I'm going to disagree here, because this idea took me a long time to develop and has been very helpful.
I spent a long time trying to make myself happier, and I just grew more miserable. I started to work instead on practical goals (I.e fixing the problems i had caused for myself) and found myself to be happier.
Now I think happiness is a natural result of accomplishment things that help you as a person. Pursing happiness directly seems like a category error. It's not a valid goal. The best metaphor I could give you is that "pursuing happiness" is akin to getting in the car and asking your gps "take me to the destination."
It will take you wherever you went last time. Occasionally that may overlap with what's actually good for you, but usually it's wherever you went last time.
"The destination" isn't a meaningful destination. "A gas station", or "a restaurant is."
Now, whenever you start driving, it's true that you are always "headed to the destination" but this is only true in the vacuuous sense of a tautology.
The happiness which results from accomplishing our goals, I now think is a return to a natural baseline state. It's when you don't need anything that you feel happy to just be as you are. Getting to a destination feels good not because "you have arrived", but because you popped the last frame off the goal-seeking stack.
What are the motivations behind what you're doing? Because likely, at the very least it stems from a Pavlovian habit originally triggered by happiness.
"There is nothing in goodness above pleasure, there is nothing in evil below pain" - Sefer Yetzirah (Hebrew book of creation)
When it comes down to it happiness is the point of life.
It's true with the normal definition of happiness. Think about it. Whatever you're doing now is an attempt to get you to a happy state. If you're already happy, it'll fade and you will take more actions to be happy again. This seems to be part of our human condition.
And it's an 'additive' kind, being that I get an additional boost of happy neurotransmitter thinking I'm adding a beneficial comment, thus potentially helping a reader to an understanding I have & perceive that they might not have as strong a grasp of. I like to help, thus am happier. If the form button fails to submit my contribution, I feel disappointment. At having wasted the effort in trying to contribute, but moreso, at not contributing.
I spent a long time trying to make myself happier, and I just grew more miserable. I started to work instead on practical goals (I.e fixing the problems i had caused for myself) and found myself to be happier.
Now I think happiness is a natural result of accomplishment things that help you as a person. Pursing happiness directly seems like a category error. It's not a valid goal. The best metaphor I could give you is that "pursuing happiness" is akin to getting in the car and asking your gps "take me to the destination."
It will take you wherever you went last time. Occasionally that may overlap with what's actually good for you, but usually it's wherever you went last time.
"The destination" isn't a meaningful destination. "A gas station", or "a restaurant is." Now, whenever you start driving, it's true that you are always "headed to the destination" but this is only true in the vacuuous sense of a tautology.
The happiness which results from accomplishing our goals, I now think is a return to a natural baseline state. It's when you don't need anything that you feel happy to just be as you are. Getting to a destination feels good not because "you have arrived", but because you popped the last frame off the goal-seeking stack.