Another thought on happiness

A follow-up thought on an old post, grown out of subsequent work and discussions in therapy:

There's another thing that interferes with out ability to experience happiness, joy, or any other positive emotion, in addition to making it our goal rather than experiencing it naturally in the course of what we're really about.  Many of us attribute our joy or lack of it to factors outside ourselves.  Certainly, our circumstances affect our emotions.  But there is something else to consider: in very similar conditions, different people have very different emotional responses.

This is because the greatest drivers of our emotions are internal rather than from outside us.