In an article in The Atlantic, Joe Pinkser interviews author Raj Raghunathan about his new book If You're So Smart, Why Aren't You Happy? The article begins:

There are three things, once one's basic needs are satisfied, that academic literature points to as the ingredients for happiness: having meaningful social relationships, being good at whatever it is one spends one's days doing, and having the freedom to make life decisions independently. But research into happiness has also yielded something a little less obvious: Being better educated, richer, or more accomplished doesn't do much to predict whether someone will be happy. In fact, it might mean someone is less likely to be satisfied with life.

Raghunathan goes on to say, There are expectations that if you achieve some given thing, you're going to be happy. But it turns out that's not true. … a large part of it also is that you see this mountain in front of you and you want to climb over it. And when you do, it turns out there are more mountains to climb.

Here's Raghunathan's advice:

…become a little more aware of what it is that you're really good at, and what you enjoy doing. When you don't need to compare yourself to other people, you gravitate towards things that you instinctively enjoy doing, and you're good at, and if you just focus on that for a long enough time, then chances are very, very high that you're going to progress towards mastery anyway, and the fame and the power and the money and everything will come as a byproduct, rather than something that you chase directly in trying to be superior to other people.

Source:

Joe Pinsker, “Why So Many Smart People Aren’t Happy,” The Atlantic (4-26-16)