Everyone wants to be happy. Almost everyone is going about it wrong.

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As a therapist, the number-one goal I hear from my patients is: "I just want to be happy." I ask, "What would being happy mean to you?" The answers range from "Everything I wish for will happen" to "I will feel good all the time" to "I won't ever feel sad or disappointed."

These patients are deeply misguided: believing that bliss is a permanent, attainable state is both unrealistic and emotionally dangerous. Awful things occur that we cannot control, and that will and should at least temporarily affect how we feel.

A utopian world would be like I Love Lucy: it would be possible to have a minor stress of the week resolved in 24 minutes

My happiness-seeking patients are also, sadly, doomed to fail. It's a time-worn paradox: the more you obsess over whether you are happy or happy enough, the unhappier you are. As I've witnessed from years of counseling patients, contentment emerges as a byproduct of a good life, not from the pursuit of it being your life's purpose.

Here are some of the most common myths my patients believe about happiness — and how I help my patients move past them.

1) They keep saying, "I'll be happy when..."

When Philip (all patients' names are changed) began therapy, his heartfelt belief was it would be impossible to enjoy life until achieving X goal. After achieving X goal, there'd be a brief spike of joy before he sank back into gloom, anxiety, and self-doubt. So he'd set Y goal, hoping the elusive happiness he longed for would follow.

As we worked together, Philip came to realize his hypercritical father, an acclaimed heart surgeon, had drummed into his head that he wasn't worthy of being accepted and loved unless he did great things. Philip told me, "Growing up, getting a single or double in Little League wasn't enough. According to my dad I had to hit a home run to deserve to feel proud and happy."

Philip was able to call his now-retired father and say that these impossible standards had left him unable to enjoy life. After this conversation, Philip told me, "Dad was mortified. He said he'd always been proud of me but he raised me the way his father raised him."

Nowadays Philip is able to choose goals he wants rather than ones he desperately needs to reach. "Since how I feel about myself isn't dependent on whether or not I publish a novel or get a skydiving certificate, I can enjoy the ups and downs along the way."

2) They believe problems should come and go quickly

A utopian world would be like I Love Lucy or The Big Bang Theory: it would be possible to have a minor stress of the week that is resolved in 24 minutes. In the real world, of course, we're confronted with traumas and tragedies —traumas and tragedies that we can't be inoculated from by reaching a permanent happy state.

Peter began therapy a few weeks after his father died from lung cancer. After months and months of grieving, Peter was back on an even keel. He'd always miss his dad but resumed the sweeteners of daily life — seeing movies, spending time with his fiancée, playing basketball. "I'm cured — I'm good," he told me. I responded, "I'm so glad you're feeling better, but life doesn't stay fixed."

A month later Peter received a negative work review. He came in to our session, crying, "I can't deal with the stress of this. I need things to be easy. I can only handle being happy!"

I encouraged him to allow his resurgent grief to wash over both of us. He said a few weeks later, "I thought it was smart to try to always feel good, but I realize that's impossible. If I'm generally in a good place I can deal with bouts of depression. Bottling up bad feelings or pretending they don't exist will just land me back where I started."

3) They think a four-star meal or an Apple Watch will make them happy

Many of my patients get wide eyes when they see people with bigger cars, bigger houses, more expensive wardrobes, and the latest gadgets. They think, "If I had that, I'd be happy!" This fantasy is partly due to canny advertising presenting us with the equation that expensive things = lasting happiness.

Kara fell for this fairy tale. She started therapy after a serious shoe shopping addiction left her in debt. She sighed, "When I felt lonely or depressed I'd log on and buy more Christian Louboutins. It felt great. Only the high wouldn't last long, and what I bought mostly stayed in the closet."

We worked hard to get her off this hedonistic treadmill. Expensive purchases offer a fleeting pleasure that vanishes shortly after the box is ripped open.