Choose carefully when considering a partner, whether to go to the cinema, restaurant and how you look after your physical well being. These choices may have a significant effect on your overall life fulfilment. That's according to a study that defies the theory that life happiness is mainly predetermined by your genetic code.

The broadly acknowledged "set-point" hypothesis of happiness states that a person's long-term happiness tends to be steady because it is reliant mainly on genetic causes. The idea is based partly on studies that show identical twins have more similar levels of life contentment than non identical twins. This implies that although your level of happiness may sporadically be thrown off by major life events, it will always return to a main set level within 2 years.

Bruce Headey at the University of Melbourne in Australia wanted to discover if people really are pre destined for a certain amount of happiness and his team queried people in Germany about their lifestyles, careers and social and religious activities. The survey was first completed by 3000 people a year, and that rose to 60,000 per year by the end of the 25-year study.

They found that evident changes in lifestyle resulted in sizeable long-term changes in reported life fulfilment, as opposed to causing the momentary changes in happiness that set-point theory had suggested.

One of the greatest influences on a person's happiness was their partner's amount of neuroticism. Those that had partners who scored greatly on tests for neuroticism were more prone to be unhappy – and shown to stay unhappy for as long as the relationship existed.

Family values and altruism also predisposed lasting happiness. Those whose yearly survey responses altered to place a higher priority on altruistic habits  and family goals were rewarded with a long-term increase in life fulfilment. Those who had a priority of  career and material success, experienced a corresponding long-term decline in happiness.

The pursuit of happiness was also helped in having strong religious or spiritual convictions. "People who attend church regularly seem to be happier than people who are not religious," says Headey.

A person's body weight was another factor for long-term happiness, notably for women. Underweight men scored slightly lower than those with healthy weights, while women stated being considerably less happy when they were obese. Being overweight seemed to have no effect on men's happiness.

Robert Cummins at Deakin University in Burwood, Australia, notes that changes in happiness reported by Headey's team could be influenced by individuals falling into or recovering from depression.

The group advises its findings may be useful to other populations, having found comparable patterns, as yet unpublished, in the UK and Australia.

How is your pursuit of happiness? If you would like any help with issues, press the link here or enrol for one of our courses here.

A survey has underlined Britain's status as the "long hours" capital of Europe, with more than a third of employees saying they are overworked.

The report shows that 36% of men and 40% of women would like to spend less time at work - even if that meant less money.

Less than 10% of those surveyed said they wanted to work longer hours.

Long hours

British workers spend longer at work than their European counterparts.

4 million people regularly ignore the European Working Time Directive by putting in more than 48 hours a week, according to the Trades Union Congress and the Industrial Society.

While more bosses are getting round the rules by making employees take work home, as claimed by TUC.

Workers found it a lot easier to increase their hours than to reduce them, according to the survey by Essex University's Institute for Social Economic Research.

However, most employees do have some degree of control over the amount of hours they work.

Fear

Dr Mark Taylor, co-author of the study, said:

"But some jobs are more rigid in their hours, which may be caused by employer preferences, technology or industrial relations.

"What is more, the costs of changing jobs mean that some people persistently work more hours than they would prefer."

This suggests those in fear of losing work stay on and over work.

The survey found people increased the number of hours they worked when unemployment rates were high, suggesting fear was the main reason for the long hours culture.

Tired of living life with fear?  Take action now and change your beliefs and life.