The Science of Happiness: Five Simple Strategies for Reducing Anxiety and Increasing Connection | Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis

25:22Listening to learn means that you have a genuine curiosity about the other person, that you really want to know not only what they're telling you, but you want to know more about it. So one of the most powerful things you can say to a person a conversation is tell me more. It's really easy. And sometimes people will be astounded that you ask that, and they'll really go into opening up in a much more vulnerable and deeper way. So the idea of listening to learn is that when we listen to another person, we're listening to connect. We're listening to find out what that person is really all about, what makes them tick.

26:01and we want to find out as much as possible. And so we approach the conversation with that kind of a mindset, not the mindset of, you know, I'll wait till they finish talking, smile nicely and then tell them about myself. Aside from tell me more, you recommend something called level three questions. What's that? I think asking questions is really important because when you think about people, when people think of listening, they think of like, you're just sort of, you know, like making, like you're kind of staring at the other person and you're doing the non-verbals and you're, you know, you look like you're really engaged.

26:37I actually don't love that when people do that to me because I'm like, are they really listening or are they just sort of being performative listening, right? And so, but asking, when you ask questions, that's when you can really tell the person is really listening. And so one of my favorite examples is actually my best friend lives in Barcelona. And so we leave each other voice memos all the time because of the time difference. And so I will tell a story about my life or something I'm thinking about, and then she will ask questions. And the level three questions, the level one is kind of like, oh, what happened?

27:05You know, level three is when you're asking a question that shows that you really understand. And then you're kind of taking what they said to a new level. So my friend will make an observation or ask me a question that gives me a new insight, you know, that I've never had before. That's not easy to always do, but it's sort of, that's what really shows me that she's listening, right? It's not the kind of looking like you're listening, you know, like making eye contact. It's the showing that she's really like going to like a deeper level than maybe even I considered. So that's beautiful when that happens.

27:38Agreed. Yeah. Let me just add one thought to that. You know, listening is an idea that gets a lot of attention in the media today. And in some ways that attention is exactly the wrong kind of attention because what many of those programs do, they talk about smile six times, lean forward, Paraphrase what the other person says. They give you a bunch of tools that you can artificially apply in a conversation that don't necessarily allow you to really figure out what is this person telling me? How can I help them go deeper with it? How can I elaborate on it? And that requires attending to them and really tuning what you do and say to where they're going and what they're saying.

28:23If they're telling you about something happy, then you can try to share their excitement and talk about what a wonderful thing it is. And if they're talking about something sad, you can try to help them more deeply understand what they're feeling. These are great tools. Okay, so let's get to the next mindset. I'll leave it to the two of you who tackles it. It's called the radical curiosity mindset. Well, I'll start because I, well, you've thought a lot about kind of distinguishing listening from curiosity. And sort of my favorite example is, imagine you're sitting in a lecture, like you're a student, you know, you're sitting in a lecture and you're listening really well to the lecture and you're taking great notes and you're even asking these level three questions about the lecture.

29:05And then there's a test on the lecture and you get an A plus on the test, right? So you're great at listening, but you know what? You could be completely not curious at all about the topic of the lecture and still get an A plus. And so curiosity is really something that's beyond that. It's an enthusiasm. I think, Harry, you're the one who sort of talks about the importance of sort of enthusiasm and excitement and energy that comes with curiosity. It's when you're not just sort of listening is really more of a process. And curiosity, it's more of an enthusiasm. It's something, as we said, you can't fake.

29:38Like, you want to know more and you know it when you see it, right? And it's not that common. What was the last time you were like at a dinner party or a reception or, you know, something with people and someone was so excited to hear your story, right? They're like leaning in and their eyes are bright and they're smiling and they just can't wait for you to finish your story, right? That doesn't actually happen that often. And it's rare and it's so powerful and compelling. Indeed. How do you operationalize that advice if you can't fake it, if it's not a skill you can develop? Well, it is a skill you can develop because enthusiasm involves being genuinely curious about what the other person tells you.

30:21Sonia's example of listening to a lecture is a good idea. You can memorize everything that you're told and get an A-plus on the exam, but do you really care about it? But if you take a class where you really care about what the topic is and you really want to learn, that wanting to learn comes across and it allows you to incorporate the information so much better and you're not going to forget it the day the exam is over. When people do this in conversations, when you show enthusiasm, it's a remarkably powerful experience. One of the places we see this most clearly is in teaching. Teachers who are enthusiastic about the process of teaching and about the subject matter that they're teaching are the ones who communicate that to their students, and there are dozens of studies that support that idea.

31:11But it's true, it is hard to teach curiosity, but I think we all can find something of interest in something. Maybe not always, right? There's been times where I've actually tried to do this in my life, where I used to go to these kids' birthday parties, where you have to talk to these other parents that you have no interest in talking to, right? And I'm trying to find something, and I'm talking to some dad, and I'm saying, well, tell me about a recent trip you took. Oh, you went to Greece. Well, I've never been to Greece. Tell me the most interesting thing about that. And so you can find something of interest in most topics, but it does take sort of effort and energy.

31:46Like we've done studies, actually one of my students did a study where she asked people sort of every day, engage in at least like one curious behavior. And people didn't have any trouble doing that. I mean, that was very broad. So they said things like, oh, I learned about this new sort of type of dance. And so I was interested in it. So I decided to go online and learn about this dance or like a friend, you know, cook something new. And so I decided to sort of learn and I was curious about this recipe. And so everyone, people didn't seem to have trouble finding something to be curious about every day.

32:18Or we're also doing a study with conversations where we're going to ask people to like, in a conversation with a friend or a partner to ask them some questions about something that you're curious about. And I think we all can do that to find something of interest to talk about. You know, one aspect of this I do think is trainable, the enthusiasm part, the genuinely being happy for somebody else. There's an ancient 2 ,600-year-old Buddhist technique that's called mudita practice, M-U-D-I-T-A, and it's sometimes translated as sympathetic joy or just I think of it as the opposite of schadenfreude, taking happiness in other people's happiness.

32:59And there are these meditation practices where you envision people happy and you send phrases like, may actually your happiness increase? And this can make you the type of person that other people want to call when they have good news. Exactly. Yeah, like charismatic people, right? Or another type of people who show enthusiasm about whatever you have to say. Compersion, I think, is another word in English for that. For mujita, right? That being happy for someone else's happiness. Okay. There's an adage that appears in many different forms that says a happiness shared is a happiness doubled. And we've done a lot of research on that actually, that shows when you relate good news to another person and they show that kind of enthusiasm about your happiness, your happiness grows and their happiness grows.

33:51So when you can share good news, if the other person can really, I mean saying that, oh, that's nice, good for you, That doesn't get anything. But, wow, that's the best thing I ever heard. Or that's the best thing that's happened this week. That produces this kind of building up for both people. You can't actually fake enthusiasm at the beginning, and then it becomes real. It's kind of like laughter when you start laughing, and you force yourself to laugh, and then you actually keep laughing for real. So actually, we haven't really—we didn't talk about this in the book, but I actually think there's something to that, where you sort of can kind of look and seem enthusiastic, And actually that will turn into real enthusiasm.

34:28The other thing I want to mention is that there are cultures, and I'm from Russia myself, you know, I was born in the Soviet Union, where there's sort of a notion of the evil eye. And I think there's some cultures where it's hard, this idea of the happiness shared is a happiness, you know, doubled, I think is a little bit hard to experience or it's not as common, right? Because showing happiness to others sometimes is perceived as having sort of detrimental effects or could bring bad luck to you. So that's kind of a very interesting little side note. Coming up, Sonia and Harry talk about the final two mindsets plus their beef with the whole concept of the five love languages.

35:12Okay, so fourth mindset of five. And again, just to reset for the listener, these are mindsets that can help you operate the relationship seesaw. That is kind of one of the controlling metaphors for this book that Harry and Sonia have written. The fourth mindset is the open-hearted mindset. I'll make that a jump ball. Whichever one of you wants to take it, you can take it. Well, I'll take it. But to say basically, one way to think about the open-hearted mindset is open-hearted mindset is basically feeling kindness and warmth and bonding towards another person, wishing them well, wanting their dreams to come true.

35:46true and one way I think about that mindset is I think most relationships that are kind of stable and sort of reasonably healthy are characterized by the open heart mindset. In fact, it's almost like a definition of a relationship. Like if you don't have warmth and kindness towards someone, you know, what's the point, right? Like you're not going to probably be in a relationship with them, you know, with some exceptions, you know, with maybe a family member, you don't have a choice to be around. And so I think open heart in some ways, yeah, it's the most common. It characterized There's a lot of relationships.

36:16But when you lack it, you have very little. There's really huge costs, right? When you're not showing warmth and kindness towards the other person, it's really unhealthy. Would you agree with that, Harry? Totally agree. And there's a lot of research that shows, and some of the best studies are Sonia studies, that shows that when you do something kind for another person, you benefit. Perhaps the other person benefits if what you do is effective enough. but you benefit from the act of doing it. There are studies that even show that this produces an increase in dopamine in the brain by doing something kind.

36:52If you can do one kind thing every day, that's just a small and easy way to increase your happiness. And, you know, like we have studies that compare doing acts of kindness for others to doing acts of kindness for yourself, right? So, Dan, you mentioned self-care before. And so self-care is wonderful. I'm a big fan. And yet it might make you feel good in the moment, but it doesn't necessarily translate to how happy you are a week later or a month later. And so we find that doing acts of kindness for others is more happiness-inducing than doing acts of kindness for yourself. But more than that, we've done studies, maybe two or three studies now, where we collect blood from participants before and after they do acts of kindness for others or for themselves.

37:36And we find that only in the group that does acts of kinase for others do we see changes in RNA gene expression. So we're talking about immune gene expression. We see reduced pro-inflammatory gene expression. So more inflammation is bad, right? So you want to have less pro-inflammatory gene expression. So that's associated with a stronger immune profile. So not only does doing acts of kinase for others make people happier, more connected, but also there's a suggestion that it makes you healthier. They boost your immune health. Pretty cool. Very. This is why the Dalai Lama calls it wise selfishness.

38:13If you want to be selfish, you should do it the right way because kindness is what actually will make you happier. Okay. Final mindset, the multiplicity mindset. I'll take that one. The multiplicity mindset is the idea that we all have parts of ourselves that are desirable and admirable, and we all have parts of ourselves that are less desirable and perhaps even repulsive on some level. Acknowledging that it's okay to have weaknesses, it's okay to have shortcomings, is a major part of being able to feel loved with another person. Now, this cuts both ways. In terms of your connection with another person, you have to acknowledge and recognize that they have parts of themselves that are not really that good.

39:06They may have shoplifted when they were younger. They may have done something even worse than that. That doesn't make them a bad person. It means that they have a part of themselves that is something that they're not particularly proud of. The interesting part of the multiplicity mindset is that it also gives you permission to have weaknesses and shortcomings. So one of the reasons that we hide our vulnerabilities is that we're afraid that you're going to think that I really am an undesirable person. But if I understand the idea of multiplicity, then I realize that I can have weaknesses, and letting you know about them isn't necessarily going to turn you off to me.

39:54So, you know, Walt Whitman expressed this idea in his poem, you know, I contain multitudes. We all contain things that we're proud of, and we all contain things that we're less than proud of. And acknowledging that a full person has all of these is one important way of allowing yourself to feel loved and allowing you to feel love toward another person. And I want to add that this is a really hard one to embrace because I think at heart, we're all kind of judgmental about other people and we're judgmental about ourselves. You know, one of my pet peeves is, have you noticed that everyone's ex is a narcissist?

40:32Like everyone's ex is a narcissist. And you know what? We're all narcissists. We're all narcissists. It's a continuum. I'm a little bit narcissistic. And so are both of you. And sometimes I'm kind and sometimes I'm selfish and sometimes I'm loyal and sometimes I'm not. Right. So we all have those qualities. Now, we don't want to, again, dump those on others right away, you know, so timing matters. But I think it's just something that's just really important to keep in mind, to embrace, and try to be—one of my, actually, New Year's resolutions is to try to be less judgmental. You know, when you hear someone doing something bad, a new kind of approach that I'm taking is, if I hear about a bad behavior, you know, a friend will say, oh, can you believe this guy did this, right?

41:13And at first, I'm like, oh, my God, yes, I can't believe it. That's so awful. But my second reaction after I've kind of like calmed down is I see the little boy inside that man who did that bad thing. And that little boy is maybe threatened or insecure or whatever, right? And so you can always find a charitable or some explanation, set it in context of that. That really helps us all, I think, to recognize everyone's humanity and how all of us have these sort of messy, complicated insides. Yes. And an essential part of this is that recognizing the multitude in another person opens the door to forgiveness.

41:50If someone has wronged you in a pretty significant way, if you're going to be judgmental about it and say, oh, they're just a bad person for that, that makes it impossible for the relationship to continue. But if you recognize that there may have been some reason they did this bad thing that can help explain it, it opens the door to forgiving them and moving on with the connection. I think it's crucial to point out that there's a difference between explanation and excusing. Yes, absolutely. Yes, and I would also say there's an important difference between forgiving and forgetting. Forgiving means not forgetting.

42:27Right, so forgiving is not forgetting. Forgiving is not condoning. Forgiving is not excusing. Forgiving is not pardoning or rationalizing. It's something you do for yourself, actually, not for the other person. Okay, so we've just gone through these five mindsets that can help us operate the aforementioned relationship seesaw. Do you have thoughts about how to apply these mindsets in different contexts? Because as we established at the beginning of this conversation, you're talking about love in a capacious way, inclusive of romantic relationships, parenting relationships, workplace, strangers, etc.

43:04We have a chapter where we talk about sort of applying mindsets and sort of different kinds of relationships, for example, whether it's with your kids or with your colleagues versus your romantic partners. And obviously, it's going to look a little different, although I think less different than one thinks. I mean, some obvious examples, sharing mindset, right, with your kids. You're not going to want to share some parts of yourself with your children, you know, because it might scare them. It just might not be healthy for your relationship with them. You might not want to share everything with your boss, right?

43:34But it doesn't mean that you don't share it all, that you have to sort of be wise about it. So that's just one example. But something like listening and curiosity, I think, applies to pretty much any context, any relationship. I can't really think of a context where it's sort of bad to listen, right, Harry? Like, when is it ever unhealthy to listen or be curious? Right. Except for when you're doing it too much. You know, moderation, right? I'm a big fan of moderation. We should do everything in moderation, including moderation, right? So maybe if you're too curious, and we know people, for example, with high-functioning autism become so curious about certain topics, special interests, that that could actually take them away from other sort of things that they need to be doing in their life.

44:13So maybe sometimes curiosity can kill the cat. It could be a little too much. Everything in moderation. And by the same token, I would add, I can't think of a situation in which having an open-hearted mindset would be a bad thing. It's always a good thing, even in a competitive world. In the world of competitive sports, for example, the athletes who have a warm-hearted approach to their competitors, it doesn't make them compete any less, but it makes them not want to hurt the other, and it makes them feel like the competition is a joy because you're bringing out the best in each other. I'd like to argue to bring open-heart mindset more to work contexts.

44:56We talked about sort of love in a very broad sense. we don't use the word love enough, I think, at work. It just seems like it's inappropriate, right? And yet, you know, loving your colleagues, being really warm towards your colleagues, you know, people who work for you, with you, who supervise you. I think that's beautiful. I think the world would be a better place if we use that word love more often. My friends and I say we love each other all the time. In fact, sometimes I'll be on the phone. I'll be like, I love you so much. And my kids are like confused. They're like, who are you talking to?

45:25Like, I'm talking to my friends. It's, you know, why don't we say we love you more to each other? You know, that's one of my, I guess, goals is try to get the world to use that word more often. Well, I was in North Carolina over the holiday, and we were riding the shuttle bus to pick up our rental car. And I got to talking with the bus driver. I was showing some curiosity toward him. And eventually, he talked about how he loved his colleagues. Now, this is a shuttle bus driver working for a rental car company, and yet he loved the people he worked with. And he actually used that word. Harry, let me stay with you for a second.

46:05The whole goal here is to help us feel loved, the whole goal of your project. What are some of the principal barriers in this? We've been talking about some of the skills we can develop, but what are the barriers we might bring to the table and then how do we work with them? I think the primary barrier that we bring to these situations is that we approach the conversation with the wrong mindsets. We assume that the way to get love from another person is to talk about your many accomplishments. You know, how many awards have you won? How many articles have you published? Even how many charitable acts have you done over the holiday?

46:48We believe that we need to impress the other person with our desirability. And the irony is that we think this goes in exactly the wrong direction, that this creates a wall, a barrier of sorts between yourself and the other person, because it sets up an ideal that the other person, perhaps, you know, they'll be impressed, but they can't connect to it. It can't be effort. Again, I don't want to use the word work because I think it's a positive kind of beautiful kind of work. It does take effort to sort of switch your mindset off of maybe off of yourself and onto another person to try to make someone else feel loved first, you know, it needs to be intentional, it needs to be effortful.

47:30But one huge caveat I think we haven't really talked about is once in a while, you will do everything right. You'll embrace the five mindset. So you will do that dynamic reciprocal thing that happens on the seesaw and it's not going to work. And once in a while, that person is not going to respond. You know, maybe when you tell your story, they're not going to really listen and be curious, or maybe they're not going to share. And once in a while, that's going to happen. And maybe you haven't chosen well the person to feel loved by. That's something important. You have to choose well. Maybe that person is just not going to make you feel loved.

48:06And so you need to maybe put a pause on that relationship, maybe walk away from it, or maybe just accept that you're not going to feel loved by that person. So we do want to sort of bring in that caveat that once in a while that's going to happen. Right. So are there other ways to diagnose the viability of your various relationships? Well, one way to diagnose the viability of this whole approach is to experiment with it, to try it and not plunge right in deeply, but rather, you know, take baby steps into it and see if the other person responds. You know, the idea of the seesaw is not that I support you for half an hour and then you support me for half an hour.

48:47It's much more of a, I support you for a brief moment in a conversation. How do you respond? If you don't respond in a supportive, enthusiastic way toward me, maybe that's a sign that it's not going to work. You can sort of experiment with it at a relatively safe and basic level to see if it's working. And you know what? We actually had a very interesting experience when we were writing the book and we had sort of our initial drafts. We sent a few friends and acquaintances and we were surprised. Like I had two guy friends read the book and they wrote me and they said, you know, your book led me to break up with my girlfriend.

49:25So two different people actually used the book and used the mindsets in a way that we did not intend, but we actually now think is very useful is they use the mindsets as a diagnostic tool of their relationships. And so one friend said, you know, your book made me realize that my girlfriend really doesn't share and she really doesn't listen. And another guy said, you know, your book made me realize that my girlfriend just has sort of ceased to show any curiosity in my work or in my life. And so they ended up breaking up. I mean, I assume that they had discussions first. And so that's another way to sort of think about is that like, to what extent are these five mindsets being embraced in your relationship?

50:04And if they're not, how can you fix that? And if you can't fix that, then maybe that's telling is something important. Yeah, a common feeling that people have, and this is especially true for couples who go into couples therapy, is that one person feels like they're doing all the lifting. So they're in the seesaw and they feel like they're lifting the other person and they feel like they're not getting lifted back. And one of the best ways to check on that is to have a conversation about it, to ask the other person to do more lifting, ask them why perhaps they're not doing the lifting. And that can not only be a diagnostic tool, but it can also be a therapeutic tool.

50:43And we actually created a quiz where it's on our website, howtofeellove.com, where people can kind of gauge the extent to which they're embracing the five mindsets in a particular relationship. And then they get feedback to say, you know, maybe you're really good at sharing, but you're not so good at listening. And here's some tips. So I think that's, again, I think that we hope that people will find that useful. But there's an important thing to keep in mind. And and what Sonia said just brought this up for me, you know how much you're lifting the other person because you're doing it, right? You're actively involved in it.

51:16Sometimes you don't know that the other person is actually trying to help lift you up, but for some reason is not getting across because you don't know what's in the other person's head. You don't know what their motivation is. You don't know what their intention is. So by checking it out, such as on our quiz or by simply conversing about it, you can find out, well, maybe there were times that the other person was doing the lifting and you weren't quite open to it. You weren't quite realizing it. And that can be an important part of this process also. I believe in the book you talk about if-only myths.

51:55Is it worth discussing what some of those are? Yeah, absolutely. And we already talked about them a little bit. Harry had said that one of the problems is people kind of embrace the wrong mindset or sort of think in a way that is not helpful about their relationships and why they don't feel loved or how to feel more loved. And the if-only myths are basically what he had said earlier, which is that, you know, many of us believe that I will be more loved if only, you know, the other person knew about all my accomplishments and all my positive qualities. Or I would feel more loved if the other person didn't know about some of my weaknesses and flaws and sort of bad behaviors.

52:31Or I feel more loved if I were more successful, if I had more money, fame, power, beauty, we think that that's the solution. And it's not the solution, right? So I think that we make pretty clear. One of the things I believe you take on, this is one of the if-only myths that I believe you talk about, is that our relationship would work if only our partner spoke our love language. And you guys take a hard run at the concept of love languages. Sure, I'll take that one. The concept of love languages is flawed because it makes the assumption that if only my partner spoke the love language that is most important to me, then I would be happier.

53:16And research shows that that's just not the case. For one thing, the basic elements that everybody wants in their relationship, expressions of affection, kindness, are true regardless of whether that's your primary love languages or not. Also, the research very clearly shows that if your partner tries to speak your particular love language, the thing you say that you value most in a love relationship, that doesn't make the relationship any better than if they speak one of the other languages. There's just not a lot of evidence that this kind of primary importance makes all that much of a difference.

53:59And I want to jump in. First of all, I love the idea of love languages. I mean, it becomes so popular everywhere. If you go on dating apps, people say what their love languages are. And I think they're a great heuristic to talk about sort of how we give and express love. It just turns out that, as Harry kind of alluded to, there's supposed to be five love languages, right? Words of affirmation, quality time, gifts, physical touch, and acts of service. Okay, so those are five. But it turns out that really there's two of them that like everyone prefers. So that's one kind of myth about the love language.

54:34It's not that like we all have these different ones and we have to match. So we all want quality time and words of affirmation, right? So those are the two that researchers that everyone prefers. It also turns out that, And of course, there's lots more than five. There's many more love languages, right? One of my favorites is giving your partner freedom is sort of another love language. But there's many, many, many others. It turns out that matching in the love languages doesn't predict how good your relationship or how long is it going to last. And then really my favorite finding is it turns out your relationship is better off with like the higher number of languages the other person expresses their love in, right?

55:11So it turns out like the more the better. So it's not the fit issue. Actually, one of my top ones is physical touch. You know, it's not that it has to be physical touch. It's just the more the better. So I still love the idea. So I don't want to kind of reject it as a heuristic. It just has some flaws. Before I let you go, is there anything either of you were hoping we would get to that we haven't gotten to? Well, one of the things that many people have asked us about is the idea of whether you can feel loved by a chatbot. That's certainly a timely idea, and the popular media has had numerous examples of this kind of thing.

55:47And our take on it is kind of a mixed take, but the bottom line is probably not. The positive side of it is that if you're not feeling much love in your life, a chatbot can fill that void. If you're starving, a McDonald's burger will probably help you not feel hungry. Will it provide much nutrition? No. The chatbots are trained on models that include a lot of the research that we're talking about. And most chatbots by now are pretty darn good at validating, at understanding, at showing curiosity, adopting a multiplicity mindset, even at adopting an open-hearted mindset. So a chatbot can do that.

56:33And if you're hurting, if you're missing it, that is a powerful experience, and it certainly explains why a lot of people feel that way when they're talking to their chatbot. On the other hand, at some point, you have to realize that it's an algorithm talking to you. It's not another person who has decided that they're really interested in you. It's a chatbot that has been programmed to show interest in you. So on some level, it starts to become an empty experience. Now, there probably are some listeners to this podcast who are going to rebel against this idea because they're going to say they love talking to their chat pod.

57:18And I would argue there are a lot of people who love McDonald's burgers too. Well, I would also add, for the same reason that we're so moved and we feel great, grand emotions and we love, say, going to movies, right? We're kind of fooled that the movies are actually real when they're not real for the same reasons. We find it very powerful and compelling. And when the chatbot shows curiosity in us, it's not real curiosity, but it certainly feels real. And AI companions certainly are the best listeners that we'll ever have in our lives. They remember everything. I also wanted to add in terms of, you had asked about what we hadn't touched on, is when you think about relationship failures and breakups and problems in relationships, Again, I'm not a therapist, so this is really more my kind of opinion based on lots of research.

58:06I think it's often about not feeling loved. It's often about the other person is doing all these things and I'm still not feeling loved. Or like when you do have a problem in a relationship, like I had a relationship where the person was not texting me often enough or fast enough, right? And I realized like the problem wasn't the texting. it was that it wasn't making me feel loved when they weren't texting fast enough, right? So it's often a lot of these kind of relationship problems are a symptom of not feeling loved. And you know the show Couples Therapy, which is a great show, right, where there's like real couples in New York and they kind of forget the cameras there.

58:43And it strikes me watching that show how often they're fighting and fighting about this and this and you don't do this enough and you did this to me. and often the underlying issue is like, I'm not feeling loved enough by you. So that just sort of struck me as we were writing the book. Is that a thing you would recommend saying in a conversation with your partner? Yeah, perhaps. That would be pretty powerful to say that. You know, our book comes out around Valentine's Day and almost all Valentine's Day cards say, I love you, right? They all say, I love you, right? And so we wanted to change that you make me feel loved.

59:22So that's the positive side of it, right? That's really beautiful. You make me feel loved. And it's about you and not about me. But in a conversation, I don't know, Harry, in a deep conversation with a partner when you're having problems to say, I'm not feeling loved enough by you. I mean, maybe that would be a very powerful thing to say. Yeah. And I would phrase it differently. I would say, I would feel more loved if you. So don't put it into, I don't feel loved, because that's very likely to get a defensive response, but I would feel more loved if you answered my text messages within 10 minutes.

59:56Oh, like, sure, I can do that. You know, it's much easier to respond to that kind of more hopeful framing. Yes. Or you can put it through the five mindsets. I would feel more loved if you were, you know, more open about what's happening for you, or I would feel more loved if you, you know, asked me real questions about my day or showed any interest or happiness for me when I'm happy, et cetera, et cetera. Yes, absolutely. Okay, final question. Can one or both of you just plug the shit out of the new book and the website and everything else? So I think this book, How to Feel Loved, is the best work I've ever done in my career.

1:00:35And I know that sounds like hyperbole, but it's true. I think Harry has said the same thing. I really think it's going to resonate with a lot of people. Our website is called howtofeellove.com. And we have a quiz that I think people will really find useful, which is just five questions. And it's going to tell you what your sort of best kind of highest ranked mindset is and what the mindset is that needs the most improvement. And you'll get feedback on that. And then we'll give you some tips on how to sort of embrace those mindsets even more. And I would add that I also think this is the best thing that I've done in my career.

1:01:10And one of the things I like about it is that it makes all of the research we've done real. This is taking the research and presenting it to the world in a way that really feels real. And it just validates all the things that we've done for so many years. And, you know, there's this idea of giving psychology away, making it something that helps people deal with the most important challenges they face in their lives. So I'm really excited about the book making a difference in people's lives. And I also want to add that it's really, again, I mean, I've said this before, that the book really has an empowering message that feeling loved is actually under your control.

1:01:55That it's not about like, oh, I have to change myself to be more lovable. It's not about I need to change the other person to somehow love me more. it's about changing the conversation, changing how I act and what I show in a conversation, in the next set of conversations, which is really, really something that's feasible, workable, tractable, you know, under everyone's control. So I hope that people will take that as an empowering message. Thank you both. Pleasure to talk to you. Congratulations on the new book. Good luck with your book, Dan. Yeah, about love too. Yeah, thank you. It was a pleasure to talk to you.

1:02:35Thank you again to Sonia Lubomirsky and Harry Reese. Great to talk to them. Don't forget to check out my new app, 10 % with Dan Harris. We've got a growing body of guided meditations from extraordinary teachers. And we do these weekly live meditation and Q &A sessions. Super fun. DanHarris.com. Check it out. There's a free trial. Finally, thank you very much to everybody who worked so hard on this show. Our producers are Tara Anderson and Eleanor Vasili. Our recording and engineering is handled by the great folks over at Pod People. Lauren Smith is our managing producer. Marissa Schneiderman is our senior producer.

1:03:10DJ Kashmir is our executive producer. And Nick Thorburn of the band Islands wrote our theme.