Goal Pursuits and Happiness
Reaching goals that are important to you and that are in alignment with your personality, can contribute to your feelings of confidence and mastery. It is important to establish goals that are neither too easy or too hard, but that are optimally challenging. It is also important to note that investing energy in avoiding goals will contribute to diminishing happiness as well as deter one from reaching one's goals, which can be quite intuitive to understand.[6]
Money and Happiness
Many people strongly associate money with happiness, and they believe that being rich will contribute greatly to making them happier, and we see that this idea is increasing as the American society reflects this growing materialism. Although wealth is associated with some positive outcomes, i.e.,lighter prison sentences for the same crime, better health, and lower infant mortality,[7] and can act as a buffer in certain instances, as mentioned previously, the overall relationship between money and happiness is marginal. That is that, beyond a low threshold where the basic needs are met, money has a very small impact on happiness. There is also the concept of the Diminishing Marginal Utility of Income(DMUI), which is that money has no effect on happiness once a certain income level has been reached, and which represents wealth and happiness as having a curvilinear relationship.[8]