1 thing you can do today to be happier | Sonja Lyubomirsky
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What is the main topic of Sonja Lyubomirsky's happiness research?
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You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas and conversations to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hu. It might be one of humanity's most sought-after emotions, happiness. And yet the journey toward this universally shared feeling can often feel out of reach. In her talk, happiness scientist Sonia Lubomirsky shares her number one hack for unlocking the potential for happiness within ourselves. And hint, it actually has a lot more to do with others than we might think.
What are happiness interventions and how do they work?
Afterward, I sat down with Sonia to get beyond her talk. Stick around after for our conversation.
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? Well, in 1998, my lab pioneered what we call happiness interventions. Happiness interventions are experiments with human participants. Over the years, we've done dozens of these experiments, testing whether practices like expressing gratitude or doing acts of kindness or simply acting like an extrovert make people happier. And they do under the right conditions. My students and I spent decades doing these experiments.
How do our connections with others influence our happiness?
This work made my career. And yet I realized that I hadn't really been listening to what the data were trying to tell me. And then it finally clicked. 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 A 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. And I know that sounds like a cliché, but many powerful ideas do, once you distill them.
What practical tips can improve our conversations for better connections?
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. So this is literally my number one happiness tip, the one thing I wish everybody knew.
How can we approach sharing and listening in conversations?
We will feel more loved if we become more known, if we learn to talk to people in a way that takes down the walls between us. The secret is super simple, yet I think massively profound. If you do one thing today to be happier, let it be this. Approach your next conversation differently from what you've done before. first by sharing from the heart. You take down your walls by sharing something real about yourself, not just your highlight reel. Whether with your best friend, colleague or first date, be brave enough to let others see the real you. Here's a simple practice. Start small. Pacing is really important.
What role does social media play in our happiness and connections?
So don't immediately share your deepest secret or trauma. If you go deep too fast, everyone's walls will come right back up again. Instead, in the beginning, maybe say something honest, like, I've had a rough day, instead of I'm fine. Recent studies show that people will like you more when the conversation is deeper as opposed to shallower. Two, you help the other person lower their walls when you listen to them in order to learn not to respond.
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Chapters
8 chapters
1
What is the main topic of Sonja Lyubomirsky's happiness research?
0:01–1:10
2
What are happiness interventions and how do they work?
1:10–2:12
3
How do our connections with others influence our happiness?
2:12–3:03
4
What practical tips can improve our conversations for better connections?
3:03–3:47
5
How can we approach sharing and listening in conversations?
3:47–4:30
6
What role does social media play in our happiness and connections?
4:30–5:28
7
How does solitude impact our sense of happiness?
5:28–6:00
8
What are the essential strategies for fostering deeper connections?
6:00–25:08
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from TED Talks Daily
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