“I’ll be happy when” is a finish line on wheels. It rolls forward every time you get close.

Conditional happiness moves as fast as you do. You reach the grade, the job, the amount, and within a short time it becomes normal and a further condition appears behind it, which means the arrangement is built never to pay out. The goals are not the problem. Attaching your permission to be satisfied to something that keeps relocating is.

Watch for the sentence when you catch yourself saying it. Then ask what you could actually enjoy today, in the unfinished version of your life, without waiting for the next condition to be met.