​Happiness is the most important goal of all. It can seem unobtainable at times but when you find it, you realise that it was a lot simpler than you had thought. In fact, the reason you are unhappy is often because we overcomplicate things. Happiness is a choice. It depends on how you look at any given situation. Your attitude and your outlook on life are ​the most important factors that contribute to your happiness. Unfortunately, you may have been trained to think otherwise by your upbringing and even by marketing messages. You probably think that there are bigger factors that contribute to your happiness than what goes on inside your head. But that simply isn’t true.

​You may well have been taught to believe that the following are 7 factors that contribute to your happiness but it has been shown time and time again that they don’t.

​If you are thinking that you will be much happier when you make more money, you are mistaken. Money is a factor that contributes to your happiness but only at the beginning. Once you have made enough to live on, increasing your income will do little for your happiness.

If we look at money in the form of purchasing power, we see that countries with very high purchasing power often have a lower life satisfaction rate than countries with less purchasing power. For example, Japan has a much higher purchasing power than my country, Ireland, but Irish people have been shown repeatedly to have a higher life satisfaction rate.

If there is an item you really want or a goal you want to achieve which requires more money, acquiring that money will make you a little happier, but only in the short-term. Because it is the item or the goal which makes you happy, not the money. Once you have acquired the item or achieved the goal, the money is irrelevant.

Sadly, there are many people who are working themselves into an early grave to make money which will not increase their life satisfaction.

​When I was travelling, 10 years ago, I made a bold decision. I decided to sell my house and go back to University. I wanted to get a Master’s degree in Psychology. It was a major sacrifice of both time and money but 18 months later, I was awarded my Master’s degree.

I was happy when I graduated, not because of the Master’s degree itself but because I had set myself a big challenge and I had successfully completed it. The happiness would have come with the achievement of any big goal, regardless of what that goal was.

As things worked out, while my qualification is useful in my career, I do not use the education I received directly in my day to day work. In fact, there are other courses I have taken which cost less and had no official accreditation but brought me more happiness and helped me more with my career.

A qualification ​may bring you more happiness if you actually need it and; it helps you improve your life. Otherwise, it is not one of the factors which contribute to your happiness.

​I really love kids. I enjoy spending time with children because they are not my children. I get to hand them back so, I get all of the pros and none of the cons. And despite what some parents might say, there are cons to having children.

Children bring additional pressure and stress to your life. You have to think about more than yourself and every decision is more complicated because you have to think about how the decision will impact upon them. ​

Children can be a factor that contribute to your happiness but only if you really want children and you are ready to be a parent. If you are ready, that’s excellent because the world needs great parents. But if you are not ready to make that commitment, children will not guarantee more happiness for you.

​One of the most annoying things about modern life is the constant pressure on people to conform to certain images of beauty. Social media has not helped with this problem either. Some people feel bad about themselves because they don’t live up to certain expectations.

However, the same media which focuses on beauty regularly tells us stories which demonstrate that those famed for their beauty are no happier than rest of us. They have the same problems and often worse because of the media pressure.

Rather than pressure yourself to fit societies expectations, it is far better to determine how you would like to look and feel. Be who you want to be and set your own standards and you will feel more attractive. Someone who feels attractive and feels good about themselves is generally more attractive to others than someone who meets societies expectations of beauty while being unhappy in their life.

​Age does not make any real difference to your happiness. You can be happy at any age because you have control over how you live your life, And, that is what is really important, how you choose to live your life. Sure, as you get older, you may not be able to do some of the things you were once able to do. If you have the right attitude and focus on making the most of what you can do, you will be happier than you would be if you tried to fight the changes.

I know that my own father had to retire with back problems at 59. There are times when he tries to force himself to do things which he can no longer do and it ends up getting him down. But when he accepts his limitations and focuses on what he can do, he is as happy in retirement as anyone I know.

It is not his limitations which influence his happiness; it’s what he thinks about and focuses on. Age is not a factor that contributes to your happiness but how you think and feel about your age is so, work on your attitude because your age is only heading in one direction.

​Your happiness is not dependent on whether you are a man or a woman. We experience happiness in different ways e.g. women tend to experience happiness in slightly bigger extremes where they can reach higher levels of happiness but deeper levels of unhappiness. Men, in general, see their happiness levels fluctuate less.

Despite these differences, both men and women are equally capable of experiencing happiness.

​I want to be clear about this, if it is your goal and something you really want to achieve, then you are likely to be happier when you achieve it. However, the same goal would not necessarily make somebody else happier. There is no one goal that will make everybody happier, unless the goal actually is to be happier.

Goals can make you happier but only if those goals are your goals. They must be what you really want to be, do or have. If you try to achieve somebody else’s goals, you are not going to be any happier for achieving them.  You must live your life, on your terms.

The following are some examples of goals which we think would make anybody happy but don’t apply to everyone:

​Each of these goals will make some people happy but for many people, they are completely irrelevant. It is also worth noting that in order to achieve any of these goals, you may have to give up something which you actually value more e.g. time with your family.

​You may tend to think that certain factors contribute to your happiness when they don’t. The most common mistakes are with factors which lie outside of you or your control. It is important to remember that your happiness never lies outside of your control. Ultimately happiness is dependent on how you look at life. Your attitude and your outlook are the real factors that contribute to your happiness. Setting goals for yourself which allow you to get more from life will certainly benefit you but your happiness should not be dependent on the outcome. Your happiness with the goal should come from the pleasure of pursuing it.