“Focus more on friends and family, less on material goods.”
Pretty simple, right?
This insight is one of the takeaways from decades worth of surveys and data gathered in a German study and summed up by USA Today. Mostly, what researchers have found is that happiness is achieved through small changes that give you balance, and so that you prioritize the truly important things in life. For example, in terms of employment:
Working too little is worse than working too much (presumably because of lack of money), but not having work is worst of all.
And:
Have a job but also enough time for leisure.
And in terms of shopping, consumerism, and “stuff”:
Emphasizing success and material items is actually harmful to life satisfaction.