do people pursue happiness seriousely?

It feels at times that people's way of going throught life is not like they are trying to maximize happiness.
Sure, people try to feel better and have various lovely things. But they are laso running after a whole bunch of things that do not look like happiness maximizing. If you start talking to people on the street about happiness you will find that while in theory they value it, in practice it does not stay in their mind, and does not alway gets "due" weight in decisions.

Several explanations are possible. but this is not the point here.

If people actually prefer some other things to happiness, or if they do not have it in highest priority, shoudl we try to convince them about this? can we say that happiness is most important when people do not think so?