Richard Hogan: Do you think you should be happy all the time? 

Happiness takes work, and thinking it's something that's easy is dangerous

Richard Hogan on happiness: "if you believe you should be in a continuous state of happiness, you're going to be let down"

I can’t think of anything more sought-after in Western culture than happiness. It’s the Holy Grail. We are constantly bombarded with images of shiny, happy people, living their best lives. 

Filtered images on social media platforms present us with lives not just being lived but lives that are brilliantly happy. Blemish free and perfect. Billboards, magazines, telly, radio, and social media are constantly feeding us information about how we should be in a perpetual state of happiness. Just look around the next time you are out in society and analyse the information you are receiving, and you will see how ubiquitous messages on happiness actually are. Ubiquitous and destructive. Because if you believe you should be in a constant state of happiness, you are going to be sorely let down. In my experience, a serious problem arises for people when they come to believe they should always be happy.