system
Given the following post, respond as if you're commenting on Reddit:
human
CMV: Most advice on how to be happy commits the wishful thinking fallacy

Most happiness advice seems perfectly okay with bullshitting you to make you feel better. Or interrupting your thought process so that you don't reach a sad conclusion. As a scientifically / logically minded person this annoys me. I feel a deep sense of purpose in investigating things and following ideas where they lead. I feel like positive psychology and therapy weren't designed for logically minded people. There's a bunch of cheap advice we're supposed to follow and not question any contradictions. I want my view changed since I want to be happy but in a way that respects a scientific and honest thinking process.

Some examples of wishful thinking advice:

1. "Be optimistic": Believe that things will turn out better than the evidence suggests because it will make you feel warm and fuzzy inside.
2. "Be religious": Religious people have higher levels of happiness. People are religious not because of evidence but because it gives them purpose, community, etc.
3. "Don't compare yourself to others": Other people have nicer things than you, but you should pretend they don't exist. The other advice is that "you don't know what they're going through", i.e. you should believe they're going through a tough time and hiding it from you based on no evidence.
4. Cognitive-behavioral therapy: When your brain has a thought your therapist doesn't like, stall indefinitely before you reach the conclusion. Or "challenge" the thought -- arbitrarily label it and all its implications as invalid.
5. "You don't know what happened": When you keep getting rejected on dates or job interviews it's not your fault. It was this mysterious one-off thing beyond your control -- always a different one, and don't think about it too much. Also if good things keep happening to you it's because you're talented.
6. Affirmations: Stand in front of a mirror and repeat the same thing over and over again until you believe it.

It seems like the formula is: believe or don't believe X, yeah I know it's bullshit and not based on any facts, but soon you'll feel better and forget you lied to yourself.

I should note that most behavior-based advice on happiness makes sense to me: get enough sleep, eat well, exercise, drink water, live close to work, have lots of sex if possible, etc. It's the thought-based advice that's bullshit.
gpt
To be clear, you are okay with exercise?  Lifting heavy objects that you don't need to bring anywhere, then putting them back in the same place afterwards?  Or walking just for the purpose of walking, with no logical reason to go to the location you are going?  

So if you are willing to move your body contrary to the logical ways you'd direct it for exercise just because exercise is empirically shown to be healthier, why not exercise your mind?  Avoid envy, practice gratitude, pray, etc just as empirically proven exercise and not because you have a logical reason to move your mind those ways.  Empiricism beats logical "what seems like it follows" for moving the body; why not for the mind?