Are you happy?

Funny a guy in work asked me that last week. Have to say I'm really happy with life and have a lot to be thankful for. Working, married, family, debt free, reasonably healthy, parents still alive. I'm at a really good place, it won't last forever but I do really appreciate what I have and take nothing for granted.
 
I'm not generally unhappy and I can have times that I am happy, but they tend to be short lived. I've come to the conclusion that I alone cannot make myself truly happy.
 
i trick myself into thinking im happy,

my main issue is i havent lived up to my potential due to not make decisions soon enough
i did not see myself at this point 10 years ago.
 
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In the grand scheme are things, I have many things going for me that others would love to have so should be happier, yet I am not where I hoped I would be 5/10 years ago.
 
I have bursts of happiness (no, not like that) but taking a macro view of myself as a whole I'm not sure I've ever been happy for an extended period (say for more than a few weeks at a time). Like a lot of people, throughout my life I've had some setbacks and they tend to keep me grounded.

One thing I have learnt as I've got older is that self-centred social activities make me happier than expected, e.g. I've never been one for celebrating birthdays but I really enjoyed my 30th birthday party and it made me wish I'd celebrated birthdays in my 20s. It may sound cheesy but my wedding day was also probably the best day of my life, as it was incredible having all those people there and being the centre of attention, it was like a massive high for 10 hours. Neither my wife nor I are what you would call 'popular' in terms of being in the cool gang at school, life and soul of the party etc, so such experiences are quite rare.

Another surprising source of happiness is watching my son smile; I was expecting to draw happiness from watching him develop etc, but I wasn't prepared for the rush I'd get from something as simple as him grinning at me. In fact it has actually changed my outlook on the importance of facial expression (I'm known as someone who rarely smiles), I never realised how powerful it could be so I am going to try and smile a lot more at others.
 
No, and it seems to be mainly down to my job and a lack of knowing exactly what I want to do.
I have a good job to the outsider, I'm on decent money, I don't have to work silly shifts, but I'm much much happier doing the odd bit of security work that I still do I get to work with a top group of guys, have a laugh, not be stuck in an office and at the end of the day I get that good knackered feeling.
The problem is I know that's not a sustainable job for life and would be a complete waste of my qualifications.
I was thinking about this on the bus this morning, up until now I've done some pretty interesting things in terms of work and now I'm stuck in a boring 9 to 5ish office job and it's just grinding me down.
 
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