Personally, I do not believe in happiness as a goal. Happiness, like sadness, is an emotion meant to come and go and from which we learn. I believe in ever higher baseline levels of contentment as the goal. "I seek contentment, which is not settling but a hopefully high-altitude baseline, coming from within and connection to without. It doesn’t stem from the acquisition of attachments but awareness of connection to the world and the universe as a living, breathing, and heart-beating organism and from alignment of mind and soul and discerning my why — my drive — from discovering who I am at my core." That is from a short form of mine https://medium.com/everything-shortform/oft-covered-topic-of-happiness-has-never-been-essayed-as-fabulously-simply-as-will-buckingham-just-ef9ef1dee54d which I created to highlight this great essay by Will Buckingham https://medium.com/curious/happiness-is-not-a-mountain-it-is-a-landscape-b16741944770