Happiness based on reality is much better than happiness based on ignoring or denying reality. The reality of the world is that every year is better on average than the last. Noticing this reality can improve your happiness. Many people only notice the negative aspects of the world while ignoring the positive. The same event can be viewed positively or negatively. Choosing positivity will lead to happiness. Interacting with others who are positive will lead to more happiness. Each of you will improve the happiness of the other.
A happy person is a person who recognizes that happiness is worth having and cultivating. Those who are discouraged from experiencing happiness as a child will most likely become an unhappy adult who spreads his or her misery to others. Pleasure is not happiness. Many things give you short-term pleasure. Sugar, drugs, alcohol, revenge, and getting away with lies are a few of the things that give you a quick and short amount of pleasure. True happiness is a prolonged feeling that permeates your life. Long-term happiness takes years to attain and takes work to maintain. Happiness is as much a part of your health as exercise, eating right, and avoiding injuries. Depression can be much more damaging to your life than a physical injury. The side effects may include death.
Placing a smile on your face or pretending to laugh cannot force you to be happy. The smile can allow others around you to be or remain happy, but happiness happens in your brain and not on your face. The smile results from the happiness in your brain. A fake smile can be spotted a mile away. Happiness can come and go. No one will spend every waking moment in a state of bliss. You can only hope for a high percentage of your day being filled with happiness.
Many businesses pray on those who seek pleasure. Selling sugar water to massive amounts of people for huge profits is the perfect example of companies who sell pleasure while claiming their product will create happiness. The sugar water will never give their customers anything beyond short-time pleasure and will probably negatively affect the health and happiness of their costumers. I have no delusions that any company cares about their customers beyond profiting from them, but these companies should not be seen as good for society. They are peddling pleasure just as a drug dealer is peddling pleasure. The addiction to the product is the same goal for both these businesses. The only difference is that one business is illegal.
If you ignore the happiness of those around you, you are never truly going to be happy. Willful ignorance is ignorance. Happiness requires interacting with other people. Short-term pleasure is the most you can expect from ignoring those around you. Happiness comes with an understanding of what happiness truly means. Happiness is not ignoring the emotional states of others. Laughing at a funeral when no one else is laughing is an example of this ignorance. A comedian has to connect with the crowd to make them laugh. If they ignore jokes that do not land with the audience, they will soon be booed by the audience.
Happiness is being able to laugh at your failures. Failing is a part of life. You will fail more than you succeed in life. When you fail, how you react to it can improve or worsen your happiness. When I started accepting my failures and telling others about them, I could turn the failure into a humorous story. I was almost glad the failure happened so I could add to my happiness. I turned the failures into humorous mistakes that I used to handle those mistakes with more humor in the future.
Be the happiest person you know. Even though others may be happier than you from time to time, your goal should be to seek what truly makes you happy and endeavor to make others happy. Gathering happiness for yourself and those around you should be the goal of all humans. This may sound like a hippie-dippy thing to say (and it kind of is) but it should be the goal of anyone who wants to live a happy life (everyone).