From the author: The article was published on my blog “Thinking errors or conversations for awareness” Continuing the topic “Types of stress that cause negative emotional states.” Each of our beliefs has a reward and a price. What does it mean? When we find confirmation of our belief, we experience positive emotions; if our belief is not confirmed, we experience negative emotions. Let's look at this with an example. Suppose we have the belief that goodness should be rewarded with goodness. We do something good (in our opinion) and receive gratitude for it. For example, we helped some friend financially. This friend thanked us both with words and with his attention. We are very pleased with this, we are satisfied with our image of a generous person, our self-image as a kind person and self-esteem has increased. Now imagine that our friend took financial assistance for granted and did not show us his affection. How will we feel? Most likely, there will be a feeling that we were simply used or, as they say now, “fucked.” Anger and disappointment in the person may appear, we will begin to reproach ourselves for our softness and decide that we will never help this person again, since he is so ungrateful. What really happened? Our belief was not confirmed, and we experienced negative emotions. Our beliefs have a certain amount of expectation - how it should be. And if expectations are not met, then suffering is inevitable, and we pay the price in the form of suffering for our belief. If our expectations are met, then we receive a reward in the form of positive emotions, in raising our self-esteem. You can read more about the cost of belief in my article “Name your belief and I will tell you where you will experience suffering!” (http://o-vni2.blogspot.com/2010/08/blog-post.html) We’ve sorted out the reward and price of beliefs, now let’s see what to do if we come into conflict with our beliefs. Ideally, free yourself from imposed beliefs, learn to accept the world as it is, and allow others to act and live the way they want. But this is very difficult work on ourselves, and in order to accomplish it, we must have the passion to free ourselves from suffering in our lives in general. But is everyone ready for this? Giving up our beliefs is difficult because the reward we receive is very valuable to us. But then we must be prepared for the fact that sometimes we will have to pay the price for belief, which means that we will always be in a state of pendulum and dependence on our beliefs. If your goal is not to explore and understand your beliefs, but only have a desire to level out your condition or replace one belief with another, then you can use the options for working with beliefs that will be given below. The first option is to weaken the belief. Any belief gives us a limitation, I already wrote about this in the article “Where and when do we lose the right to life.” (http://o-vni2.blogspot.com/2010/01/blog-post_25.html) There is also an exercise that will help weaken the belief. The second option is to replace one belief with another. This option does not solve the problem, since we will still have to pay for a new belief with disappointment or suffering, but it will help solve a specific problem. Especially if your belief limits your actions. In order for us to take advantage of this option, let's look at how a belief is created. Many of us in childhood heard from our parents the following phrase: “Whatever he doesn’t take on, he’ll break everything!” When parents uttered such a phrase, they did not consciously wish harm to their child, they simply expressed their dissatisfaction with the fact that the child did not correspond to their ideas. But it is precisely this phrase or one similar to it that instills in the child the conviction that he is “not capable of anything.” First, the child is told about this by his parents. Then, when the child