About Your Guide
JF Benoist is a celebrated author, workshop leader, speaker, and mental health pioneer with over twenty years of experience counseling those grappling with mental health, addiction, and relationship issues.
In 2011, JF co-founded The Exclusive Hawaii, a holistic addiction treatment center. Based on years of innovating new ways to resolve core trauma, Benoist created the therapeutic methodology Experiential Engagement Therapy™.
His bestselling self-help book Addicted to the Monkey Mind: Change the Programming That Sabotages Your Life has sold over 50,000 copies. JF is a Certified Option Process™ Mentor/Counselor (Socratic dialogue methodology). Involved for 27 years in The Mankind Project, a nonprofit organization that promotes men’s personal growth, JF has served for many years as a leader of international retreats.
While running an addiction treatment center for 12 years, JF repeatedly witnessed his clients’ lack of sense of belonging and connection and how it interrupted their access to happiness.
The Avive la Vie Way of Life Explained
Experience – Connect — BelongÂ
The prosperity of prioritizing connection with self and others
- Being YOU no matter what - what a relief!
- Thriving in the face of life's challenges
- Having honest, emotionally connected, and authentic relationships
- Experiencing a strong sense of courage, resilience, love, and value
- Feeling part of the community wherever you go
This is the Avive la Vie mode of life!Â
What Has Kept Us Apart
Understanding the patterns that create our suffering
Conditioned to Correct
Growing up, we were led to believe that we needed to monitor ourselves to belong.
The anxiety born out of constant critiquing, fixing, and worrying has become a way of life.
Disconnected from Emotions
Most of us didn't learn how to attune to the emotional body. We're feeling creatures, yet constantly told "Don't be (fill in the blank)". This robs us of connecting with our innate sense of courage, resilience, love, and value.
Seeking Love & Value
Whenever our feelings are not attended to, it sends a message directly to our nervous system: "You don't matter. You're not loveable or valuable enough to deserve attention for just being you."
The Shared Patterns That Have Created Our Suffering
- First, we’ve been conditioned to live in a correction way — we have believed that we are never quite enough to truly belong.
- Second, our thought patterns and biological chemistry have become habitual as we fear being rejected by others.
- Third, we even fear our own inner experience, and we try to escape this painful state of self-rejection.
- Fourth, we adapt to try to feel better, so we attempt to belong by developing (albeit unconsciously) false belonging habits.
The 6 False Belonging Habits
that plague our lives
False belonging habits are attempts to belong when we don’t actually believe we do.
What all false belonging habits have in common is that they reinforce the belief that our sense of belonging, love, and value comes from monitoring ourselves, changing our behaviors, and meeting the expectations of others. Ouch.
Performance
I confuse love and value with my accomplishments. Success means I have value.
Self-neglect
If I prioritize others over myself, I believe I’ll be loveable and valuable.
Pushing Love Away
I have learned to believe that love is fleeting and cannot endure hard times. Because I think love just comes and goes, I must keep my guard up in anticipation of love leaving me.
Getting Lost in Anxiety
If I anticipate bad things, I can avoid the bad outcome or at least fix it when it happens. I get my sense of value from being hyper-vigilant and in charge.
Rejecting feelings
If I manage my unacceptable emotions, I can be loved and valued because I believe only the “nice” parts of me are wanted and loveable.
Self-doubt
If I make the right decisions, only then I can be loved and valued. Making the wrong decisions means I will be kicked out of the tribe.
Healing our false belonging habits and finding connections together
We crave attuning to ourselves and coming together in connection, community, and a deep sense of belonging.
To begin, we must prioritize the connection to self
-
In the Avive la Vie mode of life, when triggered we gain the knowledge and capacity to attune and attend to the emotional body immediately.
-
Through loving attention and calm presence, we show ourselves and each other that our feelings are valid, that we are worthy, and that we can be connected and emotionally safe even after feeling triggered.
Furthermore, we must gain the ability to restore the broken connections
First, we value our emotional body. We listen to our feelings, and we attend to the truth about what is within us right here and now.
Second, we practice this profound presence, and we reestablish our connection to our innate sense of belonging, love, and value.
Third, we extend genuine emotional empathy to others, making a safe space for ourselves and others to explore new ways of connection.
Fourth, we practice authentic relationships and communication, which builds the strength and trust for fully embracing this new way of living.
Getting to Know JF
-
Avive la Vie was created to meet an essential human need: a deeply attuned sense of connection to ourselves and to one another.
-
No matter the struggles we face, we often feel disconnected - believing we don’t matter, we’re not enough, or that something outside of us needs to change.
-
At its heart, Avive la Vie is not about fixing ourselves, but about shifting away from self-correction and toward prioritizing genuine, meaningful connection
What Avive la Vie Helps Build
- Connection used to be a given in our Western society – from block parties to Lion’s Club meetings to attending weekly church or temple. As we’ve progressed technologically, connection (especially in person) has become an unfortunate casualty. Yet, this foundational need for connection – the longing to belong – hasn’t disappeared.
- We’ve seen this repeatedly in our decades of mental health work. A true sense of belonging can cause massive, positive ripple effects in a person’s life and in the world. Avive la Vie is a proven method to help each of us reconnect with this powerful way of living.
Read The book
- Avive la Vie – An Adventure in Belonging helps us identifies which of the six false belonging habits we each follow and how we have been disconnecting from our authentic selves.
- Through relatable stories and simple exercises, we see and understand these habits and, in their place, how to utilize the tools to create true connection and belonging.
Become a Member and Belong
- At Avive la Vie, we believe that true healing happens in connection — when we’re seen, heard, and accepted exactly as we are.
- Most of our distress stems from two simple but profound truths: we feel alone in our struggles, and we’ve had few role models for authentic living.
- So many of us were taught to earn love through performance — what we call False Belonging Habits — instead of being valued simply for who we are. Avive la Vie invites you to experience a new way of belonging — one rooted in safety, honesty, and emotional connection.
We offer two paths into this journey of connection and growth:
Membership For Therapists, Life Coaches, and Leaders
Learn how to integrate connection-based therapy into your work and transform how you support others.
Membership For Individuals
Join a vibrant community where you’ll feel seen, supported, and inspired to live more authentically.