Why You Don’t Feel Loved (even when you are) - Sonja Lyubomirsky - #1115
6/25/20261 hr 12 min
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...
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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
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#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
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Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsChris Williamson· Host0:00
You've been studying happiness for thirty-six years.
Sonja Lyubomirsky· Guest0:02
Mm-hmm.
Chris Williamson· Host0:02
Is there a commonality between all of the most effective happiness interventions that you've found?
Sonja Lyubomirsky· Guest0:08
Yes. Well, thank you for aging me, but yes, thirty-six years. So actually, it was 1998, my lab pioneered happiness interventions. So ninety-eight, a long time ago, twenty years ago, Bill Clinton was in the White House. Um, and so I've been doing research on these interventions, testing whether practices like, uh, 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, right? 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, it makes me feel closer to him. So almost all happiness practices, maybe not all- Hmm ... like maybe if you run on the beach or meditate, it's not about connection- Mm-hmm ... but almost all of them are about feeling connected and feeling loved.
Chris Williamson· Host1:03
Why?
Sonja Lyubomirsky· Guest1:04
We-- I think the human species wouldn't have survived if we did not feel connected and loved, and it's a, a extremely strong signal. And so what I concluded is the key to happiness is feeling connected, which sounds like a cliché, right?
Chris Williamson· Host1:20
Mm-hmm.
Sonja Lyubomirsky· Guest1:20
But... 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.