I can confidently say that I am happy. Everybody close to me thinks that I was born happy and positive but they couldn't be more wrong. Achieving a permanent state of happiness took years of active mental exercises. Since I don't have any credible psychology background, nobody listens to my suggestions in real life. I doubt anybody would take me seriously here as well, but... all I have is time so this will help someone find their own path to happiness.

The first exercise I did in my pursuit of happiness was to understand what it means to be a happy person.

1. (At night) Would a happy person reach for the bottle of scotch? Why would he?

2. Knowing what I know about animal farming, would a happy person enjoy eating meat as much as currently am?

3. Would a happy person be as frustrated as I am with an under performing co-worker?

Once I had an idea of what a happy 'me' would do, I started going down a journey of self reflection. Why am I doing the things a happy me wouldn't do?

The whole journey helps me gain a higher resolution into my feelings and once my mind and my feelings are aligned, the negative feelings went away. My ability to empathize (initially I did not even know what that was) was no longer suppressed. Nowadays, negative feelings are rare, but every negative feeling and pain I feel is an opportunity to align my feelings and my logic.

I believe this: You will never be happy following someone's else's happy path.

You will be happy once you find the courage to confront your demons, reflect, and understand yourself better. Our minds does good job at hiding you from finding these demons, so a big part of the journey is finding and identifying them.