http://www.resurgence.org/magazine/article3525-happy-beings.htmlic

This is a very interesting article and it has made me interested in keeping a diary although most of it will not be public.
Happiness has been the bete noir of recent years along with self esteem but how much benefit have we got from all this?

“To be happy is not the purpose of our being rather it is to deserve happiness.”
Johann G. Fichte

The article also contains a review of a book surveying the field of modern writing on happiness which has been a very popular topic recently here in the UK.
However it has not done much good because happiness is not just inside us,it is partly due to the kind of society we live in and our beliefs about entitlement.And confusing happiness and pleasure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pleasure

“Happiness is different from pleasure. Happiness has something to do with struggling and enduring and accomplishing.”
George Sheehan quotes (American physician, author and running enthusiast, 1918 – 1993)

Alfred North Whitehead wrote that “Too much thinking is bad for you” see below.

“It is a profoundly erroneous truism, repeated by all copy-books and by eminent people when they are making speeches, that we should cultivate the habit of thinking of what we are doing. The precise opposite is the case. Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking about them. Operations of thought are like cavalry charges in a battle — they are strictly limited in number, they require fresh horses, and must only be made at decisive moments.”