Many people don't even get to the point where they ask themselves "What makes me happy?" As you said, they see other people (or read lists), think they're happy, want to have the same, work for it, and end up at the same place, but completely unfulfilled.
Being honest to yourself, admitting you are different, admitting you have desires noone else shares, accepting that people may look down on you when you pursue your dreams of happiness, is the hardest thing to do.
I don't talk about running away from anything, I talk about confronting everything that makes you who you are. Inspecting and taking apart everything you ever felt. Bringing it out into the open (not posting on Twitter but bringing it out in front of yourself) and accepting whatever it is that you are. And for that matter, accepting that other people might have it even harder than you and -- I don't get why you wouldn't -- being nice to strangers since their lives might have just fallen apart. The strongest indication that someone is an emotional teenager is when you see that they treat people, who they're not dependent on, badly.
I regularly see people who can't even see when they're figuratively slitting their own wrists. People who project their own unhappiness onto others. People who hurt others without a second thought, who are so incredibly selfish that they can't see that it's like a brick wall standing in between them and their own happiness.
Especially in the tech community and with scientists it is so common that they suppress their own emotions by rationalizing them away. So here's a list of one item that is probably true advice for happiness (except for psychopaths)
1. Make sure you feel and understand your own emotions. Rationality is not the opposite of emotionality (that would be irrationality). So use your emotions as a premise for your own existence and act rationally starting from that premise.