How do we know what is most useful and fulfilling for us to do today? Where does asking the question "What would I like to do today" lead us into unhappiness? Would you join us in reading about this because I think this will be fantastically helpful for lifting any ongoing moods of sadness, depression, fear, anxiety and frustration based on my experience with the same?
Why Does Asking "What Would I Like To Do" Bring Unhappiness?
What I’ve learned is that I don’t exist outside of my relationships. This is an amazingly powerful idea that once I fully learn this at my heart, it allows me to ask questions which then give me the chance to be of both maximum service and maximally happy, today.
When I used to ask a bunch of selfish questions in my life, I used to experience a lot of depression, fear, anxiety, frustration, loneliness, separation and all those things we hate.
I experienced them more.
When I kept asking questions like, "What do I want to do today? How do I feel better? Why do I feel like this? What would make me happy?"
The more I asked those questions, the more I got answers that kept me in the middle of the same feelings that I was trying to escape by asking those questions in the first place.
I’d ask, "What would I like to do today?" And I’d start thinking about things that would make me feel good. You see, when I’m asking what do I want to do today, I’m not considering what the whole rest of humanity would like me to do today.
I would get answers like, "Well, maybe I should go down the liquor store, buy a handle of vodka, go home and play a bunch of poker and video games online," because I would think that is the best thing I can do to relieve the pain and feel happy today.
Now, what does the rest of the world need me to do?
Probably not any of those things.
What I would then feel the next day is an awful hangover. I’d feel useless, I’d feel all alone, and guess what I’d start asking again?
"What do I want to do today?"
"God, my head hurts. How do I feel better?"
"What can I do to get myself out of this situation?"
Then I'd think, "Well, I'll take some Advil, drink some water, play a bunch of video games and maybe I’ll feel better."
There was very little in the most unhappy times of my life of asking questions like:
What do all the rest of the people on Earth need me to do?
What would I do today that would be of greatest service to all the rest of the people on Earth?
These are the questions I ask today.
I get up and I often, by default, will start going into those "what would I like to do" questions. Now I’ve learned that those questions are complete crap. If I ask those questions, I will get answers that are also complete crap.
I realize today, it’s not that I’m a smart or wise person, I want to live. My tolerance, my ability to live by continuing to ask selfish questions, is not something that I can count on.
What would make me feel better?
If I go around asking, "What do I want to do? What would make me feel better?" Even just asking that for a few hours, I might end up taking my own life based on my own experience in the past. Now, not necessarily immediately, but I might do something stupid like take a drink, and then from there, the possibility of me taking my own life is very serious, given what I’ve seen in the past.
I’m lucky today that I don’t have the luxury, you might say, of going around asking a bunch of selfish questions because I realize that I can’t live like that anymore. It hurts too much to go around asking what do I want to do.
What I notice in people who are unhappy, they’re on this journey to discover themselves. They’re on a journey to discover what they want. The questions they ask tend to be just like these:
What would I like to do?
What would make me happy?
What would I like to create?
Where would I like to go?
What would I like to see?
What would I like to do?
What would I like to feel?
Who would I like to be?
These questions suck.
These questions produce a bunch of answers that don’t bring any happiness. They produce a bunch of answers in ignorance of what all the rest of us need.
It’s easier for me today to think about what other people need as a husband and as a father, because if I start asking what do I want to do, I realize I’m leaving out what my wife wants me to do and what my daughter wants me to do, and I know that it makes me miserable.
It’s easier when you live alone to just focus on what you want to do because you can tell yourself, "Well, it doesn’t matter. Who cares if I get drunk and play video games all day or smoke weed all day and watch TV? Who cares? It’s just me. No one cares."
But all of us do care. We are all connected on a deep telepathic level. Even if you don’t want to get into that aspect of it, we all define ourselves based on our relationships.
We don't exist alone
I would argue, suggest here, that we don’t exist alone. We don’t exist separately. If I take away all of your relationships, in fact if everyone else, but you disappears on Earth, you don’t exist anymore because you’re all there is. Everything I used to describe this body is a word with a context to others. If the others are taken away, I don’t exist anymore.
For example, I’m a husband. Being a husband implies there is a wife. That implies one part of a whole, which is a marriage. If you take away the wife, I am no longer a husband. Continue doing that process and you can literally strip this body of any relevance, of any label, and you can make anything applying to it meaningless.
That means that this body, me, I, myself, does not exist without other people. I’ll do a little deeper example. If I’m a son, a son implies having parents. If you take away both of my parents, you might say, my dad already passed on and if my mom passed on, I’d still be a son, right?
What if I forget about my parents?
What if I don’t think about my parents?
What if they’re gone?
If I don’t have any parents and I don’t think about them anymore, then I’m not a son anymore.
You could also say that I’m a father. If you take away my daughter and I don’t think about her, I’m not a father anymore.
If you go through and keep erasing all those things, there’s no me left. I am all that is.
Even something like an alcoholic, which I go, say, "I am" everyday at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting. If there’s no one else on Earth, then the meaning of alcoholic is irrelevant. Even if I do drink, there’s no one else that doesn’t.
You see, if there’s no one to be different, if you take away all of the relationships, you take away all of the other people, anything I think I am is meaningless.
Even something like a gamer or when I play video games. That’s something I used to think of. That’s something you still could easily say that I’m a gamer, even though I haven’t played any games in three months. I’ve played 20,000 hours of video games in my life. You could easily say that I’m a gamer.
If there’s no one on Earth who’s not a gamer, then what difference does it make rather I’m a gamer or not?
Relationships define who I am
All of the things that we think we are and that we based our idea of who we are on, require a relationship. What is the most important role you play today?
For me, in order, mine is husband, father, family member, friend, alcoholic, YouTuber, podcaster, teacher, et cetera. All these roles describe this body’s relationship to the other bodies. If there are no other bodies, this body doesn’t exist anymore. It’s all there is. I have to have other people to define the relationship. To exist means to stand out. If there is nothing else, there is no way to stand out. If there are no other people, I cannot stand out as an individual.
The only way I can exist is through definition of who this body is based on other people. If you take away all my relationships, there is no me. You can’t define me without a relationship. You can’t define me as a husband without a wife. Even if it is an idea in the past. Even though I say I’m a husband today, I see no wife around me. I believe she’s across the street with her family. I see no daughter around me, and yet these are ideas I carry in my heart.
When I think about what all of my relationships need me to do, it guides me into actions that bring happiness. Because I've learned I can't directly seek happiness, I have to seek doing the right thing and being of service to all my other relationships, and then I receive happiness.
It's kind of like going to work. If you go to work and just ask them for money, they're not likely to give it to you. If you go to work and do your job, then they'll give you money. Happiness seems to be the same way. I show up and do my job, which is serving other human beings, and then I get paid in terms of happiness.
I get paid in terms of a clean conscience to fall asleep at night. I get paid in terms of waking up and being excited to start the day. I get paid like today I get to go to EPCA with my wife, daughter and in laws. I get paid in terms of happy things to do.
If I show up and do my work for other human beings, other human beings love me. I show up every day here and I have the feeling you love me. I get that feeling because I love you. I give what I want to get. I want you to love me, so I love you. I give you the best of what helps me today. I've spent a lot of my days in my life depressed, laying in bed, just wishing it would end. Not having the courage to actually make anything in, but just wishing it'd be over.
Let's go to Las Vegas!
I remember flying on the way back from Las Vegas one time. One of those things that I ask, lots of times, "What would I like to do? What would make me happy?"
I got the answer, "Why don't you go to Las Vegas with your friends? Take the last couple of $1,000 you got, go gamble it, have fun with your friends, get drunk, forget about life. Go to your friend's bachelor party, that would make you happy."
Guess what I did?
I went to my friend's bachelor party in Las Vegas. I got way euphoric over the top. I won on the craps table. I was dropping $1,000 chips. I was so drunk. Dropping these chips screaming, I woke all my friends up playing Eminem's horrible song, which was my favorite song for a while, Fack.
It's quite full of sexual shame, really nasty, kind of like my stand up that I just finished doing where I talk about all these embarrassing things in my life. Guess what? On the way back from Las Vegas, I'm in a plane wishing, praying, "just let this plane crash."
I felt so miserable and I just said:
God, let this end. I just wanted to be happy. What? What's wrong with that? I just wanted to be happy and have fun and I feel, god awful now. Would you just let this plane crash? Because everyone else would feel so sorry for me then: "Oh, poor Jerry, he died in a plane crash."
Then everyone would say such wonderful things about me: "Oh Jerry was such a great husband. Jerry was such a great son. He was such a great co-worker. He was this great YouTuber. Wow."
Instead of sitting there thinking probably what I'll do is just do this some time and just finally work up the courage to kill myself, and then everyone will be all ashamed, "Oh god, I can't believe he killed himself." If the plane crashed right now, it'd really take care of, wrap everything up so nicely.
You see, for me I've learned asking over and over what I want, what would make me happy, what would make me look good? I've asked that so many times that I got so miserable, I realized I literally couldn't stand to live that way anymore.
I know I will not continue to live that way anymore. I've done it too much, I can't stand it. I've had so many days like that plane flight back from Las Vegas, praying to God the plane would crash, an earthquake, going to work as a police officer hang over wishing maybe I'll do a traffic stop and someone will shoot me.
Then I'll be such a hero, everyone will just love me, "Jerry was such a great officer. Jerry, he came to work, he was so strong" when that's not how I felt. I felt like a miserable, filthy person. I always just sought relief from that, "What would I do to feel better? What can I do to feel good today?"
What can I do for others?
What I've learned is that all I have to do is ask, what can I do for others and I immediately get out of all of that which I sought to escape. I remember the last time I had a hangover, I prayed to God and I mention it, so I don't forget it.
I remember praying to God, "God please, I'll do anything to stop drinking."
I had this thought about going to Alcoholics Anonymous and what motivated me to actually go there was I thought if I went there, I might be able to help someone else with the same problem I had. That's what motivated me to say, "Yes, I will go there. I will do that."
Even though I was afraid to go there, even though I had a bunch of negative thoughts and ideas about what that was like, including saying that AA is for quitters for 10 years or so, I went anyway because I thought I was hopeless to solve my own problems, but I might be able to go help someone else with theirs.
Now, picture that a guy in bed with a hangover, who's never been able to stay sober his whole adult life thinking that he could go help someone else with something he can't do for himself. This is the ridiculous thing in life, if you really want to feel good and be happy, it requires being of service to others.
I don't know anyone in the world who has a happy life that I would want to have, who doesn't consider and practice serving others on a daily basis, who doesn't participate in life in the form of paying attention to and putting that time and energy into their relationships. I don't know anyone who isn't connected with other human beings who has a happy life.
I know lots of people who are frustrated and miserable, who take a lot of medication and/or drink a lot of alcohols, smoke a lot of weed, do a lot of other drugs. I know a lot of people who are miserable and frustrated and who keep going around doing the same thing that I used to do for most of my life, and I'm lucky I got to the point where the pain was too great that I simply couldn't stand to stay here on Earth without doing better. I'm lucky I was sensitive enough to reach the breaking point before my life was completely destroyed.
My father was not nearly as sensitive as me. He absolutely trashed his entire life and was about to do it again before he had the same awakening, so to speak, that he better start thinking about what other people needed him to do more than he thought about what he wanted to do.
It seems like dying though, to jump into this. It seems like dying to start thinking about, "What do other people need me to do instead of what I want to do?"
The mind thinks, "You're not going to have a life anymore." You might look at me and say, "Jerry, you don't have a life today. You don't do anything just for yourself." I try not to do anything just for myself because there's no point in doing anything just for myself.
I seek freedom from myself
I've done enough things for myself for my whole life. I have a family member that says that he feels like there's the objective version of himself, that wants to be of service and knows the right thing to do and he's connected to other people, and then there's this "myself," as he calls it. That is just selfish, that he just wants to get drunk, smoke cigarettes, play video games and not care about what anyone else wants.
I share this with you today because I seek freedom from myself, from that part of me who doesn't care at all what you want me to do. Now, I don't mean that you should just go jump off of a cliff because one person wants you to do that.
If you're in a crazy relationship and the other person wants you to go harm yourself or something, then I encourage to think of more people. In statistical terms, the sample size that you want is at least around 200 or so of a random sample to have an effective study.
That's why it's so easy to put out things with fake statistics. You get 10 or 20 people together, you do a little study on them, it can easily, by random chance alone, come out to prove your point. If you just do enough of those, you'll surely get one that proves your point no matter what.
What I find in my life is that I need to be plugged into what hundreds of people want me to do because that gives me a good solid point of view. What I used to do was only have a few people who I cared about their opinion, and if those people were in the middle of being sick and selfish, and thinking about what they wanted to do, it was easy for me to learn from them and say, "Well, they only care about what they want. I'm going to just do the same thing." When I'm connected and plugged into as many people's lives as possible, I get a well rounded point of view.
One person, one day might be a little frustrated and be thinking about themselves, but the other 140 people in my life aren't, and then I can identify when I'm the one person stalking them, thinking about myself again when I start doing those same thoughts as before.
It only takes me a few minutes to an hour or two of asking questions like: "What do I want to do? Why do I feel like this? How can I feel better?" It only starts by a few minutes to an hour or two, and I am utterly miserable.
I've a very sensitive threshold now to not being of service to others and that's good because when my life starts to hurt, all I have to do is remember what I've told you here today.
I'm not saying this out of thinking that it doesn't apply to me anymore, I'm saying this because I want to remember it later today.
Disney and dog poop!
My exercise for today in going to Disney with my family, is to remember if I even think of a question or start thinking about what myself wants like, "Well, what ride would I like to go to on Disney?" That doesn't matter. If I even think of a question like that, I want to observe how it makes me feel afterwards.
Often, just asking a question, "What do I want to do today?" I immediately start feeling anxious.
I don't know what I want to do today because it really doesn't matter what I want to do today. It matters what other people want me to do today.
Now, I'm not saying you should just go around to be a people pleaser, and then if someone asked you to go to pick up dog crap all day, and you don't have a dog, and you don't want to pick up dog crap, and hate how it smells, I'm not saying you just have to go say "yes" to every single thing that everyone asked you to do all the time.
But it might help, if you're feeling bad, to go help someone scoop up some poop and do something that maybe help someone else. You might actually feel better afterwards.
It's uncomfortable to pick my dog poop up off of someone else's lawn and I don't like it, but I know I feel good about who I am after I do it. My dogs eat vegan now, so it's real kind of runny and it's not like rock solid like it used to be with the all-meat diet they had.
It's kind of hard, it's all warm and kind of nasty and I don't like that. If you ask, I sure don't want to pick up my dogs' poop, but I do want to be happy. I feel like a good person knowing that I'm doing what everyone else collectively wants.
The guy who owns the house, his family, the kids that play in the neighborhood and run around, are able to step in dog poop I don't pick up, I feel good about knowing I'm doing what everyone else needs me to do by picking up that dog poop, by experiencing the brief discomfort of picking that up, I feel good the rest of my dog walk.
I'd leave one pile of dog poop there, and I start feeling selfish.
I start feeling like I'm not doing what other people need me to do. I'm grateful today you've shared this with me because this is a really powerful thing that helps me in my life, and I've only gotten to it because I want to live as I realize I will not live anymore as a selfish person who only considers, "What would I like to do today, what would make me happy?"
I've done it so many times I can't stand another day of it. That's why I have it to share with you today. I've learned from so many other people how to think about what you need me to do more than I think about what I would like to do.
Final words
Thank you very much for experiencing this episode of Happier People Podcast with me, which was originally filmed as the video below!
The feedback on the video was so positive that I spent about $100 to get this post created for you here out of the video, and then edited it prior to publishing! I appreciate you being here and I hope you have a wonderful day today.
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