Will you let me tell you a little secret about feeling like we are good enough and acting as if we have already got enough because especially for posting on Steem and live streaming on @dlive this helps us to reach the biggest audience without struggling?
The Difference in Acting As If We Are Famous vs Hustling for Views!
When I have enough will tend to attract a lot more and everything tends to happen with an effortless feeling. I know I am hustling when what I have is judged as not good enough, everyone else is in my way, and each day feels like a struggle. I'm grateful that lots of people say they'd like to be where I'm at today, and in the deepest sense of things, we all are exactly where I'm at today.
We are all good enough as we are today. We are all exactly how we have chosen to be today. These are big things called truths. Now, some of us will get aggravated because we are trying to make a fantasy world where it's different, where we are operating in fear and scarcity, and when we hear the truth it calls us to leave that.
What I'm saying is when we act as if, where we are at is good enough, and it's where we chose to be, we are able to claim our full power, and then go do all those amazing things we fantasize about.
I remember posting and saying in one of my early YouTube videos that I would someday have a million views. That was about seven years ago.
Let's see how many views I have now.
I have 21 million views on YouTube and someday I thought I might have a million. I have 20 times as many as I thought I might have someday.
You see, most of us struggle to imagine how good things could go for us, and a lot of us get tricked into hustling out of a sense of feeling like we are not good enough. To make ourselves feel better, we will often try to make others feel the same way instead of helping out.
For example, on my live streams, I often see comments about, "You got 200,000 subscribers and only three viewers. Nice." That's okay because however many viewers I have is good enough. I've had live streams with almost a thousand live viewers at once, I've had live streams consistently with hundreds of viewers at once, I've had live streams that almost no one watched, and in fact if you wanted to take the median most of my live streams have had five or ten viewers or less.
Even where I'm at with seven years of uploading videos and having a business online with thousands of videos, you could argue whether I've actually made it or not.
The trick is to act as if you already are wherever you think you want to be. If you think you'd like to be where I am at, act as if you are already here with me. I do this and it helps me to focus on what's truly worth doing versus these little BS hustling time wasters. I've done so many of them that's why I think it's so important to tell you about this because these little BS hustling time wasters seem like a good idea until we question what belief are these originating out of.
Let me give you an example, so you understand what I'm talking about. I started my music live-streaming station a few months ago on Twitch among all my other platforms. What I noticed is that the Twitch affiliate program required an average of at least three viewers on the stream. I have four computers in my house, a Windows PC, a Mac Pro, an iMac and a MacBook Pro.
Now, do the math. Three viewers on Twitch plus or minus 4 computers. I easily have enough computers to guarantee that three people are always watching all of my live streams on every platform.
I easily could make a unique Facebook account, Twitter account, YouTube account and Twitch account, and wherever else I want to live stream at. I easily could guarantee every time I live stream I've got a bare minimum on every platform of 3 or 4 viewers depending on how hard I want to try. I actually happen to have 2 Twitch accounts because you can't change your username and when I switched to Jerry Banfield, I had an old username I used, so I had to make a new Twitch account.
When I first started the music stream, I thought it might be just a good idea. Why don't I just load up my Twitch stream on the other user account and that will buff my account? It will give me an extra viewer on my live stream that then along with my one thousand nine hundred and something followers, maybe it is 700 whatever, then I should easily be able to hit that three that I need on Twitch in order to become an affiliate, and that will unlock these additional monetization methods, so great to be an affiliate. I actually did that.
Even with all the followers I've got, even with the millions of dollars I have made online, I was acting as if I had nothing. Fortunately, I caught this mistake fast. I had literally just posted a video on my "Happier People" podcast a little while before that is called "Act as if we already have what we want," and I thought, "What do I want?"
I want to be a partner on Twitch. God, I always want more, right? I want to be a partner on Twitch and have all these viewers, and be just having tips roll in, and I thought about that.
When I'm a partner on Twitch, when I've got thousands of live viewers, would I take the time to go load a second computer up and add one more viewer to it? Would I do that?
I laughed. I said, "Absolutely not. There's no way."
"When I have thousands of viewers on all my live streams at once, I couldn't be bothered to care if there was one or two extra viewers, especially using some extra time of mine to load it up on a second or third or fourth computer, to artificially boost the view count. That's lame!" Once I detected that, I stopped doing it.
You see, even with all the followers I have, if you add up my followers, over 2.5 million, even with all the views I've had on my live streams, all the money I've made online, I still get tempted into hustling when I try something new especially.
"Let me hustle and see if I can get this going faster."
My follower count is the reflection of my hustling. My follower count is artificially boosted massively. I probably have about a hundred thousand true followers online that really are interested in occasionally seeing things that I post, who have genuinely chosen to like my Facebook page or follow me on Twitter or subscribe on YouTube for something I personally have created and participated in significantly.
On my YouTube channel I've been a part of the creation process on everything, but I haven't been significant in a lot of the videos that I've gotten popular, like my hacking videos where the majority of each video is someone else I paid to do hacking tutorials. That's hustling.
If I had a million YouTube subscribers, I never would have done that. I did that out of hustling. Hustling sucks the energy we have out of doing our best work.
You see, when I'm sitting there fooling around trying to be a Twitch affiliate and artificially buff the viewer counts on my live stream, the belief that's required to do that is, "What I have right now is not good enough."
Most of us never make it out of, "What I have is not good enough," and this is the number one thing that holds us back universally, especially with things like live streaming because the "What I have is not good enough" is just brutal for live streaming.
You throw your stream up, you are all excited and you might get lucky to have one or two of your friends come through and watch for a little while. If you do get some success, you have maybe 10 or 20 of your friends come through, there is a big excitement and you work it up, and at some point there may be fifty or a hundred people that watch, and then the dip.
What you do then starts to get old and boring. People aren't quite as interested anymore in what you have to say. Your friends have stopped telling all their friends about your live stream. You can't do whatever you did before for one reason or another.
You quit playing video games or you stopped giving an F about cryptocurrency tutorials, and now all of a sudden you pull up your live stream, you are all pumped and maybe five people watch. You had all these people before.
Now, five isn't good enough anymore whereas when I started live streaming five would have been amazing. I tried a couple of events, no one came. I tried live streams and I did all this work to promote it, and I was lucky to get five or ten people to watch it after spending money on ads, email signups, etcetera.
The critical limitation is a belief that what we have is not good enough. Especially with live streaming, the numbers are brutal on this belief, and especially if you keep thinking like I've thought: "I'll just get more followers and that'll fix it."
I've got a lot of followers today and that doesn't fix it. You see, even some of the YouTubers and the live streamers, and the people on Twitter, Facebook pages, you will see people that have 10 times the followers I do and once you start detecting this belief, you will see it all over what many of them are doing also.
There are guys with millions of YouTube subscribers always hustling for more views trying to make the next epic video, always competing with other YouTubers, putting other YouTubers down, always going for the maximum possible views. They are hustling, grinding themselves trying to get every single more subscriber, still not feeling like what they do is good enough.
I know because I've gotten in the same trap with money. I've made millions of dollars online from the comfort of my home. If you look on my Steem I probably have, hopefully, like $400,000 of it just sitting there. I made over $600,000 on Udemy, over a hundred thousand on StackSkills, almost fifth thousand on YouTube ad revenue and tons of other little income sources. I tell you this because it is the truth and I find no shame in talking about money.
I've more money and value than I've ever had in my entire life today, and yet it was just a few weeks ago, maybe even last week, after buying a house I was lured into the temptation that somehow I don't have enough money, even though for the first time in my life I have a positive net worth. I have more assets than liabilities.
Despite all the data, I still got lured into the "I don't have enough" mindset, and then I saw how ridiculous that is.
"Really?"
"You don't have enough?"
"Really?"
Use what you already have. What you have is good enough.
Look at it, make the best out of it and remember if you want to have enough in the future, you must have enough today because what you have tomorrow is a function of what you have today.
If one person watching your live stream is not enough, artificially gaming the view counts will not make it better. In fact, gaming those view counts artificially will reinforce the fact that what you have is not good enough.
It may work, you might be able to sneak into being a Twitch affiliate. You might be able to figure out little ways to hustle and get more people to watch. I've done a lot of it. I've done all kinds of it and the problem is that it consistently reinforces that initial belief that what you have is not enough and you have to step out of that at some point.
First, by honestly admitting, "Look, I don't think what I have is enough.” Even with X amount of money, X number of wives and girlfriends, X number of cars, it’s shocking to realize how good your life can be and you don't think it is good enough.
I'm grateful today that my life is good enough and you can feel that in what I'm doing. What I'm doing is good enough. This is the work I do with good enough. This allows me a great sense of purpose and simplicity and comfort doing what I have to do every day.
I think, "How may I help you?" because I have enough, because I have a wonderful life and I intend to share that with anyone who is interested in receiving the help.
Seeing that I am enough, I have enough, is critical in live streaming especially because there are very few other things that areas brutally consistent about reminding you that you are not good enough or that if you believe you are good enough that you are good enough.
The numbers on live streaming, the viewers are so effective at showing us how many people are watching and triggering our not enough, that most of us stop doing it out of that pain.
I've seen lots of my friends start live streaming and they quit because that brutality of the "not enough" is reinforced over and over again. I've had friends live streaming on Twitch, Facebook, YouTube and for months that one or two viewers at best and they quit because every time all they see going on their live stream is, "I don't have a good enough following. No one's watching. No one cares about my live streams. I might as well not do it."
There has to be the joy of simply doing it. It's got to be good enough like with my music. There are very few people in the world that give an F about my music.
I love my music. I listen to my music. I have fun playing my music. Sometimes I hate my music.
I listened to one of my songs in the car the other day and I said, "This is complete crap."
That complete crap song helps me make another song that might be amazing, and I enjoyed making that complete crap song. I had fun doing something that sounds just about as bad as you can imagine, and not everyone agrees with me, there might be one person in the world who listens to that song and just hears God in that song.
"Oh, my God. This is good."
That's how we see enough.
If one person loves what we do, that's enough, and it needs to start with me.
When I love what I do, I don't need all that validation from the rest of the world that what I'm doing is good enough. I realized today that if I want to have a huge following, if I want to make a big difference in the world of music, I must love doing music and I must love sharing it, and I will love my music.
Then, when I love my music, guess what? There is a good chance that at least some people will feel the same way, and that's the key to doing all of this.
If you want to build a following live streaming, you must be happy with the following you have got today. That will naturally attract more people to your following, and it will eliminate all those time-wasting activities, all those little things you do to artificially feel better about your following, it will eliminate all those time wasters.
You see, I've got a lot more free time today because I don't do all that crap. I don't waste time trying to artificially boost my following today.
Now, sure, when I have something I think is extremely valuable to share, like I think Steem is incredible, I've collaborated with people and found a way to advertise it and share it. When we love something, it is natural to want to tell everyone about it. Let us not confuse love and excitement with a belief that we need more for it to be better. With this in mind, I don't put a whole lot of time and energy into it. I make a video, honest, I share my truth, I put it in the ads, I let it run.
So, yes, we can promote ourselves. Absolutely! But where do we come from when we are promoting that belief? Do we come from a place where we are good enough today and where, therefore, there is an excitement about the future? Or do we come from a place where what we are doing is not good enough today, but if we hustle, if we work hard and we struggle, some theoretical day in the future it might be good enough?
I encourage you to ask this question today:
"Is what we have good enough or are we hoping, are we struggling, are we guessing that maybe we can work hard enough today that maybe tomorrow will be good enough?"
I'm grateful today that what I do is good enough today and that allows me to have a life filled with joy and happiness and even when sadness and frustration come, that's good enough for today.
Yesterday, I woke up and just couldn't stand the idea of filming any more videos or doing anything on my business, and what felt good enough was to just work in my garden, to move my garden from the house I'm in now to the house we are moving to, and to do manual labor for a couple of hours, that was good enough.
I hope this is good enough for you because it is good enough for me.
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk on the transcript from @deniskj
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