Happiness is linked to later success. Stop treating happiness like a reward you earn after the win. A review of 225 studies found that happy people tend to become more successful at work, in relationships, and in health, and that happiness often comes first. Psychologists Sonja Lyubomirsky, Laura King, and Ed Diener pulled the research together in Psychological Bulletin in 2005, testing the reverse of the usual assumption that success makes you happy. Their question was whether feeling good often helps you succeed. Snapshot studies showed happy people doing better in marriage, friendships, income, work, and health. Studies that followed people over years showed happiness came before many of those wins. And lab experiments, where researchers put people in a good mood on purpose, showed good moods made people more social, more helpful, and more creative. How often people feel good mattered most to the researchers, which is why "frequent" is in the paper's title. Small, regular good moods were the pattern connected with success. Some effects were modest, and studies measured happiness in lots of different ways. All three kinds of evidence still pointed the same way. Happiness showed up before success often enough that waiting to be happy until after you succeed gets the order backward.

Happiness is waking up to a fully charged up Tesla in your garage. Pure joy is waking up to two fully charged Teslas in your garage. ICE (gas) vehicle owners will never experience pure joy.

Happiness thrives where optimism waters the seeds of gratitude, growing forests of contentment. Story: A traveler planted one date seed with daily thanks. It grew into a shared oasis as neighbors planted their own, creating a forest of gratitude.