I aborted something I started writing about 2 weeks ago on a news item. It was to do with talk of schools teaching "happiness lessons", something I find quite ridiculous. After having a conversation with someone (you know who you are) a few hours ago, I decided to write it.
The truth is you can't teach people to be happy because teaching happiness would depend entirely on what the teacher believes, understands and concludes... pretty much in the same way you can't teach love. Unless you know what happiness is as it truly exists you cannot hope to teach it. And you shouldn't be so presumptious to think you can, especially in these times when each of us has the right to be whatever kind of person we choose to be.
I've concluded however, that a good place to start is by giving up our right to do the wrong thing. If we were to choose to do the right thing instead of doing what we feel inclined to do... in other words, if we chose to do the things that will lead to a good outcome thus happiness, instead of doing the things which please us now, but lead to a bad outcome, thus misery (this requires discipline), we would be happy. This isn't to say bad things won't happen from time to time; rather it is saying that despite that it wouldn't change your state of inner happiness. Happiness isn't subject to material and external factors. It really is a state of mind. And in order to find that state of mind, you have to work hard for it and be very willing to throw out character traits, habits and people that compromise your ability to be happy. You have to be ruthless about it.
The saying, "Misery likes company" is a true statement, but more often it is truer that miserable people have a habit of latching onto positive happy people and feeding off them, but rarely learn from them. This has been my experience, but I stand to be corrected.