Sonja Lyubomirsky

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1,409 appearances 3 recordings 3 series first heard Feb 2026 last heard 25 Jun

Sonja Lyubomirsky’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 3 in all, peaking in Jun 2026 with 1.

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TED Talks Daily · 1 thing you can do today to be happier | Sonja Lyubomirsky · 3 Feb 2026 podcast

Doesn't mean they experience them all the time.

Of course, negative emotions can be adaptive and functional under certain circumstances.

So that's one component.

The other component is having a sense that your life is good, that you're satisfied with your life, that you're progressing towards your life goals at a good pace.

So those are the two components.

I call them being happy in your life and being happy with your life.

You kind of need both of those to be a truly happy person.

After decades of doing this, we realized that almost all of the interventions that work to make us happier, the reason they work is that they make us feel more connected to or loved by others.

So when I write a gratitude letter to my mom, I feel loved by her.

I feel more loved by her.

When I do an act of kindness for a friend, I feel closer to that friend.

So that's kind of what I mean.

I hadn't really been listening to the data that that's really what it was trying to tell me that the connection and feeling loved is the key to happiness, which sounds like such a cliche, right?

And yet it's true.

Well, that's an interesting question because it's actually a more nuanced question because happiness is also contagious, right?

So we're also affected by other people's happiness and other people's unhappiness.

We tend to actually like happy people

We want to be around them in part because of that contagion effect.

But it certainly means that how connected we feel to others, whether it's our pets or whether it's to God or a romantic partner, our friendship networks, our colleagues, that that is absolutely going to affect our happiness overall, our happiness today.

And I really like, if you want to be happy, you know, I often say, you know, if I were going to give you one tip, if you want to be happier today, you know, spend time

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