Happiness, according to Positive Psychology, is three things: pleasure, flow, and meaning.

Of the three, pleasure is the weakest, most difficult to influence, temporary, vulnerable to the Hedonic treadmill, influenced by genetics.

The two other forms of happiness are more important, more in our control - flow, and meaning.

Flow comes from doing what we love and getting challenged by it. It is the unique feeling of time stopping, of us not noticing the events outside of us. It is being in deep concentration. It is when, deep into coding, you forget that you are cooking something and only snap out of it when you smell the scent of burned food.

The father of Positive Psychology qualifies it further to be Eudaimonian flow. Eudaimonia is the Greek word for "human flourishing". To be in an elevated state of humanity, doing what we feel we are made to do, and doing a good job at it. Aristotle believed it as the highest human good. If you felt this, you were happy. Happier than the temporary state of being in pleasure.

Meaning is obvious - it is in finding that we can affect change to things bigger than ourselves. It is in being connected to things bigger or deeper than ourselves. It is in doing things not just for our own gain. If we can do this, we are happy. Happy as the saints, happy as the modern day heroes - our social entrepreneurs. 

Too often we may be tempted to think happiness is just pleasure, when in fact pleasure is the weakest form of happiness. Ironically, deeper happiness often times require the opposite of pleasure: pain, sacrifice, selflessness. Pleasure is self-seeking. Meaning, is outward-looking. 

To reach a state of flow is often times to forgo the pleasure of not doing. To reach a state of eudaimonian flow often requires sacrifice and training and conscious and intentful struggle to get better at one's believed function in society - to be a good programmer, to be a good designer, to be a good businessman, to be a good anything that creates your maximum value to society. To be good at anything requires pain, sacrifice, it requires learning, it requires going out of one's own comfort zone. Comfort is pleasure, and that is why it is weakest. Ignatius calls this "unfreedom". To be addicted to comfort is choosing to be trapped. Choosing pleasure as the end goal of one's life is choosing unhappiness, because pleasure is fleeting and oftentimes empty, and unhappiness almost always catches up (see: Hedonic Treadmill).

One's meaning is almost never inside one's own small bubble of comfort. By definition meaning is way outside our comfort zone. Because giving, instead of taking, is uncomfortable. 

Herein lies the beauty.

If things are rough, if things are hard, if things are painful. Sometimes it is for being worthy of reaching eudaimonian flow. Sometimes it is for being connected to things bigger and deeper than ourselves. Happiness is not just pleasure - far from it. 

Happiness is service.