We want to be seen, we want people to be interested in our inner life, and ou...
If someone has a problem with substance use disorder, please call one call placement. That's 888-831-1581, and if we can't help you, we'll make a referral to someone who can. One call placement is affiliated with Carrera Treatment Wellness and Spa and One Method Treatment Centers. Today's guest has spent her career studying something everyone wants. Happiness, but her latest work focuses on something even more fundamental, and that's love.
Not just giving love, but actually feeling it, receiving it, and letting it in. Dr. Sonja Liba Mirski is one of the world's leading experts on happiness and human well-being. But what her work continues to show is that underneath happiness, there's something deeper driving it, and that's whether or not we feel loved and connected. She's the best-selling author of the "How of Happiness" and has a new book released just last month called "How to Feel Love".
Her work has helped millions of people better understand how to create lasting change in their lives. So one of the reasons I'm so excited to have you here today is because for 20 years, I'd been teaching my staff, and really everyone who comes to me, that happiness in relationships, there's nothing to get, there's only to give.
“Just worry about your side of the street, just that's all I care about, okay?”
How much more loving you can be, how much more attentive you can be, how much more nurturing you can be, how much more generous you can be, how much more present you can be. Don't worry about her, okay?
And I would tell them that, you know, look, they're not always going to reciprocate.
That's none of your business, but you get to be a loving person. And that feels better than actually being loved, and then I would say, I'll prove it to you. When you are a kid in high school, is it true that there were people there that love you, that you didn't really feel it for? But then when you loved someone, it felt really good, right?
“I said, that's what, and then the other day, or a month ago, I'm reading,”
you're the authority on this, and so I had to have you. So thank you for coming, and well, thank you, you know what we're writing, what we write about in our book, how do you love this totally aligned with what you're just describing, so very nice. What do most people get completely wrong about what actually makes them happy?
Well, I wrote a whole book about it. I call the myths of happiness.
My second book is called The Myths of Happiness, and it's about myths or misconceptions about
what makes this happy. So for example, we think like, I'll be happy when, such as such happens, like, when I have a baby, when I get a boyfriend, and when I get that job, when I move to that city, when I lose weight, and all those things do make us happy, but they don't make us happy forever, because we tend to adapt to most changes in our lives. And so anyway, long, long story, there's really three
buckets of things that make us happy, like, durability, and one is anything to do with connection, and we'll talk about that, right? Feeling love, feeling connected. The second one is anything to do with contribution or generosity, right, giving to others, helping, and the third is personal growth, sort of growing as a person, whether it's learning a new language or travel language or learning something. So yeah, those are the things that really make us
terribly happy, as opposed to, like, buying a new object, becoming more powerful, attractive,
higher status, you know, more famous. Those things don't make us happy for very long.
“Is happiness something we're born with, or something we can actually build over time?”
Well, it's both, of course, right, genetics, influence are happiness, but also a big kind of bucket of what makes us happy is what we do every day of our lives, like, how do we behave, how do we think, you know, deliberate intentional action, and so we could choose to be more grateful, we could choose to be kind, we could choose to spend more time with others, as opposed to alone, and so both, of course, are true. This is the part that I really am interested in.
Which is the science, say, on the correlation between money and the happiness?
So, but yeah, of course, money and happiness is correlated, like, it's, money does make us happy,
“you know, so that that is a myth that it doesn't. Of course it does. If you make more money,”
there's a lot of things you can do that can make you happy, right? You can spend your money on, on, on experiences and activities that you really love, as opposed to, like, working all day and having a lot of stress and all of that making ends meet. It serves as a buffer, it allows us, yeah, allows us sort of to do things we want to do. But the more money we have, like, he even having even more doesn't make a huge difference, right? So,
money is especially, um, how do I say, happiness inducing when it keeps us from being poor. And, uh, it means, even, there's lots of nuances. Actually, when my favorite nuance comes from a recent study, that showed that, that based on there's a correlation between money and happiness, but only when you're happy to begin with. So, it's like, if you're an unhappy person to begin with, more money doesn't really make you happier. But if you're happier, more money actually makes you happier.
And it's partly because, I think, uh, that happier people spend money on things that make us happy.
“So, what matters is really what you spend your money on. In your new book, how to feel love,”
you explore how people can actually experience and receive love more deeply. What's one mindset shift that can make an immediate difference? Well, like, I need to provide, thank you. That's a great question. I need to provide some context
for that before I jump into a mindset. Um, well, first of all, and I think you already started with this,
that a lot of us are loved, but we don't feel loved. Right? And so, that's really a problem. If I, we did a survey that showed that 70% of people, and I actually think that's an understatement, say that they would like to feel more loved. And so, how do you do that? Most of us think, well, if I wanted to feel more loved, I need to make myself more lovable. Maybe I need to sort of broadcast how wonderful I am, show my positive qualities to people and hide my negative qualities.
Um, or we think, so we need to change ourselves. Uh, or we think we need to change the other person somehow. You know, convinced them to love us more. Um, and we actually have a, uh, a solution that's actually much more empowering than that and much more in control, which is that you don't have to change yourself. You don't have to change the other person. You just have to change the conversation. And when you think about a relationship, it's just a series of conversations,
right? Uh, especially the defined concept of conversations broadly. And so, the first step in making yourself feel more love is to make someone else feel loved. And so, you asked about mindsets, the first mindset that I would propose that are is really important. We call radical curiosity. It's to show real genuine curiosity in the other person, make them feel seen and heard and listen to, you know, really listen to valued understood and loved. And that's really hard to do.
You know, when was the last time someone showed like real genuine curiosity in you, right? It's
it's so powerful and it's actually rare. That was beautiful. I was just on a date. I'm not even
kidding. And one of the things she said to me afterwards was, you know, you didn't ask me anything about myself. And immediately, the first thing I said was, that's true. I'm sorry. And I was nervous. That's it. That's all that was. I was just nervous. Yeah, that's a beautiful story. It's
“funny because I've had that experience as well from both, I think, side. Um, yeah, and, and but it's so,”
you know, yeah, it's so powerful when someone shows curiosity asks, ask questions. I'm not just small-talk questions, but deep questions. So it turns out research by Nick Epley shows that we think that asking deep questions of someone else is going to be perceived as like nozy or like we're prying. It's going to be uncomfortable. But on average, most of us crave to be asked those questions, right? We want to be seen. We want people to be interested in our inner life, in our experiences,
and our thoughts, right? And even in the details of our day, think of all those people that you know, you know, the people who tell you all these stories about all the boring details of their day, right? Like, oh, they went to the airport and they were running late and then they couldn't find a parking space, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? It's really boring to listen to. But you want to miss you wonder, though, people really want you to know, right? The details of their day, like they're just craving
to sort of to be seen like that. So, so we ask questions that show real interest in someone else about
those things. It's very powerful. And, and truthfully, I appreciated her saying,
because that was an opportunity to evolve or bowl and and tell the truth, and it was sweet. It was sweet.
All right.
how to feel loved is called the sharing mindset. And that is when you really share a little bit
“more of yourself to others. And the idea is, if you want to feel loved, you need to be known.”
Because if you're not really known, if you're hiding most of yourself, right, you have a wall, we all have walls around us. They're there to protect us. But they also prevent us from letting people in. So, if I have this wall around me, and I, how can I ever feel loved by someone, right? Because if they're, what are they loving, right? They're loving this part of me that's just, this little bit that I'm showing, right? And so, I really need to share more of myself
to feel loved. And that's where sharing vulnerability comes in. It doesn't have to be sharing my deepest traumas and secrets, or it's certainly not all at once. But sharing a little bit more. Because we all know people who are like very, they hold things very close to the vest. I think it's very hard to feel loved if you are not known to the other person, which is also why you want to show curiosity in others because it helps them, you really know the other and helps them feel loved.
I love that. We also know people that dump everything on the table in the first five minutes.
You did it out of it. It's just the opposite. So, it's your oversharing. And that's not, that's, that's not good either, right? Because people's walls come right back up, right? If you're sharing too much.
“So, actually, all of this takes quite a bit of emotional intelligence. Because you have to kind of”
read the other person, you have to read the room. Are they like, when I'm sharing a story about myself, I'm sort of gauging your curiosity, right? Are you, do you want to hear more, right? Like, should I maybe ask you a question now? So, yeah, it's a sort of dynamic back and forth process that involves, you know, quite a bit of reading cues, right? That's beautiful. I think of it on a date. I think of it in terms of tennis. Yeah. Right? You're compared, this be just the mindful of that.
So, I don't over. So, I don't exactly agree. Because my story, that's sort of so similar. Your story, I was on a date once, and the guy just kept talking on and on, and actually telling stories, telling really interesting stories, he actually is an influence, like a, you know, a TikTok influencer,
very good storyteller. But then I finally stopped him. And I said, do you realize in the last 45
minutes you haven't asked me a single question, sorry, very similar? And his response was great. He said,
“I'm so sorry, when I'm nervous, I talk too much. And I tell stories, because that's what he's good at, right?”
And that was vulnerable. And that forged a connection between us, right? So, it's kind of getting back, like, usually when we meet people for the first time, or even when not for the first time, we try to impress each other, right? Like, I'm talking to you right now, Richard. And I want you to think that I'm smart and interesting and funny and virtuous, right, a good person. And so, so I might succeed in impressing you, and I might even succeed in, you know, maybe you might start to admire me,
but that doesn't make me feel loved, right? So, you know, so we, we try to impress each other, but that doesn't forge a connection. What forge is a connection is actually opening up a little bit, you know, again, at the right pace, not too much. And showing really listening and showing curiosity in the other person. Give me some other mindsets that will help. We talked about five mindsets. And I already mentioned the radical curiosity mindset. I mentioned the sharing mindsets. So,
another one that's related, we call listening to learn. So, let's say, you're curious about someone, you're asking them questions. Then they start to share. They start opening up very important, right? So, you can get to know them better, make them feel loved. And when they're telling their story, most of us are not good listeners, right? Including me, we're not good listeners, because we're mostly listening to respond, right? We are literally sitting there, and we're
listening to them with half an year. The other half an year, we're formulating, you know, our next response, right? We're sort of thinking what to say next. And the person can sense that, because you're not quite all there, right? You're not quite attuned. And so, we argue in the book that's based on research, lots of you are listening, that you should listen to learn instead of listening to respond, right? So, listen like you're going to be quizzed on it tomorrow. Listen like
you're just watching a film and you're sort of taking it in. And there's no response, you know, you're just taking it in. And yeah, so that's another mindset. So, you go, the mindset shift is during your next conversation, think of yourself as a listener, not a talker. And I'm a talker. It's like what you're doing. You only love about that the most. If you're listening, right, like you're kicking it in, like you're watching movie and you're kicking it in or listening
to learn is what you call it. You don't have to think about a response because it's just going to come organically. There's nothing unique. There's nothing unique to prepare for. But is it funny,
Maybe it's because when we're in school, like we're constantly, like we're so...
I never made this connection before. You know, we all had at least 12 years of schooling. I'm
most of us a lot more than that. And that's kind of what we do in school is like we're constantly,
“like we're having to formulae teaching. Every day, all day, had to formulate the response, right?”
And so it's hard to just kind of sit back and like let it go. Let that go. Let that go. Let that go like habit. Let that go and just take it in. So, I already kind of mentioned this with someone said, it was a really great advice. When you're listening, imagine you're watching a film. When you're watching a film, unless you're a filmmaker or you're you're writing a paper on the film, like you're not formating response, right? You're just watching. Let's say there's a conversation
happening in the movie. In front of you, you're just watching and you're enjoying it, letting it all,
you know, letting it in. So, think when you're listening to someone, imagine you're just watching a
film. So, I thought there was a great advice. That's fantastic. That's terrific. Oh, another, yeah. Oh, sure. There's, there's five. There's an open heart mindset. We call it the open heart mindset.
“That's the one I think most people are already doing or familiar with. It's, it's having”
showing warmth towards a person, showing compassion, kindness, and believing in them. There's something called the Michelangelo effect. Do you know what that is? The Michelangelo, the Michelangelo phenomenon. The idea that the artist Michelangelo, he was set to, he would look at a block of marble and he would kind of envision the image of what he wanted to sculpt in the marble. And so it was already there. He already saw it and he would carve it to sort of
set it free. And the idea is that you have that perspective on your partner or your friend or your
child where you sort of see like what they're dream, you know, you sort of understand what they dream to become and then you help them become that. You believe in them. So that's called Michelangelo effect. So that's part of the open heart mindset sort of showing that belief in someone, helping them, showing warmth in them. So that's open heart. Number five. This is actually one of my favorites. Maybe my favorite. It's called the multiplicity mindset. And I'm told that the word
multiplicity comes from trauma research. The idea that if you have a trauma in your life, it doesn't have to define you, right? It's just it's a part of you, of course. It's like we're a quilt of all kinds of things, positive qualities, negative qualities, right? Trauma's dream, you know, that we did accomplishments, failures, right? It's all part of us that we're a quilt of many many, many things. And we accept that in other people and we also importantly accept it in ourselves.
So when someone misbehaves or someone's shows us a side of them that we don't like or we're in a couple of ways, we remind ourselves that that one thing does not define them, right? We're more than one trait or more than one behavior. And it's very hard to do because I think it's not, it comes naturally for us to be judgmental, right? And I often say like, I think it's evolutionarily adaptive for humans to be judgmental because in the past sort of in our ancestral past,
“it was important for us to make that judgment, is that person a friend or they have foe, right?”
So we're kind of making these quick judgments. So we have to override that judgmentalness in ourselves, right, to sort of, right, with deliberate effort, it's like to sort of see people as complex, very messy human beings. Give me an example, because on the most judgmental personal walk. Oh yeah, well lots of examples. Here's one example. A friend of mine of sort of we have a friend group, a guy. He wrote something really bad, really upsetting to a female friend. And we have
this text and we were like, oh my god, we were very upset about it. Like, can't believe you did that. He's a horrible person, right? I'm not going to go into what he wrote. And one of my friends said, you know, when I see that text, I see the little boy inside of him, the little, the teenager inside of him who used to be rejected by women or girls. And he was somehow triggered, you know, by this friend. And so this, all this stuff came out. Now, it's not condoning his, he already did. It's not
justifying condoning or excusing it, but it does help you understand. Maybe show some compassion towards him. By the way, it doesn't mean that I want to hang out with him, but I, I now understand him in a more complex way. And I, I need to know what he, I, I need to know what he's saying. Well, okay, I'll show you, I'll give you another example. I, another friend, a guy that I introduced to a female friend, and the whole time we were sitting at a coffee shop, and the whole time he's boasting.
So this is, this is what he's doing. He's just boasting all about himself, blah blah blah. This and dropping names and boasting boasting. And I was sitting there and I was so embarrassed and that I'm introducing him to the friend of mine. And it's after he leaves. I stayed on my friend. I said,
I'm so sorry, you know, they's boasting this whole time.
She said, Sonia, if you had more compassion for yourself, you'd have more compassion for him. And I was like, really, and she's like, look, this is what he can do right. He can't. It's like, he doesn't have the capacity. Like, this is what he was able to do. He was trying, of course, you're starting to impress her. And he, like, if he, if we, if you could stop boasting, he could, but right now, he just can't. And again, it's not an excuse. I don't really want to hang out with them.
I don't want to hang out with someone who boasts nonstop, right? But it gave me some understanding where he's coming from. So, um, those are more extreme examples. Often, someone just does something. You have said about, maybe they snap at you, maybe they're rude and you're like, well, maybe they had a rough day. You know, they're, you know, I mean, so things like that. Like, seeing people in the all of their complexity. All right. I got two things to say about that.
Number one, okay. I want to date that woman. Yeah. Then why is one? Yeah. For chart. Oh, yeah. That was, sure because she knew he was just nervous in that moment. She was just going to let him talk himself out until he was comfortable and not being a pain in the ants. Yeah. That's all. Very well. I love that. That wouldn't be your story. She's an amnificent. That's an amnificent. I agree. It's not like she happens to be a, sorry,
“to drive. She happens to be a coach. And she's a brilliant coach. I think because she has the”
wisdom. You know. So anyway, thank you. What's your name? Let's give her a life. Yeah. I would love to. Her name is Emily, Ritaia, R-I-T-E-A. I'm sure, and Emily with, like, I-E, she's French. And yeah, I mean, she's a brilliant coach and if anyone, you could, you could find her on the web. R-I-T-E-A is for last name, Emily. No, and she actually coached me as well a while ago. And she changed my life because she would just have these incredibly wise,
you know, reframeings or perspectives on my situation. I'd be like, oh my god, you know,
I never thought of it this way, you know. So yeah, thank you. Thank you for that. I'm happy to
promote her as a coach. Emily, Ritaia. In your research, is feeling loved more about what others do for us or how we interpret and internalize those actions? Well, it's certainly both. But we, you know, again, we make the point in our book, how to feel loved that, you know, lots of people are loved, but they don't necessarily feel loved. So that means that other people are showing love to them. What is that? Let's go back. What is that? Why do people not feel
“loved when they're being shown love? Okay, and I think that's a very complicated question”
that is a little bit above my pay grade, but I will give you one answer to it. So imagine that we have a cup of love. Here's a couple. Here's my cup of love. And people in my life are showing love to me. They're expressing love. It's like they're pouring love in the cup of love. But maybe
there's a leak at the bottom of the cup. And so it's leaking out. And so I'm never really
quite feeling as loved as I want to be, right? Because it's sort of leaking out. Or maybe the lid only has a small opening. So it's not quite getting in, right? So it's sort of like not quite, oh, getting in. And so that's actually a metaphor for people who are anxiously attached who have the leak. And maybe avoidant dismissive who are a little bit, that's one metaphor for that. And they're not quite letting it in. Or maybe even distancing themselves from it. So that's
“one answer is that I think attachment style can make it hard to feel loved. I mean, I think this”
other answer is like, and I get, I'm not a clinical psychologist with therapist. I don't have as much to say about that. But it's a very important question. The book that you wrote is not what's
taught in school. But it really is the most important thing when you think about it, right? We only
have one go around here, right? I'm going to only get one shot at this life. We're all here on loan. Okay. And if you could tell people, and I know it's a habit, right? And it's a way of life. But if you could tell somebody who was not as happy as he should be, and he had a thirst for knowledge. And he came to you and he said, Sonia, I'm unhappy. Okay. I don't know what's wrong. I've got a good relationship. I've got good kids. I've got a good job. Why am I so
intently unhappy? What would you tell him to do to turn that around? Yeah. Well, that's a really hard question because, you know, there may be a number of roots to this person's unhappiness,
Including biological.
But I would ask him, you know, do you feel loved? You know, do you buy your partner, buy your kids, you know, buy your friends? I do, but not the way, and he would say, I do, but not the way I
“feel I should be loved or not the way I want to do. So, and that's what, that's what really”
what our book is about. It's like, what do you do that, you know, and that, that, that until my advice would be, to start thing, to start, and again, the advice is, if you don't feel loved, you want to
go first and start by making other people in your life you love. This sort of seems a little bit
unfair, but that's how it works. That's beautiful. That's beautiful. Elaborate on that because that's the best thing. Yeah, thank you. So, basically, you go first. So, you make, and this happened to me too, actually, with my family members, to write it, I feel loved with one family member, and I thought, okay, I need to make her feel more love by showing interest in her and asking her questions, and anyway, so first first try to make your partner or the children or your friends to feel more
love by showing curiosity in them, by listening to them, by letting them share with you and you share with them by accepting, by, and by listening to them with warmth, that's the open heart mindset, and acceptance, that's multiplicity mindset. And then, most, most of them, most of the time, they will reciprocate. Not all the time, but most of the time, because reciprocity is an incredibly powerful norm of human behavior. It's very hard not to reciprocate. They'll, they'll reciprocate,
and they'll start showing curiosity in you and listening to you. It doesn't always happen,
but it, it, it, it mostly will happen. So that's, that's my advice. And when it doesn't, you get to feel like a loving person, right? You get to be the loving person.
“Exactly, that's what you said at the beginning of the hour, or something, and actually,”
that's one of the most common questions I get asked, you know, when I give talks on this, they'll say people, every, and very, really, someone will say, you know, I've done that, and then the other person doesn't reciprocate, and they don't ask me any questions. They don't show your curiosity in me, or they don't share, and, or they don't let me share, and then I say, I mean, it's hard for me, I, I'm not telling you what I say. I say, well, maybe you've, you've chosen
poorly, and maybe there's not the wrong person. You're with the narcissist. Possible, right? You maybe you're, yeah, maybe you're the, maybe, or maybe, sometimes it's a family member. You can't quite walk away from them. Maybe walk away, maybe you pause, maybe you just accept that this is how it's going to be, and this is not the person you want to put all your eggs in that basket, right? Yeah, I mean, there's probably more answers to that,
you know, maybe there's other things you can do to try, but some people are just not going to reciprocate, at least not at this time. And again, as Emily, my former coach used to tell me, she's like, if the person could, they would, but they can't. Like, right now, whether, let's say, say, say, say, they're not listening to you. They're not showing curiosity in you. If they could,
“they would, they can't, they lack the capacity for whatever reason, and you have to accept that.”
But sometimes it's just they don't know. Right? Well, then hopefully, then if you communicate that to them, then they will change. But of course, yeah, that's the easy, that's the easy part, you know, they don't know. Like, like, you said the, the woman who said, like, when you realize, oh, I'm not asking questions, but I'm nervous, you can try to overcome that. And some people, but maybe it's because of narcissism or whatever, some people, for example, are so they really
lack the social skills. And when they're having a conversation, and I used to feel like that, when it was younger, like, all of my mental energy was on talking. And, or me, like, you know, I had to focus so much on what I was saying, how was making an impression that I would not have the extra resources to kind of ask the other person a question, you know? And so maybe it's sort of a lack of social skills, lots of reasons for this. All right. Well, here's the question I really
want to ask you, and I don't know if it's going to be above your pay grade or not, but it would be, you know, bordering on the criminal not to ask you this. Um, social media, how does it affect our
happiness? Hmm. No, it's a great question. Um, I think the answer is nuanced. It's not just like,
oh, also for media as bad or it's all good, because actually I was asked by another interviewer, something like, if we could delete also for media tomorrow, you know, would we all feel more loved? And I said, well, I think if we replaced it with face to face, you know, in person contact, then yes, absolutely. Um, but there's some, there's, there's some positives from social media, people, some people, some people, many people feel more connected. Uh, I think overall, it probably has
part more harms and benefits. Um, so because, but you can, you can't show curiosity and listen and share on social media. I just think it's a lot more powerful for someone it's face to face. And let's one on one, I kind of don't love the kind of communicating to lots of people, you know,
Because you don't really, like, if you have a lot of followers, you probably ...
but, but, but not loved. I don't know, I would say that's not really a feeling of love. Um,
it's really that face to face sharing and listening and curiosity that makes you feel loved. Do you know what this young rapper told me once when I was interviewing him? He told me that views were the new currency. And I'm like, what, what the hell does that mean? Yeah. And he said, it's like rolling up to the club in a Bugatti. And I'm like, shut up. No way. And he's like, yeah, that's, that's the thing. All right. And that, that can't be good for your happiness.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I'm running this down because that I agree. Um, well, that for everyone, of course, I'm not for, it's a generational thing in part. Um, it's funny. I often say the texting is the new currency of relationships is kind of similar, right? Like, you're texting maybe they're not texting back.
“Maybe they're texting back enough of what you want to hear because that's what a lot of relationships”
are when you're not, you know, in person, right? What do you have? Um, but views are, but yeah,
with a social media, again, well, here's the thing. When I show curiosity, Richard, when I show curiosity
in you, and I ask you a question, like, tell me, like, let's say you tell me something about your parents. And I say the three words everyone wants to hear. It's not I love you. It's tell me more. Tell me more. Like, what was that? Like, how did you feel when that happened? And that really makes you feel special, right? It makes you feel loved, it makes you feel seen. But what if I asked that question or tell a story to all my followers, right? No one's feel special, right? Because it's, it's
directed towards many people. And so I can get something really critical that I'm directing it to you. I actually, when social media first came out, I remember, I remember before social media came out, some friends in my, and I, we would sometimes share like stories or jokes. And we would like, maybe email each other or text it, you know, one person or something. There's a few people, like five people, they, I really, you really appreciate this joke. And then people started to
post it on Facebook. And so I just went to everyone. And so I don't feel special when someone posted joke on, I mean, I might enjoy the joke, but if a friend says to me, hey, Sonia, I really thought you were in particular would enjoy that joke, like, because I see you, and I know what your sort of humor is like, you know, it's like a gift that's customized for me. So that's something that's very special with one-on-one face-to-face communication, as opposed to social
media that goes out to like lots of people. That's such a true statement, because every morning, I send out to two of my employees, my longest standing employees. I send them every morning, the song of the day. Every morning. And honestly, if I put that on social media, it would,
“they would not feel special. It's like our thing. That's what we do every morning.”
Yeah, beautiful. That's so beautiful. That's so beautiful. That's me. So yeah, and we could try to create, I mean, your listeners, viewers might be encouraged to create rituals like this, whether it's with romantic partner, a friend, or a child, or a colleague, right, like something you share specifically for them. Again, like a gift that you chose and for them and you wrap it for them. That's what matters, right, is that you have their,
them in mind, and they feel seen, right? I don't feel seen what a social media, right, because it's not directed at me only. My 12-year-old told me a story that also shows emotional intelligence in a different way, but it's very relevant to our conversation. So she said, "Oh, mom, this classmate of hers has this interest in this, like, I don't even, it's a obscure sport that I haven't even heard of." And she's so excited about this sport. And so she said,
"My daughter said, she told her, like, a month ago about this sport." And she said, "I remember, like, a month later, I asked her about it, right?" So this is exactly what Radical Curiosity is about, right? So you remember someone's something, someone's, and she asked, and as I, so I remember to ask her about it. And then the girl is one crazy, she was so excited, right, that she was asked about the obscure thing. And she just went on and on, and she was so excited
about this passion of hers. Anyway, so this is another example of how we can try to, like, yeah, try to notice and remember what people really care about, and then ask them about it.
“And hopefully, you know, with a genuine, you know, genuine interest. Do you know what this reminds me of?”
This reminds me of good gift givers, right? So when you have a good gift giver, it's there, they know you so well that they're going to find the one thing that you actually care
about. Like, there's no way that I've never been given a gift that I haven't re-gifted.
Okay, give you a handful of them. So far, yeah. And every time somebody does that, that feels like
A successful radical curiosity.
Anyway, I totally agree with you. Yeah, it's it's because it makes the person feel again, seen and heard and understood. Like, you really know me, sometimes they gave you a gift that you didn't even know that you wanted, because they know you felt was like better than you know yourself. You know, anyway, I love that example. Yeah, but then again, sometimes you have people that are given something like that. And then their first thought is, oh shit, I didn't get you anything.
I'm a shitty yet. Right. I'm the worst under you ever get people like that. Well, there's the
are we all have the self-critic. And remember, reciprocity is a powerful norm. So you really
feel you feel indebted and you want to reciprocate. If you haven't, then it makes you feel guilty. But yeah, we all have the self-critic, right, inside of us. And so, and we have to remember, it's serves an important purpose. It's good that we have the self-critic. We should be grateful for the self-critic, because they've got us through lots of things. We're better people. But sometimes it gets out of hand, you know, and you want to kind of, you know, I've heard this from therapists,
right? It's like you just want to kind of like give them a hug and put them in a chair and let them sort of sit there and not bother you for a while. You know, I kind of like that. What are the biggest behaviors people do often unconsciously that block them from feeling loved?
Well, I mean, I can, I can start with sort of the, the myths about feeling love, right? If you're too
focused on to feel loved, I need to make myself more, more, more loveable, show other people, show the person how wonderful I am. Try to pursue things like more accomplishment, higher status,
“fame, beauty, power, money, right? Because I think that's what's going to get me to feel loved.”
That's, that's not going to work, right? That's going to backfire. If you believe you need to hide your shortcomings, I guess that's my answer, sort of like you're sort of focused on the wrong thing. Because I think we already covered so much, right? So as the idea, people up a lot of people are loved, but they don't feel loved. And why is that? Why, why do they feel that way? People think they need to change themselves. I need to change the other person. I already said, we have this very
simple and empowering message. You don't need to change yourself. You don't need to change the other person.
You just need to change the conversation. So then our book is all about how to change your conversations with those people you want to feel loved by, by bracing different mindsets. And when you embrace it different mindsets, you can think of it as like putting on a coat or putting on glasses, right? So like, I'm going to, in the next conversation, I'm going to come into it with a role of being a listener, not a speaker. I'm going to wear my radical curiosity glasses.
I'm going to wear my open heart coat and show warmth and accept as multiplicity coat towards others. So it's really all about how do you have those conversations with people. And then the other thing that we already talked about is, by counterintuitively, if you want to feel loved,
“you need to go first and make the other person feel more loved. And so that's really important”
and then hear the steps. To do that, show curiosity, listen, share. You know, listen like you're going to be quizzed on a tomorrow. And then a couple of things we have, and then I guess to reiterate, what's the key? I guess the question is, what's the key to feel loved? The key to feeling loved is being known and truly knowing the other person. So again, if you don't know me, Richard, I won't ever feel loved by you because I'll think like, I don't, you know, if you really
knew me, you wouldn't love me or like, whatever side of me you love, that's not me. Like that's just kind of some kind of wall. And so one of my missions, like in the world, is to help people lower their walls. You know, we all walk around with walls around us. Again, they're there to protect us, but they prevent other people from really truly getting in. And by the way, when you notice it, it's everywhere, right? You notice all all friends, family members, colleagues, neighbors,
we're all working around with these walls around us. And so my, I have a friend group where we're very open. And we still have walls, of course, we all do, but we're much more sort of into sharing and listening and curiosity. We're like, we share a lot with each other. And I kind of wish more people were, we're like that. And so that's again, one of my missions is sort of, again, feeling
“the key to feeling loved is being known and knowing the other. And then, and we're kind of going”
backwards here, why do we care about feeling loved? Why is it so important to feel loved? Well, it's evolutionarily adaptive, like feeling loved is, you know, when we were on, if our ancestors didn't feel loved, that means they didn't belong. That means they could have, they could have died, right? They could have, they wouldn't have found a mate where they can reproduce. So that's why not feeling loved or feeling lonely, it feels so immersive,
because in our ancestral past, we could have literally died if we were lonely, right? If we didn't
Have someone that we felt loved by, and now today, it almost feels like dying...
don't feel loved, we feel lonely. So, so feeling loved is so important in an evolutionary sense,
“and so it's why it's really why it's the key to happiness. Sonia, what would be the perfect”
first date? Okay, okay, I got your question. We'll be the perfect date. Okay, and by the way,
I'll preface by saying, I go on a lot of first dates, and I never got to dinner or have drinks.
I'm into what I call deep intimacy. You don't need to go out of dinner, you know, spend money, having drinks. I just go on a walk or I just sit on a couch, have tea and talk, right? So, but doesn't matter because you're the situation at Malice, you have quiet, right? So you can really talk. So, so the perfect first date would be, you show both of you begin by showing curiosity in the other, and hopefully it's genuine curiosity, right? Because you can tell if someone's just kind of
asking questions, they're just kind of interviewing you. It's like an interrogation. They don't really care about the answer. You show curiosity, but it's a nice, you take turns, right? You show, yeah, sure. So, I show curiosity in you. You start to open up a little bit. I'm really listening, right? I'm not trying to respond, I'm listening, and then you ask me a question, and then I open up, and you really listen, and you show acceptance and warmth if I share something uncomfortable,
and it's this sort of back and forth dynamic process. So, again, it's really showing those five mindsets throughout the day, but in a, at the right pace, right? So, again, when I ask you about your background or what's on been on your mind lately, you don't just trauma dumped to me,
“right away, right? You, you kind of read the room, and that's what it is. And by the way,”
that applies to so many other settings. Imagine talking to someone on a completely across a political or religious divide, right? And they completely, you understand them at all. They believe things that you just completely disagree with, imagine bringing the five mindsets on a conversation to them. Instead of yelling at them, we're just like shutting them out of voting a lot of people, it's the void people they disagree with. You, you show curiosity, why do you believe what you do?
You truly listen, you share the state that just came out where people of like opposite political extremes shared vulnerability with each other. Like, I'm really struggling with my son, and the other person says, you know, I'm really struggling with my kid also, they started to like overcome some of that prejudice and some of those assumptions about each other. So, anyway, those five mindsets bring in a first date or bringing to like many different kinds of
conversations, I think, are is incredibly beneficial. Okay, if you ever wanted to know when I started loving you, that was it. Okay, that was it. That solves the polarization of the country. If you had to give someone a simple daily practice to help them feel more loved and connected, what would that look like? Hmm. Can I tell you what it would look like? Well, you're going to answer the question. I'll answer the question. Well, what it looks like to me is how you just
looked at me when it was emotional about what you said. It was the most warm, loving, exchange. You were perfect. That made me feel so good. Thank you. Thank you. All right, now you can answer a lesson. Well, when you thank you so much Richard, when you asked the question, I was thinking of a daily practice that you do alone, right? And so, and when you describe something you're doing, you know, with another person, right? So, you're, I do think like truly
seeing someone, right? Looking into their eyes, actually, I contact this so important that we don't do enough of, you know, we kind of look away, you know, it's so intense. And I don't know if
you were done like an eye-gazing exercise, you know, that's very powerful. So eye contact, warmth,
“show, I think warmth is so important. What is the eye, what is the eye-gazing exercise? Well,”
there are various exercises where you, you like, you might go, you might be in a, like, a workshop with several, with a number, people and you pair up and you, you look at each other's eyes for, like, say three minutes, non-stop. And it's really hard and you just, you don't break an eye contact. And try this with anyone, try this with your, with a, you know, partner, friend, colleague, it's very powerful. Like, you, you really feel, you might get in most of some people. I didn't
once with a guy, he started crying and he ran out of the room. I actually don't know what happened to him.
I never saw him again. It's something triggered in him. I think he's okay. I, if you ask the
workshop, like, facilitator, and you, they said, he's fine. But yeah, anyway, and sometimes you see something in the other person, you see, you see pain or you see happiness. Anyway, so, so, when you're with other people, I do think, like, really looking at them and showing warmth and
Kindness is so powerful.
say, and how do you start the day? To me, you would be gratitude, a gratitude practice,
“and it sounds so hokey or so kind of obvious, but it's so powerful to really feel it. Like,”
like, like, to really experience it. Like, I'm so grateful, because really, even with all the horrible things going on in the world, we have so much to be grateful for. What you're grateful for, and then also, I text people, you text people, you text or email or call them or whatever, and I tell them that I'm grateful for them. And it's so powerful, it's little text. It's so easy to take 10 seconds to write. And actually, I got a text the other day from someone who said,
I just want to let you know that I really value our relationship. It was so beautiful. That was a lot. That was it. And I do things like that. Like I said, I really appreciate you. I'm so happy you were friends or whatever. And so that would be my answer. It was a gratitude practice, both kind of internal, but also sharing it with someone else that you're grateful for.
And it is, and it does sound hokey, but the reality is, you can't be unhappy and grateful at
the same time. It's just not possible. Exactly. In fact, I say this, actually, my research shows there's other views, researchers, is that gratitude is like an ant is like a neutralizes negative emotions. You can't be grateful and resentful at the same time. You can't be grateful and bitter at the same time. You're not usually grateful and anxious at the same time. So it's sort of an antidote to negative emotions. That's exactly right. What I guess what I wanted to say is,
and this is just to get people to learn about it, the website is called howtofeallove.com. So it's very easy. Just the title, howtofeallove.com. So I want people to find it. And also, we have a quiz that we created, because there's five mindsets. And the quiz just takes five minutes, and it's on that website howtofeallove.com. And the quiz will tell you which of the five mindsets, whether it's curiosity, sharing, listening, multiplicity, which is your strongest mindset,
“and Richard, you should take this too, and which is the one most in most need of improvement.”
And then we give some tips on that. So, oh, we're going to do that right now.
You mean, let's go through the five mindsets, given me first.
Well, you have to, I don't have the quiz in front of me, but they're basically just five questions. It's again, radical curiosity. And it basically says, like, I, and you take the quiz, you think about a relationship in your life that you care about. So you pick one relationship you know, whoever it is with. And then you do it, the quiz for that relationship. You can do it repeatedly. So again, sharing mindset, listening to learn mindset, radical curiosity mindset,
open heart mindset, and multiplicity mindset. Which one's the oversharing one? Well, sharing, well, sharing, well, sharing mindset is your very good at sharing. I presume if you're oversharing, then you're not so good at that, right? If you're undersharing. Right. Um, so, so you're not extra good at it. No, no, oversharing would be. I would just, you know, of course. All right. Where can people find
you and buy your book? So go to howtofeellove.com. That would be the easiest. And if to find me, actually, the easiest way to find me, if you just Google Sonya with a J and happiness,
“you should be able to find me, but I, but I have a website, SonyaLibomirski.com,”
but most people can't spell my name. So that's okay. So you can just just put in Sonya with a J, and happiness, and you'll find me. They can't spell L-Y-U-B-O-M-I-R-S-K-Y. Well, not everyone is as smart as you Richard. So, yeah. Good. All right. Listen, this has been a blessing to me to the viewers. Everybody wants to know how to be more happy and how to be happier in our relationships. And you're the authority on it. And thank you for coming here, and, uh, and doing this for us,
I am immensely grateful. I'm so grateful too. It was lovely, lovely conversation, very meaningful today. So thank you, Richard. Good luck with everything. I can't wait to see this or hear this when it's out. Let me know. See you next Tuesday. I can't believe she did that either. Apple Podcast and Spotify, and leave a rating and a review. And share the we're out of time podcasts with others. You know who will get value out of it. See you next Tuesday.
