It may be obvious that to achieve anything substantial in life – learn a profession, master a sport, raise a child – a good deal of effort is required.

You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.

If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we’ll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves.

We found that the happiest people take pleasure in other people’s successes and show concern in the face of others’ failures. A completely different portrait, however, has emerged of a typical unhappy person – namely, as someone who is deflated rather than delighted about his peers’ accomplishments and triumphs and who is relieved rather than sympathetic in the face of his peers’ failures and undoings.

I prefer to think of the creation or construction of happiness, because research shows that it’s in our power to fashion it for ourselves.

All that is required to become an optimist is to have the goal and to practice it. The more you rehearse optimistic thoughts, the more ‘natural’ and ‘ingrained’ they will become. With time they will be part of you, and you will have made yourself into an altogether different person.

Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us.

If you’re not happy today, then you won’t be happy tomorrow unless you take things into your own hands and take action.

I use the term happiness to refer to the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.

It turns out that the process of working toward a goal, participating in a valued and challenging activity, is as important to well-being as its attainment.