I think the answer lies in your definition of happiness. Before I really started to think about it; I confused material things--possessions--with happiness. I think the idea of being happy is an illusion that has been created by advertising and magazines. It is impossible to be happy all the time; in fact, if you don't have some "down time" how do you know that you are happy?
Gretchen has the luxury at this point of basically basing her career on searching for/discussing/defining happiness. I do not have that luxury, but I do spend some of my internal thinking time making decisions about how I spend my time. If you have a clearer idea as to what makes you happy, you can make decisions that move you closer to that state.