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.
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.