I stopped drinking alcohol recently
I like my beer and my whiskey sours, but I love fine wines. I love my Italian Brunello and Nebbiolo. I was just getting into Burgundies and Spanish Fino and Priorat.
Vermentino, Grillo, Douro… there are endless wines to be discovered and enjoyed. My palette, and my personal wine collection, were becoming very nicely developed.
But for a few good reasons, I stopped. And you know what? It was easy.
When someone asks me if I crave it, I have to pause for a moment and remember what craving feels like because it has become so absent from my experience.
It was easy to stop drinking for one reason, and I want to explain it properly because it surprised and delighted me, and it provides a wonderful, real-life example of how The Schanfarber Method provides practical tools for health and well-being.
We are satisfaction-seeking creatures (and that’s a good thing)
Long before I stopped drinking, I had been intentionally building a broad repertoire of satisfactions. I had come to recognize, through my work as a coach and counselor mostly, that people are satisfaction-seeking creatures through-and-through.
Everything we want in this life is for the satisfaction we imagine it bringing. All that we want to do, be, or have is because we want to have the satisfaction of doing, being, or having it.
Satisfaction is a feeling, an emotion, and it is the common thread uniting all human desire and all human activity. A desire to feel satisfaction is at the heart of everything we want and everything we do.
The trouble is, we can get very fixated on particular forms of satisfaction. We want to feel satisfied from this and not from that. When our fixation on one kind of satisfaction squeezes out our receptivity to the other forms available, we call it addiction, and people can become addicted to just about anything.
One day I realized that I live in a world with an infinite variety of satisfactions constantly on offer to me. The world is always plying me with a continuous rainbow of assorted satisfactions and delights in every form imaginable.
It was a shocking realization. Even more shocking was the simultaneous realization of how narrow I had been in my willingness to receive satisfaction from anywhere but a handful of specific sources. I was starving myself, all the while sitting at the grandest buffet imaginable.
I made it my mission to enjoy as many of the satisfactions on offer as possible. I discovered, as we all do, that some forms of satisfaction come with a downside (for me that included drinking alcohol), and some are purely nourishing, with no cost and no downside whatsoever.
Three human operating systems
I also discovered that my satisfaction always flows to me through three primary channels, and I named these the three human operating systems – Cognition, Sensation, and Emotion.
I explain them in detail in my R3 Relationship Masterclass and in module three of my Gentle Art of Emotional Mastery course.
As I realized that my satisfaction always comes through the channels of cognition, sensation, and emotion, I started experimenting with each, one by one. I began with cognition, with my thoughts.
I quickly discovered that some thoughts and some ways of thinking are satisfying, some are not. As my discernment of the difference between satisfying thoughts and unsatisfying thoughts became clear, my use of my cognitive apparatus became more refined and intentional.
I no longer allow my thoughts to wander toward unsatisfying topics. When I catch them early enough, it’s relatively easy to steer them. If they get away from me and gain momentum, it can take a little time for them to run their course, which they always do if I don’t fuss over them.
Satisfying thoughts get my attention and my attention gives them momentum, creating more satisfaction. Unsatisfying thoughts do not get more attention, and they fizzle out, making way for something better. That’s how it works.
Something similar happened as I turned this awareness to sensation in my body. Focusing on sensations that feel satisfying creates a cascade of further satisfaction. Pleasure, by the way, is another word for satisfaction. We can also call it joy, delight, happiness, or just plain old feeling good.
At the emotional level too, the same is revealed to be true. As I find the essence of a satisfying emotion or feeling, and give it my attention, it begins to expand. Only satisfying feelings get my attention now, and with that attention they grow.
Then I discovered that within each of these three operating systems or channels, infinite depths of subtlety can be accessed and enjoyed.
I had found breadths of satisfactions beyond anything before. Now I was finding the depths.
Surprisingly, the strength of my satisfaction does not diminish as the satisfaction becomes more subtle.
In fact, the opposite is true. As I find my way into subtler forms of thought, sensation, and emotion, the satisfaction also becomes subtler, but paradoxically, the more subtle the satisfaction, the more profound it becomes!
I suppose this shouldn’t be very surprising. Every good meditation teacher or traditional spiritual practice teaches this, but hearing it as words and as a concept is a lot different from feeling it as my lived experience.
The thing I liked best about wine was developing my palette so that I could detect and enjoy increasingly subtle aspects of the tasting experience. Terroir, acidity, tannin, vintage, varietals… there are endless subtleties to discover on the wine journey.
So why don’t I miss it?
Because now I recognize that the same thing is true for absolutely everything I enjoy.
And my life mission is to find a lot of things to enjoy.
I’ve even given this a playful name. I call it: Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction.
Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction
Every enjoyable experience that I engage through all three of my operating systems offers an endless depth of subtlety to be discovered. And because I’m always looking for new things to enjoy, I’m always finding them!
Whether it’s a leading edge idea, a lively conversation, a vivid walk in the forest, a beautiful meal, a relaxing or invigorating yoga flow, dancing, reading, breathing, rolling around on the floor, daydreaming, working, having a shower, having a nap, having sex… there’s no end to the subtle attunement and enjoyment available. It’s literally endless.
From my perspective today, it would be silly to miss drinking wine. My life is rich in a million and one ways. It would be like lamenting the loss of my favorite grain of sand or my cherished drop of water.
But the most important part of all this, the part I really want to share, is how beneficial it has been for me to Build a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction BEFORE I stopped drinking.
I now realize that Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction is the single most empowering thing I can do for myself.
And it never ends.
And there’s no downside.
And hardly anyone is doing it.
That’s nuts. It’s the biggest, sweetest, ripest, juiciest, lowest hanging fruit, and it’s virtually ignored, even though there’s plenty for everyone!
Open thousands of windows – start now
It’s been said that when a door closes, a window opens. I have opened thousands of windows and I am opening thousands more. If a door closes I will never have a shortage of open windows because I have been opening so many in advance.
And here’s the most wonderful part: I haven’t opened them in preparation for coming hardship, I have opened them for the joy of it.
In the mental health field, words like “resilience” and “resourced” are the norm. Living joyfully happens to be the best way I know to build resilience and resourcefulness, but resilience and resourcefulness barely begin to describe the true benefits.
Resilience and resourcefulness are good, but wouldn’t you rather set your sights on exuberance, eagerness, inspiration, clarity, success, and delight? Thankfully you don’t have to choose.
Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction also happens to be your best protection against experiencing trauma or PTSD.
Trauma is subjective: the same experience for two people can be traumatizing for one but not the other. Researchers have found that one of the factors is a person’s baseline sense of well-being.
People who have established a solid sense of well-being in themselves, and who are enjoying high levels of satisfaction in diverse ways everyday are more resilient to trauma and PTSD. They’re also more likely to experience post-traumatic growth (PTG).
But don’t do it for that. Don’t enrich yourself with a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction because you want to brace yourself against tragedy.
Do it because it feels good – do it for the joy
Do it because it feels good right now. Do it because you care about how you feel. How you feel matters. It matters a lot. It matters most. You might have lost sight of this basic truth. Maybe no one taught you or supported you in this way, so let me be very clear: You are meant to live a life that feels mostly good, most of the time. That is your purpose and your highest potential.
Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction is good protection against unwanted experiences, but don’t do it for that reason. Do it because you feel most purposeful when you are thriving. Do it because you love feeling yourself as creator of your life experience. Do it for the joy.
I help people worldwide embrace their desire to feel good, and Build a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction. If you’d like my help, request a client package by email. Please tell me a little bit about yourself in your email, and include your country of residence.
All My Best,
Justice Schanfarber
Teacher, Coach, and Founder at The Schanfarber Method
P.S. The only thing better than Building a Massive Repertoire of Subtle Enjoyment and Satisfaction is doing it with your partner. My partner and collaborator Vanessa and I have been doing this together for four years and are reaping massive benefits in our mental, physical, and emotional well-being. Check out my P2 Power Couple Coaching Program and my R3 Relationship Masterclass to learn more about creating synergy and alignment in a marriage or relationship.