Finding Mastery with Dr. Michael Gervais - The Psychology Of Feeling Loved | Dr Sonja Lyubomirsky

Episode Date: May 20, 2026

Why is it that so many of us are loved... and yet don’t actually feel loved?Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky is a Professor of Psychology at UC Riverside and one of the world’s leading researchers on happiness. Her newest book, How to Feel Loved, co-authored with relationship scientist Harry Reis, lands at a strange moment: a time when more people than ever say they are connected, and more people than ever say they don’t actually feel it. In this conversation with Dr. Michael Gervais, Sonja offers a quietly radical reframe. After 36 years of studying what makes a life happy, she has come to believe the answer lies in this: Feeling loved.And here is where it gets interesting. Sonja’s research is showing that feeling loved is not something we have to wait for. It’s something we can help create. Most of us, when we sense the absence, default to one of two strategies. We try to be more lovable. Or we try to change the person on the other side. Sonja argues that neither one actually works. What changes a relationship is changing the conversation.She walks Mike through the five mindsets at the heart of the book: the sharing mindset, listening to learn, radical curiosity, open heart, and multiplicity. Along the way, they explore why most of us are listening to respond instead of listening to learn, the three words people actually want to hear (hint: it’s not I love you), and why ‘tell me more’ might be one of the most loving phrases in the English language. Sonja shares her foggy glass metaphor for why being known is the prerequisite to being loved, the Michelangelo effect, and a striking line the Dalai Lama once said to her about how we hold each other.The conversation also gets honest about the harder edges. Bridging political divides at the dinner table. Staying curious about a partner of 30 years. Navigating the modern questions around AI companions, monogamy, and what it means to really go deep with another human. And the research on what tiny acts of kindness, including the impact a 10-second compliment can have.If you’ve ever been surrounded by people who love you and still felt unseen, this conversation is a gentle invitation back in. The good news is that feeling loved is under your control, more than you think. Sonja’s research will show you exactly where to start.Most of us are waiting to feel loved. Sonja shows us how to create the conditions for it... starting today._____________________________________________________Links & ResourcesSubscribe to our YouTube Channel for more conversations at the intersection of high performance, leadership, and wellbeing: https://www.youtube.com/c/FindingMastery Get exclusive discounts and support our amazing sponsors!Go to: https://findingmastery.com/sponsors/ Subscribe to the Finding Mastery newsletter for weekly high performance insights: https://www.findingmastery.com/newsletter Download Dr. Mike’s Morning Mindset Routine: findingmastery.com/morningmindsetFollow on YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, and XBook: How to Feel Loved by Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis. Learn more and take the mindset quiz at howtofeellove.com See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

I've done 36 years of research on happiness. And after all those decades of research, I realized that the key to happiness is... Why is it that so many of us are loved, and yet we actually don't feel loved? If you want to feel more loved, you need to become known. You need to be known to the other person

and to really know the other. And most of us have these sort of walls around us. And that means I don't really know you and you don't really know me because you can barely see through. Welcome back or welcome to the Finding Mastery podcast, where we dive into the minds of the world's greatest thinkers and doers. I'm your host, Dr. Michael Jervais.

A high-performance psychologist named Michael Trevei, who head coach Mike McDonald and former head coach Pete Carroll brought into work with the Seahawks. Famous for his work with Felix Baumgartner when he jumped out of space in the Stratos Project. Olympic athletes depend on something more than just training and talent. They have to stay mentally tough. Today's guest is Dr. Sonia Lubermerski,

professor of psychology and one of the world's leading researchers on happiness, whose decades of work have helped shape how we understand what it means to live a happy life. What people get wrong is to get more love in their life or to feel more love. The more money, fame, power, beauty that we have, the more we'll have. And that we know from lots of research that that's not the answer to happiness or to feeling loved. In her latest book, How to Feel Loved, Dr. Sonia explores a powerful and often overlooked idea that the key to happiness isn't just being loved. It's feeling loved.

And more importantly, we talk about. why so many relationships fall short, even when love is present. The three words that everyone wants to hear, it's not I Love You've Lost Weight. It's... With that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Dr. Sonia Lubermerski. Okay, Sonia, I picked up your book because it challenged a first principle. And I've known of your work and known of your research. And it challenged the first principle that I have, which is the directionality of love. And so before we get into what was challenging me, welcome. I'm so happy that you're here.

It's a pleasure to be here in person. Yeah, this is great. I really, really enjoyed your book. And it's called How to Feel Loved. And first and foremost, where can people go to check into it and buy the book? Very easy. The title.com, How to Feel Love.com. People can find lots of information about the book.

We even have a quiz that we developed. We talk about five mindsets on the book, the sharing mindset, the listening to learn mindset, the radical curiosity mindset, the open heart mindset, and the multiplicity mindset. And we developed a quiz to help people understand what is their strongest mindset and which mindset is in their most need for improvement in a particular relationship in their life. So go to how to feel love.com and check out the book and take the mindset quiz. I loved it. And it's also, if you're thoughtful, a bit of a diagnostic of your current relationships that you're in. Yeah, exactly. We were actually stunned to hear that we wrote the book,

as a kind of a prescriptive. Like, here's what you do to feel love, to embrace these mindsets. But then a couple of early readers actually told us that they broke up with their girlfriends after reading our book because they use the mindsets

to hold sort of a mirror to their relationships. And one guy said, these are both guys. One guy said, I realized after reading your book that my girlfriend is no longer curious about my work.

And the other guy said, my girlfriend is no longer sharing and I'm no longer sharing with her. And I'm assuming, by the way, they went to couples therapy or they talked about it, but they ended up breaking off the relationship. So that was surprising to us,

but we think it's also an important benefit, I guess, of learning about the mindset, is that you can use the mindsets as a diagnostic about your current relationships. And so maybe just a quick background for you first, just set the context. Why did you want to write about love? Because I've done 36 years of research on happiness.

And after all those decades of research, I realized something. I had not been really listening to the data that were in front of me, and I realized that the key to happiness is feeling loved. And I can say more about that, more detail, but the key to happiness, I'll repeat it. The key to happiness is feeling loved.

That's why I wanted to write a book about feeling loved. It is worth repeating. The key to happiness is feeling loved. And it's not being loved. A lot of us are loved, but we don't feel loved. And there's lots of reasons for that. A lot of people say, like, I have connections. I know people that love me, but I'm still not happy.

and I think that feeling loved is really, really important, and that's subjective, and it's also under your control. Okay, so let's talk about the control thing. This is where my approach in love and a good life, maybe even a great life, is to have people that I can share love with. And so my job in that is to fill up with love because we can only give what we have. If we're anxious, we give that. If we're frustrated, we give that. So my job is to fill up as best as I'm I possibly can and then give it. And that is part of a meditation practice. It's part of a daily living practice. It's part of the relationships I want to be in. So my job is to be in a position of control and be great with the things that I can control. And when I read your title, I was like, wait, hold on. This is not how I see it. So can you, you're nodding your head like you know where

I'm coming from. Can you address why you pivoted in the way that you did? Well, I'll start with saying a reader recently emailed me and said, what's more important to, you know, to love someone else or to feel love from someone else. And I was like, it's kind of a ridiculous question because of course both are important. And I also want to say that we have a little bit of a counterintuitive message in our book is that if you want to feel more loved, the first step is to make someone else feel loved. So of course they go together.

And it's a dynamic process that I make you feel loved and then you reciprocated by making me feel loved. But feeling loved, it's like, how do I say it? It's as though let's say you're wealthy. You have a lot of money, but you don't feel wealthy. or you don't know, you don't see it, then it doesn't matter how much money you have because you don't feel wealthy.

If you have a lot of love out there but you don't feel it, it's as though it's not there. So that's really key to happiness. Yeah, it's a, so as I was digging into it, and I think you'll appreciate this. I didn't start as a skeptic. I started curiously, like, wait, hold on.

You've done a ton of research on relationships and now love. And so I was like, where is she coming from? You and your partner that wrote the book, not to be lost on that, that it was a tag team here. And can you open up first, like, let's just start the basics, your definition of love. Like, let's start with some very basic things so we can get on the same page there.

Sure. And my co-author is Harry Reese, who's one of the world's preeminent researchers on love and relationships. And I'm happiness researchers. So it kind of made sense for us to get together, although we realize that love scientists and happiness scientists don't talk to each other as often as they should. It's really a fun insight. Yeah.

Yeah. And so love, we define love very broadly. I mean, love is basically, right, the sense that you, matter to someone and that they matter to you and that you have the sort of sense of warmth and bonded feelings with someone else. Often your goals are intertwined. But it doesn't have to be romantic love. It could be love for your neighbor, your child, your best friend, your colleagues even. And I think we should bring actually the word love into more spaces than we do. Of course, you're not just talking about romantic love. But so what does love look like outside of romantic love? Well, it's warmth

and kindness and a feeling that someone matters. We talk about a mindset in our book called the open-heart mindset. And that's basically love for all kinds of people in your life. So open-heart means you believe in someone, you want them to be happy and they matter to you. So really, I think that's the key. I want you to be happy and you matter to me and I matter to you. You created this image, I think it was towards the end of your book, where imagine that the person that you're wanting to be connected with is on the other side of a foggy glass. Can you walk the listener through that image and what is on the other side of the foggy glass and how to work through the foggy glass.

And I love that metaphor. So this idea is, one of the key messages of our book is that if you want to feel more loved, you need to become known. You need to be known to the other person and to really know the other. And most of us have these sort of walls around us.

Or you can think foggy glass around us. Like we're sitting here, imagine, yeah, we're sort of surrounded by like a foggy glass or a curtain. And that means I don't really know you and you don't really know me because you can barely see through. And the only things you can see maybe

are kind of like the things that I show you, which are often the positive qualities, right? When you first meet someone, especially on a first date or professional meeting, like we want to impress the other person, right? I want you to know that I'm smart and interesting and funny and virtuous. And that's great. And it's human, it's normal. And I might impress you.

I might succeed in impressing you. I might succeed in getting your admiration. But I'm not going to make you feel loved or you won't make me feel loved. So the idea of the foggy glass is that if I show genuine curiosity, in you, if I truly listen to you, if I show warmth and acceptance towards you, it's as though I'm kind of clearing that glass a little bit, and I'm seeing a little bit more and more of you, you become a little bit more known to me. And then you reciprocate and I become known to you. And this is so important because we argue that I won't ever really feel loved if I feel

that you don't really know me, right? Because I'll always wonder if he really knew me on the inside what it's like all the messy complexity, some of the names. negative stuff too, then you wouldn't love me. So being known is really critical to feeling loved. I'm nodding my head to everything. What do you hope, I want to get to the five mindsets that you outline and it's great. What do you hope the reader understands right now from your message or the listener in our community understands most? Because what you just said is tight and it's beautiful and it's powerful. But what is the thing that you want people to understand above all else? The first is, and I mentioned this before, but again, it bears repeating.

By the way, most people don't feel as loved as they want to be in their relationships. We actually did a survey expressly for the book. We found that 70% said they don't feel as loved as they want to be in at least one relationship. 40% reported not feeling as loved as they want to be by their romantic partner. So this is very common. If you want to feel more loved, you go first. You make the other person feel loved by what do you do? Showing real curiosity in them and listening to them.

We'll get to that in more detail. Because that's one of the mindsets. Yeah. But I think the key is, or a really important take-home message is that this is really empowering because most people think, oh, I don't feel enough loved. I need to make myself more lovable, right? So I have a family member that this happened where I didn't feel as loved by her as I wanted to be, as I needed to be.

And so I thought, what do I do? How do I somehow make her love me more, right? So we think, I need to make myself more lovable. I need to show, you know, my good qualities to this person. or I need to somehow change them, get them to sort of love me more, express it more, right? Both of these seem like a mess. Yeah, and we don't control over that. And so we say, and this sounds like very pat, but we spent seven years working on this,

and suddenly it all kind of clicked. And by we, I mean me and Harry Reese, is that if you want to feel more loved, you don't need to change yourself. By the way, it's always good to work on yourself and evolve, so I'm not saying improve anyway, but you don't need to change yourself. You don't need to change the other person. what you need to do is change the conversation. Show up differently in your conversations with that person. And that's very controllable, very empowering.

And when we show up in that way, and you're saying in these five mindsets, when you show up in that way and you go first, which is you are working to see them, to understand them, and that creates a loving approach to them. They feel seen, understood, and loved. Exactly. And then in return, they start to act differently and because you've acted differently. Exactly. So you first make them feel love by, again, the first mindset or not necessarily in order,

we call it radical curiosity, is you show genuine interest in them. And it's actually amazing how rare that is. You know, when a person is so interested in you, they're really curious in you, whether it's the details of your day or your work or, you know, your feelings. You show interest. And then when they start talking, you ask them questions. We don't ask each other enough questions, research shows. We think that asking deep questions will be seen as nosy or prying.

It actually turns out that that's false. On average, people want to be asked, right? Because they want to be seen. So let's say with you, I ask you. And actually, the family member I mentioned, I started thinking, what is she really interested in? It turns out she's very interested in health. So she reads a lot about health. And so I thought, okay, I'm going to start reading a little bit about what she's interested in and then asking her about that.

And so you ask them questions about their interests. You remember those interests. And then they start talking. And then you truly listen. The second mindset is called listening to learn. And most people are not very good at it, including myself. We mostly listen to respond than to listen to learn, right? We are trying to think of the next thing we want to say,

or we try to think how to fix whatever their problem is. But listening to learn is really being with them and asking them, what was that like? you know, the three words that everyone wants to hear, this is kind of a joke. It's not I love you. I've heard the joke is that it's not I love you. It's you've lost weight or you were right. But actually, no, it's not that. It's tell me more. Tell me more and really mean it. Isn't it such a gift to be so curious and to really listen and to stay with them? And so that's what makes people feel seen, heard and loved. So if we go back to radical curiosity as a mindset,

as one of the five that you've identified to help feel more loved. And again, it's by initiating a way that you are engaging in the relationship. And then what happens is that people see you differently and feel differently about you, right? Yeah, they reciprocate. So this is a tricky thing. So reciprocity is one of the most powerful norms of human behavior, right? It's evolutionarily adaptive, right? We reciprocate.

It's very hard. That's why they're harder Christian at airports used to give you flowers so that you would, you know, reciprocate because it's very hard not to reciprocate. And so the idea is that I would show my family member that curiosity and listening and then she would return the favor and then ask me questions about myself. And that happens most of the time. But I keep being asked actually by people who read the book. They're like, but sometimes it doesn't happen. And I do everything right, you know, and doesn't happen. So that's a whole other sort of question, you know, should you sort of give up on that person and walk away, maybe accept the fact that that person lacks the capacity to reciprocate. So that

this happened once in a while. That is best reserved for narcissists and people that like really are not capable of seeing you. And so, okay, that was standing. It sounds clever to be curious, to be radically curious. It sounds really clever. Okay, good. What are the like the ways to do that? And how do you respond if somebody doesn't respond well? And I know you just walk through like find something that they're interested in, ask them questions about it. To me, that almost feels tactical. Right. I think it's a fine line between something that seems a little bit like manipulative, almost, or strategic. Although when you think about it, many things in life kind of have multiple goals, right? So I might help you because it makes me feel good about myself to help you, but I also actually genuinely want to help you.

So I think it's okay to have sort of multiple goals in mind. So if I want to make someone feel loved by showing curiosity, at first I might start being a little strategic about it. Another example from my 12-year-old daughter said to me one day, she's like, mom, I have this class. And she told me a month ago that she's really obsessed with, it was some kind of sport. I don't even remember, some kind of obscure sport. And she said, I remembered that. And I asked her later about that sport. And the girl just went crazy.

Like she was so happy because no one asked her about this. And then she just went on and on and on. And that's social intelligence. It's also strategic, right? But she also made this girl so happy, you know, and strengthened their friendship. Finding Mastery is brought to you by Sunlighten. Really excited about a new partner of ours. Something that I've come back to again and again is when I invest in recovery with the same

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So that's interesting. You slipped in there, but I think it was the most important part of the sentence was when you are curious, it's a way to help somebody feel loved. Absolutely, right. That's what we're trying to do at first. The first step is you make someone else feel loved by showing genuine curiosity in them. It has to be genuine because you'll be able to tell if you're faking it. And you don't know necessarily if the person is feeling.

feeling loved, right? Because that, if you're asking me questions, I can interpret that as inspection. I can interpret that as, oh, boy, I need to perform. I can interpret that as like, whoa, if I'm not perfect, I'm creating a bunch of maladaptive responses to an honest question. Right. Well, Mike, you're bringing a really important point up, which is that it takes, you have to read the room. It actually takes quite a bit of emotional intelligence to do what we're suggesting to do, right? So when I'm asking you questions, right, I don't want to be an interoperative. interrogator or an interviewer, it has to be just the right amount, just the right amount of deepness. And then I need to kind of gauge your responses. Are you sort of responding in a way that I'm

expecting, like, should I ask you more? Should I kind of pull back? Maybe now it's time for me to share. Because if there's an imbalance, then people feel the imbalance. So you really need to kind of read the room. And some of us, like, it takes practice. You know, some of us are not as good at that as others. Yeah, you know what I found is like the pacing of questions actually helps. And I find myself purposely slowing down and then ending the sentence with an up in kind of inflection as opposed to, you know, a very fast kind of abrupt ending. So a fast question with an abrupt ending, my experience is it creates a bit of anxiousness. It's like a cheap lever you can pull for people. It's like you can go fast and then leave empty space, which creates anxiousness.

Great tip. Yeah, just the more I thought, to talk about these topics, the more I realized sort of how, yeah, sort of how many. it's so dynamic, like how many factors are involved, have any cues are involved. Or when you're shared, we haven't talked about the other aspect, which is sharing. You know, sharing is important. If I'm sharing something with you, I need to gauge your response, your curiosity. Are you really listening? Do you really care what I'm saying?

Should I say more? Should I say less? Should I ask you a question now? And again, I think we all can do it and it takes practice. And some people, when people tell me like, oh, I try to do this with someone and they just don't respond. They don't reciprocate. And sometimes it's just the person lacks the capacity within that moment or the self-awareness to respond.

Because all of their mental resources are being used up. By something else. Exactly. And if somebody were to want to build a curious mindset. Well, there's different kinds of curiosity. And actually, my lab is studying curiosity. We've done studies where we ask people to try to be curious, you know, every week. So you can be curious about a topic, right?

So let's say I want to learn more. I'm watching a show right now about hockey. I won't say what the name is, but it's amazing. and I'm learning a little bit about hockey, right? So I can get curious and learn more about it. But what I'm more interested actually is social curiosity, which is curiosity about a person, you know. And sometimes it's easy.

When we're falling in love or making a new friend that we're really excited about, right? We're very curious about them. And we like, we want to know everything about them. And sometimes it's harder. It's actually often hard with people we know well. Like we have a partner for many years or decades. We often stop being curious about them because we feel like we know everything, right? We stop asking questions of the people we've known the longest.

And so some of the tips are to sort of approach others with wonder every day. Because even if I've married to someone for 30 years, they are having new thoughts, new dreams, new doubts, new fears, new feelings, new experiences every single day that I don't know about. As I'm thinking right now, I'm like, do that more with my wife. And like, like, because we see each other all. Yeah. But like my wife and I, we see each other and hug each other and laugh. with each other and argue with each other all the time. So there's so much raw clay there.

How would you hope that people in intimate relationships deploy curiosity better? Yeah. And sort of ask more and really mean it, you know, like how was your day, honey, you know, and tell me more. Again, like the three ways. You like that. Tell me more. Yeah. You could say different ways. Or like, so something was hard today, what was the hardest thing about it, you know? And how did you really feel when your colleague did said that? What about when you start asking questions and somebody responds and go, well, I hear you asking, but you don't really care. Well, again, that's the key that you need to really care.

Now, if you really care and they somehow, that's not coming through, that's, I guess, a different problem. But maybe you're at first being a little more performative, right? And maybe that's okay. We all kind of have to start somewhere. It's like learning to play the guitar or, well, I remember I was once interested in Judaism and I want to, and it felt very weird to me to do these rituals. The books all kind of said, it's okay.

Like, at first they're going to seem weird and unnatural. And after a while, they'll seem more. Or I actually, I do happiness interventions for most of my careers. Well, what is that? Okay, happiness intervention is basically a clinical trial where instead of testing a vaccine or a medication, we're testing a happiness practice, like expressing gratitude or doing acts of kindness or asking someone just be more social. So we do these experiments that are randomized controlled trials.

And then we are randomly assigned some people to write a gratitude letter every week. So, or to do acts of kindness every week. And so sometimes people at first feel a little bit unnatural. doing it. It doesn't come naturally to them. But then they sort of find the rhythm. They own it. So it's okay, I think. Lots of things start a little bit on natural sports. You know, first, it doesn't feel right. Right. I think embracing the awkwardness is very different than suggesting, like, let's fake your way through it. Because if I'm going to be a coach or I'm going to be a teammate or I'm going to be a student or a loving partner, like, I just need the raw clay to be

honest. And then we can like really go somewhere together. The word fake is a terrible word, right? So, or you can just say like, yeah, this is awkward for me right now. But I'm going to, yeah, I just admit. And this is the sharing, the sharing mindset is one of the mindsets, which is that you're vulnerable and you're admitting this is a little awkward. And start with that. And then it'll get better. Actually, one, one, we were talking about how if you want to help someone, right, you

feel like you need to be authentic and really, it comes from the heart. And you're helping someone not because you want something in return. My point is, no, it's almost never like that. We almost never have pure motives. We almost always have multiple motives, right? So I help for five different reasons. And I think it was His Holiness at Dalai Lama who said, I've had that fortune of meeting with him a few times. He said something like, it's okay.

I'm sure he said much more eloquently in that space. It's something like, it's okay to feel good when you help someone, like to do it in part because it makes you feel good. That's great. The important thing is that you're helping and then you also want the person to be happy. So it's okay to have multiple motives. I'm thinking of like a student in school and they're learning. They're studying for a test because you're not. because they want to learn and they want to be a scholar and they want to be a doctor or whatever

when they grow up. But you know what? They also are studying because they want to get good grades and they want to get lauded by their teachers and their parents. And that's okay. We almost always have multiple motives. Yeah, that is really clean. It's honest.

I think that's where the springboard for this. Yeah. Okay, Dalai Lama, pretty cool. Like, again, when you were in his presence, going back to like Masteads or like the icons of something, what did you notice? And by way, Harry Reese, my co-author and I, we actually went together with a group to India, to Dharamsala to meet with him. And so we have some stories in the book about it. He's so serene, you know, in the face of a lot of hardship and adversity.

And the way he talks about the adversity, about how China has treated Tibet, he's just so serene about it. And one of the most powerful things that he said to us is he said, and I can say this to you, Mike, I am your mother and you are my mother. we are each other's mothers. How can we ever harm each other when we are each other's mothers? And I think that is so powerful. And he said a lot of things sort of like this, you know, sort of like,

we need to treat each other well because we are each other's mothers. Isn't that beautiful? Yeah. When I was in his presence, it was a small room, like 30 people. And the joy that comes from this man is undeniable

and he is radically unbothered and he shared that he's terrified of sharks. It was a really... I did not hear that. There's not a lot of sharks in Durham Sala, but... There was another surfer in the room with us. So, you know, but anyways. Yeah.

Okay. Awesome. Will you start at the top and just list the five mindsets to help people feel more loved? Sure. We start in the book with what we call the sharing mindset. And getting about this idea that we all have walls around us. We're all... Actually, when you notice that, you see it everywhere.

We all have walls around us. We build these walls to protect ourselves. So they're there for a good reason. And yet they also prevent people from really like getting in. We don't let people in. And yet, again, to feel love, we need to be known and we need to really get to know other people. So the sharing mindset is one way that I can become less opaque, you know, that I can sort of take down the walls a little bit. And so sharing means sharing authentically, sharing vulnerably, not just telling you all the positive things about me because I want to impress you.

But it doesn't have to be negative, by the way. It could just be like, here's my true opinion about that movie that everyone loves, but I hate. So starts with sharing. The second mindset is listening to learn instead of listening to respond, again, very difficult for almost all of us. We're kind of all passing the mic to each other when we're talking. I can't wait to get my mic. We also often want to fix other people's problems instead of just validating their feelings. And the therapist coaches, of course, know this.

And so they know it is validate. I'm very good at sort of fixing. You know the question you should ask yourself, do you want to be? hugged, heard, or helped? In this moment. Yes, in this moment, of course. The third is radical curiosity is to really show genuine interest in the other person.

It's such a gift. And listening to, you know, it's such a gift to be really curious about the other person. I think of it as an act of kindness. I think curiosity as a mindset is one of the most significant mindsets in our modern world. And we are sucked into this need to be expert

because of this fear of people's opinions. Fopo was some of my research. And this evolutionary, if you will, under quotes, biological dictum to be included, to not be rejected, is right underneath the surface for all of the things that you're suggesting. Like, it is a driver that is very hard to escape unless you address it.

Yeah, in fact, we started the book actually with this idea that it's evolutionarily adaptive to want to feel loved, and then when you don't feel love, which is very much linked to feeling lonely or feeling like you don't belong, you almost literally feel like you're going to die. Because in our ancestral history, when you didn't belong, when you didn't feel love, you really could have died, right?

You were pushed to the fringe and that was a near-death-ups. Exactly. So it's actually an important signal that something needs to repair, a bond needs to be fixed. So it's actually a good thing. When you don't feel loved, it's healthy. It's a healthy signal that tells you to go and do something to make yourself feel more loved. Okay, so we hit three. Let's go four and five.

Open heart and... And multiplicity. So open heart, I'd mentioned before. So open heart mindset is sort of having warmth, compassion for someone, kindness, and believing in them. We talk about something called the Michelangelo effect, which is that the artist Michelangelo was said to see a block of stone, a block of marble, and he sees an image in that marble. And then he sort of sets that image free.

So maybe it's an angel or a person, David, and he chisels away to set that image free. in the open-hard mindset includes me seeing something in you. Maybe I see that you want to be more extroverted, that you want to be more patient, you want to be a marine biologist, you want to be a writer, and I try to help you achieve, I believe in you, I help you achieve that goal. So that's part of the open-hearted mindset. Before we go to the last one, what is the practice to be more open-hearted that you can point to? For decades, my lab and I have been doing interventions where we ask people to do acts of kindness

for others. And so this is very simple, simple but not simplistic. Just do small or medium or large acts of kindness for people around you. Yeah, very cool. I think we did the very first acts of kindness intervention in 1998. So basically what we find is if I ask you, say, for the next month, to do three more acts of kindness, say every week that you don't normally do, you feel happier, you feel more connected. We also have been showing that doing acts of kindness gets under the skin. So we actually take people's blood before and after this intervention.

and we find that people who are asked to do acts of kindness for others, as opposed to one of the comparison conditions is do acts of kindness for yourself, which, by the way, is also a good thing, self-care, maybe a little bit of self-indulgence, take a nap, have a piece of chocolate, you know. But if you do acts of kindness for others, you show changes in gene expression that are associated with a stronger immune profile. So less pro-inflammatory gene expression, right? So more inflammation is bad, so you kind of want to have less pro-inflammatory gene regulation,

gene expression and a little bit, and we also have some evidence of greater antiviral gene expressions. So somebody buys, I'm in line, and for whatever reason they want to buy my tea, the person behind them, they don't know me, whatever, or maybe we had a conversation. So that's what you're pointing to. When those things happen, and can you give three other examples? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, my favorite example is compliments.

So I don't think we give each other compliments often enough. In fact, there's research on this. Something like every five times that I think of a compliment to someone, I don't actually say it for something like three or four of the times. Is this your research? No, this is Nick Eppley from University of Chicago. Oh, Nick. Beautiful research.

You know Nick. Yeah, yeah. Love Nick. He has a new book out, by the way. It's going to be amazing coming out in April. Okay, so compliments. So I go to Trader Joe's all the time. It's a grocery store for those of you, anyone who's international.

And I will often say things like, wow, you are so good at your job because I'm very busy. I'm always running, right? They're like, thank you for being because they're super efficient. They're really, really fast. Like, thank you for being so good at your job. You made my day better. And they're often shocked to hear it. I think people don't usually say that.

It's a small bit of genuine compliment. Or I'll say to someone, often a woman, I'll say, you are so beautiful. That's a little dangerous sometimes to say things like that. And as a woman, I'll say to often women, more women, I'll say, you are so beautiful. When I really mean it, by the way, it has to be authentic. And I've had women cry.

They start crying. And they're like, and especially, I actually talked to one of my students once, who's really beautiful. I said, you're so beautiful. She's like, oh, no one ever tells me that. I'm like, are you kidding me? And it's also, it takes a lot of courage to give a compliment.

It's vulnerable to give a compliment. It is. It can be awkward. So again, compliments, I have done, I have never done a compliment study, but I've done lots of acts of kindness studies. And so obviously, a compliment is a type of act of kindness, as is showing curiosity, you know, as is showing gratitude. You know, there's lots of different kinds of kindness.

And people really appreciate it. And we probably all had these experiences where someone gives us a compliment. I remember 20 years, ago, another professor who was more senior than me gave me a compliment because I had a thought that she thought was really smart or creative. And I still, I still remember that compliment. I had a compliment in fourth grade. You still remember? What was it? I was dribbling a basketball. And I don't know, she was probably, I was in fourth grade. She was probably in seventh or eighth grade. And for some reason, we're walking down the hallway of our school. I remember it so crisply.

And she goes, wow, you're really good at that. You must play a lot of sports. And I think, I thought, oh, yeah. And I remember, like, wanting to be better at dribbling. And, like, it was a weird thing. But I just really remember. And that's one of the oldest, I remember. But when people give them all, you know, it's just such a breath of fresh air. And it's not just, oh, it makes you feel good.

Because as you said, like, it can actually change the path of your life. Yeah. You know, you could, yeah, like, whether it's you recommit to sports or I remember someone told me that they like the clothes that I wore. And I had been kind of insecure about my style. People tell me sometimes, like, they'll be like, Sonia, you know, remember, you know, 10 years ago, I met you in an elevator, like at a conference, and you gave me a compliment. And then that inspired me to, you know, do whatever they were doing.

So I don't remember it. And, you know, the cost to me of giving someone a compliment, like a 10 second compliment, right? But it costs is vulnerability. Yeah. But it's so little, right? Yeah, it's really not that expensive to do it. And the benefit to them could be this much. And another example, because I love giving these examples, because I'm a whole professor,

if a student gives a really good talk, whether it's in my department or a conference, I try to remember to email them or to say something to them and to say, hey, that was a great, that was a wonderful talk, you know, because I know how much it means to them to hear that.

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We don't, yeah, we don't, I don't think that has not been done yet. So we've only done just general acts of kindness for others. So they could be all kinds of acts of kindness. But Nick Epley, again, back to Nick from Chicago, he has done studies showing that we underestimate sort of the rewards or value of compliments. We underestimate the value or the benefits of deep questions. This is sort of the theme of his research. we underestimate the benefit of gratitude, right? So we think like, oh, if we express gratitude to someone,

yeah, we kind of generally think they'll be kind of nice, but it's a lot more positively received. And act of kindness too. Like we think, oh, it might be a little awkward to do this act of kindness. Or reach out, one of my favorites, reach out to an old friend or colleague that you haven't reached out in a while.

Just send them a text. And by the way, after listening to this, if everyone does this, the world will be a better place. We think, oh, why don't we, I wonder if we could do a social. A little challenge. Yeah, I mean, cool just to do a challenge, which is like, how many people would you want the listener to reach out to?

Oh, oh, oh, just one. Just one. Just one. Oh, I was, I was going to look bigger. I mean, you could do three. Let's go three. Yeah, three. So reach out to three people in your life.

And it could be your friend from high school, your colleague from two years ago. You haven't really been in touch and just say, hey, I haven't heard, you know, just a little bit of a note. It could be, I'm so grateful that you're in my life, you know, that you helped me with this thing. People generally think, oh, it might be a little awkward. They haven't heard from me for a while. maybe they don't really want to hear from me. But on average, people love to, you know,

wouldn't you love to receive one of those messages? I'll tell you when I recently received. It was from somebody I really respect. We don't spend a lot of time together. We did some workup at the Seahawks. He was a guest speaker. And we got to know each other. And he sent me an email.

And he said, hey, just, I've been thinking about you a bunch. You really are soul feeder. And I'm wishing you the best. And I was like, no one has ever used soul feeder. And I was like, oh, wow, that, like, it was awesome. So I saw him just recently, like two weeks ago at the Super Bowl.

And I was like, hey, remember that note you sent me? And I was like, I got to say thank you. And he was like, yeah, it's true. It was easy. It was non-consequential for him, but it mattered a lot to me. And actually, and your thank you also matters because there's also research on how important it is to then to show gratitude for that. Because then it makes him feel even better. We just don't do that enough.

So let's think about before we get to multiplicity, the mindset of multiplicity, I want to do one more thing on the acts of kindness. I like that you said random, strike that and put general, general acts of kindness. Or intentional, deliberate, because they're usually deliberate. I like that a lot. Yeah. And I, this was probably like a handful of years, 10 years ago. I've been married to my wife for 30 some years.

Came downstairs one day and I said, God, you are beautiful. And in my mind, she is stunning. And she just had this glow about her. And she said, thanks. And she said, it's a depreciating asset, you know. And I went, no, it's not the tone of your skin. It's not, it's just the way you carry yourself. And she's like, but my looks are depreciating.

And I was like, oh, hold on. It's really important when I talk about how beautiful she is that I'm talking about not physical, but I'm talking about like everything. And for me, it's that spark that comes out of somebody's eyes, that aliveness, that zest for life, that thing that is undeniable that they're here and with it and they've got a strength about them or even the vulnerability that's for it. Like all of that is so beautiful. And so I just want to mark that when you, to our community, when you give a compliment,

to also know that I guess it's nice to say that the outfit you're wearing is pretty, you're nice, or you look great in that. That's cool. I don't want to get too intense on this, but it's the essence of a person if you can see that and like soul feeder. Exactly. And you know what's why, and part is a gift. I mean, partly because the person feels so wonderful to hear it, but it's a gift because it means you're really noticing, right? You're really paying attention. You're really with them. You're really attuned to them. You've noticed something about them, that zest or that energy. Some people say I feel loved, but I don't feel understood. That's actually fairly common. And we kind of say it should go the opposite direction. The more I make you feel understood, the more likely you will feel loved is not a guarantee. But that's why we start with curiosity. By the way, another challenge I would say is try to be curious about someone today,

or at least three people, right? So, okay, let's go back to our challenge. Three people today. Yeah. Like, don't wait for tomorrow, do it today. Today. Three texts. Reach out to three people in your life.

Just simple texts. It could be, I'm grateful for you, but it could be just even less, you know, more neutral. And then show curiosity, genuine curiosity in three different, three different people, three different conversations. Are these two separate challenges or the same challenge? Yeah, two separate challenges. Okay, so six people or three people? Or three people?

Six people. Let's go six people. Like the decisiveness. Six people. Three of them of which you are reaching out because you want to share appreciation. Right. Take seconds to write a little text. Yep.

And then for three other people, we are doing what? We're showing curiosity in a conversation we're having with them. How are you doing? How's that project you're doing? Tell me more. But really think about something that you actually are curious about, right? Great. Curiosity.

Okay. Six. This is great. Come on. Let's move the needle. We need it more now than we ever did. Absolutely. And by the way, we talk it in the book.

Okay, so open heart mindset again, showing compassion, believing in people. But notice that all of these mindsets, and we'll get to the last one, which is maybe even more relevant, are important when you're talking about strangers. When we're talking about this polarized society we live in, we're talking about bridging divides across politics, religion,

you know, whatever. You know, imagine sitting down with someone who's wearing a different hat from you, right? Whether, no pun intended, but it could be in sports, you know, could be in politics, and really showing curiosity in them. Like, why, you know, we don't agree on these things because most people just kind of shut down,

either they yell at each other or they just don't talk. You know, someone was telling me that they have these MAGA supporting relatives and they love them, but they just don't talk about politics to them ever. And like, okay, that's one way to deal with it. But why don't we show curiosity, you know, in that person's thinking and beliefs and feelings? Another study showed that actually being vulnerable and sharing, like about my struggles with my son,

you have similar struggles with your son, even though you're on opposite divide. So all of our mindsets are really relevant also about bridging divides. Great. Before we get to multiplicity, I've said this five times because I really do want to sit there for a minute together. Our community, they're really switched on.

They are high performers. How can your work help people that are ambitious? They really want to have an amazing life and do amazing things. You know, there's a thought that sometimes gets complicated, which is if you really want to do special things, you have to sacrifice relationships. And I wrestled with that probably most of my professional career,

and it was haunting. It was when we first started this podcast 10 years ago, it was probably the question I asked most quote-unquote experts, like, how have you managed your love life? You are so good at what you do, meaning there's so much time under tension and investment in your craft. Like, how are you doing it? And I didn't get many satisfying answers. Right.

Well, I think you already kind of answered your own question earlier. Because you talked about the importance of being connected and feeling loved to a person's success, right? That you actually are going to be more successful when you have wonderful relationships in your life. People who support you, they're there. Of course, when you need distraction, when you need support, you know. healing, whatever. And so you actually will be more successful if you are feeling loved in sort of other areas of your life. And they also will support you literally by like championing you or, you know, helping you train or whatever you're doing. But the other thing is a lot of what we talk

about in the book is about basically, I would say attunement. Because when you think about curiosity, sharing, listening, it's about really being present and attuning to another person. And those muscles are also, of course, so important in almost any kind of performance, right? What do people in high performance environments misunderstand about love? I mean, I'm not sure there's something unique about people in high performance environments.

And I think maybe we all have sort of similar misunderstandings. And the one that I keep going back to, is this is our idea is, if I want to feel more loved, I need to make myself more lovable. I need to just show off and broadcast how wonderful I am. And the more wonderful I am that I can show you, the more maybe you'll love me and I'll feel love.

This happens a lot on first dates. Actually, I went through a period. I went to a lot of first dates. And usually the guy, and I'm sure women do this too, will just sort of spend the whole first date talking about themselves or talking about their opinions. And it's normal.

Like, if I have compassion for that, they're trying to impress me, right? They're trying to impress how, yeah, broadcasting those wonderful qualities. And it doesn't work. Peacocking. Sending all the right beautiful feathers forward. And sometimes it's really interesting.

And I try to kind of disrupt that, you know. And I'll just say, like, actually I had one date with someone who's actually a well-known writer, really, really smart. We're having this actually a really great intellectual conversations, but it was still not like forging a connection. So I actually said, I actually interrupted him, and I said, you know, you're a little intimidating. And actually, this kind of vulnerable thing for me to say because I'm, and I even said, I'm not often intimidated, but you're a little. And he was like, really? And it kind of like broke that fourth wall. And we ended up having a, you know, whatever, a more connecting conversation after that.

So again, what people get wrong is to get more love in their life or to feel more love. We need to sort of be more wonderful or pursue those success. You know, the more money, fame, power, beauty that we have, the more we'll have. And that we know from lots of research that that's not the answer to happiness or to feeling loved. Awesome. Multiplicity? Maybe my favorite mindset. it comes from, well, I'm told, it comes from trauma research.

This idea that if you have a trauma, it doesn't define you as a person, right? It's part of your quilt of many things. So the idea is that we are all a quilt of both positive and negative and neutral qualities and features and traits and behaviors, and we're not defined by just one trait or behavior. And this is a really hard one. The reason we talk about is that when you're sharing, when I'm sharing, maybe you share something that makes me uncomfortable, that maybe you share a bad behavior. you once did or a negative quality. And that the idea with multiplicity is I recognize you,

I see you, I, maybe I accept, maybe I forgive, I accept with warmth. Now, sometimes you share something and I might have that compassion and multiplicity. And maybe it makes me not really want to hang out with you. But that's okay, because it doesn't, it's not about justifying or condoning or excusing. It's about seeing people in all their messy humanity. And they were all full of contradictions. We've all done bad things, right? So I'm honest sometimes, and you know what? Sometimes I lie. I am kind sometimes and sometimes I'm selfish. And sometimes I'm loyal and sometimes I'm narcissistic. And you know, we are all like that. And so to also to view ourselves with a multiplicity mindset with self-compassion is also critical. Let me summarize to make sure I'm on the same page,

which is, yeah, you know what? There's multi-dimensions to people. And so can you hold the complexity of another person in your mind's eye, in your heart. And can you do the same for yourself? You know, it's not good or bad. It's way more complicated than that. And it actually will feed curious, radical curiosity. Right. Exactly.

Like, why did you do that thing? And I have some examples that actually people have a really hard time with. I'll just start with something else, which is that I think that we are by nature as human judgmental. and that being judgmental is evolutionarily adaptive, right? I need to make a quick judgment about whether you're a friend or an enemy, right? And maybe that came from our ancestral past. And so we need to deliberately overcome that judgmentalism.

I've had to work hard at it. No, we all do. We all do. Because often, one of my examples actually is a friend said something pretty awful to a woman. And we found out about it. And my friends are like, can you believe he said this? It was a text, actually. We're like, I can't believe he said this is so awful.

and all of us immediately are judgmental, right? We're like, I can't believe him. We don't like him. But the second response is, wow, I can see that little boy, that little threatened boy inside of him. Maybe that teenager who was rejected by women, you know, when he was young, come out in that text, right? And so I have compassion for him.

Now, again, it doesn't mean I want to hang out with him. Bad behavior is bad behavior, but you can address the behavior and also understand the complexity of where that might have come from. And there's also advice that parents are, are often given about their children, right? So a child might misbehave, and so you can punish them for their behavior,

but not for them, their trait or the person. And then casting the gaze on yourself with multiplicity is a great way to embrace the complexity of your tapestry, so to speak. So you move into MDMA and monogamy in this kind of subchapter. Can you open up why you went into those two directions and I just said them like they're related,

but I don't think that you put them in a related. way. Yeah, I guess they kind of are related. So I do research. I have a line of research on MDMA. It's actually not at all surprising that I study MDMA, which is also known as Molly or Ecstasy for people who don't know, because we were talking about how we all have walls around us. And MDMA is an incredible substance that helps people lower their walls, right? When people are on it under the influence, it lasts about four and a half hours. People feel like they can really share. They see complexity in other people. They see beauty and others. They're grateful. they are not just defensive.

That's why it's used for trauma because you can really go back into the room where you were raped or you're in combat and you can process that without the fear. You know, it's sort of like the walls come down,

their defensiveness comes down. I had a neighbor who told me that he negotiated his divorce settlement under the influence of MDMA with a guide, which I thought was brilliant, right? Because imagine how emotional and defensive people get,

you know, writing divorce agreements. So anyway, so I thought that was just very relevant, right? Because almost all the mindset, people are incredibly curious when they're in MDMA. Now, I'm not suggesting that we all take MDMA, but it's scientifically, it kind of opens the window and sort of what actually happens, like in the brain, for example, you know, what brain pathways are involved when you're really curious or when you feel really loved or when you're really listening, when you're really sharing. What are some of those tip of tongue brain networks that you're most interested in? I'm not being a neuroscientist. I can't speak like from memory right now.

I think I used to know better. But it's actually really interesting. It's very revealing kind of like what brain pathways are involved when you're really feeling understood and feeling. It's something that it's hard to manipulate in the lab, but with the substance we have. Is that similar research to ketamine? Is the feeling safe enough to bond with the therapist? Very, very interesting. I don't know.

I mean, I know about research on ketamine. Ketamine is a very different substance, right? It's dissociative. 100%. Very, very different. But yes, absolutely. We actually write. I have a paper on this.

where I write about how MDMA is beautiful for sort of fostering the patient health professional alliance. Yeah, that's where I saw. So we know that, that rapport matters so much in the therapeutic alliance. Maybe it's the most important thing. The most 85% and some would suggest. Exactly. Yeah.

If I am your patient or your client and I'm just kind of wound up, I'm protecting myself and I just can't quite let go to let you see and understand me, it's going to take a long time to get the change that I want. So what the research around MDMA and others is suggesting is like, wait, are there mechanisms to help somebody feel safer, which is different than alcohol? Alcohol, like there's a disinhibition that takes place, but it's different. I'm not using, I don't use MDMA or academy. I haven't been down that path, but I really do like the point that you made in your book that

alcohol is different than these other psychotropics. Exactly. I think it's very, very different. And also, people say that on MDMA, they feel more like themselves. Right. It's as though we have these walls around us, which kind of shields what we hide who we really are in MDMA. You feel more authentic on it.

I don't think anyone says that they feel more authentic on alcohol, maybe on cocaine or other drugs. Yeah, you hear people say, oh, God, what did I just do last night? Great. The second is you made a point to bring up monogamy. If you're talking about love and most of the Western world, I think most of the world is aligned with monogamy as a choice of intimacy. And so you just pushed against it.

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So yeah, monogamy, non-monogamy. So it's actually incredible again. When you see it everywhere, you know, my kids and I sometimes watch reality shows, you know, it was like the bachelor or like love is blind. They often are like choosing between two people. And I'm like, I'm like, kids, why do we have to make this choice? Why is there a choice? So this is just an example of like our society is built around monogamy.

But this is actually a very relevant question to ask in a book about how to feel loved, which is that can you feel loved by more than one partner? And one kind of maybe easy answer is we'll think about your children, right, if you have more than one child and you have kids. I do. I have four. Certainly people will say you can feel loved by more than one child and we can love more than one child. We can feel loved by multiple friends.

We argue that you can feel loved by multiple romantic partners as well. But this is assuming this is all ethical and transparent and they know about each other. So the research supports that. I thought the research I was aware of is that multiple relationships, it's doable but complicated and I'm going to make up this number right now so don't hold me to it. but just generally, like in the 80% range, do not end well. So is that old? Is it wrong?

I don't think that's right, but it's so hard because there's so little research on non-monogamy and the samples are not very representative. And, you know, we just need more like huge studies. Yeah, this was, sorry, to interrupt, this was on open relationships. Yeah. So marriages that had open relationships where they would invite other couples. And I think it was either swinging or whatever the terminology is that, Yeah, you can do it. It's just really complicated and they usually end sourly.

Well, so there's so much to say about that. One is that it's possible, at least in that study, that the couples that chose to open up, you know, chose for a reason. And it's possible that maybe they had lost passion or maybe they already had some kind of problem. So the causality could be going the other way. Yeah. So we need bigger studies. But for example, there was a UGov poll that was pretty big and representative.

What is UGov? UGov is an organization that like supports like voting. and I think it's more democratic. And I believe 40% of millennials reported either having been non-monogamous or wanting to be non-monogamous, at least some of their relationships. And so that's huge, right? So those numbers could be changing. So we need a lot more research, you know, because, yeah, we really don't know.

It's really hard to compare. So we need a lot more research. But some of the research that's been done is actually kind of the opposite to what you say. For example, that there's more jealousy in monogamous relationships and non-monogamous. because in monogamous relationships, you know, you don't really talk about it. So maybe you hang out with your colleague at work who's an attractive woman and, you know, your wife, like, I don't know, like there might be more sort of misunderstanding or uncertainty. In non-monogical relationships, there's a lot more, you know, conversation, communication. On the other hand, there's a lot more effort to like emotional effort that's put in.

It's, you know, it's difficult. So anyway, so I can say a lot more about that. But I think it is relevant to our book because it's about feeling loved. And we talk about how to apply feeling loved, not just to sort of monogamous, non-amongous situations, but to children, to parents, to colleagues, right? So, like, how do the mindsets look different in these sort of different types of relationships? Yeah, it's great. Yeah.

Where I land on that part of the conversation on monogamy, non-monogamy, is that whatever works for somebody great. And I know me well enough is that I, like, really want to go deep in the relationship. And I feel like if I had, I don't know, let's say that we're going to breakfast, and there's a buffet of a lot of different things. I can't eat all of them. Like, I can sample a couple, but I'm staying kind of at the surface.

I'm getting a taste and a taste and taste. I just want to really go as far and as deep into the intimacy domain as I possibly can. And that feels really great to me. And so I can hear, like, knucklehead friends am I like, what are you talking about? You know, like? Well, a couple responses. So one is there's as many different types of non-monogamous relationships, really, as there are couples, right?

Because everyone's very different. And so there certainly are types where people really, really go deep with each other. And they really have like one person. But maybe they date others, you know, once in a while. Right. So they're still going deep. But the retort that I would have for you is in a lot of these kinds of deep monogamous relationships, you go, you know, you go to a party or a dinner or whatever, a conference.

And you're not really able or allowed to go deep with someone else. So let's say you want to have a really, you know, beautiful conversation with a member of whatever sex you're attracted to, that would not be considered sort of kosher in many monogamous relationships. So that's something that I would say monogamous people might be missing. There you go. Yeah. So anyway. Okay.

I've got two questions, two kind of like heavier questions, if you will. When it comes to a relational mindset, how would you first and foremost describe somebody who has a relational mindset, somebody who holds relationships at the forefront of their thinking and being? Yeah. Which is, I think you are. Yeah, well, it's funny. There's research on gender differences that talks about how, like, women are more

like they'd have a communal orientation versus an agentic orientation that men are. And by there's truth to this, you know, there's sort of, if you look at base rates. And so that's kind of what reminding me of what you mean, kind of a communal orientation. So you're, yeah, like relationships are more important to you, that you put more effort and energy into them. Is that what you mean? Yeah, I think it's built on this premise that your relationship. relationship with yourself is really important. Your relationship with others is really important. Your

relationship with experience is really important. Your relationship with machines is really important. Got it. So what I'm kind of extrapolating out of is I think that at the core, people that have a relational mindset are going to experience more in life. And as opposed to what's the opposite? A transactional mindset. This idea of what is relational. I know that you've spent things. through this love research and happiness research and your partner on relational research, I just wanted you to talk about that a little bit. And maybe one way into that is what would get in the way of somebody having a relational mindset?

Well, thank you for asking that question. I've never been asked that before. So I'm just trying to figure out how to answer it because the word relationship can be, yeah, it can be defined very broadly. Like isn't someone who has a transactional relationship with machines? they still have a relationship with them. So maybe I think I'm getting stuck on the semantics. I think you're bringing up something good.

I'm new in this territory, but I am going to go after this to really understand it. And you're right, transactional is a type of relationship. And so it's a way to relate with something. I'm thinking of something other, which is like for us to go really far, we need to be able to lock arms and stay locked. And if we unlock, to lock back in.

you know, because what happens to most teams is that they say they want to be a great team, but they struggle being great teammates when it gets hard. So then you don't really have a team because all the teammates are fraying. So when you invest in the relationship between each other, you're more likely to stay locked in when it gets hard. And that is a requisite to be able to move through the fog and messiness and prickliness of complicated environments. So I just think that this piece, especially in our world that we're living in,

is going to be a massive asset. Absolutely. And the world is changing. And I can speak more to relationships with humans, right? And your example is with other humans on a team. You know, if you really believe, and I'm rewatching Ted Lassau with my daughter. So this is, of course, one of the themes of that show, right? Like, it's really the important thing is, like, to support each other and relationships between us, because that's going to make us more successful. And so I think if you really believe that, you're going to put more effort into that and more, yeah, it's going to be a goal as opposed to like, we're all kind of islands. and we're going to sort of be competitive with each other and succeed. And we're not going to succeed alone, as we know, no man is an island.

So I completely agree with you. And then with the sort of the new AI world that we're facing, where people with like a lot of people, I think in the future are going to be not spending much time with humans. I don't think everyone's going to be. I have a kind of a rule of thirds. I think one third are going to go down that hole and are going to be spending most of their time. Yeah, with AI companions.

Just like right now, many people are on their devices. Even on devices, though, they're often communicated with actual humans. And so, yeah, even more important, it's going to be the actual human relationships and communities, right? So people are, I feel like there's a lot more talk now about building communities, maintaining communities, being in person with one another. So there might be kind of a little bit of a backlash against this. Finding Master is brought to you by David Protein. Nutrition is foundational to high performance and well-being. And being consistent with whole food choices is really important.

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finding mastery. Okay, last of the heavier questions here is if parents knew what you knew, how would they parent different? Great question. We have a little bit of a section on that. Getting back to the mindsets, right? Now, it's going to look different with a child than with a, we're talking about young children versus older children than with your best friend or your partner, but really being curious and listening to your child. You know, we know this to be true. We know this is important, but it's so hard when they're going on and talking about my kid, talking about like Minecraft or something. I'm not really that interested in that game, but, you know, really getting to understand what they're really interested in and asking them

questions. Tell me more, right? Tell me more about that kid who said that thing at school today and then really listening and staying with them as opposed to just trying to fix their problems, right? So if a kid is acting out, there's these famous kind of examples of this, like from TV shows. Everyone loves Raymond has this nice example of the daughter, like totally acting out. And they sat with her and they're like, okay, what's going on? You know, instead of just punishing, but being like, clearly there's something that's leading her to act out. So listening curiosity, sharing is going to look different, right? You're not going to just share your deepest thoughts and feelings with your kid because that might be frightening to them or inappropriate.

But you might share just enough like, hey, when I was, although they hate to hear that. Like, when I was your age, I had this problem too. But, you know, sort of sharing a little bit that helps them put things into context. Multiplicity, of course, you know, punishing the behavior and not the person, really, or separating the person from the behavior. And then open heart, of course. We all kind and that's the one that we all know. We all know we need to be kind and compassionate and believe in our child, right?

It's the other four mindsets that are harder. You've studied love and happiness for decades. How has your research changed the way you live? I've always been a naturally fairly happy person, not like a 10, but maybe a 7 or 8. So I wasn't seeking that out with the research. But certainly just like for anyone, you know, if you live with a certain material day in and day out,

I can't help but be affected, right? So I've gotten really good at sharing and a little bit better at listening, I think. I reach out to friends all the time to express gratitude to them. You know, that's actually one of my favorite things to do. I say to my friends, I love you a lot. In fact, my kids will get confused, right?

Because I'll be on the phone. I'll be like, I love you so much. And they're like, mom, who are you talking to? Oh, that was my friend so-and-so. I hope that we all do that more often. And so it does affect my daily life. It doesn't mean that I'm happy all the time. No, of course not.

Just like therapists are not necessarily happy, right? They know what to do. But it does kind of put in the forefront like, oh, maybe learn to meditate. You know, oh, do this more, you know. Spent time in nature. Physical exercise. You know, I'm a big fan, right? Because that's associated with happiness.

What is? Physical exercise. Did you add the outdoors to it? Yeah. Well, I did. I kind of separated them. Yeah. Because being out in nature and outdoors also affects happiness and makes you feel kind of

more relaxed and reduces anxiety. So putting those together, my go-to exercise is running outside, you know, by the beach. So, so yeah, I kind of am lucky enough to put those together. Not everyone is, you know, if they live in a cold climate, for example. But yeah, both of those are happiness boosters. Nature and exercise. And for me, if you do it with somebody else, now I've got relational. Absolutely.

That's a trifective for me. Absolutely. And if I do something that kind of pushes me up to the edges of my limits, not all the time, but, you know, enough kind of appropriate doses throughout the week. Happy days. Look, I feel like I really spend a lot of time with you. And thank you for being generous with your science, the sharing of your science, the really good writing of science is hard to do. And I really appreciate it your book. And just the nature of how we covered this conversation.

Thank you so much. Thank you so much. It's really, yes, amazing questions today. And that was a pleasure to talk, sharing and listening. and curiosity, right? Next time on Finding Mastery, best-selling author Mark Manson joins us once more

to explore how to think clearly in a world flooded with noise, distraction, and competing truths. Mark breaks down why sincerity matters more than ever and the three principles he uses to navigate modern life,

radical ownership, radical honesty, and radical acceptance. So join us Wednesday, May 27th at 9 a.m. Pacific only on Finding Mastery. All right. Thank you so much. for diving into another episode of Finding Mastery with us. Our team loves creating this podcast and sharing

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