I strongly believe happiness shouldn’t be your end goal. Some pain in life is inevitable, and you have to be ready for it. If happiness is the only thing you’re chasing, every hard moment will feel like failure.
That said, if you’re not happy with your situation, if you’re constantly complaining about what you have, or shaming yourself into doing things, then maybe happiness should be your first goal. If you can’t love yourself, there’s very little chance you’ll love others sincerely. Trying to love others, or looking for love from them, won’t fix it. They may leave or hurt you, and the shame and bad vibes just keep going. So love yourself first, and get to a place of calm, so you can be a positive presence for the people in your life.
What I’m really saying is that you should have a sense of calm throughout the day. Once you’re free from the immediate dangers, whether financial, emotional, or physical, you can handle the small ups and downs. But they shouldn’t be your daily struggle. You shouldn’t be in fight-or-flight mode all the time. Once you have that calm, it becomes much easier to turn it into happiness, even bliss.
You just have to pay closer attention to the details. I don’t know where “the devil is in the details” comes from, but I feel that life is in the details: the way you touch someone, the way you offer them food, the way you call them, the way you text them. People take these little things for granted, but for me, the whole of life lives in those moments.