I am the last person who should be talking about this topic. :). But still I am going to take a bold step and write about this. From my experiences, I am writing this. Up until my undergrad days, I believed I was happy. I guess the reason was, I did what I felt like, had goals, worked to achieve them, apart from them,I had my little hobbies which kept me occupied. Besides I was living with my parents and brother. So I was overall happy with my life and secure in my life. Then came my undergrad days, starting which, I realize now, I started looking for happiness in others as opposed to looking for it within myself. Since then up until recently, mostly I have been looking for happiness in others. Although, I continued to have goals, but I started depending so much on others for my happiness, I believe, I gave up on a lot of activities which probably used to make me happy as a kid. I guess, a lot of us make the same mistake. Be it from parents, or friends, or gfs/bfs or your spouse, we can definitely try to make them happy and it might make us happy. But in return, you might start depending on them for your happiness, at one point, without your own knowledge you will kind of stop loving yourself. Your dependence on others for love would increase a lot and soon, your expectations of others will also increase a lot. All this will lead the others around you to feel pressurized by your expectations. What this leads to is, people leaving you or kind of running away from you and ultimately loneliness. Instead of scaring away people from you, would it not be smart to look for happiness within? I am not preaching staying away from people altogether, all I mean to say is that, your happiness lies right within you, so dont go around looking for happiness in material objects or in others, you might get some temporary happiness and if by any chance these people or objects dont exist in the future in your life, you will be depressed and would be desperate to find a replacement for the people/things we assumed made us happy.