I have never felt happiness in its deepest sense (which extends way beyond being cheerful and satisfied) and I have found throughout the years that things that cause great pleasure to others don't have the same effect on me.

Lately, I have been crafting an idea or sort of a theory about the state of being happy.

I am arguing that happiness is just an accumulation of mood over time.

The state of being unhappy can't be turned overnight precisely because it's an accumulation over time, but I think this accumulation occurs over a window so we are accumulating from the current time all the way back to the start of a certain window. And as such very old experiences have very little weight.

Since happiness is the area under the curve of your mood, if you had sustained a negative mood for a prolonged period, you would be accumulating what I call negative happiness and this is very problematic.

To get a feel of why this is a very challenging problem to overcome, consider you are the type of person who can't leave the past behind and thus your window would start from day 0. To change from unhappy to happy, you would have to keep a positive mode equal to your current state of happiness divided by the timeframe you choose to accomplish this task.

You might be tempted to choose a very tight timeframe, but this means you would have to sustain a very positive mood which isn't realistic because of the hedonic effect. Let's say for example, you buy a very nice car or a new phone, your mood would be positive only for a very short time and it will quickly fade back to the baseline.

That's why the only solution is to change your lifestyle, which would shift your mood in a positive direction ever so slightly. It will be a long-term change that will lead to happiness as time goes by.

That's why happiness usually comes from events that transform day-to-day experiences like building a family, moving to a new country, or starting a new and exciting job.

That's why if you feel unhappy, look for ways to change your life because you are just accumulating wrong experiences.