Modern Wisdom - Why You Don’t Feel Loved (even when you are) - Sonja Lyubomirsky - #1115

Episode Date: June 25, 2026

Sonja Lyubomirsky is a psychologist, professor, and author. What does it really mean to feel loved? People say "I love you" all the time, but why doesn't it always register? Why can someone love you deeply, yet you still don't feel it? What does real love actually feel like? Expect to learn if there is a commonality between all of the happiness interventions out there, why feeling loved is important, how self-esteem and self-love are related, why having a sharing mindset is so important, what it actually means to be understood, the things that make you happier you might be overlooking, and much more... Sponsors: See discounts for all the products I use and recommend: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/deals⁠⁠ Timestamps: (0:00) Why Do We Need to Feel Loved? (2:51) Don’t Spend Your Life Trying to Be Loveable (5:22) What It Really Means to Feel Loved (6:36) The Biggest Ways Push Love Away (9:39) Do Self-Esteem Interventions Exist? (13:43) Is Romantic Love the Most Important Type of Love? (16:20) The Words More Powerful Than ‘I Love You’ (18:10) Why Receiving Love Is a Skill (19:24) The Importance of a Sharing Mindset (24:35) Are Vulnerable People More Likeable? (30:09) Why Validation Changes Everything (32:54) Is Therapy Speak Helping or Hurting? (36:59) We Need to Ask Deeper Questions (40:03) Why Multiplicity Can Be So Hard (44:07) The Strongest Predictors of Relationship Success (48:51) Should Everything Be Reciprocal? (55:24) The Habits That Make You Feel Loved (58:34) The Most Fascinating Study Sonja Has Conducted (01:01:17) Is This the Best Definition For Introvert and Extrovert? (01:05:23) The Biggest Misconception About Happiness (01:08:56) What Should We Prioritise to Be Happy? (01:11:19) Where to Find Sonja Extra Stuff: Get my free reading list of 100 books to read before you die: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/books⁠⁠ Try my productivity energy drink Neutonic: ⁠⁠https://neutonic.com/modernwisdom⁠⁠ Episodes You Might Enjoy: #577 - David Goggins - This Is How To Master Your Life: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Goggins⁠⁠ #712 - Dr Jordan Peterson - How To Destroy Your Negative Beliefs: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Peterson⁠⁠ #700 - Dr Andrew Huberman - The Secret Tools To Hack Your Brain: ⁠⁠lnkfi.re/SN-Huberman⁠⁠ - Get In Touch: Instagram: ⁠⁠https://www.instagram.com/chriswillx⁠⁠ Twitter: ⁠⁠https://www.twitter.com/chriswillx⁠⁠ YouTube: ⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/modernwisdompodcast⁠⁠ Email: ⁠⁠https://chriswillx.com/contact⁠⁠ - Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

You've been studying happiness for 36 years. Is there a commonality between all of the most effective happiness interventions that you've found? Yes. Well, thank you for aging me. But yes, 36 years. So actually, it was 1998, my lab pioneered happiness interventions. So 98, long time ago, 28 years ago, Bill Clinton was in the White House. And so I've been doing research on these interventions, testing, whether practices like expressing gratitude or doing acts of kindness or being social makes people happier. So interventions are like clinical trials, but instead of testing a vaccine, we're testing like a happiness strategy. And then one day, it finally hit me that what all these interventions had in common is the ones that worked, the reason they worked is because they made us feel more connected to and loved by others.

So when I write a gratitude letter to my mom, it makes me feel more loved by her, right? When I do an act of kindness for a colleague or a friend, makes me feel closer to him. So almost all happiness practices, maybe not all. Like maybe if you run on the beach or meditate, it's not about connection, but almost all of them are about feeling connected and feeling loved. Why? I think the human species wouldn't have survived if we did not feel connected and loved. And it's an extremely strong signal. And so what I concluded is the key to happiness is feeling connected, which sounds like a cliche, right?

And when you think about like in our ancestral past, if we did not feel connected and loved, we wouldn't survive. We wouldn't find mates. Like, we wouldn't pass on our genes. So it's incredibly important. It's one of the most important tasks of human beings is to sort of maintain connection. Okay. So to take a bit of an evolutionary lens. If you are not belonging to the tribe, mattering to the tribe, understood by the tribe,

and a part of that, a human on its own 20,000 years ago isn't going to last very long. Therefore, it's important for you to get back into connection. It doesn't seem to me, though, that unhappiness necessarily drives people. back to connection and love. It can often make people behave in ways, have habits and a demeanor that actually makes them kind of hard to love. Right. So it's not really unhappiness that drives them back to connection. It's not feeling loved or feeling lonely, which actually is very similar to feeling unloved. I think actually a lonely moment and a moment where you don't feel loved are almost identical. And there again, there's a signal to us humans that something's a

rise, something's amiss. I need to, you know, regain, reconnect that connection. I actually was feeling a little lonely a few weeks ago. And I actually, I don't usually feel lonely. I have lots of friends and family who love me. And I loved a message for a friend. And she just actually just left me a message back yesterday. And she said, oh, I feel so sorry for you. Like, so, feel so bad. I wish I were there. And she's like, Sonia, feeling lonely is a signal that, you know, you need to kind of put more effort and energy into reconnecting. So, yeah. Lots of people spend their entire lives trying to be lovable. Is that the wrong goal in highly? Yes. Well, there's a part of it that's not a bad thing, which is if you want to be a

better person, right, we working on yourself, wonderful, right? But I think the, I think when you don't feel loved to conclude that, oh, I don't feel loved, I need to make myself more lovable. Like, I need to sort of somehow broadcast how wonderful I am, or maybe I need to get richer or more famous or more beautiful to people would love me more. That's the part. That's a myth. And it does not actually get you to feel more loved. Is it a supply of love problem or an acceptance of love problem? I think it's an or not necessarily acceptance, but it's not a supply of love problem. So many of us are loved, but we still don't feel loved.

So why is that maybe somehow we don't trust it, we don't see it, you know, it's not somehow getting in, you know, I think of it as like a cup of love, you know, this cup of love and you're pouring love, you're showing love to me, but maybe it has a leak in the bottom and the love is sort of leaking out. Or maybe it has a lid, it doesn't have much of a place to get in. That's one way that that happens.

But, okay, so the idea is that when we think, when we're not love, we think, oh, I need to make myself more lovable. And so I sort of show you how wonderful I am. And what does that accomplish? It might lead you to admire me, right? I might impress you. It happens all the time. Like here I am sitting here, talking to you, Chris, and I want you to think that I'm smart and interesting and funny and kind. And I might succeed in impressing you and I might succeed at you admiring me, but it's not going to forge a connection. So that's not the answer to real connection. What's the difference?

So I think admiration is like, it's like an influencer has a lot of followers and they might be admired, but the followers don't really know them. And my co-author of my book, How to Feel Loved, Harry Reese and I believe that really the key to feeling loved is being known. Because if you don't really know me, if I'm just broadcasting my positive qualities, hiding my weaknesses, you don't really know who I am on the inside, what really matters to me. and if you don't really know me, I can't truly ever feel loved because I'll always wonder if he knew me, maybe he wouldn't love me. That fear of being seen. Yeah. Just definitionally, what does it mean to feel loved?

Feeling love means that I believe I make a difference in your life and that I really matter in your life. It really comes down to that. I mean, love, of course, is about affection and care and intertwined goals, but I think it really comes down to like, I matter to you and you matter to me. And it's much broader, by the way, than, of course, romantic love. And what we talk about feeling love, we're talking about feeling loved at work, by your neighbors, by your family, by your friends. So it's not just about your partner.

40% of people say they don't feel as loved as they want to be by their partner. And nearly two-thirds of young men feel that nobody truly knows them. Isn't that terrible? Yeah. it's really a it's sad it's a problem i actually think those numbers are probably understatements i bet people you know are feeling embarrassed about it exactly exactly so yeah we did a survey expressly for the book right found there was it 70% said they don't feel as loved as they want to be at at least one significant relationship in their life so it's 70% um and why is that i think many of them

have love they have connection they have friends and somehow yeah they're not they're not It's not getting it. It's not getting internalized. What are the big ways, structurally, tactically, literally? What are the big ways that people don't accept love? Well, I was talking about the cup of love. I think if you're anxiously attached or avoidantly attached, I think that's a huge barrier. Somehow, again, if you're anxious, it's like you're watching for signs of rejection, signs that the person doesn't love you.

If you're avoided, maybe you're not even noticing those signs of love. I mean, it could even be, it's funny, the idea of the love language, We actually debunk the idea of the love languages. In the book, we have a whole section. We didn't do it. Someone else did it. But there's a truth to it. I mean, it's a good heuristic that if somehow,

like I actually was dating someone who kept sending me gifts, like in the mail with like little handwritten notes. It's actually really cute. And yet didn't do the things that I actually really wanted him to do, which is really like saying something to me or, you know, my love quote, love languages are words of affirmation and physical touch. Well, hang in a second. Have you debunked it?

Or are you, like, a subject to it? What we've debunked is that there's not just five languages, there's many, and that what we debunk is, not we, other people have debunk the idea that matching in your love language predicts like how good or how strong or how stable your relationship is. It does not predict it. It turns out everyone cares about two love languages, words of information, and quality time.

It also turns out that the more love languages, your partner shows love to you, the better. So it's not about the matching. That's the matching idea that really we've debunked. But I think it's a great heuristic. So I like to talk about it. So I'll bring it. So it is funny.

Like I'm like bringing it in and yet I've debunked it. A little. Pick it direct. I know exactly. But yeah, anyway, this example, I was dating someone who was sending me gifts and that was his love language. And I just wasn't reading it. Like I wasn't seeing that. Like I wasn't saying that that's an expression of love.

So that does happen sometimes when you're just not, yeah, you're not taking it in. whatever the person is doing. Their love language is different from yours. Okay. What else? What is some of the other ways that people are rejecting love, not accepting it? Yeah. If you don't love yourself very much, it's hard to see signs of other people's love as genuine. Now, everything we talk about is really much more nuanced than like a simple explanation. So, for example, a lot of people think if you don't love yourself, you can't really love other people. I think that's a, that's a myth. And I think Esther Perel actually was someone I heard talking about that. She said, no, you learn to love yourself also in the context of relationships.

It's a bidirectional kind of thing. Having said that, if you really don't love yourself, if you love self-esteem, you're not going to believe other people's expressions of love. You're not going to be aware of them. You're not going to see it as genuine. Furthermore, if you don't love yourself, you literally are going to be, quote, less lovable, right? people, people, it leaks out, right, that your self-image is poor and you're not going to be as likely to receive love. So, so I think that's another barrier. Yeah. What have you learned about

building self-esteem and self-love? Because it sounds here like, hey, we're on the receive. But in the context of self-esteem and self-love, we are both the recipient and the giver. Yeah. I would say nothing. That is the one thing. I don't know. I'm an interventionist. I'm an experimental social psychologist. I don't know. of any good interventions to increase people's self-esteem. No way. Well, interventions in the lab that have been actually evidence-based. I mean, of course I can-

Well, we can do anything off vibes, right? I can come up with something that sounds good. That's the reason we need you. We need you to test whether or not my vibe coding of an intervention is actually good on it. But remember, absence of evidence is not evidence of absence, right? So just because there aren't interventions doesn't mean that they wouldn't work. I mean, I could speculate, you know, like based on years of experience, and expertise that, you know, like, for example, just pursuing goals, passions that are important to you,

you know, and having successes in those things and practicing your social skills, like, that's going to build your self-esteem. I just don't know any, maybe they're out there, but I don't know any successful interventions that have actually boosted people's self-esteem. That's interesting. I wonder whether, and this is completely, in fact, I'm going to take this off, and I'm going to put this one on for the time being. Love it. This is the bro scientist, huh? Love it.

I wonder if part of self-esteem is kind of like an aggregate, a lagging measure aggregate for how your local ecosystem socially and emotionally seems to be feeding back to you in a positive way, that self-esteem can be built up on your own, but you need to be very deluded if you were able to hold self-esteem when the world was giving you no evidence that you should hold on to it, right? Because that would be incredibly maladaptive. You are, as a social creature, you're actively ignoring signals that you should pay attention to.

If everybody else in the tribe is going, Sonia, you can't behave like that. You can't keep behaving like that. We're not giving you positive reinforcement. We're not giving you love. We're not giving you belonging. You're not mattering. We're not listening. We don't care because you're being an asshole.

You're being an asshole and that's maladaptive to the group as a whole. presumably the opposite of that would be, this is good, keep going, more of that, this is helping us, you are a good person, you are contributing, we care about you, and over time that would help to build up. Now, people can have self-esteem that is self-generated, but again, you need to have nerves of steel or basically no eyes and ears if you're going to ignore the feedback from everybody else. That's my bro scientist. No, no, that is actually, and I'm not just flattering you, that it's actually a brilliant idea and you've just reproduced some of you change hats you've just independently developed some really solid theories in psychology about about how self-esteem is kind of a measure

like a like a metric a meter of what's happening exactly like a sociometer I think is what someone calls it one of my colleagues calls it absolutely we're social animals right we're we don't live in isolation where you don't man does not live on an island right um and so that also means So if I were to build a self-esteem intervention right now, I would say go out, and this is actually very similar to my happiness interventions, go out and help other people, right? Contribute to community. Well, actually, the three buckets that contribute to happiness are anything to do with connection. So go and connect with other people, right? Spend time with others.

Listen, you know, we'll get back, we'll get to that later. To contribution to society, to community, right? helping others. When you help others, you're going to get positive feedback from the world. And then the third is personal growth, right? So work on yourself. But it also can be just like learning to garden, learning new language, going to travel, having experiences that you can talk about to other people that gives you, this gives you esteem, right? If you sit home in your garage all day, right, you're not going to build that very easily. Is the person that you're dating the most important relationship for providing this sense of love? Well, interesting, in Western society,

most people have romantic relationships. It actually a far majority end up getting married at some point, I think something like 85% by age 56. I would say for a lot of people would report that that is their most important relationship. I personally think that friends are what makes life worth living. That's more of my kind of personal theory that you get more of it from friends. But it's also a very gender-based theory. So it turns out that men derive more happiness for romantic relationships than women. You probably know this. Yeah, that's why men suffer more through divorce because so much of their social belonging was tied up in the other person, whereas women had distributed it. They put all their eggs in my basket, whereas women have very close friendships, social support

networks. But again, I think friends are what makes life worth living. And yeah, so really maintain those friendships. Did you read Friends by Robin Dunbar? No, but I know about it. Yeah, yeah. Interesting idea. He talks about, you know, the concentric circles of friendship. And I think he talks about you have room in your life, is for about five, five very close friends, but that a partner takes up two of those slots. I thought that was really interesting to think about, you know, your, you're distributing this around. But what's the most common answer to the question, how many close friends do you have to call on an emergency is zero? That's not the median, but it's, the most common answer. More people have no friends to call on in an emergency than any other number.

And I wonder whether people who aren't in a relationship don't realize, hey, you need two additional close friends to compensate for your singleness. And that might help to fill in some of the gaps. Now, yeah, there is a category of love and intimacy, obviously, that can't be replicated by friendships that is available in an intimate partnership, right, obviously. But more isolation means that maybe people are placing even more pressure on romantic relationships to fulfill all of these different needs. And when they're not in a romantic relationship, they're not supplementing that with more friends. I mean, I love that idea, the two for one. But we also have the false belief that our partner needs to fulfill all of our needs. So like Eli Finkel's book,

the all or nothing marriage, right? And so we know this to be true, and yet we still think that, right? That they, yeah, so one person needs to fulfill, you know, sexual, spiritual, emotional, intellectual needs, and that almost never happens. And so which is why delegating those to friends and family is a great idea. Are there more important words to hear than I love you? Yes. So on Valentine's Day, right, almost all the cards say, I love you, right? Almost all of them. I would say 99%. And so we had the idea. that they should say, maybe it's more important or as important to say, I feel loved by you.

You make me feel loved, which is really more about what they're doing, a gift that they're giving you. Because again, like, that's what matters. You could be loved. If you are loved but you don't feel loved, it's like almost doesn't matter. It's like you could be beautiful, but you don't feel beautiful. You could be smart and you don't feel smart, then, you know, that's a problem.

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breathe better. That's why 8Sleep has been clinically proven to add up to one hour of quality sleep per night. They have a 30-day sleep trial so you can buy it and sleep on it for 29 nights. If you don't like it, they will give you your money back. Plus, they ship internationally. Right now, you can get up to $350 off the pod five by going to the link in the description below. Are heading to 8Sleep.com slash modern wisdom and using the code modern wisdom at checkout. That's E-I-G-H-T-Sleep.com slash modern wisdom and modern wisdom. Checkout. Is there a skill to accepting love, do you think?

Is that something that can be developed over time? You know, to use a more flippant example, everyone's got that friend that when you pay them a genuine compliment, they dismiss it. This is kind of like the British approach to receiving a compliment. Oh, you must be not. You look really good today. Well, if you had nothing else to do with your life other than get ready for a party,

you too would look great. And you go, hey, dude, I've just worked really hard. try and give you something, that's an opportunity for you to feel good, and for me to feel good, for making you feel good, and now neither of us feel good. So congratulations, but yeah, it makes me think about that, but at a much deeper level, right, the skill of accepting love. Right, and absolutely true. And actually, your example is great, because I've noticed that as my friends and I get older, we are better at receiving compliments, or just sort of receiving, receiving, receiving generosity. It's like, just a practice, we practice and practice and practice.

And I see that, like, there's more of a focus on kind of self-development, you know, at least in certain circles, and people are really working on themselves. And I see that everywhere. So, yeah, I think almost everything can get better with practice, even when it feels really unnatural at first. Why is having a sharing mindset so important? We were talking about how the key to feeling loved is to be known, right? So if you don't know me, I'll never really feel loved by you, because I'll always wonder, would he love me if he knew? me, how do you get to know me? I need to share more of myself. It doesn't have to be, you know, trauma sharing or oversharing. It has to be done at the right pace. And also, I need to really have

some emotional intelligence, like read the room. So I might like, so I need to share more of myself, right, not just the highlight reel, but more of myself. But again, not like to spill all my, you know, weaknesses. So but I would want to test the room, right? So when you ask me, how are you? You know, most of the time I say, fine. Maybe I might start with, oh, I had, you know, I was sort of struggling today with something. You know, I had a rough morning. And then I look at your reaction and see, like, are you really interested to hear about my rough morning? And that's kind of the tone in the water.

And then you can share more and more. So I just want to, like, make sure that people understand that it's not just, like, oversharing I'm talking about. But it's showing, like, who are you, who do you believe to be on the inside? Like, showing more of that. You know, what matters to me. It doesn't have to be something negative. It could just be like my opinion about that movie that maybe everyone likes, but I don't like it.

You know, showing something genuine about me, you know, that, yeah, that shows you who I am. It's an interesting bi-directional relationship here too, right? I think about the UK as well. There is a good culture of mocking in the UK, especially as you're a kid growing up. There's a piss-taking banter back and forth. One of the interesting things there is if you try to put a slightly orthogonal opinion forward,

I'm going to say something that's a little bit different to what most people expect. Typically, that's not met with, oh, that's really interesting. I've never thought about stuff like that before. That's really cool. I'm really glad that you brought that up. Why would you say that? That's so strange. And I think if you think about that in the context of a relationship,

the fact that this is going back and forth between two people means that the last, less it is encouraged and received. Wow, that thing that you said that was evidently surprising to me that might have taken a little bit of effort for you to say that wasn't received and encouraged in the way that might make you want to continue to do it more. That means that you do it less and a less encouraged to do it, which means that I know you less, which means that I don't get the opportunity to do it. So it's a vicious cycle. And actually, someone was just telling me, like, they had one time they were vulnerable and they really got punished for it. They got judged for it was used against them.

It was one out of a hundred times, and yet they now don't want to reveal anything ever about themselves. And we kind of overgeneralize from that. It's a formative experience. I mean, how many times... I see this online a lot, and I'm aware people use the most extreme examples when they talk on the internet.

But how many times do you see some story online about a person who really tried to open up to a partner, to a parent, to a close friend, to a confidant? And it was such a painful experience for them. But like that is their formative experience of what opening up, of what asking to be loved, of what asking to be known feels like. And yeah, that's ruthless. There's a, Rob Henderson, my friend told me this idea where he said, if you get rejected by one goal, but you've gone up to 100, even if you get rejected by 100, getting rejected by one is just another drop in the bucket.

but if you've only ever gone up to one goal and you get rejected that one time, it's the biggest event in your entire life. And the same thing goes for, hey, maybe this is an example for if you're going to open up to somebody, make sure that the first one has got a high hit rate of at least not being an asshole to you. Yeah, exactly. But bad is stronger than good, so we remember those bad events. It also suggests that maybe parenting, something that parents should emphasize is like

to model kind of sharing and sharing and listening. And I should say that, you know, we really can't talk about sharing without talking about how the person responds, as you say. And so actually, feeling loved for me, I would argue, starts with curiosity, right? So it starts with really you being curious about me and asking deep questions. And then I know I can share. I feel safe. I feel inspired to share. So I'm not just sharing out of the blue and I have to guess whether you care or not or whether it's going to be uncomfortable or whether you're going to judge me or use it against me. So it really starts with curiosity. And genuine curiosity is so rare. Really, when you think about it, how often

that people really, really care about what goes on in your inner life and, like, you know, ask you a lot of questions. Anyway, so that's where really I'm coming from is that someone asks another person a question that you genuinely are interested in getting an answer to, and then you share in response. You don't just kind of, you know, share out of the blue. Okay, so sharing mindset, stepping into an interaction with the understanding, I'm going to put more of myself across than I might naturally tend to, and that's going to happen. it's going to unfold over time.

I'm not going to trauma dump immediately. And what else just on the sharing mindset? Are there any other sort of pitfalls that people need to be aware of? Go slow. Well, the vulnerability paradox, which we're kind of hitting on without naming it. So vulnerability paradoxes is that we think being vulnerable will lead other people to like us less.

On average, people like us more. That's interesting. Why do you think that's the case? So we think, yeah, we're so focused on the bad. like I reveal some kind of, I don't know, like bad habit I have. And other people, and I think it's so terrible, people will judge me and I'm embarrassed and other people just think it's human or maybe they have the same habit. Actually, something happened to me a few weeks ago where I really, I totally bombed giving a talk.

Like I usually never do, but I just completely blanked out and I was just standing there on stage and I'm like, I don't know what comes next. I literally said, I don't know what to say. And it was mortifying. And I can't tell you how many people came up to me later and were like, Sonia, like, I loved it. Like, it just made you more human. You know, they, so the thing that I thought was mortifying, other people thought was like a cute human failure. I mean, that's, that was an unvolute.

Are you familiar with the Pratt fall effect? Do you know this? Yes. So it's when somebody gets all of the answers right in a test, but they drop their pencils on the way up to hand their paper in. And it's a British study, the word Pratt. I don't know whether the word Pratt has come over to America. Anyway, we like people who show their human side, which is strange, right? Because there's an assumption that we just want everybody to be as perfect as possible.

There's a great line from a famous screenwriter who said, if you want to write a character that no one connects with, make them perfect. Right? So we actually don't want perfection because it's not human. It's not interesting. It's not complex. I want to show you a video. Jared, can you pull up that video of that? gymnastics goal. So there's this, there's a, look at this, just watch, watch this video.

Okay. No one else has ever done. You are doing skills that are insane to even adults. You have more courage in your little body than a thousand people have and all of their bodies combined. You are mine and I am yours. Nothing you can do will ever make me stop loving you. Nothing you will do whatever cause me to give up on you. I'm going to let you know when I think you're making a bad choice. I am not going to let you talk down on yourself. I'm not going to let you give up on yourself,

and I'm not going to let you quit because something might be scary. You can quit if you truly don't love something, but you cannot quit because something might scare you. Okay? You are not failing me, and if I have made you feel like you are not good enough or that I don't care about you and I have not done my job as a father. I love you very much. And I don't think that you're bad.

I don't ever want you to think that I wouldn't be there and do whatever it takes to make sure that you can be successful doing whatever you want to do. Because at the end of the day, this is something you have told me you want to do. Now, if you truly do not love cheer, guess what? You don't have to do cheer. If you truly love doing cheer, then yes, I'm going to let you know when I think you are making a silly decision because you don't think you're good enough or because you think something is too hard or too scary. The only limits that you have are the limits that you put on yourself.

If you keep telling yourself you are incapable of doing something, guess what? You will prevent yourself from doing something. If you tell yourself that you can achieve something, even if it doesn't have, happen right away, guess what you will eventually end up doing, achieving it. But we have to be able to be strong here to make this do what we are capable of doing. It starts with this. What do you think of when you say that? Okay, a couple things. Well, it was beautiful that he could go underneath what her fear was not just she's afraid of doing this flip, but she's afraid that if she fails it, maybe her dad won't love her,

which is really beautiful. Like, he gets under the fear. And I do have one critique. That was beautiful, obviously, what he said. But I do have one critique of this dad. Hey, if anyone is open to feedback, something tells me that it's Anthony, the dad. And it is that what therapy,

I'm not a therapist. What therapist says that you want to first validate what she says. She kept saying, I'm scared. And he's like, no, you're not scared. And I guess what you're supposed to do is kind of not supposed to do, right? Ideally, you want to kind of validate, like, I understand you feel scared right now or something like that. And then go and talk about it and give the speech that you get. A bit of validation in the emotions. Yeah, yeah, yeah, first validate. Is that important?

Do you think when receiving love and trying to give it as well? It's so interesting. So one thing we talk about, right, let's say you're sharing more of yourself because you want to feel more loved, and so you are sharing more of yourself, and then I'm listening. So listening is so critical. Most of us are not very good listeners. And so what we do when we're trying to listen, Turns out the one study showed 25% of the time when we're listening, our mind is wandering. And I bet it's higher than that. Because we have this inner chatter. We're like distracted or we're mostly we're rehearsing what we want to say next, right?

How I'm going to respond to you. And we also want to sort of fix or give advice, which I do all the time, instead of just simply making the person feel heard, which is what we're just talking about and just validate it, right? Which is like, wow, that must have been really hard. or that must have been really inspiring. You know, how did that feel? And again, that sounds like therapy talk, but you can put in your own words. I do think the pendulum has swung a little too far

on, like, validating over fixing. You know that nail in the head video that's so popular? The woman who has this nail in the head. Oh, you've got to watch this. Okay. So she has a nail in the head. And she's like, oh, I feel I'm in such pain and all my sweaters are shredding.

And the guy's like, well, you have this nail in your head. And she's like, and basically the point of the video is she just wants to be hurt. And then once he says, I'm so sorry, it must be so painful for you to have a nail in your head. And she's like, ah, right? And that's the point of the video, whereas he keeps trying to give her advice. You should take the nail out of your head. And then you won't feel so much in pain. And you won't tread your sweaters.

And I just think, like, yeah, it's like, again, the pendulum is swung so far. Like, because sometimes people kind of need, like, fucking need advice, right? They need to be told take the nail out of the head. But I agree that at first you want to validate and then give advice later. Most people don't realize how much being dehydrated impacts their performance, which is why for the last five years I've started pretty much every morning with Element. Element is a tasty electrolyte drink mix with everything that you need and nothing that you don't. This orange salt in a cold glass of water is like a sweet, salty, orangy nectar.

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We're heading to drinklmnt.com slash modern wisdom. That's drinklmnt.com. slash, bottom wisdom. I understand what you mean about therapy speak, maybe going mainstream to an extent where validation's given when it shouldn't be. A lot of people do need some tough love. I don't know whether good therapy speak has been widespread yet, though. I get the sense that in a lot of these conversations, it's still quite performative.

It's people saying the thing that they've heard is kind of cool. Well, it's really important to just follow your body and to just do what feels good for you, as opposed to, I'm going to sit in the muck with you. I'm going to sit in the discomfort. You know, yeah, the validation thing. Good point. I'm sure Anthony will take it on board.

But he's sitting in the emotion with his daughter, right? He's holding that space. It's unfortunate that holding space has kind of been memeified into... I hate that phrase. Yeah, but what it means is so good. It's just a shame that the phrase is because, a cliche of itself in a way. But, well, there's one kind of

therapy to speak that I think is so amazing and effective, and it's nonviolent communication, right? It's using eye statements, right? So I feel hurt when you do this, as opposed to, why do you always do this? You know, what's wrong with you? And so, yeah, that is just so effective, has been

shown to be effective in so many contexts. And people are doing it more. Again, instead of accusing the other person, it's about you. So, like, it's not like you're doing this, is like, I feel this way when I see this. Or it's my understanding, or the story I'm telling myself is that you're, and then you ask, and then you have a request. So I'm a big believer in nonviolent communication.

And the TLDR of that is I statements, not use statements. Yeah. There's a whole process to it, but it's sort of I feel this when you, you know, so let's say, yeah, like, let's say the person never cleaning up. You know, I feel, you know, I, I don't know, overburdened. when you don't wash the dishes when you do this. You know, I'd like to talk about, I'd like to understand what's going on.

Maybe you're really stressed out at work. And then you have a, and the hard part is the request. It's like, what do you actually, it's easier to criticize, it's harder to kind of ask. The ask is the hard part, you know. Why? It's vulnerable to sort of ask, to say, I, yeah, it's hard to ask.

That's funny. It's almost obvious to me, why? maybe it's not so obvious I would love for us to come up with an agreement and how we split chores so yeah I statements yeah I guess criticizing somebody else puts the ball in their court

it also makes your displeasure known and like abscondes you of having to take responsibility but putting yourself forward and going I would really like it if you did that is another opportunity for this person to hurt you. Right? It's like, I'm going to request this thing. Not only have you done this thing that pissed me off

that I've now had to tell you about, I've had to tell you that it's hurt me, but I'm now going to like offer you this thing that you could reject this request. That's why it's vulnerable, because you're risking rejection. And that's life. Sometimes you'll be rejected.

What's your advice to people who, when they get to the precipice of vulnerability, of exposing a little bit more of themselves and they feel like they should, that sort of fear comes up and the tightness in the chest and the ringing in the ears, what is your advice to them in that moment?

I mean, part of my advice is just to go for it, take the leap. So many great things in life involve taking risks, almost everything, right? Like having a baby, you know, going for that job, that, you know, moving to a different city. But before they take that leap,

I would go slow, right? So maybe the first time just you, yeah, reveal something smaller. And then take a baby steps, I would say. Okay. So listening to learn, people are not just playing the game of tennis, waiting to hit the ball back. Genuine curiosity. What else? We talked about sharing.

So curiosity, listen. So you start with curiosity. Like, I'm really interested in you. And curiosity, by the way, has an enthusiasm component, right? I'm really, I'm excited to hear what you have to say. That's why it's such a gift, right? Like, how often does that happen when someone's so excited? Charismatic people are really good at this, right?

That's why we flock to them because they're so excited to hear what you have to say. So it starts with curiosity. So I'm curious about you. Then you start sharing, which is hard. But I'm validating and I'm supporting your sharing by like really listening and asking questions. So question asking is not talked about or even studied that much. So important. we don't ask each other enough questions.

So research shows that we think that, especially asking deep questions, if I ask you a deep question, I'll think, oh, he's going to think I'm prying, that I'm being a little nosy. And sometimes that happens, but on average, people crave to be seen, right? They want to be known. I have an example for my daughter, who has a roommate, who is having a lot of problems,

and her family was coming over. They were crying. There were all these sort of sessions. And they were speaking Spanish. So she didn't know. My daughter didn't know what they were saying. So I said to my daughter, why do you talk to your roommate and ask her what's going on? And she said, oh, mom, I couldn't do that.

She'll think I'm prying. And I think, you know, she could be right, but I think most likely she's wrong, that this roommate probably would feel really supported and loved if she was asked about it. But we usually think, yeah, so we don't ask enough questions. So ask your friends, colleagues, and partners. those deep questions. Okay, and that's radical curiosity. That's part of radical curiosity.

And part of listening because listening is it back and forth. And then there's two more mindsets we talk about. One is called open heart. And it's almost like an obvious one. You know, I think open heart is basically warmth, kindness, believing in the other person, wanting them to be happy,

wanting their dreams to come true. I say it's obvious because I would think most stable relationships have that mindset. It's the other mindsets that often people don't necessarily have. So I actually, we sent the book to a few early readers, and two of my male friends said they're like, we love the book, but they broke up with their girlfriends

after reading the book. And I was really surprised because I thought it was prescriptive, like, oh, do this, listen better, you know, show curiosity, but they actually used it to hold a mirror to their relationships. So they had the open heart, they had kindness and warmth and belief in the other person, but one person said,

she's not really sharing and I'm not really sharing. Another person said, my girlfriend is no longer curious about my work. She never asks about it. And so those are really important and need to be worked on. The open heart, I think, is one that I would hope most relationships already have. Okay. Yeah.

But the last one is my favorite, the last mindset. It's called multiplicity. So the term multiplicity, I'm told, comes from trauma research. The idea if you have a trauma, it doesn't define you. It's like you're a quilt of many, many things. Of course you had the trauma. You can't take it away, but it doesn't define you. They were all multitud, you know, the Walt Whitman quote, you know, I am multitudes.

I contain multitudes. So I'm like a quilt of both positive and negative qualities and traits and behaviors, right? So sometimes I'm kind and other times I'm selfish. Sometimes I'm loyal and sometimes I'm narcissistic. And we're all like that, right? And sort of use that multiplicity lens to turn it on the other person. So when you're revealing your story and some, you say something I might disapprove of, makes me uncomfortable, I use a multiplicity lens

and see you as a human in all of your complexity. And what's interesting about that is that when I tell this to people, everyone nods and they're like, oh, yeah, of course. And then when you actually give specific examples, it's really hard, right? People will say, oh, what a jerk, right? What an asshole, like he did that or she did that. So that's a really hard one. Yeah, I think it's difficult for so few people want to sit in a discomfort zone, a tough emotion, and their solution is to just fix it.

To just say, if I just come up with the solution to this thing, we don't need to worry about it anymore. We'll be the solution to someone reveals something negative about them. About themselves. I don't want you to feel that way anymore. Allow me to minimize it. Allow me to tell you what you can. can do. Like, um, this person at work keeps mistreating me in this way. And every time that they do, it makes me feel really small. And I'm worried that they don't like me. And I think that I don't really belong there anymore. Well, she's a bitch anyway. And you shouldn't do it. And you're like, hey, dude, you're not, you're not in this with me. What I want to hear from you is,

damn, that must be, that must be really hard to go through. What, what's that been like over the last couple of months or what do you what are you worried this means or what's the emotion just after that happens like oh okay like I'm someone cares someone cares enough to do that and uh yeah I just think people's it comes from two two directions it comes from I don't want this person who I care about to suffer anymore and also I don't want to be in this discomfort anymore and both of those things together can be wrapped up in a, I'll just fix it, minimize it, or make it go away? I had a coach once, and a friend did something that I was really upset about. And so I'm talking to the coach, and I'm doing that.

I'm minimizing, I'm thinking, oh, well, because of this and this reason, they must have done it. And the coach said, Sonia, just stop it right now. And he said, skip right over the rumination and the justification, the rationalization, and right onto sadness. go straight to sadness, which is just be sad that your friend did this, right? Which is kind of like what you're saying,

sort of sit in it, and then you can, you know, rationalize. But the rationalization, like, you know, there's a fine line between kind of condoning, justifying, and compassion, right? When is it compassion where you see someone and they do something kind of terrible

and you can see, like, this happened once with my friends where this guy said something really terrible in a text? And we're like, oh, what a jerk. And one of my friends said, you know, when I read that text, I see the little boy inside of him, or I see the teenage boy who used to be rejected by girls. And so whatever, he got triggered. It's not excusing or condoning or justifying, but is having compassion. And I don't know, it really helps me to see people

in this sort of more complex light. Again, it doesn't mean I want to hang out with him. But I, again, I think that compassion is really helpful. What do you think of the things in a relationship that makes people feel unloved the most? I think when people kind of feel a little, like I guess when they start to feel invisible and the other person stops noticing, well, stops asking questions, or even we talked about that,

stops being curious about you. We often stop being curious about the people we've known the longest, right? Because we think, oh, I know everything about them. And of course you don't, because every day we're having new fears and dreams and self-doubts, right, and regrets. So stopping being curious.

But the other thing is, yeah, just kind of feeling yeah, like that you're invisible. They don't, they're not noticing the little things. You know, when we ask people what makes them feel loved, a lot of them were those little things like, like, I remember being at a party, and friends would bring me like a piece of fruit or a water or a blanket. And before I even knew I wanted those things,

they're like, Sonia, you need this water, you need a blanket because you seem cold. And I'm like, oh, I didn't even know I needed a blanket. And so like when you feel loved is when people, you feel love when people are doing, they're noticing you and they're noticing things that you need before you even need, before you even realize you need them. So those little things when your partner, your best friend sort of stops noticing

those things, you don't feel loved. Have you looked at the whatever the strongest predictors are of long-term relationship satisfaction? So I partner with a love scientist to write this book because I'm really more of a happiness scientist. I don't think I can answer this question. But I will tell you a really interesting finding that we do talk about, which is how do you respond to good versus bad news in a relationship, right? You come home and you say, hey, honey,

I got laid off or, you know, something bad happened. My car, the car broke down. And everyone kind of knows how to respond to bad news or sort of something bad that happened. But what if you come home and you say, hi, honey, I got a new job offer in New York, right? So it turns out how we respond to good news is a better predictor of relationship duration than how we respond to bad news. because it's so, it's not easy, right? You got a job offered to New York. I mean, it could be threatening. Does that mean we have to move?

Does that mean you're going to work harder so you don't have time to, you know, with the kids? Maybe you might even be envious that like my career is going as well as yours. And so what research shows is the best, you know, well, the reaction that is predictive of relationship duration is truly celebrating good news with your partner, right? Like, that's so amazing. Being enthusiastic, right? That's so amazing. Tell me what happened. What did they say?

You know, how did you feel? Maybe later you can deal with some of the insecurities that come out of that, right? But so, so anyway, that is one factor that predicts relationship strength is celebrating. It's called capitalizing. Celebrating good things. This episode is brought you by Whoop. According to my Whoop, I've tracked nearly 2,000 days of my life. And the thing that still gets me is that I could have predicted almost every bad day before it happens.

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Woop 5.0 strap, and you get your first month for free, and there's a 30-day money back guarantee. So you can buy it for free, try it for free. If you don't like it after 29 days, they just give you your money back. Right now, you can get the brand new Woop 5.0 and that 30-day free trial by going to the link in the description below. We're heading to join.com.com slash modern wisdom. That's join. dot whoop.com slash modern wisdom. It's interesting how much easier it is to sort of care for somebody who's struggling than it is to celebrate somebody who's winning in many ways. Yeah.

And you know what? How many people are, the list of people that you share your wins with is a small list. Is that right? Right. Because we learn not to be boastful, right? And I remember, like, I would come home and tell my family about some great thing that happened, maybe an award I got. And my kids would say, oh, mom, you're boasting.

And I'm like, if I can't share this with my family, like, who can I share with? And so we've sort of trained, like, not to boast. And yet, of course, like, we want to celebrate those things, right? And so, yeah, and so we don't have as much practice, both sharing and I guess reacting to those wins. What about in the relationship if you're doing everything right and the other person just doesn't show it in return? Great question. And I get asked that question a lot where let's say I'm doing all the right things. So I'm sharing.

I'm listening. I'm curious. I'm seeing you in the multiplicity lens. I'm listening with the warmth and acceptance. And the other person just does not respond. They don't return. They don't reciprocate. They're not curious about you.

They're not listening. They're not sharing. What do you do? So I'm not a therapist. I mean, therapists are very like, you know, they'll never sort of say exactly directly directly what they really think, I think, right? Bluntly. And I'll just say bluntly, maybe you need to.

walk away. Maybe you've made a poor choice. If it's a family member, yeah, probably you can't walk away, but just accept that you're not going to feel as loved as you want to feel by this person. I mean, obviously keep trying, but if you've kept trying and it's not working.

There's so much of it, I think, the discontent that people feel in situations like this is I feel an incompatibility here, and I'm continuing to push up against it. And you know how when you see a bridge and a bridge twist like this, it's because one side is going in one direction and another isn't moving with it.

If you just did that, it's just a bridge that's rotating, right? But the tension occurs in the flexing like this. And I wonder how many people, if you were to just say, hey, dude, this just isn't working and you're continuing to try and put this square peg into a round hole is where the discomfort comes from. And if it's, you got an uncle that you just cannot resonate with, or a younger brother who just you and him are like different species. So, okay, guess what? Thanksgiving and Christmas, you're going to see each other. You wish him happy birthday.

You keep on top of it. But the tension and the pain is coming from you wanting a thing which is not accessible. And I don't think it's your job in life to drown trying to keep people afloat who refuse to swim. Exactly. Although, you know, you try curiosity, by the way, with the brother or the uncle, right? Like, why do you believe that thing that, you know, are you thinking of first? Shut up, Sonia. I don't need to hear that.

Right. Well, if that's, right, if that's the response consistently, and I completely agree with you, but there's this tension, because I hear all this advice, like, you know, people in our society, in our individualistic society,

they kind of break up too often. You know, they kind of end relationships too often. Like, especially on dating apps, or, you know, you're like, oh, this person isn't working for me, I'm just going to go to the next person. So there's sort of this advice you hear that maybe we don't work hard enough

to sort of fix our differences. and then there's all those people, and I'm thinking of romantic relationships, and they're together forever, and they're just clearly not right for each other, and they're clearly unhappy, and I really feel for them, right? Like, life is too short. So I don't know. I don't know what's, I guess both can be true at the same time. It is absolutely that both can be true.

I've got this idea called advice hyper responders. So advice doesn't distribute evenly. It distributes more like alcohol than medicine. The people who could really benefit from loosening up and having a drink remain abstinent while the people that are already drinking too much, they take it on board. So for instance, the person who has the fear, I am emotionally inadequate, will absorb the message you should open up about your emotions wholesale because it confirms their fear that they already weren't good at doing emotions and that will cause them not to rectify the imbalance,

but to over-exaggerate something that already exists. Another one of the person who permanently feels like they're not working hard enough will take on the David Goggins jocke-willink message of just get up at 4.30 a.m., you've got to crush it, dude. As opposed to going, I actually need to listen to the advice that tells people to chill out a little bit more. Meanwhile, the place I first saw this was after Me Too. So Me Too told guys, don't be pushy with women. And the dudes that were blowing through boundaries didn't pay any attention to it. Meanwhile, nervous guys that could do with a little bit more of a pushing end, they decided, they were like, I knew I was.

was too much already. I already thought I had this. Oh, interesting. And this is how advice lands in groups that already are moving in that direction. It confirms- What are you calling this? Advice hyper-responders. So you throw advice down, and the people who already do it, pick it up first. It often doesn't correct over, it doesn't correct imbalances. It just exaggerates predispositions. And I think it's true. And that's how you end up in situations like this. How is it the case that people are both cycling through relationships, relationships too quickly and staying in ones that they shouldn't for too long. Well, it's because...

Different kinds of people. Bingo. Bingo. And then when you give a piece of advice, this is the thing that's interesting and pernicious about it, is that typically one side of the fence sounds like a more pro-social and noble piece of advice. So, for instance, the idea, work harder and ignore your emotions sounds upward aiming. It is believing in the little guy. It's grassroots.

It's spit and sawdust. It's zero to hero. that tends to be more popular to talk about online, even if it increases the disposition of the type A person that can never switch off. The idea of don't let good relationships fall away. You should work through them and try hard. Sounds prosocial in a world of atomized transactional swipe dating, but it worsens the situation for the people who already burden themselves way too much with psychological strength that makes them powerful in the boardroom

but silent at the kitchen dinner table. Okay, but let's talk about I think one concept that can kind of unite what you're talking about is the idea of dosage, right? So Aristotle's golden mean, right? So there's an optimal dosage for everything. Like there's somewhere in the middle,

there's an optimal way, like amount of time you should stay together before you break up, et cetera, et cetera. And I'm a huge believer in dosage. I think it applies to almost everything, right? And so in terms of the happy research, right? Can you do too much acts of kindness? Absolutely, right? You can be too kind to others. You can neglect yourself. You can do too little. Almost everything should be done

in moderation, including moderation, of course. So that's how I think about things. It's sort of in the optimal dosage. But sometimes you're talking about things that sometimes are in the same continuum, right? It has to be in the same continuum, the same spectrum, to figure out what the optimum dosages. Well, ideally, people are going to take some of the advice from the opposite side of the spectrum. And unfortunately, people don't usually want to hear that. So yeah, it's an interesting one. Okay. So tactically, what are the most powerful habits for implementing this? The more I think about feeling loved and these mindsets, the more I think they apply to almost everything. You know, like, when you study something, you see it everywhere. But seriously, like,

it applies to reducing polarization in our society, right? When you're curious and really listening to people who are on the other side of the political spectrum, it actually research has shown it reduces prejudice. It reduces differences. And so I think out of everything I've talked about, I think curiosity and listening are probably the two habits that can really change your life. Like if we all became better listeners, more curious, research shows that if you're a leader or a manager or a supervisor,

and if you're curious and really listening to your employees or your followers, they're going to be more productive, they're going to be more engaged, they're going to be less likely to quit. Pretty amazing, right? It's not that hard to implement. And then sharing, too, there's a study that came out of maybe a year ago that had people who are literally like wearing different hats on the political spectrum, no put intended, sharing.

And so I might share about like, I'm struggling with my son. And the guy in the other hat is sharing, oh, you know, I'm also struggling with my son. That reduced prejudice and reduced polarization, just sharing more of your humanity with someone who's really different from you. So, but yeah, but I would stick with those three, but especially curiosity and listening. Okay.

What's something, if you were to say this technique or this habit, this one thing that you can do tomorrow that would improve your ability to feel love, what would it be? Well, first of all, have a conversation with a person, that you want to feel loved by. And actually, this is my number one kind of happiness tip. If you want to be happier tomorrow, have a 15-minute conversation with someone, at least 15 minutes.

And then when you're having the conversation, share, listen, show curiosity, listen with acceptance and warmth. When you think about relationships, there are really a series of conversations. Even when you're not talking, right? You're communicating. That's how I think about relationships.

There are a series of conversations. And so when you think about, I want to feel more loved, it seems very overwhelming. Like, what do I do? I need to make myself more lovable. I need to change your mind and get you to love me more. But really, all you have to do is change the next conversation or change the next series of conversations.

So that would be my number one tip is show up differently in your next conversation with that person by sharing more, listening, more showing curiosity with warmth and acceptance. So you're saying that life is just one big podcast? That's the main thing. Yes, absolutely. But also, I'm kind of biased because I'm a talker. So my oldest daughter once said to me, Mom, you talk so much, I can't think.

So I do like to talk. But, and also in our culture, where actually there's some research on this, individualist cultures are more talking cultures. Collectivist cultures, like Asian cultures are more listening cultures. But, you know, we can adapt these mindsets. You know, you don't have to talk a mile a minute. You know, it's just communication that matters. Across all of the studies that you've been a part of,

what's your favorite one? Like what's the most fun or interesting a novel study that you've done? I think my favorite one is that we asked people to act more extroverted for a week. So we said to both introverts and extroverts, we said for the next week, act more extroverted. We didn't actually use the word extroverted because it has connotations in our culture. I think we said, you know, sociables, energetic, talkative. And then for the week after, we asked people to act more introverted. Again, using different words like deliberate and quiet.

And vice versa. And we were shocked at what we found. So we found the biggest effects we'd ever found in any of our interventions. People in the week that people acted more extroverted, they were so much happier. And sort of everything improved. During the introversion week, surprisingly, sometimes people actually got less happy or kind of no change. And the second surprise was that this effect was the same for introverts and extroverts. So even people who were already extroverted, increasing their extroversion improved their happiness. But, well, it's interesting that you thought that was the surprising part. No, no, no, the introversion is the surprising part, I think, to me, that the introverts, you know, Susan Kane wrote this great book, right, called Quiet, love the book. And I'm a big fan of introversion. I think there's a lot of benefits to being introverted. But she writes that, you know, introverts get exhausted by trying to act social. I don't actually, I actually don't quite believe it.

Like, the evidence is now showing that it's actually the extroverse that get exhausted by social behavior. It makes sense because they're social much more of the time. Okay. Yeah, so the introverts also got happier acting extroverted. Most people have no idea where their testosterone levels sit. But what if I told you there was a solution? Something that identifies low T faster than a high school bully, and it won't cost you all your lunch money.

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slash modern wisdom using the code Modern Wisdom, a checkout. What do you make of the where you get your energy from on your own versus with other people is the best definition of introversion versus extroversions? Does this still hold true or has this been replication crisis? So I

love the definition, again that Susan Kane made popular. It's a sexy definition, but if it's inaccurate, then we need new one. that the evidence is not really holding up. And actually, Nick Epple, who wrote a book called A Little More Social, great book, talks about this. I think that the evidence is not quite there. So I don't know, maybe, again, absence of evidence is an evidence of absence. But the studies, I think there's only, with one exception, studies are showing that introverts that are asked to act more social do not feel depleted or exhausted. But again, maybe we need more research.

that's interesting it wouldn't surprise me I think a lot of the time what introverts are doing is finding a home base or finding a situation that feels comfortable and familiar to them but you can get detrained out of your social muscle an awful lot like if you don't lose it you lose it and if you don't get into the rhythm of seeing for instance we have every Friday and this is one of the best this is one of the best two best things that three best things actually that are from a habit perspective that I've done. First one is sleeping with my phone outside of my bedroom. Second one is when I think about a friend that I haven't spoken to in a while,

I just text them immediately. And I'm like, hey man, just thinking to you, hope everything's good or whatever. But the third one, we've got a standing dinner reservation at 6 p.m. every Friday. And it's just an open invite for between six and eight people. And no matter how good or bad your week's been, you always turn up. And if you're in town, you're there. sometimes people bring new friends, sometimes people, it's just you and it's being me and one other guy. And the fact that you've got that, it means some people have got more introverted days and more extroverted days.

On my most introverted day, I'm still at dinner. And I leave. I'm like, that was fine. That was worth it. I love it. I love it. Very important point that you just raised, right? So in these studies, when we asked introverts to be extroverted, we don't ask them to go to a party and be the life of

the party. They can choose how to be extroverted. So an introvert is going to do different things. So they might call up a friend. They might chat a little bit more during lunch. I was super shy when I was young and when I was when I was in college. I can't imagine that. And I really was my parents told me that before age 10, I did not speak to other adults other than teachers and family members. And that I really kind of pushed through it. But okay, here's one way I did it in college, you know, we had sections. And I forced myself to say one thing in each section. And it was terrifying. Like, it was really, really hard. But then the more you do it, you know, so anyway, that's the kind of thing that introvert might say. Like, at lunch, I'm going to, I'm going to try to

say one more thing. But I love your three habits. I'm going to add one more to it that one of my friends introduced me is when you meet someone or you're talking to someone, they say, oh, let's get together. You know, this happens all the time. And what happens is you don't get together. You know, you start you text and then you get busy and then you're like, oh, how about next week? And that doesn't work out. He said, you do not leave that interaction without making a firm plan to get together. You know, a specific time and place and date. And that really works. I heard a really Machiavellian way to work out if someone actually wants to hang out with you. If you propose a date and they cancel and you say, tell me when you want to reschedule for and they don't reschedule,

it was basically reverse engineering whether or not this person is genuinely busy or just doesn't like you. I don't know whether, I think you'd probably need you reading into that a little bit much. People are just busy, but I thought that was an interesting. I like that. Tell me when you want to reschedule for. Yeah.

Yeah. Just tell me when. Like, hey, especially if you recancel, if you canceled, dude, like it's on you, okay? You fucked it. I was going to go. Yeah. There's a New Yorker cartoon and it's like, how about never? Is it never good for you?

Yeah. But that's what someone says if they don't come up with a date or a time. Exactly. Yeah. What's something about happiness that almost everyone believes but is wrong? Well, the one that's kind of boring is that people think, well, okay, maybe it's not boring. I have a book about this called The Myths of Happiness. I'll be happy when.

I'll be happy when I have a baby. I'll be happy when I move to New York. I'll be happy when I get that tech job I wanted to get. I'll be happy when, whatever. And the truth is you are happy when those things happen. But then what happens is it's called hedonic adaptation. we adapt to that new goal. And this is, by the way, humans probably would never progress if we didn't have adaptation because then we would just kind of sit on the mountain and do nothing, but we always

want more. And you bring your same self with you to the new relationship or to the new city or to the new job. And so sort of putting all your eggs in changing your life circumstances to be happier. Now, there's a caveat. If you live in a war zone, if you're poor, if you're in an abusive relationship, of absolutely changing your circumstances is going to make you happier. But if you're kind of normal, like, you know, comfortable circumstances, then changing them is going to make you happy temporarily. Is there a way to hack hedonic adaptation? Yes, through variety, novelty, surprise, and gratitude.

Right? So we adapt to constant stimuli, right? So when things are the same, like you buy a new car, at first you're like, I love this new car. And then, you know, for the eighth time you sit in the car, you don't notice the car anymore, that it's new. And so novelty varieties sort of maybe, yeah, so you have novel, create novel circumstances.

So actually, relationship is a better example. We don't want to adapt to our new spouse. So you do different things with them. I mean, it seems obvious, right? You do exciting activities with them. You learn new things with them. You see new friends. I mean, people are endlessly fascinating and dynamic, right?

So they're not constant. And then surprise. Open yourself up to surprises, right? So if you go to a lot of, I don't know, social events, there's going to be things that are surprising, right? If you take risks, there'll be things that are surprising. I should say surprise in a positive, not a negative way. And then finally, gratitude is the antidote to hedonic adaptation.

Because when you think about it, when you adapt to something, you start taking things for granted. And when you're grateful, it's like you don't take it for granted anymore, right? So, like, if I'm grateful for my health, I'm not taking my health for granted. So truly expressing gratitude, but it's not easy, right? I mean, how often can you sort of express gratitude for your car or even for your spouse? But I'm a big... Especially given that the stimuli is the same. Yeah.

So you're expressing gratitude for something you've experienced previously. Exactly. You know, something we don't adapt to is a view. A view, like a beautiful view from your... That's interesting. Is that interesting? So actually, I have a beautiful view. I did it and I got it for a reason.

Like, I think it's worth paying for the view. No one really knows why. I think one reason is novelty and variety. Well, variety, right? It's always changing with the weather, with the seasons. I also think there's an evolutionary reason that humans are hardwired to like to look at things, to have a view, right? Because you can see, like, I don't know, friends and enemies. And also, by the way, water and mountains, we are hardwired to want to see water and mountains for kind of obvious reasons, that they are going to help us survive and thrive.

and so that's why views of water and mountains are most like Vancouver is supposed to be one of the most beautiful cities water and mountains together yeah yeah yeah that's interesting okay let's say that you met a a 20 year old today what would you tell them to prioritize if they wanted the highest probability of being happy when they were 50 relationships relationships but but it's really everything we were talking about today like really put into maintaining relationships. Learn social skills. I wish we could take classes in college and high school, right? Everyone can learn some social skills, how to have a conversation.

So have conversations, spend time with people, don't spend time alone in the garage on the screen, right? Because it's not going to give you practice with those social skills. So relationships in person, ideally, face-to-face, like you said, like those dinners, make a habit of it. Learn to listen, be curious, and share. Yeah. Those would be my top, my top habits. Okay. Well, I, speaking of which, oh my gosh.

I have something to you. Yeah, thank you. Can I open it? Yeah, you can. It's a card that, it's a card with my name on it. Okay. It's a thank you card. Okay.

Thank you. I love Arthur, by the way. He's the man. And since Arthur Brooks, we were in an almost plane crash together. I have a fun story about that. Wow. We were at a plane and it was going to crash. And I was holding, I was sitting next time.

I started holding his hand. And he's very confident. So it turns out it's very good to be, if you want to be in a plane crash. Alth is about as Christian as you can come. So he was probably hoping it crashed. Well, ha, no, no, no. He was just, he is very, it's very useful to be, yes, sitting next to a very confident, very masculine Christian person. You know, I'm literally holding his hand and he's like, Sonia, is going to be okay.

Everything is going to be okay. And then later on, he's like, Sonia, I didn't realize, because we had lost an engine actually fell out of the plane. Was it India? Where the fuck we were in India in the middle of nowhere? He's like, Sonia, I didn't realize how bad the situation was. Anyway, you've got tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of people to write gratitude letters, and I don't know whether anyone's done it to you on a podcast. I figured that it would be nice.

Not in a podcast. I certainly have beautiful letters from my students. I love it. Consider me a student. Thank you. Sonia Louis Merski, ladies and gentlemen. Where should people go to check out everything that's going on? How to Feel Love.com.

Does the title of my book, How to Feel Love.com? And we also, by the way, we have a quiz where you can take and it shows, it will tell you just five minutes. It will tell you which mindset is your strongest mindset and which is your weakest mindset. And I think it could be very useful. Thank you. Sonia, I appreciate you. Thank you. All right.

See you next time, everyone. Bye. Oh, good. Oh, my God. Thank you. Thank you. Oh, my God.