TricycleBlog
Dr. Jonathan Haidt is a professor at the University of Virginia:

‘Happiness has a very weak relation to the events in our lives,’ Haidt says. ‘Your happiness level is determined mostly by the structure in your brain – not by whether good or bad things happen to you. Negative events hurt or feel bad, but they are not usually as bad as we think and don’t last as long as we think.’

That rings true. But that brain structure is not permanent. It has been shown that long-term meditation practices alter the structure in your brain.