At least once each week, often more, I come across a distraught individual who bemoans the fact that they just can’t find happiness.

You may have heard me say this before – or even read it here, but life is NOT about finding happiness.  I guess you could say, happiness will find you, when you are ready.

“Normally pleasure is never the goal of human strivings but rather is, and must remain, an effect, more specifically, the side effect of attaining a goal.  Attaining the goat constitutes a reason for being happy.  In other words, if there is a reason for happiness, happiness ensues, automatically and spontaneously, as it were.  And that is why one need not pursue happiness, on need not care for it once there is a reason for it.  But, even more, one cannot pursue it.  To the extent to which ones makes happiness the objective of his motivation, he necessarily makes it the object of his attention.  But precisely by so doing he loses sight of the reason for happiness, and happiness itself must fade away.”  – The Will to Meaning

What are the goals you have achieved that have made you the happiest?  I would guess they are not the ones that were easiest, or most quickly accomplished, but the ones you had to work for and maybe even struggle a bit to attain.

What goals will you set today to find happiness this week?  What about the bigger goals for the end of the year?  Goals for next year?