Hello -
I’m running a campaign for quite a few first timers to BW, and they are a bit stuck on Beliefs. I have my own advice to give, but was also wondering if there are any epic forum posts/links/blog posts from Luke or Thor or any of the other heavy hitters around here that really knock it out of the park when it comes to new players and Beliefs (and Instincts!).
I like Paul Beakley’s BITs recipe for new players.
Paul Beakley is a solid advice. 
An eye-opening moment for me was, when I internalised that I, as a player, can steer the game with my beliefs.
When I have burned a character (except Beliefs and Instincts of course ;)), I try to come up with an awesome/tense/interesting scene that the character is in.
Maybe:
My guy/girl is the head of a rebel ambush squad. He/she and the team are waiting in their hideout to launch a surgical strike against the admiral of the much stronger enemy forces. The ambush evens the odds between the combatants but the admiral survives and now it’s one on one.
Then I ask myself what has led to that moment.
Staying with the example:
By writing Beliefs that deal with those questions I can steer the game in a direction that points towards the awesome climax I imagined for my character.
E.g.:
The admiral has to be taken down. For a successful ambush I need the best crossbowman among the rebels. Too bad Trisha has been captured and is taken prison in a fieldcamp near by. I’ll free her.
I personally like to use Instincts to spice things up. Assuming the stuff I imagined really happens in game, what are habits that get triggered and could cause trouble?
All this needs a bit of knowledge about how the game works but it helps me to come up with BITs.
I hope it helps you and your group as well.
I’m curious about the advices you teased in your post.
The Codex has some solid advice. Here’s a bit:
Write a Belief that helps you buy into the Situation/subject matter in play.
Write a Belief about your character’s worldview that will help richly characterize your character.
Write a Belief about another player.
You also might write a Belief about some ambition your character has or some part of the broader setting you’d like to explore.
You also might leave a Belief open to discover in play.
Riffing on this, my advice would be “Don’t Chase Perfection”.
Yes, BITs are at the core of Burning Wheel and are one of the things that I love about the system, so properly thinking about them during the initial character/world creation session is important; however, you can change Beliefs if they don’t fit so you can select something that feels cool and active and then if something central to your character leaps out once the character hits the adventure (as usually happens to me) you can change to that instead.