Arthur Brooks is everywhere right now.

That’s what happens when you co-author a book with Oprah (or so I’m told). And when you write about happiness and how to get more of it, you’re bound to be the most popular person on the internet (well, second only to Oprah, of course).

do we have a “natural” happiness personality?

On his website (and in the book with Oprah), Brooks offers a test to determine your “natural happiness blend.”

The test divides people into four quadrants: High Positive/Low Negative (“Cheerleader”); High Positive/High Negative (“Mad Scientist”); Low Positive/High Negative (“Poet”); and Low Positive/Low Negative (“Judge”).

I took the test — as expected, I rated a “Cheerleader.” I’m happy most of the time and spend very little time in negative emotions. (Not that I don’t have them; I just very deliberately don’t stay long.)

But I wonder why Brooks calls this a “natural” happiness blend. Because Brooks himself, in various interviews (like this really good one on The Peter Attia Drive Podcoast) says that happiness can be trained — that he himself has increased his own happiness by 60 percent.

A Happiness Journey

I wasn’t always happy.

Twenty years ago, I guarantee I wouldn’t have rated a “Cheerleader” on Brooks’s test.

Almost certainly I would have been a “Mad Scientist” — very high peaks, very low valleys. (Ask any of my friend from back then — no wait, on second thought, don’t ask them.)

My deep lows distressed me. (I was distressed by distress — how’s that for a double whammy?) I searched everywhere for solutions. I went to therapy, took Prozac, haunted the self-help aisle of every bookstore in my vicinity. I felt stuck — and I didn’t want to stay stuck.

For a long time, nothing seemed to work. But gradually, piece by piece by maddeningly slow piece, I put together a picture of a happier self.

There were a few big “aha” moments — noticing, in the months before my mother’s death, a key mental trap she’d fallen into and that I could easily avoid; recognizing, with help from an online relationships guru, the simple mistake I’d repeatedly made in relationships and breaking that cycle; finding, after a health crisis, a much deeper sense of purpose and opportunity to serve others in my work.

Looking back, these landmarks define the journey, but the journey consisted of day to day decisions: Committing to doing work I love, no matter how much or how little it paid. Eating healthy and exercising daily. Limiting my intake of negative news and focusing on what I can control.

A Happiness evolution

Am I a “natural” Mad Scientist who learned to act and feel more like a Cheerleader?

If I am not a “natural” Cheerleader, then who’s to say I was ever a “natural” Mad Scientist? Had a few factors in my life gone differently, or gone differently sooner, perhaps my “natural happiness blend” would have been completely different.

For what it’s worth, I don’t relate to some of the natural challenges of Cheerleaders as defined on Brooks’s site. I don’t avoid looking at the potential negatives of a situation. (That would be professional suicide for a lawyer; lawyers specialize in anticipating what could go wrong and preventing it.) I don’t have a tendency to sugarcoat things to people — if anything, I have a reputation for telling it like it is (a quality often respected but not always enjoyed by those around me).

raising our Happiness temperature

Perhaps, rather than having a “natural happiness blend,” we tend toward a certain happiness temperature. At a given stage of our lives, we tend to hold positive and negative emotions in a particular way (or to release them).

So is happiness a matter of “nature” or choice?

I’m sure neurology research has something to say about this. But neurology also has something to say about neuroplasticity — the notion that our brains respond to the connections we deliberately make. Biology, neuroplasticity suggests, is not destiny.

Choose Happiness

Brooks’s (and Winfrey’s) message still applies: You can use the research on “happy people,” apply it to your own life, and raise your general happiness temperature.

But maybe happiness has much more to do with daily choices than with nature. That may be more helpful than thinking we have a “natural” happiness blend — a loaded gun we have to carry gingerly to avoid shooting our toes off.

No one said happiness is easy or automatic — but it is something that’s within your power to choose.