If you rank your normal level of happiness on a scale of 1 to 10, can you increase that number? Can you change your default happiness?
If you think about the people you know, you can probably divide them into the camp of “happy people” or “unhappy people”. That is, people who naturally tend to be happy, regardless of what is going on around them. Or those who seem grumpy as a default setting.
Sure, everybody goes through roller-coasters of emotion, when good things or bad things happen. And of course, the mood someone has on any particular day is subject to events in their life. However, there are some people that seem to naturally have a smile, while others naturally have a scowl.
And you might even feel this way about yourself. You might think that life is good, or you might feel like you can never catch a break. And, of course, how you feel about yourself may or may not match up with how others see you.
So then the question becomes: can this aspect of your personality change? If life always gets you down, can you exercise some sort of emotional muscle to improve the amount of happiness you experience? If one bad thing after another happens, can a naturally cheerful person become a grump?
If change is possible, then what can we do to make that change happen for the better? What can we do in our everyday life to increase how happy we tend to be?
Related questions: Is happiness the most important purpose in life? Why do we put up with unhappiness? How does technology influence your emotions? What is the right amount of emotion?