Lack sells. Before we can convince someone to buy what we’re selling, we must convince them they are lacking it and suffering for it . . . or soon will be. They may have had no insecurity and dissatisfaction until the moment they saw that commercial or heard that sales pitch. The content are poor customers.

Friends, family, and strangers may approach you with opportunities to improve your health and increase your wealth using these very tactics. Unhappy with your appearance? Tired of being tired? Are you ready to be your own boss? All too often, these pitches are merely attempts to profit off our insecurities and discontent.

We can chase wealth, power, prestige, and personal well-being, yet still find the striving, if not the attaining, unsatisfying and hollow. The wise one argues that wisdom is far greater and more valuable than any of these. That those who seek and attain wisdom are blessed.

Perhaps it is in our striving for dominance of the mountains of influence that we will misunderstand what it means to be influential. Perhaps it is in our attempts to be “someone”—to “become someone”—that we lose ourselves. Perhaps in clamoring for all that we thought we needed, we lost the very things that mattered.