This is common life/career advice given to people when faced with the choice of what to do next. It’s also common to tell this to people who are miserable in their current station and are looking for a change.

I see a problem with this advice.

It means well, but our society has done a tremendously horrible job at defining happiness. On top of which, we can barely define it for ourselves.

And even the things that do make us happy won’t always make us that way. Especially if we try for it all day, every day.

In the end, we are always going to be comparing whatever we have to a definition of happiness that we can’t live up to and will always come up short.

I offer the following instead:

Do what is going to challenge you, cause you to grow, stretch your comfort zone and gets you out of bed in the morning.