[This post is part of a series on “Mental models and beliefs: an exercise to identify yours.” If you don’t see a Table of Contents to the left, click here to view the series, where you’ll get more value than reading just this post.]

Do you want an okay life? Do you want limits on how much you can get out of life?

Or do you prefer to have no limits on how much you can get out of life?

Remember from two days ago that the value, meaning, importance, and purpose (MVIP) of a thing comes from the emotions it evokes. Remember from yesterday that you can create reward any time any place.

It follows that you can create more reward all the time, even when you’re feeling as much reward as you think you can. There’s no limit to how much reward you can have, which means not limit to the MVIP in your life. And MVIP is what matters, more than anything physical.

A model to remove limits from your life: You can create as much reward as you want. There is no upper limit to reward.

When I started looking for ways to improve my social and leadership skills or any part of my life, I looked for areas lacking reward — parts of my life that evoked anxiety, confusion, impatience, disappointment, and other emotions arising from conflict between my environment, belief, and behavior (the elements in the Model I can control). I would resolve the conflict that prevented the related parts of my life from bringing me reward, a process some people call conquering their fears.

It didn’t take long before I had transformed most of my anxieties into rewarding things. Then I realized I could improve my life not just by increasing the reward from unrewarding things. I could improve my life by increasing the reward from anything — even already-rewarding things.

I realized sometimes the best place to increase reward — thereby creating MVIP — was in places I had just improved. Then I realized I could work on any part of my life.

Next thing I knew, I was improving every part of my life. I don’t mean I was changing my material state. More money didn’t magically appear in my account. New friends didn’t pop into existence. Remember, the value of material things comes from the emotions they evoke. As I learned to create emotions in more areas, mainly by changing my beliefs and behavior, more things evoked reward. Then more reward.

So while I couldn’t get unlimited material stuff, which I wouldn’t want anyway, I got unlimited MVIP from what I did have.

When I use this belief

I use this belief all the time.

What this belief replaces

This belief replaces thinking you need more stuff, which is finite, to get reward and MVIP, which is unlimited.

Where this belief leads

This belief leads more MVIP in your life — without limit.

• ← A model to find reward anywhere, anytime
• A model to help create the life and relationships you want →