Edify Vs Satisfy Vs Gratify

For the purposes of understanding these principles, consider the following:

Gratification is detrimental because it is primarily about self-indulgence: It prioritises feeding the hunger over ensuring the quality of what’s being consumed. Little to no consideration is given of the after-effects & therefore one accepts consuming even detrimental things.

Satisfaction is primarily about meeting expectations. It’s like returning to par. Getting back to where one wasn’t hungry. Neither particularly better off nor worse off, simply ‘continuing on the existing path’.

Edification is beneficial because it is primarily about improvement and building.  If what’s being consumed is detrimental or doesn’t help to improve and build, it’s not consumed and alternatives are sought.

Simply put:

We gratify when eating > what one eats.
It’s ignorant of long-term effects on the consumer.
Resulting prioritisation: Acquiring more.

We edify when what one eats > eating.
It only uses consumption to better the consumer.
Resulting prioritisation: Becoming more.

As satisfaction is neutral, the focus is primarily on comparing gratification to edification. Gratification’s over-focus on acquisition leads to decreasing the individual’s personal capabilities, while edification ‘becomes more’ through increasing their capabilities.

A couple of very important points I desire to make relate to the fact that all three options of feeding the hunger actually remove the hunger. This is extremely important to understand and appreciate. Because of this, too often too many of us overlook the by-products of the choice. As soon as one’s not hungry anymore the problem is considered dealt with and we move on to the next problem.

A coinciding and similarly dangerous reality, is that because of gratification’s priorities, it will nearly always get the job of ‘hunger-removal’ done before edification will. It’s filterless and will fill the hole with anything and everything. It therefore is too often ignorantly seen as the superior option. However, just because we solve the problem, doesn’t mean we benefit from the solution.

Usually, gratification is the path of least resistance. This means it doesn’t care if it’s the easiest, cheapest, quickest, dirtiest thing one could consume, you just get it done. Simply put, we gratify by default.

Simultaneously, as edification requires a filter on consumption, it will in most cases be the harder, more expensive, slower path, in comparison to gratification.

For these reasons, anybody who doesn’t thoroughly evaluate their life, hungers and related choices using an ‘edifying filter’, are likely to see gratification as the answer to their problems and can too easily develop harmful patterns, habits and addictions that grow too subtly to be identified until they’re too debilitating to escape.

Simultaneously those who can utilise an edifying filter on their choices in hunger management and life, can much more easily and effectively produce powerful results in their search for success and accomplishments. Due to detrimental indulgences being filtered from one’s daily life, people are able to improve their habitual nature so that making wiser, healthier, more helpful choices becomes easier and easier, even until we get to a point where we become more likely to edify in all/new hungers by default, instead of gratify. I can not come close to sufficiently illustrating how valuable it is when it becomes your nature to edify by default. This is a state I have visited many times but am still working on retaining permanently.

Edifying Success therefore serves to illustrate:

• • some of the varying hungers we find ourselves experiencing and where we could easily benefit by using an edifying filter
  • the contrasting differences between gratification and edification so as to better identify which habits we’ve already formed in our daily lives
  • a clear, structured, strategic approach to increasing the edifying value of our nature and therefore our default responses to life and all hungers

Activity: Rank & Rate to ID potential for improvement

Rank the following cravings from most to least common for yourself, personally, adding any extras that come to mind:

Now using the same list, rate (0-10) how effectively you filter your responses to each hunger to ensure ‘how you respond’ is going to benefit you (10), instead of merely removing the hunger (0).

• Which of your most common hungers are you gratifying the most?
• Where do you stand to benefit most, by improving the edifying value of your hunger response?

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Now similarly, of the following consumables, rank them in order of those you find yourself most commonly engaging with, then also rate how effectively you’re filtering for edification, or placating the hunger? (adding any extras that come to mind:)

• Which of your most common consumables are you gratifying the most?
• Where do you stand to benefit most, by improving the edifying value of your consumption?

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