

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Hear how I am slowing down my life today to enjoy each moment. Listen to stories of what happens when being in a hurry is the default state of life and the consequences that are completely avoided by moving through the day with a little patience. I am sure the advice I would give myself 10 years from now is to slow down. Where am I trying to go each day? In my business online, what difference does doing one more video make at the cost of being in a hurry the entire day to produce it? When I am driving, I gratefully have learned after being stopped by police at least ten times to drive the speed limit no matter what. Now when I see another person speeding and driving recklessly, I know where they are in a hurry to get to. They want to arrive in the future and they will never get there. I still speed through simple activities like going to the bathroom and have even noticed I have been trying to hurry through writing this description. Begin conscious of my habit of hurrying through parts of my day is the first step to changing my behavior. Thank you for reading this and I hope it is useful for you!

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As my throat starts feeling sore this morning, listen to how I think about the benefits of getting sick and look at the fear that comes up of experiencing the illness. I hope hearing my thoughts as I potentially am about to come down with a cold will be helpful for you next time you are feeling the same way. Hear how I find it unnecessary to take any additional supplements because my daily eating is already designed to do the very best I know how to do to fight illness and simply continuing that is enough. While I used to be quick to take cold medicine at the first discomfort of being sick, hear how now I want to fully feel how sick I am to help my body heal by making sure I do not do more than my body wants to during the sickness. In the past I often would try and work through being sick using cold medicine to numb the pain only to end up getting sicker and staying sick for longer.

Even if you are feeling great today, I hope listening to this episode of my happier people podcast will be helpful for you to remember the next time you are thinking you might be coming down with a cold. Thank you for reading this today and I hope you have a great day!

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Hear how I limit activities like watching TV, listening to music, and reading fictional books to approximately an hour a day because I want to stay focused on living in reality. Listen to stories of how I used to spend my entire life in one fantasy or another. Explore the problems that I faced with getting lost in thought when I wanted to be participating in my life. Try driving today without listening to any music and without thinking about something the entire time. What I try to avoid completely today is fictional thinking especially as far as my life's story. My day is spent focused on what I need to do, why I am doing it, and how I can do it most effectively. Each day used to be spent mostly thinking about how nice life might be if ... or how awful life might be if ... When I share about how devastating fantasy thinking is for relationships especially with a partner, I hope you have the chance to identify any areas you would like to improve in your life today and behaviors you are doing that are positive which you would like to keep!

Thank you for listening to this Happier People podcast episode which focuses on mindfulness, the ideas presented in the power of now, and having a healthier intimate relationships.

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Listen to how I recenter my thinking today after becoming sick last night and this morning with racing thoughts about my business. When I start feeling afraid, I remember to consider the facts about my life including that this body will pass away someday. This helps my workflow to focus on doing the most good I can for the most people today instead of trying to impress you.

I started getting sick with shame which then produces racing thoughts to avoid the spotlight when listening to a free class about negotiating and suddenly becoming afraid that I was doing my business all wrong. Am I undervaluing my time? Is what I am doing limiting me to working a job forever? Why am I not charging more for what I do?

The problem with thoughts like this is only my resistance to them. Remembering the big reset button this morning helped me to recenter spiritually and to go on doing work that I hope will be useful for you today and go beyond trying to impress you by offering some real value.

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