Origin of Happiness

In my experience, happiness always comes from within. It's like a light that is cast on the beauty that is already there. Of course we are programmed with instincts to react emotionally to stimuli from the environment (a stone is not affected), but those instincts are still within ourselves. Even though it's triggered by the environment you can still reprogram yourself (neuroplasticity: people with brain damage may learn to walk and talk again), but what you can't always do is control the outside world. But my point is not that you should be like a stone but to be happy even with your emotions.
I realized that until I had no more emotions during my depression in 2008 and begged to be able to feel anything, whatever. That is also how I eventually became happy, by saying: "give me any experience and I will be thankful for it, because nothing is worse than this emptiness." Because I had so little emotion, I focused on it all the more. It made it easier to harmonise, and once I did, it intensified again. Eventually, nothing had changed in my life when I became happy: I still had no friends, no purpose, no future. The changes came only after that ... and then I became more busy, and had less time to be thankful and so ironically became less happy. The one that you really need from your environment is time for yourself, time to contemplate on what one has.