 Nothing achieved through effort brings happiness. Everything that I was ever raised with was, you can achieve much through great effort. If you're poor, you can use great effort to be rich. If you're ugly, you can use great effort to move in the direction of being beautiful, we'll say. The ego always is telling us that we can achieve happiness through effort. What Jesus is telling us in the Course is actually, happiness is experienced when there is a release of the body identity, a release of the doer, and we sink into the present moment and we realize, oh my gosh, it was here all along. All I had to do was sink inward and relax and deeply relax and realize the happiness is right now.