The Psychology Of Feeling Loved | Dr Sonja Lyubomirsky

Sonja Lyubomirsky (0:00)

I've done 36 years of research on happiness, and after all those decades of research, I realized that the key to happiness is...

Michael Gervais (0:08)

Why is it that so many of us are loved, and yet we actually don't feel loved?

Sonja Lyubomirsky (0:13)

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.

Michael Gervais (0:26)

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 Gervais.

SPEAKER_3 (0:35)

A high-performance psychologist named Michael Gervais, who head coach Mike McDonald and former head coach Pete Carroll brought in to work with the Seahawks.

SPEAKER_4 (0:42)

Famous for his work with Felix Baumgartner when he jumped out of space in the Stratos project.

SPEAKER_5 (0:46)

Olympic athletes depend on something more than just training and talent. They have to stay mentally tough.

Michael Gervais (0:52)

Today's guest is Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky, 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.

Sonja Lyubomirsky (1:03)

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.

Michael Gervais (1:17)

In her latest book, How to Feel Loved, Dr. Sonja 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.

Sonja Lyubomirsky (1:33)

The three words that everyone wants to hear, it's not I love you, you've lost weight, it's.

Michael Gervais (1:38)

With that, let's jump into this week's conversation with Dr. Sonja Lyubomirsky.

Okay, Sonja, 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.

Sonja Lyubomirsky (2:09)

It's a pleasure to be here in person.

Michael Gervais (2:11)

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?

Sonja Lyubomirsky (2:22)

Very easy, the title.com, howtofeelloved.com. People can find lots of information about the book. We even have a quiz that we developed. We talk about five mindsets in 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 howtofeellove.com and check out the book and take the mindset quiz.

Michael Gervais (2:52)

I loved it. And it's also, if you're thoughtful, a bit of a diagnostic of your current relationships that you're in.

Sonja Lyubomirsky (2:59)

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 loved, 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 relationships. 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.

Michael Gervais (3:45)

And so, maybe just a quick background for you first, just set the context. Why did you want to write about love?