How can I be more happy?

Answer: Stop miswanting things. That is, stop wanting things that won’t make you happy even though you think they will.

Miswanting: Some Problems in the Forecasting of Future Affective States by Daniel Gilbert and Timothy Wilson

How can I make myself more happy?

Answer: Try staying mindful more often.

Mind Is a Frequent, but Not Happy, Wanderer: People Spend Nearly Half Their Waking Hours Thinking About What Isn’t Going On Around Them (Nov. 12, 2010) — People spend 46.9 percent of their waking hours thinking about something other than what they’re doing, and this mind-wandering typically makes them unhappy. So says a study that used an iPhone web …  > read more

How can I be more happy?

1. Write down your most important goals in life,  rank them in order of  importance, and give up the less-important goals that clash with your more important goals:

“The great Sufi poet and philosopher Rumi once advised his students to write down the three things they most wanted in life.  If any item on the list clashes with any other item, Rumi warned, you are destined for unhappiness.  Better to live a life of single-pointed focus, he taught. ”

(From Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert, p 30)