Things that feel good are good for us, and what is good for us is to feel good!
It’s a perfect design, and it’s the result of millions of years of evolution. It only gets tricky or confusing when we are disconnected from our inner guidance.
Our inner guidance is the built-in sensitivity that lets us discern between what truly feels good and satisfying, and what feels other-than-good, plain-old-bad, uncertain, or “pseudo-satisfying”.
There are just three requirements for making proper use of our inner guidance. They aren’t complicated requirements, but they’re also not optional:
- You have to actually want to feel good.
- You have to be sensitive enough to discern between things that feel good and things that feel other-than-good.
- You have to take some kind of action to move yourself toward feeling good once you have this clarity.
Once you decide that you actually want to feel good (be honest with yourself, many people are committed to trying to find satisfaction in feeling bad), then the next step is to establish a strong connection with the sensitivity that informs your inner guidance.
Re-establishing sensitivity and inner guidance
The connection to our sensitivity and inner guidance often gets broken, blocked, or distorted by the time we reach adulthood, not because we mean to do it, but as a consequence of adapting to life.
Years later (decades for some of us), once we recognize that this connection to our own sensitivity has been compromised, we get to embark upon the incredibly satisfying journey of re-discovering and re-establishing it. Some people call this a healing journey, or becoming whole, or self-realization, or integration, or befriending yourself, or self-love.
Before we re-establish this connection to our sensitive self, we often rely on experts to tell us the most basic and obvious facts about our own health and well-being:
Drinking water, apparently, is good for you. Anyone who has been thirsty and has successfully quenched their thirst with fresh water knows this. But some people missed the memo. If you were brought up drinking pop or juice or flavored beverages, you might have never developed a taste for drinking water, or have experienced the good feeling of a thirst properly quenched.
Sleeping until we feel rested is good for us too, and it feels good. But many people have little or no experience of this, and remain disconnected from this very basic example of our in-born clarity about the connection between what feels good and what is good.
When you fall asleep in front of a screen that is telling a story of human drama or suffering, and then “alarm” yourself out of sleep each morning, and then shock your nervous system with bright light and stimulants so that you can gain temporary functionality so that you can force yourself to go to a place that does not feel good to be, and do something that does not feel good to do, you are not going to be sensitive to your own inner guidance.
In fact, if you were sensitive, it would feel like torture. And so we shut it off. We shut down the sensitivity that is our guide in order to fulfill an abstract idea of success, or to fit in, or do what is expected, or sometimes just to survive.
I’m being a little hyperbolical for effect, but the fact remains: if you are falling asleep in front of a screen and then waking up to an alarm before your natural sleep cycle is complete, you can not have any real embodied knowledge of what feels truly good in regards to sleep and restfulness, which is a basic cornerstone of human well-being.
You might know better conceptually, but that doesn’t help. You might know everything there is to know about the benefits of sleep (and there is a LOT to know), but if you are not applying this knowledge through actual practice, it’s worth very little.
This is precisely the reason that people have become mistrustful of using feeling, and feeling good, as a guide. When ideas and concepts become proxies for actual felt experience, then confusion, disconnection, and mistrust is the result. Hence my playful but one hundred percent correct refrain: “There is nothing more practical than feeling good.”
You cannot thrive on just ideas
You can survive on ideas to a point, but you cannot thrive. To thrive is to feel good, and to feel good means engaging directly and enthusiastically with your feeling apparatus.
These feeling apparatus are sensation and emotion, and they represent two of the three human operating systems, which we’ll explore in detail shortly.
First, another example of something that feels good and that is good for you:
Engaging physically, through all your senses, with material, three dimensional phenomena like sunlight, unconditioned air, waterways, plants, animals, and natural ecosystems feels good and is good for you.
Experts can give you truckloads of scientific evidence and dazzling neurobiological explanations for this, which is fun and gratifying. But reading about it or listening to a podcast about it or having ChatGPT tell you about it is not a substitute for the actual first-hand physical experience of doing it.
Playing with a happy child feels good and is good for you.
Helping someone accomplish something that matters to them feels good and is good for you.
Combining mindful movement with intentional breathing feels good and is good for you.
Discerning between satisfaction and pseudo-satisfaction
Things that feel good are satisfying. Much that is offered in the culture today promises satisfaction, but delivers only pseudo-satisfaction. This is so widespread, and has been going on for so long, that many people can no longer feel the difference.
Do you know the difference? There’s only one way to tell them apart: by how they feel.
You don’t need an expert to tell you that aligning your circadian rhythm with natural environmental cues like sunlight and darkness is better for you than bathing yourself in blue light from your laptop until 2am.
Binging on screen-time is a pseudo-satisfaction, not a real satisfaction. You can tell by how it feels, but you have to develop enough sensitivity to make this distinction.
You don’t need an expert to tell you that eating fresh, wholesome food is better for you than eating cheese puffs and cola. Eating junk is a pseudo-satisfaction, even if you initially like how it tastes. You can tell by how it feels, but you have to develop enough sensitivity to make this distinction.
You don’t need an expert to tell you that a peaceful and loving relationship is better for you than a tumultuous and painful relationship. You can tell by how it feels, but you have to develop enough sensitivity to make this distinction.
You can always tell what is best by how you feel. But you need a clear channel to your inner guidance in order to receive the message clearly.
Pseudo-satisfactions don’t genuinely satisfy, and they come with a downside. True satisfaction has no downside. It feels good, and it is good for you.
If you’re used to settling for pseudo-satisfactions – junk food, news cycles, hype and distraction, mood regulation through chemical substances, status seeking, superficial or manipulative interactions with other people – you start to believe that satisfaction comes with a downside. You start to mistrust feeling good because you know it won’t last, or that it will likely betray you. You might even become more desperate and cynical in your yearning for satisfaction, reaching for more and more intense pseudo-satisfactions until they become addiction.
Every bit of this applies to how you engage your inner world too, not just how you engage the outer world.
Feeling good from the inside-out
There are better-feeling and worse-feeling ways of engaging your own mind, your own thoughts. Thinking thoughts that feel good is better for you than thinking thoughts that feel bad. Obvious? Maybe. Are you using this knowledge for your benefit one hundred percent of the time? Fifty percent of the time? Ever?
Are you using your mind with purpose and intention, or does it seem to be using you? What do you think the purpose of your mind is? I think it’s to help you feel good.
The thinking mind is just one of three distinct, interconnected human operating systems, and if you’re not engaging the other two, and bringing all three into alignment, the mind will become agitated, delivering a distorted view of reality, and keeping you at arm’s reach from satisfying your true desires.
The three human operating systems are always guiding us, and are also the source of all satisfaction and dissatisfaction in our lives.
They are:
- Cognition
- Sensation
- Emotion
[The three human operating systems are described in the description page for The Schanfarber Method and are explained in even more detail in my R3 Relationship Masterclass. Descriptions can also be heard in Module Three of my Free 7-Day Audio Course: The Gentle Art of Emotional Mastery.]
Using cognition to feel good is good for you
Cognition is thinking. It’s our mental, rational, conceptual self. When we use this operating system in ways that feel good, it’s good for us. Using our cognitive system in ways that feel good means choosing thought patterns that feel good.
It means using imagination in ways that feel good, using memory in ways that feel good, and creating narratives, stories, and beliefs that feel good.
Using our cognitive system in ways that feel good also means talking about things that feel good. Language is part of the cognitive system.
Using your cognition operating system, your mind, in all these ways feels good, and is good for you.
Using sensation to feel good is good for you
Sensation is how we feel in our body. It’s the messages that our body gives us. When we use our bodies in ways that feel good, it’s good for us. This includes all five senses, and also our intuition or “gut feeling”. It includes how we feel moving our bodies in our physical environment, and how we feel inhabiting our bodies in each moment.
When we look at things that feel good to look at, it’s good for us. When we touch things that feel good, it’s good for us. When we move our bodies in ways that feel good, it’s good for us. When we rest our bodies in ways that feel good, it’s good for us. When we eat foods that make us feel good, it’s good for us. When we breathe in ways that feel good, it’s good for us.
Sensation includes the feelings in our body that result from our interactions with outer experiences, and also with inner experiences.
For example, it might feel good in your body to swim in the lake (outer experience). It might also feel good in your body to remember that time you enjoyed swimming in the lake (inner experience).
Your body, through the sensation operating system, offers infinite ways of feeling genuinely good, and every single one is good for you.
Using emotion to feel good is good for you
Emotion is the third human operating system, and it is special. Emotion is the totality of our subjective inner state of being. Associated with our heart, it is at the center of our life experience. It’s our temperament, our disposition, our mood. When we speak of well-being, we speak primarily of emotional well-being. When we talk about mental health, we often mean emotional health.
Emotion is the meeting place or the synthesis of the other two operating systems, cognition and sensation.
We can learn to influence our emotional state through cognition, which is sometimes called a “top-down” approach, and we can learn to influence our emotional state through sensation, sometimes called a “bottom-up” approach.
Some of us can also shape our emotional state directly, through applied intention. This emergent ability represents a leading edge of evolutionary development in human beings. It’s something I am very excited about, and helping people develop this ability has become a cornerstone of my work. I see this as my most valuable contribution to the field of psychology and human thriving to date.
Using your emotional operating system to feel good, through any of these means, is good for you.
Applied knowledge: turning ideas into reality
Is any of what you’re reading here brand new to you? Probably not, although perhaps I’m offering some nuance or clarification that feels fresh.
Are you in agreement with what I’m saying? You probably are. It would be hard to make a convincing argument otherwise.
Are you applying the truth of what you are reading here in tangible, real ways most of the time in your life?
Be honest. If you are… isn’t it awesome?!
If you are, please write to me and share your experience. Better yet, leave a comment to inspire other people too.
A quick report from my personal experience
I’ve been intentionally engaging and developing my sensitivity and alignment within and throughout my three operating systems every day for five years now, and the results are enriching my life beyond description.
My discernment between what feels good and what feels bad, and between real satisfaction and pseudo-satisfaction keeps getting sharper and sharper in clarity, and with this clarity my confidence and ability in creating my own life through the choices I make improves by leaps and bounds.
Relationships have improved, or peacefully dissolved. My physical health is better than it has ever been. Emotionally and mentally I am thriving. My enjoyment of nature has blossomed. My outlook and my experience of life have become far more positive and fulfilling in every way.
My discernment and sense of choice about what I want to engage and manifest in my life and what I do not want to engage and manifest in my life has clarified by a factor of at least ten. In all of these ways and more, I’ve discovered what self-empowerment actually means.
It’s been so powerful that I had to develop a new method for working with clients if I wanted to keep my professional practice up to speed with what I was discovering and applying in my own life. I simply couldn’t work in the old therapy paradigms any longer.
When someone comes for help because they feel anxious or because their marriage is falling apart, I can’t in good conscience offer any treatment that isn’t rooted in what I am describing on this page. It would be like withholding food from someone who is starving. I’ve learned that not everyone is ready for this kind of empowerment, but for those who are, transformation and relief come quickly.
Your inner world shapes your outer world
Developing sensitivity and alignment throughout the three operating systems – cognition, sensation, and emotion – leads to an embodied clarity about what feels genuinely good and what feels other-than-good. Letting that clarity guide you, and putting that inner guidance into real, practical action through the choices you make is when the results come to life and the benefits gain visible momentum.
When I talk about “choices” I mean outer behaviors and how we skillfully engage with the physical world (job, home, spouse, kids), but I also mean inner behaviors and how we skillfully engage with our self through thought, sensation, and emotion.
“Things that feel good are good for you” becomes dependably true only when we become sensitive and receptive to what feels genuinely good. Only then can we use the guidance that is our biological inheritance.
Without this, we are bumbling around with disembodied notions of good and bad, creating elaborate arguments and justifications for absurd behaviors, and missing the point entirely, which is to live with ever-increasing optimism, clarity, joy, and satisfaction.
Establishing a stable and balanced connection (right relationship) with all three of our human operating systems is the only way to make full use of our inner guidance, and is also the only way to receive the full nourishment and satisfaction that life offers. There might be nothing more pragmatic.
Learn as you go, let it be fun
Don’t worry if you don’t know precisely what feels good to you all the time. It’s OK, you’ll learn quickly, and it never ends. Let yourself enjoy the journey of discovering the difference between real satisfaction and pseudo-satisfaction.
Don’t worry too much about why you got disconnected from your own guidance in the first place. Disconnection happens to the best of us, for lots of reasons that all make sense. Search out answers if that feels satisfying, but don’t get too hung up on figuring out the past. Life moves forward. Move with it.
Your growing dissatisfaction with pseudo-satisfactions is working to your advantage. It’s leading you to discover the genuine article, the real deal. But don’t explore those feelings of dissatisfaction for too long. The purpose of dissatisfaction is to provide you with valuable clarity about what you want next. Pivot your attention quickly and completely in the direction of that clarity. There’s an energetic shift, a pulse, that comes with this pivot of attention, and it will propel you. Catch the wave.
By the way, no one else has to understand what feels good for you. No one else has to understand or agree with any of this. It will work anyway. If it feels good to walk barefoot in the sand or to be naked on your private deck, do it. If cold plunges or saunas feel good, do it. If eating one thing and not another thing feels good, do it, even if everyone you know is doing the opposite.
Especially if believing something different from what everyone else seems to believe feels good, do it.
Let what feels good shape your thinking and your use of your mind. Don’t focus so much on what is true if what is true is unwanted. Don’t reject or deny it, just leave it alone and find another truth that feels better. There is no end to truths to choose from!
If being really, really nice to yourself and gentle with yourself feels good, do it. Do it even if everyone else around you is torturing themselves with worry, criticism, and doubt, and expects you to do the same.
Trusting yourself means trusting what feels good. And it’s all going to change along the way. Did I mention that it will change? It will change. Let it change.
Drinking fancy wine felt good to me until it didn’t. Today I don’t drink alcohol. What I enjoyed yesterday felt good yesterday. What I enjoy today feels good today. I’m looking forward to discovering what will feel good tomorrow.
I don’t have to justify changing. I just have to keep up. I don’t have to explain why I want what I want now. I just have to keep up. Keeping up with what feels good now is synonymous with fulfilling my potential, living with purpose, and being my best self.
A relationship or a job might feel good, and then it doesn’t. Accept that you will continue to want different things, new things, more. Today it might be acquiring things that feels good and is good for you. Tomorrow it might be getting rid of things that feels good and is good for you. Be flexible. Around our house we call this “nimbleosity.”
Quit trying to figure it all out in your head once and for all. Your head can’t tell you what feels good, but it can confuse you with ideas about what should and shouldn’t. Use your mind, but use it appropriately and to your benefit. Cognition is not the answer to everything, and it can never deliver all the satisfaction that it promises. It’s OK, we forgive it. It’s the nature of the cognition system to over-promise, to take itself too seriously, and also to ignore or deny the existence and value of the other two human operating systems.
Quit trying to make a plan and quit trying to stick to it. Quit holding yourself accountable and quit making commitments to yourself. Stop trying to force outcomes and stop hitching your well-being to those outcomes. Be less conditional in your joy and well-being. Joy and well-being are your essence, like emotional DNA, not something to prove or earn. Enjoy clarity as it comes, with all its twists and turns. It’s supposed to be an adventure. It’s supposed to be fun. Trust yourself. Trust that what feels good is good for you. It’s so much easier this way.
Be easier-going about feeling good. Feeling good is not supposed to be hard. Feeling good is who you are when you’re not cut off, shut down, confused, or throwing obstacles in your own way. Feeling good (and benefiting from feeling good) is something you allow, not something you force, figure out, or solve. Let yourself feel good, and follow that feeling where it takes you. That’s inner guidance. That’s clarity. That’s purpose. It feels good, and it’s good for you.