My flash of insight for today is that happiness is an ideal. Ideals are ideas of perfection and as such are for the most part unattainable. As we get closer to the original idea, our brains can imagine all sorts of improvements and the ideal changes. This can be very frustrating and can cause feelings of inadequacy, guilt, anger and fear, to name a few responses to having the goal posts moved just as you are getting close. Alternatively, making progress toward an ideal and celebrating the progress produces feelings of accomplishment, positiveness and satisfaction.
"The Happiness Process" has a focus on "wanting what we have" through gratefulness and noticing progress by writing about intentional daily achievement, first by naming goals or wins and second by recording achievement of the goals and wins.
Having personally practiced The Happiness Process for 242 consecutive days, I am happier and quite excited to have the insight that happiness is an ideal. It explains a lot of the magic of The Happiness Process. [Russell]