“Success is getting what you want; Happiness is wanting what you get.”

Happiness is an emotional response to an outcome; if you win, you become happy. If you don’t, you become unhappy. It is an if-then, cause-and-effect proposition that is not sustainable because every time you attain a certain level of happiness, you raise the bar, and it is an endless loop. We also schedule and delay our happiness; we say when this happens, I will become happy. If this then that, Someday I’ll when so and so happens, I would be happy when I get married we change it to when we have kids, then when the kids leave home to when there are grandkids, there is always a reason to postpone. It is a constant moving target.

“Happiness is not a goal…it’s a by-product of a life well-lived.” – Eleanor Roosevelt

Author Gary Keller, in his book “The ONE Thing: The Surprisingly Simple Truth Behind Extraordinary Results,” shares a great anecdote on happiness through the story of the begging bowl: