If you wait for happiness, you’ll be disappointed. This is because if happiness comes your way, you won’t understand why or how it did. It will all feel so fragile and uncertain. If happiness doesn’t come your way, then you’ll feel bitter and resentful. I love the old quote that happiness is not something to wait for; it’s something to achieve. That’s really true. Happiness is something you create and shape over time. It’s something that in one sense you achieve in degrees, and in another sense you achieve fully — “in the doing” or producing of it, over time. This is where so many people go wrong. They start out expecting some unnamed source or entity — some projection of mommy or daddy — to make sure they are happy. Then they confuse this with wanting to be loved. Well of course we all want to be loved. But being loved doesn’t mean having someone “make you happy.” A lover or partner is a fellow happy person to stand side-by-side with in an already happy life. In the end, happiness is an attitude. It’s the reflection of a belief system that “I can and should go after what I want.” Happy people are those who value themselves and life itself. As a consequence, they develop the view that they can and should achieve happiness. At this point, they’re off and running.