Our beliefs are our estimate of how to obtain what we consider has value. Value is how much you desire something. Value and beliefs are interactive in important ways.
Everything has objective value, but we can only interact with it according to our subjective perception of its value. Our subjective estimate of a thing’s cost and benefit comes from our beliefs. This is crucial to understand: our desire for something comes solely from our beliefs about it, and the value we can find in anything will be limited to the value with which our beliefs appraise it.
Many have struggled with attempts to change their desires, whether in an attempt to more fully desire what they consider good or to diminish their desire for what they consider to be bad. Those who have not succeeded in their aims have failed because they did not understand that their desire for something comes solely from their beliefs about it.
You will not encounter much success in attempts to directly modify your desires. The lever of control for your desires is not on the desire itself, but on the practical beliefs that determine it. You change your desires by changing your beliefs.
To achieve desire-shifting changes in belief, you’ll have to find convincing reasons to want something else more than what you presently want instead. With the wrong beliefs, even the very best actions will require a great deal of additional willpower or motivation. With the right beliefs, many good actions become almost automatic.
Your desires comprise a relative ranking of effects from the catalogue of your beliefs.
At all times, you have the choice to decide whether to:
- Heed or reject the thoughts, actions, and feelings suggested by your beliefs.
- Recognize evidence suggesting your beliefs, or your prioritization thereof, are lacking.
- Search for beliefs that are better supported or which bring about better outcomes.
- Treat the causes according to how you prioritize the anticipated effects.
It is your decisions with respect to your beliefs—and always your decisions only—that dictate what you do, what you think, and how you feel.
While what you do, think, and feel is always your choice, that choice can be made much easier or much harder through you obtaining more information about cause and effect—through expanding and increasing the accuracy of your beliefs.