Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky: Why You Don’t Feel Loved (Even When You Are)

We want to be seen. We want people to be interested in our inner life, in our experiences, in our thoughts. ["Inner Life"] If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call 1-CALL-PLACEMENT. That's 888-831-1581. And if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. One-CALL-PLACEMENT is affiliated with Carrera Treatment, Wellness & Spa, and One Method Treatment Centers. Today's guest has spent her career studying something everyone wants, happiness. But her latest work focuses on something even more fundamental, and that's love. Not just giving love, but actually feeling it, receiving it, and letting it in. Dr. Sonja Libomirsky is one of the world's leading experts on happiness and human well-being. But what her work continues to show is that underneath happiness, there's something deeper driving it. And that's whether or not we feel loved and connected. She's the best-selling author of the How of Happiness and has a new book released just last month called How to Feel Loved. Her work has helped millions of people better understand how to create lasting change in their lives. So one of the reasons I'm so excited to have you here today is because for 20 years, I've been teaching my staff, and really everyone who comes to me, that happiness in relationships, there's nothing to get, there's only to give. Just worry about your side of the street. Just, that's all I care about, okay? How much more loving you can be, how much more attentive you can be, how much more nurturing you can be, how much more generous you can be, how much more present you can be. Don't worry about pearl, okay? And I would tell them that, you know, look, they're not always gonna reciprocate. That's none of your business, but you get to be a loving person, and that feels better than actually being loved. And then I would say, I'll prove it to you. When you were a kid in high school, is it true that there were people there that loved you that you didn't really feel it for? But then when you loved someone, it felt really good, right? I said, that's what, and then the other day or a month ago, I'm reading, you're the authority on this. And so I had to have you. So thank you for coming and long. Thank you. What we write about in our book, How to Feel Loved is totally aligned with what you were just describing. So very nice. What do most people get completely wrong about what Ashley makes them happy? Well, I wrote a whole book about it. I call it The Myths of Happiness. My second book is called The Myths of Happiness, and it's about myths or misconceptions about what makes us happy. So for example, we think, I'll be happy when such and such happens, like when I have a baby, when I get a boyfriend, when I get that job, when I move to that city, when I lose weight, and all of those things do make us happy, but they don't make us happy forever, because we tend to adapt to most changes in our lives. And so anyway, long, long story. There's really three buckets of things that make us happy, like durably. And one is anything to do with connection, and we'll talk about that, right? Feeling loved, feeling connected. The second one is anything to do with contribution or generosity, right? Giving to others, helping. And the third is personal growth, sort of growing as a person, whether it's learning a new language or traveling or learning something. So yeah, those are the things that really make us durably happy, as opposed to like buying a new object, becoming more powerful, attractive, higher status, more famous. Those things don't make us happy for very long. Is happiness something we're born with, or something we can actually build over time? Well, it's both, of course, right? Genetics, influence, or happiness, but also a big kind of bucket of what makes us happy is what we do every day of our lives. Like how do we behave? How do we think? Deliberate intentional action. And so we could choose to be more grateful. We can choose to be kind. We can choose to spend more time with others, as opposed to alone. And so both, of course, are true. This is the part that I really am interested in. What does the science say on the correlation between money and the happiness? Of course, money and happiness are correlated. Money does make us happy. So that is a myth that it doesn't. Of course it does. If you make more money, there's a lot of things you can do that can make you happy. You can spend your money on experiences and activities that you really love, as opposed to working all day and having a lot of stress and all of that, making ends meet. It serves as a buffer. It allows us to do things we wanna do. But the more money we have, like even having even more doesn't make a huge difference, right? So money is especially, how do I say, happiness inducing when it keeps us from being poor. And there's lots of nuances. Actually, one of my favorite nuances comes from a recent study that showed that basically there's a correlation between money and happiness, but only when you're happy to begin with. So it's like, if you're an unhappy person to begin with, more money doesn't really make you happier. But if you're happier, more money actually makes you happier. And it's partly because I think that happier people spend money on things that make us happy. So what matters is really what you spend your money on. In your new book, How to Feel Love, you explore how people can actually experience and receive love more deeply. What's one mindset shift that can make an immediate difference? Well, I need to provide thank you. That's a great question. I need to provide some context for that before I jump into a mindset. Well, first of all, and I think you already started with this, that a lot of us are loved, but we don't feel loved, right? And so that's really a problem. In fact, we did a survey that showed about 70% of people, and I actually think that's an understatement, say that they would like to feel more loved. And so how do you do that? Most of us think, well, if I wanted to feel more loved, I need to make myself more lovable. Maybe I need to sort of broadcast how wonderful I am, show my positive qualities to people and hide my negative qualities. Or we think, so we need to change ourselves. Or we think we need to change the other person somehow, convince them to love us more. And we actually have a solution that's actually much more empowering than that and much more in control, which is that you don't have to change yourself. You don't have to change the other person. You just have to change the conversation. And when you think about a relationship, it's just a series of conversations, right? Especially if you define conversations broadly. And so the first step in making yourself feel more loved is to make someone else feel loved. And so you asked about mindsets. The first mindset that I would propose that is really important, we call radical curiosity, is to show real genuine curiosity in the other person, make them feel seen and heard and listen to, really listen to, valued, understood and loved. And that's really hard to do. When was the last time someone showed like real genuine curiosity in you, right? It's so powerful and it's actually rare. That was beautiful. I was just on a date. I'm not even kidding. And one of the things she said to me afterwards was, you know, you didn't ask me anything about myself. And immediately the first thing I said was, that's true, I'm sorry, and I was nervous. That's it. That's all that was. I was just nervous. Yeah, that's a beautiful story. It's funny because I've had that experience as well from both, I think sides. Yeah, and it's so, you know, yeah, it's so powerful when someone shows curiosity, asks questions and not just small talk questions, but deep questions. So it turns out, research by Nick Epley shows that we think that asking deep questions of someone else is gonna be perceived as like nosy or like we're prying. It's gonna be uncomfortable, but on average, most of us crave to be asked those questions, right? We want to be seen. We want people to be interested in our inner life, in our experiences and our thoughts, right? And even in the details of our day, think of all those people that you know, you know, you know, the people who tell you all these stories about all the boring details of their day, right? Like, oh, they went to the airport and they were running late and then they couldn't find a parking space, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It's really boring to listen to, but it makes you wonder though, people really want you to know, right? The details of their day, like they're just craving to sort of be seen like that. So when we ask questions that show real interest in someone else about those things, it's very powerful. And truthfully, I appreciated her saying that because that was an opportunity to be vulnerable and tell the truth and it was sweet. It was sweet. All right. Speaking of vulnerability, another mindset that we talk about in our book, how to feel loved is called a sharing mindset. And that is when you really share a little bit more of yourself to others. And the idea is if you want to feel loved, you need to be known. Because if you're not really known, if you're hiding most of yourself, right? You have a wall, we all have walls around us. They're there to protect us, but they also prevent us from letting people in. So if I have this wall around me and I, how can I ever feel loved by someone, right? Because if they're, what are they loving, right? They're loving this part of me, that's just this little bit that I'm showing, right? And so I really need to share more of myself to feel loved. And that's where sharing vulnerability comes in. It doesn't have to be sharing my deepest traumas and secrets, or it's certainly not all at once, but sharing a little bit more. Because we all know people who are like very, they hold things very close to the vest. I think it's very hard to feel loved if you are not known to the other person, which is also why you want to show curiosity in others because it helps them, you really know the other and help them feel loved. I love that. We also know people that dump everything on the table in the first five minutes. You did it out of the way. That's the opposite, so it's your over sharing. And that's not good either, right? Because people's walls come right back up if you're sharing too much. So actually, all of this takes quite a bit of emotional intelligence. Because you have to kind of read the other person, you have to read the room. Are they like, when I'm sharing a story about myself, I'm sort of gauging your curiosity, right? Do you want to hear more? Like, should I maybe ask you a question now? So yeah, it's this sort of dynamic back and forth process that involves quite a bit of reading cues, right? That's beautiful. I think of it on a date. I think of it in terms of tennis. Yeah. Right? Sure, come to it. Just be mindful of that so I don't over... So I don't just take over. Exactly, my story that's so similar to your story, I was on a date once and the guy just kept talking on and on and actually telling stories, telling really interesting stories. He actually is an influence, like a TikTok influencer, very good storyteller. But then I finally stopped him and I said, do you realize in the last 45 minutes you haven't asked me a single question? So very similar. And his response was great. He said, I'm so sorry when I'm nervous, I talk too much and I tell stories because that's what he's good at, right? And that was vulnerable and that forged a connection between us, right? So kind of getting back, like, usually when we meet people for the first time or even when not for the first time, we try to impress each other, right? Like I'm talking to you right now, Richard, and I want you to think that I'm smart and interesting and funny and virtuous, right? A good person. And so I might succeed in impressing you and I might even succeed in, maybe you might start to admire me, but that doesn't make me feel loved, right? So we try to impress each other, but that doesn't forge a connection. What forges a connection is actually opening up a little bit, you know, again, at the right pace, not too much and really listening and showing curiosity in the other person. Give me some other mindsets that will help. We talked about five mindsets. And I already mentioned the radical curiosity mindset. I mentioned the sharing mindset. So another one that's related, that we call listening to learn. So let's say you're curious about someone, you're asking them questions, then they start to share. They start opening up, very important, right? So you can get to know them better, make them feel loved. And when they're telling their story, most of us are not good listeners, right? Including me, we're not good listeners because we're mostly listening to respond, right? We are literally sitting there and we're listening sort of with half an ear. The other half an ear, we're formulating, you know, our next response, right? We're sort of thinking what to say next. And the person can sense that because you're not quite all there, right? You're not quite attuned. And so we argue in the book, this based on research, lots of research on listening that you should listen to learn instead of listening to respond, right? So listen like you're gonna be quizzed on it tomorrow. Listen like you're just watching a film and you're just sort of taking it in and there's no response, you know, you're just taking it in. And yeah, so that's another mindset. So you go, the mindset shift is during your next conversation, think of yourself as a listener, not a talker. And I'm a talker, so it's fine for me to do that. Do you know what I love about that the most? If you're listening, right? Like you're taking it in, like you're watching a movie and you're taking it in or listening to learn is what you call it. You don't have to think about a response because it's just gonna come organically. There's nothing you need to prepare for. But is it funny? Maybe it's because when we were in school, like we're constantly, like we're sort of taught, I never made this connection before. You know, we all had at least 12 years of schooling. Most of us a lot more than that. And that's kind of what we do in school is like we're constantly, like we have to formulate, we're teaching every day all day how to formulate a response, right? And so it's hard to just kind of sit back and like let that go. Let that like habit, let that go and just take it in. So I already kind of mentioned this with someone said, it was really great advice. When you're listening, imagine you're watching a film. When you're watching a film, unless you're a filmmaker or you're writing a paper on the film, like you're not formulating response, right? You're just watching. Let's say there's a conversation happening on the movie in front of you, you're just watching and you're enjoying it, letting it all, you know, letting it in. So think when you're listening to someone, imagine you're just watching a film. So I thought that was a great advice. That's fantastic. That's the root. Give me four. Oh, sure, there's five. Then when there's an open-heart mindset, they're called the open-heart mindset. That's the one I think most people are already doing or familiar with. It's having, showing warmth towards a person, showing compassion, kindness and believing in them. There's something called the Michelangelo effect. Do you know what that is? The Michelangelo phenomenon. This idea that the artist Michelangelo, he was set to, he would look at a block of marble and he would kind of envision the image of what he wanted to sculpt in the marble. And so it was already there. He already saw it and he would carve it to sort of set it free. And the idea is that you have that perspective on your partner or your friend or your child, where you sort of see like what they're dreaming, you know, you sort of understand what they dream to become and then you help them become that. You believe in them. So that's called the Michelangelo effect. So that's part of the open-heart mindset, sort of showing that belief in someone, helping them, showing warmth in them. So that's open-heart. Number five. This is actually one of my favorites. Maybe my favorite. It's called the multiplicity mindset. And I'm told that the word multiplicity comes from trauma research. The idea that if you have a trauma in your life, it doesn't have to define you, right? It's just, it's part of you, of course. It's like we're a quilt of all kinds of things, positive qualities, negative qualities, right? Traumas, dreams, you know, that we did accomplishments, failures, right? It's all part of us. We're a quilt of many, many things. And we accept that in other people. And we also importantly accept it in ourselves. So when someone misbehaves, or someone shows us a side of them that we don't like or we're uncomfortable with, we remind ourselves that that one thing does not define them, right? We're more than one trait. We're more than one behavior. And it's very hard to do because I think it's not, it comes naturally for us to be judgmental, right? And I often say like, I think it's evolutionarily adaptive for humans to be judgmental, because in the past, sort of in our ancestral past, it was important for us to make that judgment. Is that person a friend or are they a foe, right? So we kind of make these quick judgments. So we have to override that judgmental-ness in ourselves, right, to sort of, right? With deliberate effort, we always like to sort of see people as complex, very messy human beings. Give me an example, because I'm the most judgmental person alive. Yeah. Oh yeah, well, lots of examples. Here's one example. A friend of mine, we have a friend group, a guy. He wrote something really bad, really upsetting to a female friend. And we have this text, and we were like, oh my God, we were very upset about it. Like, I can't believe he did that. He's a horrible person, right? I'm not gonna go into what he wrote. And one of my friends said, you know, when I see that text, I see the little boy inside of him, the teenager inside of him, who used to be rejected by women or girls. And he was somehow triggered by this friend. And so all this stuff came out. Now, it's not condoning what he did. It's not justifying condoning or excusing it, but it does help you understand, maybe show some compassion towards him. By the way, it doesn't mean that I wanna hang out with him, but I now understand him in a more complex way. I need to know what he said. I need to know what he said, Matt. Well, okay, I'll give you another example. Another friend, a guy that I introduced to a female friend, and the whole time, we were sitting at a coffee shop, and the whole time he's boasting. So this is what he's doing. He's just boasting all about himself, blah, blah, blah, this and dropping names and boasting, boasting. And I was sitting there and I was so embarrassed. And that, because I'm introducing him to this friend of mine. And so after he leaves, I say to my friend, I said, I'm so sorry that he's boasting this whole time. And she said to me, I'll never forget it. She said, Sonia, if you had more compassion for yourself, you'd have more compassion for him. And I was like, really? And she's like, look, this is what he can do, right? He can't, it's like he doesn't have the capacity. Like this is what he was able to do. He was trying, of course, he was trying to impress her. He like, if he could stop boasting, he could, but right now he just can't. And again, it's not an excuse. I don't really want to hang out with him. I don't want to hang out with someone who boasts nonstop, right? But it gave me some understanding where he's coming from. So those are more extreme examples. Often someone just does something, you're upset about, maybe they snap at you, maybe they're rude and you're like, well, maybe they had a rough day, you know? You know what I mean? So it's things like that, like seeing people in all of their complexity. All right, I got two things to say about that. Number one, okay, I want to date that woman. Yeah, the wise one, yeah. For sure. Oh yeah, that was, sure, because she knew he was just nervous in that moment. She was just going to let him talk himself out until he was comfortable and not being a pain in the ass. Yeah. That's all. I love that. What a beauty, sorry. She's an amnithicent. That's an amnithicent. I agree. She happens to be a coach and she's a brilliant coach, I think because she has this wisdom, you know? So anyway, thank you. What's her name? Let's give her a flower. Yeah, I would love to. Her name is Emily Ritea, R-I-T-E-A, I'm sure, and Emily with like IE, she's French. And yeah, I mean, she's a brilliant coach and if anyone, you can find her on the web, R-I-T-E-A is her last name, Emily. No, and she actually coached me as well a while ago and she changed my life because she would just have these incredibly wise, you know, reframings or perspectives on my situation. I'd be like, oh my God, you know, I never thought of it this way, you know? So yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I'm happy to promote her as a coach. Emily Ritea. In your research, is feeling loved more about what others do for us or how we interpret and internalize those actions? Well, it's certainly both, but we, you know, again, we make the point in our book, How to Feel Love, that, you know, lots of people are loved, but they don't necessarily feel loved. So that means that other people are showing love to them. Well, what is that? Let's go back. Well, what is that? Why do people not feel loved when they're being shown love? Okay, and I think that's a very complicated question that is a little bit above my pay grade, but I will give you one answer to it. So imagine that we have a cup of love. Here's my cup of love. And people in my life are showing love to me. They're expressing love. It's like they're pouring love in the cup of love, but maybe there's a leak at the bottom of the cup. And so it's leaking out. And so I'm never really quite feeling as loved as I want to be, right? Cause it's sort of leaking out. Or maybe the lid only has a small opening. So it's not quite getting in, right? So it's sort of like, not quite all getting in. And so that's actually a metaphor for people who are anxiously attached, who have the leak, and maybe avoidant dismissive, who are a little bit, it's one metaphor for that. And they're not quite letting it in, or maybe even distancing themselves from it. So that's one answer is that I think attachment style can make it hard to feel loved. I mean, I think this other answer is like, and again, I'm not a clinical psychologist or therapist. I don't have as much to say about that, but it's a very important question. The book that you wrote is not what's taught in school, but it really is the most important thing when you think about it, right? We only have one go around here, right? We only get one shot at this life. We're all here on loan, okay? And if you could tell people, and I know it's a habit, right? And it's a way of life. But if you could tell somebody who was not as happy as he should be, and he had a thirst for knowledge, and he came to you and he said, Sonia, I'm unhappy, okay? I don't know what's wrong. My, I've got a good relationship. I've got good kids. I've got a good job. Why am I so intently unhappy? What would you tell him to do to turn that around? Yeah, well, that's a really hard question because there may be a number of routes to this person's unhappiness, including biological. I mean, maybe they are depressive, right? Including something in their background. But I would ask him, do you feel loved? By your partner, by your kids, by your friends? I do, but not the way, and he would say I do, but not the way I feel I should be loved or not the way I want to be loved. So, and that's what really what our book is about, is like, what do you do then? And that, so my advice would be to start, to start, and again, the advice is, if you don't feel loved, you wanna go first and start by making other people in your life feel loved. It sort of seems a little bit unfair, but that's how it works. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Elaborate on that, because that's the best thing. Yeah, thank you. So basically, you go first. So you make, and this happened to me too, actually with my family members too, where I didn't feel loved with one family member, and I thought, okay, I need to make her feel more loved by showing interest in her and asking her questions. And anyway, so first try to make your partner or the children or your friends to feel more loved by showing curiosity in them, by listening to them, by letting them share with you and you share with them, by accepting, and by listening to them with warmth, that's the open heart mindset, and acceptance, that's the multiplicity mindset. And then most of them, most of the time, they will reciprocate, not all the time, but most of the time, because reciprocity is an incredibly powerful norm of human behavior. It's very hard not to reciprocate. They'll reciprocate, and they'll start showing curiosity in you and listening to you. Doesn't always happen, but it mostly will happen. So that's my advice. And when it doesn't, you get to feel like a loving person, right? You get to be the loving person. Exactly, that's what you said at the beginning of the hour. Sometimes, and actually, that's one of the most common questions I get asked, when I give talks on this, they'll say, invariably, someone will say, I've done that, and then the other person doesn't reciprocate, and they don't ask me any questions, and they don't show curiosity in me, or they don't share, and, or they don't let me share, they don't care, and then I say, I mean, it's hard for me, I mean, I'll tell you what I say. I say, well, maybe you've chosen poorly, and maybe that's not the right person. You're with a narcissist. Possible, right? You maybe you're, yeah, maybe you've said through the, maybe, or maybe sometimes as a family member, you can't quite walk away from them. Maybe you walk away, maybe you pause, maybe you just accept that this is how it's gonna be, and this is not the person, you wanna put all your eggs in that basket, right? Yeah, I mean, there's probably more answers to that. Maybe there's other things you can do to try, but some people are just not gonna reciprocate, at least not at this time. And again, as Emily, my former coach, used to tell me, she's like, if the person could, they would, but they can't. Like right now, whether it's, say they're not listening to you, they're not showing curiosity in you. If they could, they would, they can't, they lack the capacity for whatever reason, and you have to accept that. But sometimes it's just they don't know. Right, well then, hopefully, then if you communicate that to them, then they will change. But of course, yeah, that's the easy part. They don't know, or like you said, the woman who said, when you realized, oh, I'm not asking questions, cause I'm nervous, you can try to overcome that. And some people, maybe it's because of narcissism, or whatever, some people, for example, are so, they really lack the social skills. And when they're having a conversation, all, and I used to be like that when I was younger, like all of my mental energy was on talking, or me, I had to focus so much on what I was saying, and how I was making an impression that I would not have the extra resources to kind of ask the other person a question, you know? And so maybe it's sort of a lack of social skills, lots of reasons for this. All right, well, here's the question I really wanna ask you, and I don't know if it's gonna be above your pay grade or not, but it would be, bordering on the criminal, not to ask you this. Social media, how does it affect our happiness? No, it's a great question. I think the answer is nuanced. It's not just like, oh, all social media is bad, or it's all good, because actually I was asked by another interviewer, something like, if we could delete all social media tomorrow, would we all feel more loved? And I said, well, I think if we replaced it with face-to-face, in-person contact, then yes, absolutely. But there's some positives from social media, people, some people, many people feel more connected. I think overall, it probably has more harms than benefits. So because, but you can show curiosity and listen and share on social media. I just think it's a lot more powerful, first of all, it's face-to-face. And when it's one-on-one, I kind of don't love the kind of communicating to lots of people, you know? Because you don't really, like if you have a lot of followers, you probably feel admired and respected, but not loved. I don't know, I would say that's not really a feeling of loved. It's really that face-to-face sharing, enlisting and curiosity that makes you feel loved. Do you know what this young rapper told me once when I was interviewing him? He told me that views were the new currency. And I'm like, what the hell does that mean? Yeah. And he said, it's like rolling up to the club in a Bugatti. And I'm like, shut up, no way. And he's like, yeah, that's the thing. All right, and that can't be good for your happiness. Yeah, yeah, I'm writing this down because I agree. Well, not for everyone, of course. I mean, not for, it's a generational thing in part. It's funny, cause I often say that texting is the new currency of relationships. It's kind of similar, right? Like you're texting, maybe they're not texting back. Maybe they're not texting back enough of what you wanna hear, cause that's what a lot of relationships are when you're not in person, right? What do you have? But views are, but yeah, with a social media, again, well, here's the thing, when I show curiosity, Richard, when I show curiosity in you and I ask you a question, like tell me, like let's say you tell me something about your parents. And I say, the three words everyone wants to hear. It's not, I love you. It's tell me more, tell me more. Like what was that like? How did you feel when that happened? And that really makes you feel special, right? It makes you feel loved, it makes you feel seen. But what if I ask that question or tell a story to all my followers, right? No one's feels special, right? Because it's directed towards many people. And so I can get something really critical that I'm directing it to you. I actually, when social media first came out, I remember before social media came out, some friends of mine and I, we would sometimes share like stories or jokes and we would like maybe email each other or text one person, but sometimes a few people, like five people say, I really appreciate this joke. And then people just started to post it on Facebook. And so I just went to everyone. And so I don't feel special when someone posted joke on, I mean, I might enjoy the joke, but if a friend says to me, hey, Sonia, I really thought you in particular would enjoy that joke. Like, because I see you and I know what your sense of humor is like, you know, it's like a gift that's customized for me. So that's something that's very special with one-on-one face-to-face communication as opposed to social media that goes out to like, lots of people. That's such a true statement because every morning I send out to two of my employees, my longest standing employees, I send them every morning the song of the day, every morning. And honestly, if I put that on social media, it would, they would not feel special. It's like our thing, that's what we do every morning. That's beautiful. That's so beautiful. That's so beautiful. Isn't that sweet? So yeah, and we could try to create, I mean, your listeners, viewers might be encouraged to create rituals like this, whether it's with a romantic partner or a friend or a child or a colleague, right? Like something you share specifically for them. Again, like a gift that you've chosen for them and you wrap it for them, that's what matters, right? Is that you have them in mind and they feel seen, right? I don't feel seen when I look at social media, right? Cause it's not directed at me only. My 12 year old told me a story that also shows emotional intelligence in a different way, but it's very relevant to our conversation. So she said, oh mom, this classmate of hers has this interest in this like, I don't even, it's an obscure sport that I haven't even heard of. And she's so excited about this sport. And so she said, my daughter said, she told her like a month ago about this sport. And she said, and I remembered, and like a month later, I asked her about it, right? So this is exactly what radical curiosity is about, right? So you remember someone's something, someone's deep. And she asked, and I remember to ask her about it. And then the girl just went crazy. She was so excited, right? That she was asked about this obscure thing. And she just went on and on and she was so excited about this passion of hers. Anyway, so this is another example of how we can try to like, yeah, try to notice and remember what people really care about and then ask them about it. And hopefully, you know, with a genuine interest. Do you know what this reminds me of? This reminds me of good gift givers, right? So when you have a good gift giver, it's there, they know you so well that they're gonna find the one thing that you actually care about. Like there's no way that I've never been given a gift that I haven't re-gifted, okay? Maybe a handful of them. So hard, yeah. And every time somebody does that, that feels like a successful radical curiosity. I totally agree. So hard to do. I know, and I feel like I'm not good at that. Anyway, I totally agree with you. Yeah, it's because it makes the person feel again, seen and heard and understood. Like you really know me. Sometimes they gave you a gift that you didn't even know that you wanted because they know you was like better than you know yourself. Anyway, I love that example. Yeah, but then again, sometimes you have people that are given something like that and then their first thought is, oh, shit, I didn't get you anything. I'm a shitty kid, right? I'm the worst. You ever get people like that? Well, we all have the self-critic. And remember reciprocity is a powerful norm. So you really feel indebted and you want reciprocating. If you haven't, then it makes you feel guilty. But yeah, we all have the self-critic, right? Inside of us. And we have to remember it serves an important purpose. It's good that we have the self-critic. We should be grateful for the self-critic because they've got us through lots of things. We are better people. But sometimes it gets out of hand, I've heard this from therapists, right? It's like, you just want to kind of like give them a hug and put them in a chair and let them sort of sit there and not bother you for a while. I kind of like that. What are the biggest behaviors people do often unconsciously that block them from feeling loved? Well, I mean, I can start with sort of the myths about feeling love, right? If you're too focused on to feel loved, I need to make myself more lovable, show other people, show the person how wonderful I am, try to pursue things like more accomplishment, higher status, fame, beauty, power, money, right? Cause I think that's what's gonna get me to feel loved. That's not gonna work, right? That's gonna backfire. If you believe you need to hide your shortcomings, I guess that's one answer, sort of like you're sort of focused on the wrong thing. Cause I think we already covered so much, right? So this idea, a lot of people are loved, but they don't feel loved. And why is that? Why do they feel that way? People think they need to change themselves. I need to change the other person. I already said, we have this very simple and empowering message. You don't need to change yourself. You don't need to change the other person. You just need to change the conversation. So then our book is all about how to change your conversations with those people you want to feel loved by, by embracing different mindsets. And when you embrace a different mindset, you can think of it as like putting on a coat or putting on glasses, right? So like, in the next conversation, I'm gonna come into it with the role of being a listener, not a speaker. Or I'm gonna wear my radical curiosity glasses. Or I'm gonna wear my open heart coat and show warmth and accept as multiplicity coat towards others. So it's really all about how do you have those conversations with people? And then the other thing that we already talked about is, but counterintuitively, if you wanna feel loved, you need to go first and make the other person feel more loved. And so that's really important. And then here are the steps to do that. Show curiosity, listen, share. Listen like you're gonna be quizzed on it tomorrow. And then a couple of things we have, and then I guess to reiterate, what's the key? I guess the question is like, what's the key to feel loved? The key to feeling loved is being known and truly knowing the other person. So again, if you don't know me, Richard, I won't ever feel loved by you because I'll think like, I don't, if you really knew me, you wouldn't love me. Or like, whatever side of me you love, that's not me. Like that's just kind of some kind of wall. And so one of my missions, like in the world, is to help people lower their walls. We all walk around with walls around us. Again, they're there to protect us, but they prevent other people from really, truly getting in. And by the way, when you notice it, it's everywhere, right? You notice all friends, family members, colleagues, neighbors, we're all working around with these walls around us. And so I have a friend group where we're very open. We still have walls, of course, we all do, but we're much more sort of into sharing, eliciting and curiosity. We're like, we share a lot with each other. And I kind of wish more people were like that. So that's again, one of my missions is sort of, again, feeling the key to feeling loved is being known and knowing the other. And then, and we're kind of going backwards here, why do we care about feeling loved? Why is it so important to feel loved? Well, it's evolutionarily adaptive. Like feeling loved is, you know, if our ancestors didn't feel loved, that means they didn't belong. That means they could have died, right? They couldn't have found a mate where they can reproduce. So that's why not feeling loved or feeling lonely, it feels so aversive because in our ancestral past, we could have literally died if we were lonely, right? If we didn't have someone that we felt loved by. And now today, it almost feels like dying, right? When we don't feel love or we feel lonely. So feeling loved is so important in an evolutionary sense. And it's why it's really why it's the key to happiness. Sonia. What would be the perfect first date? Okay, okay, I got your question. What would be the perfect date? Okay, and by the way, I'll preface by saying, I go on a lot of first dates and I never go out to dinner or have drinks. I'm into what I call deep intimacy. You don't need to go out to dinner, you know, spend money having drinks. I just go on a walk or I just sit on a couch, have tea and talk, right? So it doesn't matter because you're the situation at Malice, you have quiet, right? So you can really talk. So the perfect first date would be, you show both of you begin by showing curiosity in the other and hopefully it's genuine curiosity, right? Because you can tell if someone's just kind of asking questions, they're just kind of interviewing you. It's like an interrogation. They don't really care about the answer. You show curiosity, but it's a nice, you take turns, right? You share, so I show curiosity in you, you start to open up a little bit. I'm really listening, right? I'm not trying to respond, I'm listening. And then you ask me a question and then I open up and you really listen and you show acceptance and warmth if I share something uncomfortable and it's this sort of back and forth dynamic process. So again, it's really showing those five mindsets throughout the date, but at the right pace, right? So again, when I ask you about your background or what's been on your mind lately, you don't just trauma dump to me right away, right? You kind of read the room and that's what it is. And by the way, that applies to so many other settings. Imagine talking to someone on a completely across a political or religious divide, right? And they completely, you don't understand them at all. They believe things that you just completely disagree with. Imagine bringing the five mindsets on a conversation to them. Instead of yelling at them or just like shutting them out, avoiding a lot of people, just avoid people they disagree with, you show curiosity. Why do you believe what you do? You truly listen, you share. There's a study that just came out where people of like opposite political extremes shared vulnerably with each other. Like I'm really struggling with my son. And the other person says, you know, I'm really struggling with my kid also. They started to like overcome some of that prejudice and some of those assumptions about each other. So anyway, those five mindsets bringing in a first date or bringing to like many different kinds of conversations, I think is incredibly beneficial. Okay, if you ever wanted to know when I started loving you, that was it. Oh, yeah. Okay, that was it. That solves the polarization of the country. If you had to give someone a simple daily practice to help them feel more loved and connected, what would that look like? Can I tell you what it would look like? Well, you're gonna answer the question. I'll both answer the question. Well, what it looks like to me is how you just looked at me when I was emotional about what you just said. It was the most warm, loving exchange. You were perfect. That made me feel so good. Thank you. Thank you. All right, now you can answer a less impressive answer. When you ask, thank you so much, Richard. When you asked the question, I was thinking of a daily practice that you do alone, right? And so, and what you describe as something you're doing with another person, right? So you're, I do think truly seeing someone, right? Looking into their eyes. Actually, eye contact is so important that we don't do enough of. We kind of look away. It's so intense. And I don't know if you've ever done like an eye gazing exercise that's very powerful. So eye contact, warmth, show, I think warmth is so important. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. What is the eye gazing exercise? Well, there are various exercises where you, you like, you might go, you might be in a workshop with several, with a number of people and you pair up and you look at each other's eyes for like, say three minutes, nonstop. And it's really hard. And you just, you don't break eye contact and try this with anyone. Try this with your, with a, you know, partner or friend, colleague, it's very powerful. Like you really feel, you might get emotional. Some people, I did it once with a guy and he started crying and he ran out of the room. I actually don't know what happened to him. I never saw him begin. I think something triggered in him. I think he's okay. I actually asked the workshop, like facilitator and they said, he's fine. But yeah, anyway, and sometimes you see something in the other person, you see pain or you see happiness. Anyway, so when you're with other people, I do think like really looking at them and showing warmth and kindness is so powerful. But your question, I interpreted it as like, you're alone every morning, say, and how do you start the day? And to me, it would be gratitude, a gratitude practice. And it sounds so hokey or so kind of obvious, but it's so powerful to really feel it, right? Like to really experience it. Like I'm so grateful because really, even with all the horrible things going on in the world, we have so much to be grateful for. What you're grateful for. And then also I text people, you text people, text or email or call them or whatever. And I tell them that I'm grateful for them. And it's so powerful, there's little texts, it's so easy, it takes 10 seconds to write. And actually I got a text the other day from someone who said, I just wanna let you know that I really value our relationship. It was so beautiful, that was it. So, and I do things like that. Like I said, I really appreciate you. I'm so happy we're friends or whatever. And so that would be my answer, was a gratitude practice, both kind of internal, but also sharing it with someone else that you're grateful for. And it does sound hokey, but the reality is you can't be unhappy and grateful at the same time. It's just not possible. Exactly, in fact, I say this at, actually, my research shows this, other people's research shows this, that gratitude is like an, it neutralizes negative emotions. You can't be grateful and resentful at the same time. You can't be grateful and bitter at the same time. You're not usually grateful and anxious at the same time. So it's sort of an antidote to negative emotions. That's exactly right. What I guess what I wanted to say is, and this is just to get people to learn about it, the website is called howtofielove.com. So it's very easy, just the title, howtofielove.com. So I want people to find it. And also we have a quiz that we created because there's five mindsets. And the quiz just takes five minutes and it's on that website, howtofielove.com. And the quiz will tell you which of the five mindsets, whether it's curiosity, sharing, listening, multiplicity, which is your strongest mindset. Richard, you should take this too. And which is the one most in most need of improvement. And then we give some tips on that. So- Oh, we're gonna do that right now. Give me the five, let's go through the five mindsets. Giving me. First one. Well, you have to sort of, I don't have the quiz in front of me, but they're basically just five questions. It's again, radical curiosity. And it basically says like, I, and you take the quiz, you think about a relationship in your life that you care about. So you pick one relationship, you know, whoever it is with. And then you do it, the quiz for that relationship. You can do it repeatedly. So again, sharing mindset, listening to learn mindset, radical curiosity mindset, open heart mindset, and multiplicity mindset. Which one's the over sharing one? Well, sharing, well, over sharing, well, sharing mindset is you're very good at sharing. I presume if you're over sharing that you're not so good at that, right? If you're under sharing. Right, okay. So you're not extra good at it. No, no, over sharing would be less your points. All right, where can people find you and buy your book? So go to howtofilllove.com, that would be the easiest. And to find me, actually the easiest way to find me, if you just Google Sonya with a J and happiness, you should be able to find me. But I have a website, SonyaLibomirsky.com, but most people can't spell my name, so that's okay. So you can just put in Sonya with a J and happiness and you'll find me. They can't spell L-Y-U-B-O-M-I-R-S-K-Y. Well, not everyone is as smart as you, Richard. So, yeah. Good, all right. Listen, this has been a blessing to me, to the viewers. Everybody wants to know how to be more happy and how to be happier in our relationships. And you're the authority on it. And thank you for coming here and doing this for us. I am immensely grateful. I'm so grateful too. It was lovely, lovely conversation, very meaningful today. So thank you, Richard. Good luck with everything. I can't wait to see this or hear this when it's out. Let me know. See you next Tuesday. I can't believe she did that either. We're out of time. 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