Life is for Getting Better

That should be the guiding principle no matter what.  Simply, relentlessly to improve.  With that as one's guiding principle, life will get better -- as a self-fulfilling prophecy.  It doesn't matter where one is or starts from -- only to get better.  The fatal flaw, is thinking nothing matters, and nothing makes a difference -- so doing "anything," is enough to ensure and entitle one to a wonderful life.  It doesn't happen that way.

The opposite or antagonist of improving constantly, relentlessly -- is having a great ambition -- without doing the little things that gets one there.  Instead, all their time and energies are focused on already being there -- and all the fantastic things one will do when they achieve their great ambition -- but until then, they never feel they have to do anything to improve and get better.  In their mind and fantasies, they are already "there," and just waiting for everybody else to realize that.

They themselves feel that they shouldn't care -- or be able to tell the difference -- but everybody else should, for their benefit.  So there is this essential disconnect of any personal responsibility for their own lives -- only that everybody else should make it better.  Obviously, that's not going to happen -- because everybody's first responsibility, is to take better care of themselves.

Lacking that, no amount of caring by others, is going to make up for it -- because that is the limiting factor that cannot be overrridden by any other(s).  It simply is what it is.  Nobody can care more for another, than they care for themselves -- because that is their essential life force, their power to do anything.  "Nothing comes from nothing, nothing ever could."

Improving implies knowing the difference -- because if one cannot tell that difference, what difference does it make?  But if one knows the difference, that is an infallible guide no matter what one is doing -- even if they are on the wrong track, because they can right themselves, and get back on the right track.