How do we benefit by sharing the details of our lives including the pain points? What has consistently been my biggest challenge and how might looking at it be useful? What I enjoy most as a reader is the honesty of an author looking at their challenges because I feel empowered to get curious about my own pain points and open to receiving help with them instead of just seeking to numb all my feels.
Where have I been challenged the most recently? The expectations I put on my life are suffocating and they’re way greater than what anyone else does to me. My own expectations make me more miserable than anyone else has the ability to do. My own expectations are so much greater than whatever the world expects me to do. Here’s what my expectations look like as seen from my schedule on a typical day.
Will you read this post or watch the original video from YouTube because you might enjoy the rest of the story?
My Daily Expectations Bring Me to Tears!
I’m grateful that I’ve been reading Brené Brown’s book, I don’t remember which one it is, but she encourages us to talk about shame and what makes us feel shame in our lives.
Over the last several months, this has been the biggest thing that’s made me feel shame, that I’m not worthy of love and that I’m not good enough. I have this crazy idea that getting up, doing these videos and doing my work is what makes me worthy of Love, and that really, I don’t have a right to hang out with my family or get to experience any of the other love and joy until I step up in my studio and do some videos, which is go to work, essentially.
Our work, especially as a man, tends to draw a lot of value out of who we are and rather we are worthy of Love based on work. This has been absolutely true in my case. I found it very difficult to even hang out with my family in the morning before I’ve done some work, before I feel like I’m worthy of love.
So, I’m talking about this because I want it to be better. I’ve broken down and cried over this a lot, I have gotten upset about everything. Most of my day is very happy, and yet this right here is what I’ve broken down and cried about the most.
This is what has gotten me all angry, irritated, and frustrated. This is my biggest shame trigger. This currently is the biggest single challenge in my life.
Here it is.
Now, I don’t actually put this on my calendar, I’ve set up this calendar as an example.
This is what I expect myself to do every day, seven days a week, with minor changes, like my Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, which is on a different time on Sunday.
Basically, the calendar still looks the same with the family time and the AA meeting shuffled around.
Seven days a week, these are the expectations on Saturday and Sunday even as well.
Between 7:30 to 8:30 in the morning, I usually wake up with my family. I expect that I ought to hold my butt out of bed as soon as my daughter cries, "Daddy," in the morning, which she started doing about as soon as she wakes up now.
I expect that I should be ready to just pop out of bed at the drop of a hat. I immediately get triggered off into shame if I lay there for an extra couple of minutes and don’t get up right when she calls. I expect that I should be absolutely ready to wake up first thing in the morning with the family every single day.
That’s a lot different from most of my adult life where I often spent five, six or eight hours in bed with a hangover anywhere from one to three days a week. Now, every day, I expect to just pop up right away. I feel great most mornings, so I expect to wake up with my family after getting a full night of sleep for eight plus hours every single night, to wake up right when my wife and daughter do.
If I deviate even slightly, immediate pain and frustration happens. Several mornings, I’ve broken down and cried within an hour of getting up because my head was so full of expectations that I could hardly enjoy getting my daughter ready for the day, and saying good morning to the wife, because my mind was all wrapped up in what I was going to do next.
Yesterday, we all woke up late at about 9:30. My daughter went to bed at about 8:30 or 9:00 and my wife and I went to bed at about 11.00. We all slept in till 9:30, which is 10 hours of sleep, "Holy cow." We got a lot of sleep here.
So, if any little thing pushes my schedule back, up here like this, "Oh my God. You still need to get all of this done even though you started an hour late."
Absurd expectations about the speed at which I can get things done
I expect to film and upload a video to YouTube and Facebook every day. At one point, that used to seem like a big challenge to me. That used to be really difficult and it would take hours to just get a video together and film it.
Hell, today, I have such good equipment and I’m so used to doing this that I expect to be able to pump out a 35 minute video tutorial, which I’m very grateful hundreds of people left likes on. If you’re one of them, thank you very much. A few people disliked, and if you’re one of them, thank you very much as well.
I expect to be able to crank a video out like that every day with little effort. I expect in an hour to be able to crank out a 35 minute video tutorial, upload it, write a description that will do really good in YouTube search and put a cover image. I expect that I can do that in an hour.
That’s a little bit insane!
I have read that vloggers spend hours editing their videos. They try to just work really hard to get one video up a day. I expect that I can crank mine out in an hour of actual time.
That’s the tip of the iceberg!
The next two hours after that, I expect that I can film and upload a video course on my website.
Now, I’ve got about 100 video courses I have filmed, it takes anywhere from 20 minutes to an hour to take one I’ve already filmed and to upload it on my new University of Jerry Banfield. Some days I film new videos for courses, other days I’m just trying to get my existing courses up on the website. I expect every day, no matter what’s happening, that I should be able to get an entire course uploaded.
My friend has been working on three courses for six months. I expect I can knockout and film a course in a day. I’m grateful that the last cryptocurrency investing course I made called "Number One Cryptocurrency Investment Opportunity," was filmed in two or three days. I got everything done and promoted it. I did all of that maybe in 6 to 10 hours of real time.
I have absurd expectations about the speed at which I can film and get things done.
You know what happens?
This is what happen.
I wake up in the morning, sometimes I’m a little edgy right when I wake up.
Sometimes I need to break down and cry just to get through the morning without being nasty to my wife or daughter, instead of outwardly being angry.
My dad and mom were frequently outwardly angry, they’d wake up and get cranky, yell and scream. If that even starts to happen, I just break down and cry. I’m so sensitive.
If I get through the morning gracefully, which I do lots of times, my wife and daughter usually are out of the house during my work time, because they go across the street with the family. They go do things in the morning, and often they will come back at about 11:30. They’ll be gone while I’m working and they’ll come back.
I expect to drop what I’m doing immediately for family time
Man, when they come back, I expect that I should be able to drop what I’m doing immediately. Now, if you’ve worked and you’re passionate about your work, now look at how easily next time when something comes up you just drop what you’re doing. You don’t keep thinking about it, you don’t keep wanting to do it, you don’t get out, you just drop it.
I expect when my wife and daughter come home that I can just drop wherever I'm at. Yesterday I was in the middle of writing a YouTube description for the video tutorial. I almost had it done, then my wife and daughter came home. I expect I can drop what I’m doing.
Why?
Because when they’ve come home lots of other times, I'd stay here and keep working, and the shame just builds.
"Oh, what a great father in here, typing away on your keyboard while your wife and daughter are out there. How are you going to feel on your deathbed someday when you sat in there and kept typing this YouTube description while your wife and daughter were out there running around? Oh, heard that? Your daughter's banging on the door, 'Daddy, daddy,' and what are you doing? Acting like you’re hiding in here. 'Oh, I’m just working, I’ll be out in a minute.' Now, you get your butt out there and you say, 'hi,' to your wife and daughter."
I expect that I should just be able to drop what I’m doing when my wife and daughter get home, hang out with them, run around with them, talk, act like I weren’t even doing anything before. Some days I’m able to do this gratefully.
Yesterday, this kicked off a little 30 minute depression where I felt so bad, like I couldn’t work effectively or be a good husband or a father. I just literally laid on the couch, tried to keep my mouth shut and feel my feelings.
Other days it works out great. I meet my wife and daughter coming at the right time, "Hey, how you doing?" I hang out with them, I change my daughter's diaper, get her ready, give her to my wife to nap her, and then I come back into the next part of my day which is a Steemit post.
Time for all my other business tasks while my daughter takes a nap
Then it is time for all my other business tasks. Anything that requires responding to comments online, research, anything else I need to do that's quiet, while my daughter's napping. I've got about two hours while she naps in the afternoon to knock that out.
Man, that includes if I need to pay bills or anything, I'm just ripping through tasks. Like when I was learning about Steem, I was just researching, going through videos, skipping around, just ripping through, destroying one task after another.
Today, I'm hoping to upload an entire audio book and make a Steemit post in this stretch and get a course uploaded.
"Oh my God, this guy is effing crazy."
I can do so much and I'm used to like driving this body like a car. I'm used to driving it 100 miles an hour, being able to stop on a dime, and it's really easy for me to mentally and emotionally wreck because I can go so fast and I can do so much. I have these amazing capabilities and when they run into a wall, it's like, "booo."
I can't stand to be mean to anyone else anymore because I've been so mean and nasty so many times to so many people in my life. I cussed out tens of thousands of people in my life mostly online, many of them in person, most frequently my loved ones. I can't stand to do that anymore. If all that shame comes up, it's just like an instant depression, anxiety, fear, like I can't even breathe. So I've learned to just pray and lay down on the couch, and let it pass.
I'm grateful this often happens at some point during the day. Whenever it will be, like, "Let's just have this during family time, when you're hanging out with your family if you're laying down depressed on the couch, that counts, right?"
Another great shame trigger opportunity
When my daughter wakes up, it's another great shame trigger opportunity if she wakes up and calls for daddy, and I've got like another paragraph I need to write.
Yesterday, I had like five more lectures. I was uploading a class on how to publish on audible using ACX, which is the Audiobook Creation Exchange.
I had like five more videos, I'd spent 40 or so minutes uploading a course I had already filmed on the University of Jerry Banfield and I just was about finished. My daughter woke up, "Daddy, daddy," and the shame exploded.
"Look at him now, is that a nice father? Look at him in here uploading. On his deathbed he's going to love this."
"You can't work properly, you're not doing enough for your business, you haven't finished your work, your daughter needs you right now."
It's like, "Ghhr."
I remember sitting there like, "Ugh," just the energy.
Like, "Why can't I do anything right? Why can't I just finish something? Why is there not enough time?"
The truth is that I'm doing too much.
I'm trying to balance and fit everything in this perfect position and if there's one little vibration in the earth, it all slips slightly out of place. Then, I will lose my mind and let the crazy out, at least inside, but really it just looks like I'm crying and depressed on the outside for a little bit.
No, I don't know anyone in my life who goes to the doctor and takes medications for mental conditions that has the kind of life I want to have today.
So, no, I'm not going to a doctor and getting drugs to sedate myself and calm down, and then be happy with doing one damn thing every day.
That's why I drank alcohol and that's why I go to AA every day today, because I about killed myself doing that stuff.
No, I want to live and experience my full life sober. I want to maintain a healthy balance. I want to be able to make a contribution to the world. I want to be able to do everything in balance and I just will keep tweaking my approach, because this is a hell of a lot better than it used to be. As I continue tweaking my approach, I'm continuing to do better and better.
I'm sharing here the biggest struggle I'm currently having. It's okay to struggle and to be a little upset, it doesn't mean that you need to get some pill at the doctor that poisons the inside of your body and knocks the whole thing down because you get a little upset occasionally, that's normal.
What's abnormal is putting all kinds of substances in your body to screw it up, to take yourself down to the animal level. That's weird, that's crazy! I've done that a lot, which is why I don't want to do it anymore.
Thank you for reading with me!
If you enjoyed reading this post, would you please upvote it and read the next one because if you are like me every upvote feels good and I will be sharing the second part of this post next?
I love you, I hope you have a wonderful day today and I hope to see you again soon.
Love,
Jerry Banfield with edits by @gmichelbkk