Take account of what you want but don’t have

Unmet needs or wants are a great resource in discovering hidden flaws. It is sometimes the case that people think they already have what they seek when they don’t. This causes an obvious problem, because you will never pay any additional price to obtain what you already assume you have, and whatever you don’t already have carries a price beyond what you have already paid.

In most cases, people are well aware of their unmet needs or wants. However, few people realize what the root cause of their unmet needs or wants is: What you lack in life stems from what you lack in character. The common assumption is that all outcomes can be reached from whatever arbitrary path you happen to be on. This is, of course, not true. Outcomes always result from the path chosen. The path includes your character. Deficiencies of certain qualities in your character will always prevent the outcomes that require them. If you are lazy, you will not obtain the outcomes of the diligent; if you are greedy, you will not obtain the outcomes of the generous; if you are short-tempered, you will not obtain the outcomes of the patient, and so on.

If you lack something that you want, it is possible and probable that one of the character qualities you are missing is knowledge— specifically, the knowledge of how to obtain what you want but do not have. It’s common for people to pretend to know much more than they do, to be more confident about what they believe than they should, and to be less receptive to new ideas than they should.¹ If you don’t know how to obtain what you want, find someone who already has it, and ask them for their advice on how to obtain the same. It’s dishonest to do any less.