Happiness and pain

When asked what they want, people often say they want happiness or pleasure.

However, in Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman argues that people are loss-averse, meaning they are more likely to act to avert a loss than to achieve a gain.

This finding means we are more likely to avoid pain than pursue happiness. As Nir Eyal says in Indistractable:

Simply put, the drive to relieve discomfort is the root cause of all our behavior, while everything else is a proximate cause.

When thinking about the inner want of your character, ask yourself what your character no longer wants to feel discomfort about and how are they moving away from it.