Improvement consists of choosing actions that yield greater longterm value than what you would have done otherwise. In order to improve, you either need to improve the accuracy of the value you appraise in the options you already knew about, see new options beyond those you already knew about, or become better at choosing what will provide you with the greatest long-term value. Your awareness is the key to providing the information necessary to improve.
Awareness is the composite of our understanding of what was, is, and will be. It includes our beliefs about the potential of ourselves and all other things and people, the actions that would bring about that potential, and what those outcomes would be worth.
Awareness is the key to addressing the first two barriers to long-term happiness listed above, and is at least a prerequisite requirement to overcome the third. An understanding of the cost and benefit of each option reduces the problem of achieving long-term happiness to a willingness to choose what has the greatest value—a property rarely described by the word faith , but which is its actual definition.1
Footnotes
- 1. Perfect faith is to do everything that is most reasonable, and nothing else. Any who seek this goal should read or reread Through Faith by the author. ↩