Many people tend to confuse the two or believe that you can’t be successful without being happy and that there is no happiness without success. The truth is that they are two very distinct things.
Success means to achieve what you want, to get what you desire, no matter if it’s having a certain job, house, family, car or anything else. This is personal success, but there is also a social success where others, society, perceive you as successful because you achieved what they wish they had.
On the other hand, happiness means to enjoy and appreciate your job, belongings, friends, other people, life in general. Happiness means not to have what you desire but desire what you have.
Most of times successful people are people seen as successful by society and not by own standards and that’s why you can see a lot of unhappy successful people. Also many happy people don’t care about the standards that society uses to define success and that’s why you can see so many unsuccessful people happy.
Success means to get what you want while happiness means to want what you got.