The secret that leads to happiness, is to try to became a better person.

First of all, in order to make my case, we should think what happiness is? Well, happiness, is nothing more than an emotion, a feeling or a state of mind, that a person has; it is not a physical object nor it exist outside the persons psychological world, or simply put, his head. Therefore, it is created by emotions and it exist by them and as one of them. Of course, this emotions are produced and affected by our environment, but also, since they are just emotions (they are an idea in our head, not a physical object) can be produced and controlled by us. Now what creates those happy emotions? The first answer that would come to the majority of people, would be money, fame and others and also there would be a minority who would respond love, companionship, even family. But, what truly creates these emotion, is neither of that, but ourselves. And now let me make my case, which divided in two parts. First, we must consider that food, sex, trips and generally all the materialistic goods that money or fame can provide you, does not make you happy, but they just make you have a entertaining time, since happiness is a state of mind that does not decay or disappears after the fun this goods has provide you with, ends. Simply explained, entertainment, only cause you fun the time you are are entertained, meaning after the food ends, after the sex is finished or after you return from your vacations you will stop having fun and therefore you will not be joy-full anymore, but happiness is a state of mind, that accompanies you, before and after the food, before, during and after sex and before, during and after the vacations; it does not disappears after the 'entertaining' time has ended and it even endures difficult times. Even if a person, was to make the entertaining time 'permanent', meaning never stop the party, that would still not lead him to happiness, because happiness is an emotion and it does results from materialistic goods or generally physical things. Therefore, it is easy this way, to confuse happiness with just having fun. So we must consider that happiness may result from emotions and not money or fame etc. Moreover, we should think which emotions are the strongest. Which do you think, will make you feel better, eating a pizza or having a nice dinner with family and friends, having sex or making love to your significant other, being high and drunk or feeling the tranquility only love can give you? The answer is obvious. Also i don"t think it is important to emphasize, that no matter how much fun a person can have, he will not be happy as long as he has negative emotions ravaging his psychological world, like jealousy, hate or stress. All in all positive, emotions constitute happiness and not physical objects. Second, i must ask you which would be the point to have all the goods in the world, materialistic goods like money and mental goods like love, if you were not to exploit and use them properly? Meaning, which would be the point to have all the money in the world, if someone was to spend them in drugs and end up sick and dying or to lose them in casinos or waste them generally? That would not make him happy. What would be the point, to have fame, if you were to end up like this washed up actors you don"t see in the movies anymore? Neither that would cause you happiness. Also what would be the point to have a relationship with a person you love, if that relationship were to end due to ones fault or the others? Even further, what would be the point, to have everything you want, money, love, fame if negative emotions tormented you every day (jealousy, hate, stress, guilt) never to allow you to be happy? Neither of this things would make you happy. It does not matter if you can have all the mental or materialistic goods you wish for, if you were not to use them correctly. And if you think i am over exaggerating, consider how many people had money and fame and destroyed everything by their mistakes, or were never happy with them. Think, how many persons could have been happy after they had won their significant other, or after they had made a family and they ended up poisoning their relationships or up braking up, because they had negative emotions in their heads, like jealousy etc. What a person needs in order to achieve happiness, is the knowledge of how to exploit and use the goods he already has and that kind of knowledge is called wisdom. Wisdom is the knowledge, the ability, someone has to understand and separate what is the right from wrong and what is the good from bad. With wisdom you will be able to discover happiness, since you will be able to utilize properly everything you already have and you will be able to find the beauty of the world in small things, of our everyday life. Only then can a person, truly find happiness, because he can separate the good from the bad and properly utilize the goods (love, money etc) life has already blessed him with and of course clear him mental world (his soul if i am allowed to say for my religious readers) from all negative emotions, like jealousy or hate, that are an obstacle to finding happiness. Everything else is just an occasional and temporary time of 'having fun', that people confuse it with happiness, when they have the ability (money) to repeat it a lot of times. Also then a person is able to find happiness even if he has no materialistic goods like money, because he has all the mental goods he needs to, since he is wise. A person can acquire wisdom only when he strife's to became a better human being, when he takes care of his psychological world and tries to be good and just. Gandhi himself stated that his life where a sequence of misfortune events, that he manage to overcame with the help of Bhagavad-Ghita and in an other statement he said that he was a happy person. Why? Because Gandhi was a wise person and therefore he manage not only to pull throw all the disasters that tortured his life, but even to achieve happiness. Being wise he was able to 'utilize' all the goods he had on his life (mental goods only, because he was poor and he did not care about money) and became a symbol of tranquility. I strongly recommend to read the ' Les miserables' of Victor Hugo, to realize what happiness truly consist of. To conclude, happiness is an emotion and therefore it is not a product of the goods or the fun time, money can provide you with, because it is a state of mind that does not decay and disappears when the fun is over, but is a product of other positive emotions (e.g. love). Furthermore, no matter how many goods (mental or materialistic) a person has, he will not be happy unless he can live with them 'properly' and not waste them and in order to achieve that, he needs to have a piece of wisdom in him. Wisdom is only achievable when a person strife"s to became good and a better character. All in all, if you, my brother, wish to became truly happy, try to became a better person and in order to do that, you should study philosophy to find what is really good and what is bad, so you can apply that to your life. I recommend you, to read Plato, because his books contains everything a person needs to know, in order to make a just and good life and therefore be happy.