Improvement requires the recognition of fault

Some of the most important facts are those you least want to acknowledge. You have to detect and acknowledge what isn’t real in order to find what is.

Many of your ideas about your self-worth are based on illusion. Your faults are the difference between your overinflated self-worth and your actual self-worth.

Overestimation of self-worth is a problem of eternal significance, as it prevents you from improving toward who you could be.¹ You will never become what you think you already are. While you overestimate your value, you will prevent yourself from becoming more valuable than you are. Without knowing your weaknesses, you can’t grow out of them. Those who are not aware of their faults can never address them. You will have to adopt a lower image of how you are in order to adopt a higher image of what you could be. To attain what could be , you must first accept what is. Accepting what is requires letting go of what is not . You have to recognize who you are to effectively plan how to become more and better than you presently are. You need to know where you are in order to effectively find and follow the path to where you want to go.

Improvement requires you to first admit who and how you really are. Human adults, by nature, have massive barriers put into place to hide who we really are: what we do, why we do it, and how we feel about it. We avoid identifying faults because we suppose that recognizing faults reduces our perceived value. The problem is that your actual worth is never reduced by recognizing flaws—only your artificially inflated perceived value.

Don’t hide from who you really are. Strip yourself of the pretense or delusions that cause you to see yourself as more than you really are. Without accurately recognizing your weaknesses, you won’t take advantage of opportunities to improve² or recognize the need for help from others,³ and you will unwittingly enter situations that are guaranteed to overcome you. If you ignore contending with your flaws, the day will come when the consequences of doing so eclipse the benefits of not doing so.

Whether the idea for the change comes from your mind, your interaction with the world, or your interaction with others, and no matter if the change concerns your thoughts, feelings, or actions, no improvement will ever occur while you believe there is insufficient reason to make it.

Self-improvement is progressive both in your ability to detect your flaws as well as in your ability to implement improvements. There is a set of faults which you already have the ability to see, but actively ignore, and these must be acknowledged and addressed before you can see additional faults that lie beyond your present ability to perceive.

The first step to overcoming any fault is to notice it. It is possible to become the kind of person who rejoices at the discovery of a fault. Recognize that every fault discovered is the key to something better. You have to detect and acknowledge what isn’t ideal in order to do something about it. Everything better than what you presently have requires recognition of the flaws in what you already have. As you admit and confront the faults you presently see, you will gain the ability to see more.

Before every improvement comes the realization that a better option exists. Seeing the possibility of something better requires admitting the reality of something worse. Improvement can’t occur before the difference between what is and what could be is identified.

Elevate the priority of finding and fixing faults by understanding them as barriers to what you want

Most people simply will not find the motivation to improve if they merely see their faults as an abstract moral issue. Character flaws are less arbitrary and more consequential than commonly assumed.

Character flaws are often seen as separate from most other things in life. The truth is that character flaws have long tentacles that wind around nearly everything in your life. While these connections are not frequently acknowledged, they are easy enough to see, and until you do, you will lack the interest and intensity required to fix your flaws. The problems you face in life reveal the problems in your character. Your character flaws are more obvious than you pretend they are. Fix them.

The apparent consequences of our flaws are more than enough reason to fix them. While the costs of fixing flaws are readily acknowledged, the costs of leaving them unaddressed are not. Like the lion who needed to pull the splinter from its paw, it is going to hurt momentarily, but it is also the path to the least long-term pain.⁴

Most avoid fixing faults because they suppose that the work required to do so will take away from something more important to them. The truth is that addressing faults is actually the most direct action you can take toward getting more of whatever it is you want.

Everyone has unmet desires. Some desire many things, some only a few. Some have a strong desire, and some only a little. Whatever it is you want, and however much it is you want it, you need to realize that the reason you do not have it is that you are not yet the kind of person who gets it.

It is essential to understand that your faults are among the barriers preventing what you want. In order to become the kind of person who gets whatever it is you desire, you must address every part of your character that is different than that kind of person. You should impart to fixing your faults the same intensity with which you desire what you do not yet have. If you want to change, you have to change what you want. In this case, you have to learn to desire everything needed to attain what you want, and detest everything preventing what you want.

Addressing obvious flaws is non-negotiable⁵ for building an abundant life free from unnecessary suffering. To get better, you have to identify and discharge what is worse.