Thousands of thoughts go through your mind in the course of your day and each day you make many choices. Your choices intend to bring you the greatest value. Your perception of what adds value is based on your thoughts, beliefs, feelings, and habits. These were created from your life experiences and your personal interpretation of events. Your choices, however, are often made unconsciously or subconsciously. For example, your children might be very important to you but when they interrupt you on a phone call or when you are working on something, you might dismiss them saying, "Can’t you see I’m busy?" In that moment, you have not consciously considered your response, but there is an impact nonetheless. You do what you do because of how you think or how you value things relative to everything else and often these actions or reactions are made by habits of thought rather than by conscious choice. In many ways, you are a slave to your habits and they are creating your reality.

The Natural Order of Thoughts Value science teaches us that there is a hierarchy of value, meaning that there is a Natural Law or order of how things are valued in the universe. There is the "Intrinsic" category of thought which includes singular concepts, irreplaceable and incomparable, including human beings. Then there is the "Extrinsic" category of thought which includes abstract concepts, things of the everyday world, finite, comparable, and measureable. Lastly, is the "Systemic" category of thought which includes dualistic, formal concepts (dualistic meaning absolute – right/wrong, all/nothing) such as ideas, rules, and mental constructs. We also have two worlds in which we "think" or "value": one is the internal world or how we value ourselves; the other is the external world or how we think about everything else.

So, there is a natural order for how things are valued in the universe – absolute and irrefutable – and then, there is our perception of what is of greatest value. It is this gap in how we think about people, things, ideas, and ourselves that causes us difficulty and creates stress in our lives.

Somewhere in your thought processes, you have ideas and beliefs about YOU and where you rank in the scheme of things. As a human being, YOU are irreplaceable, unique, and priceless. As such, YOU are of greatest value. Interestingly, you may not have difficulty believing in the infinite and priceless value of a human being. You are quite capable of recognizing this value in others. The difficulty may be to embrace your own value, acknowledging and accepting that you, too, are a human being and fit into the intrinsic category just like everyone else.

Looking for Value in All the Wrong Places When you don’t believe that you are of great value as a human being, you will look for your value elsewhere. This is reflected in your self-esteem as it attempts to overcompensate for feelings of "not good enough" or "less than". The Self has to have value, you see. So if you are not giving it to yourself, you will go elsewhere to find it. The problem with this plan of action is that you are always searching and never quite receiving what you need in order to feel good about yourself. You are dependent upon others to value you appropriately in hopes of getting what you’ve always been able (and can only) give to yourself.

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