I frequently ask that question these days. I am struck by the similarities in so many posts and blogs I read. Everyone has advice about how to create a happy life. Or how to set goals that will help you achieve your “happily ever after.” Do you ever think about how people figured out life before the advice of strangers from all over the world was available?

Well to start with, I imagine life was much simpler, say, a hundred and fifty years ago. You could look forward to a basic education – if you were lucky. You were expected to marry the most suitable match who probably lived a few houses away. Your future spouse was almost certainly from the same town.

Your parents were likely friends with the parents of your intended or they would certainly have known one another. From church or encounters at the general store or sports and hobbies. Social and geographic boundaries were much smaller and tighter.

The rules for living a good life were generally agreed upon by most of the community. You were born, got married, worked either inside (usually the wife) or outside the home (usually the husband), had kids, then grandkids, retired, got sick, and died. Dead easy.

My dear departed Dad chased the one overriding goal in life he was convinced would make him happy: becoming a millionaire. His admiration for money was a lifelong obsession. He faithfully attended Dale Carnegie courses that taught him How to Win Friends and Influence People. He learned “tricks” about how the wealthy nurtured an aura of money … like always sporting a tan. It encouraged the perception: “A man of means has time to relax in the sun.”

Dad missed one of the fundamental rules of creating wealth that follows the counter-intuitive rule: if you want more of something, you have to give it away. His miserliness always seemed like a synonym for misery. After he lost all his money in middle age, it made him cling to it even more fiercely.

He complimented his wife for saving scraps of wax paper in a kitchen drawer. He refused to buy anything “frivolous.” He balked at buying a package of better quality ham that cost only pennies more than his choice. After retiring from law, he owned and operated an ice cream store. He drove his employees crazy. When someone ordered a banana split, he would drive down to the supermarket … and buy one banana at a time.

To all outward appearances, he had a comfortable life toward its end. A house he owned outright. A luxury car. Steady passive income. Savings in the bank (if not quite a million dollars). But his emotional and financial miserliness cost him his family.

Like many kids in his generation, we were on our own after high school. I marveled with envy at peers whose parents paid for their education or paid for their fees to stay in residence or regularly sent them “care packages.” There was no support for “frivolous” pursuits like university in my Dad’s opinion. Dad once asked an old boyfriend of mine: “What is Margot doing in university? She is only going to get married and have children.”

I often wonder how Dad felt about his life and the goals he accomplished. He kept himself and his second wife safe and comfortable. But he did no community service to speak of. Had very few friends and as time went by, fewer and fewer interests. It seemed he lived his life with an anvil on his heart and soul. He never had enough.

Marketing gurus today push the glamor of high-end vodka and designer purses and shoes and all the symbols of wealth and status. Strategically, they target a younger clientele who are not yet encumbered by families and mortgage payments. This time period of “disposable income” is usually a short phase.

So I come back to my question. When we are setting goals for our lives, what is our absolute endpoint? When and why should we move the goalposts? To whose benefit? I’m convinced the answer can only be found in getting to know ourselves better. I recently read Steve Jobs’ said that a $300 watch and a $30 dollar watch tell the same time.

I learned that lesson early. There were high-end items I wanted and acquired for their quality as much as for their cachet. A Tissot wood watch I bought in Florence, Italy years ago still brings me pleasure aesthetically and sentimentally.

When we are young, we want to hurry up and get on with it. We want it all. We are hungry and eager to explore and experience everything that life can offer. We test our wings and seek out our pack. We build castles in the air then eventually settle for a three-bedroom and two-bathroom house that better suits our lifestyle, our budget, and our needs. Needs is the operative word. Life choices essentially come down to that.

The quicker we learn what makes us happy, the faster we begin to attract those things into our lives. It doesn’t matter what anyone else wants or what the world tells you will make you happy. We learn what is enough, for us. It is up to us to decide when that is.