Would you like to go through my day with me one step at a time to see the things I do every day, because my routines are extremely helpful for me today to have a wonderful peaceful life?
When you see what I do, you might want to copy something. I've taken a lot of things from others who have the kind of lives I wanted to have, and that I have now, and I've adapted their routines and made them mine.
What I'll do today is show you from the beginning to the end of my day including where it actually happens.
This is my bed I sleep in with my wife. We go to bed at about 10:30 PM.
We've got our room blacked-out here for the studio, these are sound absorbing pads.
I've got some in my studio area and they're just set up in opposite order.
You can see my recording studio as well.
Last night I went to bed at about 11:00 PM, and got up today at about 8:00 AM, so I get 8 or 9 hours of sleep every day. When I wake up, I'm well-rested.
Then, from here, I usually will get down on my knees and pray before I even get out of bed.
I get down, I pray to stay sober and to take care of my health.
Sobriety is about not putting things in my body including medications that alter my state regardless of whether I could get a doctor to give them to me or not.
Sobriety is about not altering the state of my body, to take care of that state as it is, a wholly, natural and normal state, to just take care of that and lovingly maintain that each day.
I ask God to stay sober and I am willing to do whatever that takes.
That's my basic way of living, the seed in my mind that gets planted every day as to what's most important.
Once I do that, then I get out of bed and I usually then walk over and go to the bathroom.
"Oh, you could have left that out, Jerry."
Then what I generally do after that, I often let the dogs out, but I go in and spend some time in here with my daughter. This is my daughter's room, this is where she sleeps.
I tend to go hang out with her in here.
Some people have a morning meditation, and this is my morning meditation, I sit and play with my daughter.
I often sit in this chair and I read some books to her, she's really into this one right now: "Nana in the City."
She also is into this truck one: "Goodnight, Goodnight, Construction Site."
That's her best thing over there, her pink blanky.
This is my morning meditation essentially.
Given my actual circumstances, it'd be pretty ridiculous for me to sit quietly when sitting with my daughter and playing with her is a perfect meditation because she is always in the state of Zen.
At two years old, she doesn't go off in the mind world all day and start thinking about all these things. She’s here, she's present, she's paying attention to what's going on. She’s playing, she's listening, she's learning, she's participating, she's a Zen master you could say. She's always in the state of Zen, she's almost always happy and if she has a brief moment of crying or a few minutes of upset, then she'll quickly go back to being happy right after that.
My morning meditation is I sit in here and play with my daughter while my wife then has time to get ready for the day, because my wife usually has activity she's doing with our daughter so that then I have some time to work.
Right now we are in that work time, so my wife and daughter are off, she went to hang out with her family this morning, and then I honestly forgot what she's doing after that.
After my wife and daughter leave, what I do is I get to work. I film videos in the house or mainly in the office.
What I do then, I grab something to eat. This is what I eat, I've got this smoothie.
This is the first thing I eat every single day.
I have this smoothie, it's made out of these fruits and vegetables, they're already pre-cut up, which is nice, that saves me a lot of time.
Then these pineapples are $5 each and I could grow them in the front yard instead of grass. They are already cut up too.
I use half of each of these tubs and one pineapple every day, so this is for four days.
Then I get down here into this drawer and this is also four days worth.
I put a quarter of these broccoli florets in the smoothie, I put a quarter of these Brussels sprouts in there, and I put a half bag of each of these carrots.
Then I've got ginger and turmeric in here. I cut up and put a little bit of that in my smoothie.
I make the smoothie in the afternoon, and then I'll throw in something like a banana and some oranges.
I've got this Ninja blender.
I actually make this later in the day, but this is one of the first things I actually eat in the morning.
I've already drank the entire smoothie and it's really nice because then my daughter drinks some of the smoothie as well, it helps her get her fruits and vegetables.
I lead by example, I don't have to sell her on having a smoothie or having her fruits and vegetables, she gets her fruits and vegetables with me first thing in the morning because I get them.
I also have some tea along with my smoothie, so that gets me really fired up, and then I'm most talkative. I don't talk much the rest of the day. I have these ground-up Matcha teas.
I have this one I bought from my friend Sherry.
Then I've got this pure Matcha, "Teaki Hut," which is instant black tea powder.
I put that in there and that gets me going, that gives me full energy and real talkative.
Then I get to work filming videos in the studio, my wife usually plans out activities that last for a few hours.
I like to have at least 2 or 3 hours so I can get to work filming these videos. I've got my set up here, all the equipment is listed on my website.
I've got a Mac Pro, which can live stream on 6 or 7 websites at once. I've got a Windows computer, which is the main controller. I've got two different keyboards and mice. I've got four monitors in total and two lights over here.
I get to work on these computers and that is usually what I do until about noon or so.
When my wife and daughter get home, then I'll usually hang out with them a little bit. I'll go change a diaper or something, help out. Then, it's time for my daughter to go in and nap.
We have quiet time at that point where I then go back and do some work that usually is more involved, just essentially uploading or rendering these videos I've made, making posts on Steemit.
My daughter wakes up from her nap maybe at about two o'clock in the afternoon, then it's generally time for me to hang out with my daughter, and that's when my wife and I switch.
My daughter will wake up in here at about two or three in the afternoon, and then usually I'll come in and start hanging out with her.
My wife will either go into a room or a kitchen table, go across the street, or go to Starbucks. She will go do her freelancing work on our laptop, she writes some articles online for attorney marketing companies.
Meanwhile, my daughter and I usually come out of the room and go over into the kitchen.
We'll make the smoothie together. She helps out, she puts things in the smoothie and we also make the dog food together. I make vegan dog food now out of oats and the peanut butter.
Then I've got these beans in here which I blend up. I cook the oatmeal and put that together.
This is the dog food in the fridge, I just put it in empty packing, these are "Organic Girl" packages that I get.
My daughter and I often will hang out in the kitchen for an hour usually at the minimum, we'll make our smoothie right here. She gets in her Tower so she can stand up there and be right next to the counter and everything with me.
After that, sometimes we'll go to the store, like yesterday. We hung out for a couple hours.
Then I usually go to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting after that, my wife wraps up her work, and she goes with our daughter hang out with her family.
Going to my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting takes about an hour and a half to two hours between leaving and going there, staying, hanging out with people in the meeting and coming back.
If you aren't an alcoholic or a drug addict, or you don't have one in the family, you don't go to Al-Anon, if you have no idea what I'm talking about or the 12-step program, the best thing I can equate it to is volunteer work.
I've been going over three years now and for me it's very much most days like volunteer work, and on other days when I'm having a hard time, it's like a group therapy session.
Lots of days it is like volunteer work, I'm having a great day, I go sit there and listen. I might share for a minute or a couple of minutes, it's mostly like volunteer work. According to the data, people who do volunteer work, charitable work, feel much happier in life.
I am very grateful for AA, because when I first came in, I was sick and needed a lot of help, and all those men and women who were volunteering, coming and sitting there for free, listened to me and helped me out, and talked with me, saved my life.
I try to go be a part of that every day. When I'm finished with my AA meeting, then I'll generally come back home and spend some time with my wife and daughter until about 8:00 PM. In which case we go in for a bath time. It's nice because that's usually the last time I get to see my daughter for the day.
We have a nice bath time in here, my wife just cleaned the bathtub and everything yesterday during her work time, so I figured this is probably the best time to show you everything in here.
She has all her bath time friends in here that we play with. She has a nice bath here in the bathroom, and then I usually say goodnight to her. Then that's the last time I get to see her. My wife takes her in, gets her all dressed, and then puts her to bed.
Then once my daughter is in bed, I go take these two out for their dog walk.
This is our time we get to spend together each day. I'll take them both out for their dog walk.
We'll go out and walk for about an hour, and that's my designated talking on the phone time. If I'm going to talk to you on the phone, it's generally going to be during my dog walk. I call up my mom, my brother, my aunt, my friends and family members. I talk on the phone during my dog walk.
If they're not available, I'll listen to an audio book or sometimes I'll just walk around the neighborhood and be present, listen, enter Zen.
Then I would come back home where it's quiet time in the house. I'll say hi to my wife, she's usually working on the couch there. I then will come in and take a shower.
Sometimes I've been pushing the limit, lately I've been coming in and fooling around, working a bit more at night. I generally have a harder time falling asleep and get more aggravated doing that.
After I shower, especially if I sit down on the couch here where I read on my iPad or something like that, then I often get all stirred up before bed. But sometimes that can happen reading a book too or watching something on Netflix.
I don't usually watch things on Netflix, but I just started watching "Cowspiracy," and it's really good, and that's my day then.
I get up off the couch and go to the bathroom, go back in the bedroom, lights off and bedtime about anywhere from 10:30 PM to 11:30 PM if my wife wants to stay up and work some more.
This is what I do almost every single day, seven days a week. Now, AA meetings are at different times on different days of the week, and some days if we go do something, the schedule will be slightly different.
This is what my life is most every day, and you might think, "Oh God, Jerry, that's boring."
You could look at it that way, there's not a lot of excitement or drama, my life is very regimented routine, it goes very smooth. Even if I get a little upset or frustrated during the day, I just talk with people about it. My routines essentially carry me through the day and drop me in bed at night.
I will keep my mouth shut when I'm trying to make things worse, talk to people and ask for help, then I usually feel better pretty quick too. This is what I do every day and this is the happiest my life’s been before.
These are the current things that I have in my life. As my daughter gets older, and when she was younger, I had different routines, but a lot of the things just move around at what time I do them.
In the past, my wife used to go out of town with our daughter when we lived in a different city to visit her family, I'd often play video games with my friends then when she was gone. Right now, with the life I have, it doesn't make sense to play any video games.
I try to respect my limitations because all the things I have in my life are also a blessing and a limitation. Each thing I have in my life both gives me a blessing and limits me from doing other things.
This is my life today, this is what I do every day and it's wonderful. I love it, I'm very grateful for it and that's why I share it here with you today.
This is what an ordinary, peaceful, happy life looks like, relatively free from drama and disturbance.
I'd say about 98% of the time my life is smooth and peaceful. The disturbances are minor and stand out a lot, therefore it motivates me to handle them and move on to ask for help, see why this is happening or what I can do to learn from them and move on.
I appreciate you going through this journey with me. If you've enjoyed this would you please upvote it if you're on Steemit, or leave a like if you're on YouTube or Facebook because that's how I know that talking about things like this is worth doing compared to filming cryptocurrency videos or other tutorials.
If you would rather have me do something else, would you please leave a dislike or if you're on Steemit, just have a comment and give me suggestions?
Thank you very much for reading this.
I love you, you're awesome.
I hope you have a wonderful day today and hope to see you again soon.
Thank you very much for experiencing this episode of Happier People Podcast with me, which was originally filmed as the video below!
If you found this post helpful on Steemit, would you please upvote it and follow me because you will then be able to see more posts like this in your home feed?
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript by GoTranscript
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