You may confuse happiness with accomplishments. When you achieve something new, when there is a new accomplishment to add to your success list, you probably feel happy.

Only for a while. You tend to forget every one of your accomplishments very quickly and every failure sticks with you much longer. 

Your brain prefers to remember all your failures rather than successes. Success brings short-term happiness and very soon you forget about everything.

You experience a failure and it stays with you for a long time, especially if you do not gather the courage to manage and overcome your fears.

It helps to have a list of your past accomplishments to remind you how awesome you are. It helps you to see the objective reality.

It helps you to gather courage for new challenges and get out of the comfort zone. But it is not the recipe for long-term happiness.

You need accomplishments in life to feel happy and good but they will not bring you real happiness.

Your accomplishments leave you feeling empty. This makes you depressed, anxious, even angry. You do not understand why.

You may not even realize your unhappiness is related to your accomplishments in the first place.

All you know is that you feel exhausted and deeply unfulfilled, feelings that are hard to square with the success you have achieved.

You feel empty because of what your accomplishments mean to you. They are not a joy; they are a necessity.

When you are forced to accomplish just to have any value, then you can not stop. Stop accomplishing and you stop being lovable. It is a terrible burden.

The problem typically starts in your childhood. Your parents tought you that your value as person ultimately comes down to your accomplishments and what you do … not who you are.

The problem becomes turbo-charged when you become a teen and an adult.

When you crash into a social media-infused, celebrity-obsessed culture, which insidiously conveys the message:

If you do not get enough ‘Likes’ on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram for the impressive things you do or say, well, you are obviously not likable enough.

And no matter how well-liked you are, you will never be as famous or popular as …

Drop the idea of success. You only want success because you believe success will make you happy. So instead, focus on doing things that make you happy. Success will come, but don’t let it define you.