Bee Happy and Whistle While You Work

Happiness is not something akin to a celestial body to pursue and catch. In fact, happiness often comes on us unawares while we are helping others.
An old Hindu proverb pointedly and beautifully expresses this philosophy on happiness: "Help thy brother's boat across, and lo! Thine own has reached the shore."
"Pursue Love, yet desire earnestly spiritual gifts." (1 Corinthians 14:1a)
One psychologist by the name of William James put it this way, "I don't sing because I'm happy, I'm happy because I sing."
Some of us tend to wait for happiness to somehow take up residence on our doorstep, not even realizing that if we act as if we are happy, we will make others happy.
William James put it this way: "Action seems to follow feeling, but really ... action and feeling go together and by regulating the action, which is under the more direct control of the will, we can indirectly regulate the feeling, which is not."
This is powerful advice. Now, here is the final step to William James's philosophy: "Thus the sovereign voluntary path to cheerfulness, if our cheerfulness be lost, is to sit up cheerfully and to act and speak as if cheerfulness were already there!"