Sonja Lyubomirsky

You know, sort of to follow up because then she sees that I remember the things that really matter to her and to make her feel loved first.

Yeah, you know, it did.

Now, it didn't have some kind of immediate miraculous, you know, result, but it led her to open up a little bit more to me.

It led her to ask me more questions about me, which is, you know, not as common.

You know, children often don't ask their parents a lot of questions.

It made me think like, oh, I should go home.

Call my mom and ask her more questions.

Maybe we should all do this after this episode.

Call your parents and ask them questions about their inner lives or about their childhoods, about what really matters to them.

And also it sort of led us to be more affectionate with each other.

I'm a huge fan of physical touch.

It's like I just feel so loved when we're cuddling.

And so we've been cuddling a lot more lately.

I'm a happiness scientist, and I've been a happiness scientist for 36 years. For my entire professional career, I've been obsessed with learning the secrets to being a happy person, with trying to answer the question, can anyone become happier? Now, how do we even study something like that?

1998 minun koulutukseni pionoi se, mitä kutsumme onnistumisohjelmiin. Onnistumisohjelmiin on kokeilu ihmisten osallistujien kanssa. Vuosien aikana olemme tehneet useita näitä kokeiluja, testaamalla, onko taitoja kokeilemaan rauhallisuutta tai tekemällä tehtäviä rauhallisuutta. Tai vain tekemällä kokeilua, kuten ekstraverti, on saanut ihmisiä onnellisemmin. Ja he tekevät sen oikein.

Opiskelijani ja minä olimme tehneet näitä kokemuksia vuosikymmeniä. Tämä työkalu teki minun karjani. Silloin tuntui, että en ollut kuullut sitä, mitä tieto halusi kertoa minulle. Sitten se loppui lopulta.

It dawned on me that almost all of the interventions that work to make us happier, they work precisely because they help us feel more connected to and loved by others. So writing a gratitude letter to my mom makes me feel more loved by her. And doing an act of kindness for my

Colleague makes me feel closer to him. In other words, what I learned is that to be a better happiness scientist, I had to become a love scientist. Because as it turns out, the key to happiness is feeling connected and loved.

I know that sounds like a cliché, but many powerful ideas do, once you distill them. The real challenge and opportunity is how to put it into practice. So then how do we connect? Well, we can connect through touch or dance or eye contact. But let's face it, in Western culture, in many cultures actually, we mostly connect by talking.

Yet here's the problem with our social world today. Even when we're talking, we all have walls around us. There are walls around our friends, colleagues, neighbors, even family. We build those walls to protect ourselves, yet they also keep us from ever really letting anyone in. They keep us from becoming truly known.