Chapter 158: Sonja Lyubomirsky helps harness happiness by honing hearty habits

Listen to the chapter here!

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

I realized a few years ago that almost all of the interventions that work to make us happier, the reason they work is they make us feel more loved by others, right, and more connected. The best thing that you could give your kids is a good marriage. If you want to feel more loved, you need to change your conversations and approach your conversations differently or have more of them, right?

And so, how to have deeper conversations, right? So, it's not just small talk. Conversations in which you really listen, where you show curiosity.

We crave to be known and seen and heard.

[Neil Pasricha]

In the world of happiness, there are writers, there are researchers, and there are legends. Professor Sonja Lyubomirsky is definitely a legend. She has been studying happiness since 1989.

Before that, she was born in Moscow in the USSR, came over to the United States where she grew up. She went to Harvard undergrad, graduated summa cum laude, i.e. top 1% of the whole class. She went on to do her PhD at Stanford, where she first got interested in the topic of human wellness, human flourishing, what actually drives us to do our best, feel our best, be our best.

The study of happiness had one researcher in it at the time, Professor Ed Diener, who has since passed away, making Sonia the longest-running, living researcher of happiness in the world today. She got into it 10 years before Martin Seligman and Michal Csikszentmihalyi even invented the concept of positive psychology. We've talked about positive psychology a ton on this show.

We're going to hear why Sonia actually does not like that term and phrase. And Sonia actually became kind of the leading researcher in this field back in 2005 for a very famous, most-cited paper about, does happiness cause success? It was reversing the existing model that most of us had in our heads.

She went on to write the 2007 book, The How of Happiness, and she is returning now for the first time in over a decade with an incredible new book that just came out called How to Feel Loved. She has an idea underpinning her work that she says, you know, most of the happiest interventions she's conducted over the last kind of 20, 30 years all lead to the idea of feeling loved. She's partnered with the University of Rochester's leading researcher on relationships, Harry Reese, and she's putting out this new book that just came out a few weeks ago.

We are going to talk about the four horsemen of marriages that could actually ruin a marriage. What are they? How do you avoid them?

What does MDMA do to our brains? What's the best advice for dating? Why small talk doesn't build relationships?

How we can make ourselves feel loved? And, of course, the single best advice to feel happier today. This, Sonia's three most formative books and much, much more in this quicker conversation of three bucks.

Let's flip the page into chapter 158 now. Hi, Sonia.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Hi, Neil. How are you?

[Neil Pasricha]

I'm doing great. It's good to see you again. I bumped into you, I think I want to say 2023 after you gave a riveting talk at Upper Camden College here in Toronto.

Yes. Just so much data and slides. It was for the alumni and the events.

And I caught wind of you coming from your own website. And then I snuck up to kind of come into the event and hear you speak. And I've been following your stuff forever.

I love the How of Happiness. I love your brand new book. You're in the middle of like, I don't want to call it a vibe shift, but you're going into new territory these days, I hear.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

You know, it's in some ways, it's very new territory. In some ways, it's not at all, because maybe I'll just say it now. Like, I've spent 28 years doing happiness interventions, you know.

So, you know, my lab pioneers sort of the testing different practices that make people happier or not. And so I realized a few years ago that almost all of the interventions that work to make us happier, the reason they work is they make us feel more loved by others, right? And more connected.

So like when I write a gratitude letter to my best friend, I feel more loved by her, right? When I do an act of kindness for a colleague or a neighbor, I feel closer to them. And so that feeling loved is really the key to happiness.

And so, yeah, so the book is called How to Feel Loved. So it's really about happiness. But I am very into this territory, writing it with a love scientist.

I actually have a TED talk coming out next week. And I have a slide that my daughter helped me make that was just something like, you know, I realized that to become a better happiness scientist, I had to become a love scientist. So, yes, that's the new territory.

[Neil Pasricha]

I love that. This conversation will drop on the exact minute of the film at the very beginning of March. So just so you know, you know, listeners will hear this.

They will know that the book is out. It'll be on in bookstores and it'll be online, of course, everywhere. But so you said to to continue your work as a happiness scientist, you had to become a love scientist.

Tell us more what that means. And I do want you to tell us about the new book. I mean, I'm excited about it.

I read it. I loved it. I thought the relationship seesaw was fascinating.

I've been talking to my wife, Leslie, about it already. I've got highlights and I've got notes and scribbles. What is How to Feel Loved?

And how does this relate to you said 20? I thought 1989 I had you pegged then, you know, in 1989 is when I started doing research on happiness.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Nineteen ninety eight is when I started doing happiness interventions, you know, randomized controlled trials. Right. So I've been doing research on happiness for thirty six years.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

And a half years. Yeah. So.

So, yeah, the idea is that the key to happiness is feeling love. So then how do we feel more love? Well, it turns out, you know, most people will report to have at least one relationship in their life that they would like to feel more loved in.

Right. They don't feel as loved as they'd like. By the way, we define love broadly so it can be a romantic partner, but it could be your mom or your child or your neighbor or your colleague or your friend.

And we can be loved. And this is sort of one of the insights that my coauthor and I had. We can be loved, but not feel loved.

Right. So so sometimes people just don't feel loved in their relationships. And so.

And then what do we do? And, you know, because most people think, well, if I want to feel more loved, say, by my adult child or by my, you know, by my friend or my partner, like I need to sort of make myself more lovable. Right.

And that's what mostly we're trying to do. We want to impress the other person that, look, look how wonderful I am, like I'm kind and I'm smart and I'm interesting. I'm funny.

You know, love me. Right. You know, or we try to get the other person to love us more.

And that's like difficult, if not impossible. Right. So and our book really has what I would call an empowering message, which is, well, first of all, if you want to feel more loved, the first step is to make the other person feel more loved first.

So we can talk about that. But it's really empowering because it's not about changing yourself. It's not about changing the other person.

It's about changing the conversation. You know, how do you approach your conversation? And when you think about a relationship as a series of conversations.

Right. So even when we're not talking, we're really kind of in conversation. And so the book is about five mindsets that you embrace before you have your next conversation with that person that you want to feel more loved by.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah, you have this great model in the book. I think it's on page 77. Oh, yeah.

OK. Right. Called the Relationship Seesaw.

And C is spelled S-E-A, not right, because it's I love all the highlighting. In water. Yeah, I love it.

I'm a reader with a highlighter. And, you know, you show the picture of two hearts that are on kind of like a teeter-totter or a seesaw. Some of it submerged.

We don't show our full selves to the other person. But when we express interest in the other person through these kind of conversations, we push the seesaw down, exposing them to us.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Exactly. Yeah. So most of us are like kind of like underwater in a way, like most of ourself is hidden from view.

Right. We we tend to show only kind of the positive side or the neutral side. And so imagine the seesaw kind of underwater.

Right. That's what we call it. S-E-A seesaw.

And then when I show. So, Neil, when I'm talking to you and I show genuine curiosity in you and I say, hey, tell me, how was your morning today? And and let's say you say, well, actually, it was a little bit of a rough morning.

I say, well, why was it rough? Yeah. Tell me more like and I know you can't fake curiosity.

You have to really show real curiosity. And then you start talking. And so and then I'm listening.

I'm really listening. I'm not like just preparing my response to you. And so the idea is, as I'm like kind of pushing on the seesaw and helping lift, lift you up a little bit, right, where you are feeling safe and trusty, trust in form.

And you have the trust in me to share more of yourself. Right. And so you're kind of lifting.

I'm lifting you up a little bit by listening to you, by showing curiosity you're sharing. And then the idea is you're going to reciprocate. Yeah.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Reciprocity is a very powerful norm or rule of social behavior. It's very hard not to. Sometimes people don't, but most people do.

And then the idea is that you will hopefully show curiosity in me and show interest. Right. And then help me open up a little bit, too, so that I'm going to share a little bit more.

But sharing, you have to do it at the good pace. Right. Not to not too fast.

Not to not too soon. Right.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah. Well, I think that it's a it's an astounding idea for you to get to this through all the work you've done. I mean, I you were famous for the 50 percent genetics, 40 percent intentional activities, 10 percent circumstances pie chart, which I know you've pulled back from a little bit.

But but, you know, you've you've really been the leader of the positive psychology movement for decades, although I hear that you don't like the phrase positive psychology.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

I don't like the term positive psychology. I like to call it well-being science or gratitude science, whatever you're studying. Yeah.

Thank you. Well, thank you for that. Yeah.

But it's all kind of it's all aligned, as I mentioned, that that the happiness interventions I did really led me to this conclusion that feeling loved, feeling connected is the key to happiness, which sounds like such a cliche. Right. But, you know, when you think about it, many powerful ideas where you distill them kind of like in a word or like several words, they sound like a cliche, you know.

But but it's but it's true. Right. Like feeling love when you think about like problems in relationships, often people are not feeling loved enough, you know.

Have you ever seen the show Couples Therapy?

[Neil Pasricha]

I haven't. No.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah. It's amazing show. Right.

These are real couples in New York. And the therapist is amazing. And they're it's like they forget the cameras there and they're getting therapy, couples therapy.

And it's so fascinating because it actually makes you feel really smart because it's so obvious what the problem is. Right. They're like fighting.

And she says you never do this for me. And where he says, oh, but you said this. And it's so obvious that like at the heart of it is no matter what he says or does, she doesn't feel loved no matter what she does or she's not doing enough to make him feel loved.

And so that yeah, that was another kind of epiphany that like we had that like feeling loved is often at the root of relationship problems.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah, it's unbelievable. I really I take this message to heart. I mean, I you know, my parents are getting older.

I have relied on the feeling of love from them my whole life. It's been a little harder lately. Just, you know, they're getting up there and their health is, you know, they need to take care of themselves a little bit more.

I need to take care of them a little bit more. And I sort of recognize I could see I was processing as I was reading this book, my relationship with my parents through it. And so I'm thinking, like, how do I reach out?

How do I express a rather than say, how come you don't visit or how come you don't come over here? Blah, blah, blah. How do we express interest, curiosity, what they're doing?

And I thought that mindsets, the five mindsets model is really helpful. How to feel loved. So for those of us saying just out, grab a copy.

Sonia's first new book in many years, I think 13 years and 13 years. And it builds upon, as you said, this 36 year legacy since your Ph.D. at Stanford. But before that, of course, you went to undergrad at Harvard.

You came over from Moscow at age nine and a half, I believe. And you led this really illustrious career. So of course, as we started exchanging notes about doing this conversation, I said, so Sonia, do you have a few books that have been formative to you that have shaped your own mind, your growth, your development and your work?

And I know that you're a happily married mother of four. And I am a happily married father of four. And so I saw some other kinships and connections I want to explore.

And the way to do that on this show is I ask you about formative books. I've got your three formative books here. I'm going to take our listeners on a little bit of a journey.

I'm going to picture them on a chair between us. I'm going to introduce each book as if the lister is holding it in a bookstore. And then I'm going to ask you to tell us about your relationship with it.

A story that kind of brought the book into your life, what it might be shaped or changed for you. And then I'll have a couple short jump off questions from there.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Fantastic. And by the way, I'm a big reader, so I have a ton of books that are formative. And so it was really hard.

You know, it was really hard for me to choose. I kind of like listed many, many books. And you said, OK, let's just take the top, the first three that I mentioned.

So these are great. I also wanted to correct something. I am actually happily separated.

Oh, I'm sorry. But it gives me actually lots of other life experiences now. But but we had a very, very happy marriage for 25 years and just sort of now going in different directions.

But but that's that's life. And then, yeah, so I'm happily separated.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah. Thanks for clarifying. I did try to look up your personal situation because I was piecing it together in conversations with Rich Roll and with with Dan Harris.

I was like, OK, I know she's a mom of four. I got that. I got the ages of your kids roughly because in an interview with Dan Harris five years ago, you mentioned this and with the Richie mentioned this. I was like, OK, they're probably in there.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

I love the private detective work you're doing.

[Neil Pasricha]

I just try to figure it out. But I guess I got one of the key factors wrong in my research.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

But I do actually I do talk about dating sometimes, but yeah, I don't announce it, although there's nothing it's not a secret. My kids, by the way, are 12, 14, 24 and 26. So I feel like I've had so many life experiences.

Actually, that's something that I like to talk about is sort of this idea that like I have sort of not just scientific wisdom, but kind of like life or like science based life wisdom, you know, like having been an immigrant, having had a difficult childhood, having had this really happy marriage, like being single, having four kids, all, you know, having different issues, you know, at different times. You know, so, yeah, lots of lots of different life experiences anyway.

[Neil Pasricha]

No, it's not. I mean, thank you for opening that up. I'm also in a very different context, also divorced.

I was I got divorced younger in my life and and the marriage I'm in now with Leslie is my second marriage. But divorce is something I wouldn't, you know, wish upon anybody. It must have.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah. Wow. Yeah, well, everyone's different.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah. Yeah.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

So, yeah.

[Neil Pasricha]

So we jump into the formative books and our lives are going to kind of collide naturally. And I'm going to kind of let that and you want to open things up, you know, please do. We also put stuff out after, but I really appreciate you being open.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

And by the way, you know, one of the mindsets I talk about in How to Feel Loved is called the sharing mindset, which is really which is what we're kind of doing right now. We're sort of opening up a little bit more than you normally do, because normally we're kind of people are like either it's either small talk or kind of medium talk or we're sort of trying to impress each other. You know, like I want you to know, think that I'm kind and funny and interesting and smart.

Right. And you probably want the same thing. But like, you know, going a little bit deeper is actually what forges that connection.

And that's a sense of feeling loved. So we're kind of demonstrating this to you.

[Neil Pasricha]

I agree.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

And by the way, right.

[Neil Pasricha]

I also felt internally deep presence when you said I have four kids and I've had the issues that they've all had. And right away I felt I felt seen because I've four boys. They're eleven, nine, seven and five right now.

And, you know, so my oldest, your youngest, kind of very close together. And if I think about it, I've got, you know, challenges with all four of them that are different degrees at the same time. And I can't even imagine what the teenagers will hold in the twenties will hold.

But it's it's dynamic. It's ever changing. And I it's challenging for sure.

And there's good days and bad days. So let's get into some of that here. Great.

Great. Your first formative book is a book you read many years ago called Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes. T-A-U-B-E-S.

This book was published in 2007 by Knopf. And it's actually, interestingly enough, called The Diet Delusion over in the UK. Covers a clean, white background with the title Good Calories, Bad Calories, a piece of toast with butter in the center of it, of course, because he's he's kind of castigating against the decrying of fats.

Like he's saying fats are not the problem. Carbs are the problem. Taubes is alive.

He's born in 1956 from Rochester, New York, a city that you have research connection to as well. He was a physicist and an aerospace engineer before getting a master's in journalism, started joining Discover magazine in 1982, became a big reporter. This is the second Taubes book actually added to our show.

Gretchen Rubin, way back in chapter five, added Why We Get Fat, his 2011 book.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah, which is a follow up, which is really the same book, kind of like in a shortened version that's more accessible, I think, to people. I don't want to say it's the same, but it's actually, yeah, I read that, too. So, yeah, great.

[Neil Pasricha]

That changed. I mean, Gretchen said that completely changed.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

That's funny because Gretchen is, yeah, she's a happiness scientist, too. So it's kind of interesting that she has also recommended him.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah, very interesting connection. For decades, we've been taught fat is bad for us, carbohydrates better. And the key to healthy weight is eating less and exercising more.

Yet despite this advice, we have seen unprecedented epidemic of obesity and diabetes. Taubes argues that the problem lies in refined carbohydrates, white flour, easily digested starches, sugars, and that the key to good health is the kind of calories we take in, not the amount. File this book under 613.283. Very interestingly, it's technology slash medicine and health slash personal health slash dietetics slash carbohydrates. Sonia, please tell us about your relationship with Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

And I have to say, it's been so long. I mean, I was so obsessed with this book a long time ago. But I mean, there's so many things about at the time, by the way, right now, by the way, there's like a lot of talk about the importance of sort of protein, right, and sort of like paleo.

So but back then, that wasn't really the case. It was sort of all about fat is the big bad sort of culprit. And so that was that was that was eye opening.

That is really sort of carbs and refined sugars that are sort of the culprit. But it's really more than that. This book is like it took so much, I would say, intellectual courage for Gary Taubes.

I actually drove to San Diego one time to hear him give a talk to write this book because he was going against like so much of like government policy, like all these clinical trials. And and I am not even sure if I can summarize it well. This is not my field, obviously.

[Neil Pasricha]

This is no, no, no.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

But it changed how I think about food and eating. But the other thing that he said, and oh, my God, I think that the follow up, why? Why?

Why is it called why you get fat while we get fat? Why we get fat is that is also very good at this is that we just sort of assume like sort of calories in, calories out. I mean, it's so it's so kind of obvious, right?

Like, let's say to maintain my weight, I need to eat twenty five hundred calories a day. And so like if I eat more than twenty five dollars a day, I'll gain weight. If I eat fewer, I'd lose weight.

And he actually said that's wrong. And like that was like really mind blowing to me that it's not because because the causal direction sometimes goes the the opposite way. And when you think about it, like think about like when people are gaining, even when they're gaining weight, that actually most most week, if you kind of like I don't do this or maybe I used to do this like decades ago, but if you actually counted your calories, it's actually kind of incredible how close we get to balancing our calories like every day.

Like it's almost like it's too good to be true. How can we, without counting, like get that close? And the idea is that the body is actually this beautiful organism.

Like like if you overeat a little bit, you might like actually like, I don't know, walk faster like most kids will do this. Right. They'll actually run from the restaurant to the car.

It's like their body knows to work that off. And it's not thinking, oh, I need to work off another 33 calories right now. Right.

So so there's just all these things that your body is doing without you knowing it. That's actually like very wise. And so I just thought that that was like amazing because it was so mind blowing.

And the fact that he challenged like all this sort of common wisdom for like decades.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

It's like this lone person. And it really, as I said, it took a lot of intellectual courage that I would love to model myself about. You know, I started doing research on happiness in 1989.

Like only one person, Ed Diener, you know, was doing research on it. And he didn't even call it happiness, right? He called it subjective well-being.

And that was that was so I was so insecure about it. Right. It was so like it was considered such a fuzzy, unscientific thing to do.

Now, of course, the world has changed. So I guess I just thought of like Gary Taubes is as kind of a role model, like intellectual courage.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah, I love that role model of intellectual courage. I actually, you know, I've heard you being referred to, of course, as the longest running happiness researcher. And you're always quick to correct and say, actually, when I started, there was one other guy.

His name was Ed Diener. I know he passed away just a few years ago, and I know he did kind of a lot of work around, you know, are married people happier than sort of single people and so on. I wonder if you might color in the picture of Ed a little bit for us, because it sounds like he was a big mentor and role model to you.

And I'm very familiar with your 2005 kind of foundational paper that you wrote with him and I believe King.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah, my highest cited paper.

[Neil Pasricha]

Your highest cited paper. It says, does happiness lead to success?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Exactly. Or does it lead to opposite causal direction?

[Neil Pasricha]

Exactly.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

And by the way, just yesterday I was on a Zoom with sort of happiness pioneers, you know, so like Marty Seligman was on it and lots of people. And so we actually talked about the people who weren't in the room. And and so Robert Biswas Diener, who's a friend of mine, was Ed's son, who was also there to kind of talk about Ed.

And so I knew Ed like, you know, we weren't super close. I mean, I didn't see him a lot, but like he's just such a first of all, just a naturally happy person. His son was just saying yesterday that he's also very playful.

And I can see that he's a very playful person. Like Robert told the story how like on an airplane once he got he got a fake Rolex watch and he left it in the bathroom of the airplane just to see what would happen. Like, would someone like bring it, you know, report it?

Would someone steal it? You know, just like for fun, because he was it was funny. Right.

I love that about him. So he's just like a very happy, naturally happy person. Because on this on this call yesterday, we're sort of talking like a happiness pioneers, people who are sort of naturally happy to begin with.

Do they get happier because they're studying and practicing these strategies? Or some people like Marty Seligman, like actually wasn't happy to begin with. And he is very open about that.

And anyway, so, yeah, so Ed was studying mostly running correlations between subjective well-being and like, you know, money, income, you know, educational level, age, you know, ethnicity, sort of all these important factors. Right. Because no one had done that before.

[Neil Pasricha]

And in my lab, this is in the eighties.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah. This is the 80s, study 84. Yeah.

It was when he started.

[Neil Pasricha]

And he got interested in happiness. How? Because this is like the first researcher on the topic before positive psychology was even quote unquote, invented by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

For context. And by the way, my, my former student, Kristen Leis, and I actually wrote this. I don't know if you were aware.

We wrote this paper year, last year we finished it. That's like the sort of this huge comprehensive paper of kind of the whole field of well-being. So if you or others are interested, it's free and online.

It's on my website.

[Neil Pasricha]

What's it called?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

It's just called well-being and it's 250 pages. It's a hundred, well, it's 150 pages with a hundred pages of references. That's just how psychology papers are.

But it's like, if you want like a comprehensive overview of all of sort of the, the field, but I mean, there certainly were economists that were studying, you know, well-being before. And there were sort of humanistic psychologists who were studying kind of what you'd call positive psychology. It's not calling it that.

But Ed was really the first, like he founded the science of well-being. And I think he was interested in happiness a long time ago, but he was kind of dissuaded from it because there was, there were no role models. No one was studying it.

And so he was studying de-individuation for years, which is, you know, like kind of the opposite of happiness, kind of, you know, why do people become violent, you know, when they're like de-individuated anyway, but 84 is when he started and yeah, I, I started in 89. So, um, and I, but I was reading his papers, um, back then. Um, so that, that's all.

[Neil Pasricha]

It's so interesting to me because I always think of it like, and correct me if I'm wrong, but you know, Aristotle said, happiness is the meaning and purpose of life. 2,400 years ago, there's the famous declaration of independence. Yeah. Everybody gets life, liberty, and this pursuit, of course, of happiness. But it wasn't until what you're saying, 1984, Ed Diener, Zagitova-Mirsky, 1989, that this really starts to take hold in our culture as the idea that we can be happier. We should look into it.

We can kind of study it. Then in arguably 1998, but then 2000, the famous APA paper comes out, Seligman and Mike Csikszentmihalyi, um, you then, uh, tell us on our original podcast, I think it was, or maybe with Dan Harris, about how the way that the happiness research began, because we're talking about, you know, how to be bold in the field of research like Gary Taub's has been. Yeah.

And you actually would have these, these Mexican offsites where the, anybody around the world who was starting to research happiness would kind of come together and you would sort of foment a plan for studying happiness. I'm so curious about what those events look like.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Well, first of all, I want to say, so I was studying happiness from, for 10 years before the Mexican, before Marty Seligman and Mike Csikszentmihalyi, you know, decided to start this field called, you know, that they called positive psychology. And so they had others nominate. So the first meeting was in January 99.

I, and I was, I was pregnant with my first child, um, who was born in May 99, uh, who's now 26. Right. Um, and so, um, so they, they basically had people in the field nominate sort of the young people in the field who, and some of them weren't actually studying anything to do with happiness, you know, but I was, Barb Fredrickson was studying, had a new theory of positive emotion.

Um, and so we all got together, started talking about it. And then that's, that's what started the collaboration between me and Ken Sheldon and David Scotty. That's when we developed this idea of the pie chart.

And back then that was really revolutionary. Right. Cause no one had really put the research together, like sort of what, what are the most important factors in happiness?

Like now, now it just seems almost like trite, but like, you know, um, yeah, again, back then no one was doing this early work, but it's foundational work and the pie chart you're talking.

[Neil Pasricha]

So Martin Seligman, you know, uh, from the university of Pennsylvania wrote the book authentic happiness and the book flourish. Uh, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, uh, wrote the book and coined that term flow. And, um, you know, you added to this, to the study, this idea that there's a genetic set point we have with happiness.

And, you know, if you have two kids, you can kind of see that, you know, um, there's a circumstances element and then there's the intentional activities, which is kind of where this 20 plus years of research has been like, what does journaling do, what a conscious acts of kindness do, which your study on that has been, uh, one I've quoted for years. And then, but have you, are you distancing? Are you, have you distanced yourself from that pie chart or is that still something that you believe?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

I, I, by the way, I have a paper with Ken Sheldon, which is called revisiting the pie chart, which we can easily find, um, where we basically just sort of explain what our thinking is on the pie chart. So we, we distance ourselves from the numbers and we never really believe that, that in those numbers, like the, this, this 40% or is under your control. The people just kept misinterpreting it.

And so, so now what I say is like, just think about what the determinants of happiness. There are really three buckets, right? And the first bucket is genetics.

Like we all know their genetic influence on happiness. There's not a specific candidate gene. There's probably thousands of genes, but we know those are important.

The second bucket of influences on happiness has, has to do with our life circumstances, right? Are we rich or poor? Are we married?

Where do we live? How old are we? Et cetera.

And, you know, of course, and the, the extent to which those are going to be impactful are going to depend on like how good our circumstances are, right? So, so if we're pretty comfortable, they're not going to matter that much to our happiness, but if we, if I, if we're in an abusive relationship, if we live in a war zone, right, if we live in poverty, absolutely like that, that's going to be a huge factor of our happy, in our happiness and the third bucket of influences on happiness are like, what actually we can do every day, like to affect it, right, or how we think and how we behave, how we act. And so I've devoted my career, you know, to really studying that third bucket. And it's like, what is it that we can do?

You know? So that's why we, my lab. So in 98, my lab pioneered what we call happiness interventions, right?

Which are like, they're like clinical trials, but instead of testing a medication or a vaccine, we're testing a happiness practice where randomly assigning people to like express gratitude or do something else, et cetera.

[Neil Pasricha]

And because you mentioned in circumstances, the first thing you said was, you know, I'm not rich or I'm not poor. I wondered if, is the paper you most described to the Kahneman paper from 2010 Woodrow Wilson, where he says that, you know, above a certain mean, I think at the time it was 70 something thousand dollars, you know, there's a marginal benefit to wealth that I think people put in today's numbers, like 110 or 120,000. I'm curious for your, your talk, just on, on wealth today, as it relates to happiness.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Sure. Sure. I actually, you know, I teach this class, um, every Friday on zoom that anyone can sign up for.

Um, and we actually just had a class on sort of happiness and money to kind of summarize. It's just a half hour class and it's to sort of summarize it. And, and it's a little bit nuanced, right?

But one of the, the sort of the summaries of all the tons of research, you mentioned this one paper, there's hundreds and hundreds of papers on money and happiness, uh, both from the economics field of economics and sociology, but also psychology. But one of the take home points is yes, that like money really makes you happy if it keeps you from being poor, right. If it buffers you from all those difficult challenges, you know, when you don't have much money.

So, so when you have little money, it like makes a huge difference when you, when you already are comfortable and that line can be very many places depending on where you live, right. And who you are. Um, so that's why I don't, I don't like to put a number on it.

Um, then money is still going to make you happier, but just sort of not as much, it's going to kind of flatten out a little bit, not as much as you think. Right. But incredibly, like, you know, if you, if you make 300,000 a year, compare that to someone who makes a 500 or a million a year, there's still going to be a gradient, right?

People are still happier. So that's one finding, but there's lots of other findings. It turns out that money makes you, yeah.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah. You would agree with the sense that money does make you happier.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

It does. Absolutely. It does make you happier.

Uh, but it also depends on how you spend it. Right? So it turns out if you spend money on connection, on contribution, helping others on personal growth, learning, it's going to make you happier than if you spend your money on just like buying more stuff.

[Neil Pasricha]

So you agree with money. Then on the third point, intentional activities, which you've been studying for decades, and I, I've read your foundational work on, on acts of kindness. Like I thought that was, I thought that's what you said was the biggest thing that creates happiness.

Are you in today in 2026?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Right, right, right. So, yes, we've done, so we mostly focus on kindness interventions and gratitude interventions. We have definitely said acts of kindness interventions are, are more, are very powerful, right?

Cause they're very concrete. Like you help you help someone else. And then we had this, I had this sort of this epiphany that the key to all these interventions is they make us feel more connected and loved.

And so, and so then we started thinking, well, maybe we should just ask people to socialize more. Okay. So we did this big study where we asked people just to act more extroverted for a week, you know, or to act more introverted for a week.

And the people who actually extroverted got a lot happier, uh, including introverts. Um, and so then we started doing more studies and just having more social interactions. And now we're studying conversations, right?

So now if I were to give you kind of my number one happiness tip, and this is very relevant to the new book, how to feel loved, because the book is really about relationships or a series of conversations and sort of, if you want to feel more loved, you need to change your conversations and approach your conversations differently or have more of them, right? So, and so how to have deeper conversations, right? So it's not just small talk, uh, conversations in which you really listen, where you show curiosity, where, where you share, you help the other person to share.

So, um, anyway, so, so that's, that's what we're studying now. So I actually think now the, now the most powerful happiness booster is sort of anything social, really, like anything that helps you connect, you know? Yeah.

[Neil Pasricha]

The most powerful, the most powerful happiness booster is anything social. Yeah. Yeah.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah.

[Neil Pasricha]

That's a huge statement coming from you.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

No, it is. And I, so yeah, so I have this, um, yeah, this TED talk that would have come out on February 3rd. So basically just a five minute talk, but, um, I worked, but I worked very hard on it, like those five minutes.

[Neil Pasricha]

As Mark Twain says, it's hard to make something short.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah, yeah, exactly. Um, uh, yeah, there's this, that, that famous line, right. By Mark Twain, right.

I would have literally said, sorry, I wrote you such a long letter. If I had more time, I'd written you a short, I would have written you a shorter letter. Uh, but anyway, um, uh, but I say in that talk, you know, if I were to give you sort of my, I don't like one tip to be happier today, it would be go out and have a five, a 15 minute conversation with someone, uh, and research shows it just like people on average are so much happier after a conversation than before.

And so as a podcaster, I mean, I mean, maybe it's different when you're sort of doing it for work, but, but like, yeah, like, you know, the power of conversations, um, uh, and I also know the pain or the sadness or the loneliness.

[Neil Pasricha]

I feel like even in like, my kids go to school, my wife's off to work. I'm sitting at home, I'm preparing for this podcast. I have the morning and I'm like, immediately I feel like lower.

You know what I mean? Like the house is quiet. I hear the hum of the fridge.

I'm like, I don't know if it's just me, but I do require like a pretty high amount.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

So you're an extrovert, right, right. You're an extrovert, right, right. And I'm, I'm, I call myself, uh, uh, uh, let's see an extroverted, introvert.

Uh, and I still, I love solitude. Um, I really love solitude, but I, but I'm also very social. I love my, my, my, my, my happy places, parties.

I love going to parties. Um, partly because you can go from one conversation to another, like you're not stuck in one conversation.

[Neil Pasricha]

Um, but anyway, um, I haven't heard you say that you take Uber pool specifically for conversations with strangers.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Uh, oh, interesting.

[Neil Pasricha]

By the way, I don't think that exists anymore, but when it exists, it does here in Toronto, you always like, if it's a $17 ride, I can, I can go down to $13. I'm willing to take five minutes longer and go with three other people.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Right, right. That's funny. Yeah, no, no.

I, I've had some really great, it does not exist where I, yeah, they used to have it. And I don't know. Um, uh, not anymore.

Um, but, um, but yeah, that, well, again, I'm, I'm not as good talking to strangers. Um, although when I do talk to, you know, Nick Epley at University of Chicago has done all this research and he has a new book out or soon coming out called Undersocial, um, that like, we're not social enough, you know, that like, and he's a big proponent of talking to strangers has done all these studies showing that just talking to your person sitting next to you on a train, talking to your bus driver, talking to your barista is going to make you happier. And I do do that sometimes. I'm not as good at like, I'm not really a chit-chatter, um, um, but certainly talking to people I know, like I, I feel much happier, of course on average.

I mean, sometimes we have a horrible conversation with someone, right. Um, but on average, we're happier.

[Neil Pasricha]

And you said the number of things, one thing you could do if you want to be happier is do anything social, but I was just going to ask you just for clarification, because you mentioned Nick Epley's work at, at University of Chicago and so on, and you mentioned talking to people on trains. This is in real life. This is IRL.

Like when you say anything social, does that not include social media then?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Well, that's a whole other conversation, but, um, I do think we actually have one study where we, where we compared all kinds of different social interactions and how in sync people felt and how much warmth they felt, how much, how connected they felt. Um, and we actually didn't find a difference between face-to-face video and phone. So anything involving voice was connecting.

And so, but I'm not saying that it's the same, because I do think there's something about in real life, breathing the same air as someone that's like really special, physical touch, smell, all of those things that happen in real life. Um, but you know, at least in some studies that show that you can, you know, from a phone call or from a video call, um, you know, I still think that face-to-face is better. Um, but yeah, I don't want to, um, throw shade onto some of these other forms of connection that actually do help people connect.

[Neil Pasricha]

I was just talking to somebody the other day about how like the voice memo kind of thing that just sort of came, crept up on us, like it came into iOS. You can, you know, my wife thinks of her voice memos with her friends as like this great joy in her life. I've started using them too.

I advocate for people that they spend two minutes a day sending one voice note to somebody they would invite to their wedding, you know, using Dunbar's number 150, you know, who would you invite to your wedding? And just state the value of the relationship, share something going on with you and seek, like ask them a question. And, um, I feel like people respond well to that.

You know, if you keep it two minutes, like if you get a 12 minute voice note, it's hard to respond, but I like your point about voice. Now we're talking about research, deep research, interesting research, counterintuitive research, and in real life lab research, maybe nobody other than you has done that better than Mr. John Gottman, John Gottman, John Gottman, for those that don't know, has been studying relationships for, um, in this lab, in this lab where he like gets people into like rooms and actually records them and he kind of comes out and, and he put out this book in 1999 called the seven principles of, for making marriage work.

Published by Harmony Books. I'm holding a revised edition. I just bought a few weeks ago.

Already in its 36th printing. And this is 2015. So it's like, this thing's flying.

It says over a million copies sold on the cover. It's a white cover. Um, pretty Seraphy, uh, font with a little bit of lime green trim.

The O in the word work at the bottom is like this, you know, this. Set of couples rings, like two gold rings. I took my ring off by the way, and put it on the book cover.

It's the exact size of my ring. And then the other ring is like tiny. It's like, you know, I guess a big person married to a small person kind of thing.

Um, beneath the rings, it says a practical guide from the country's foremost relationship expert. And then the bottom, it says John M Gottman PhD and a big 24 point aerial font and below that in a very small 12 point font, poor Nan Silver gets kind of tossed in. That would be the journalist that wrote the book with him.

What is this about? This guy, by the way, is 83 years old now. Founder and director of Gottman Institute.

He's published over 250 academic articles, over 50 books since he began quote unquote, systematically observing couples in a lab in 1970. When he was 27, um, he uses rigorous scientific procedure to observe the habits of married couples in unprecedented detail, and this is the culmination of his life work. Seven principles that guide couples on the path towards harmonious and long lasting relationships.

Dewey Decimalist can follow this one on to 306.1 for social sciences slash anthropology slash cultural institutions slash marriage. Sonia, please tell us about your relationship with the seven principles for making marriage work by John Gottman.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

So I have given out this book to couples who are getting engaged. Um, but I think anyone who has ever been in a relationship, romantic relationship, or wants to be in a romantic relationship should read this book and, you know, it is based on research, but like it just, it's very wise. Uh, it just has a really, really wise advice.

And, and some of it, like, it's kind of like what, I don't know, like the famous advice is that, that, you know, successful relationships are not just about like conflict. So like, you know, people think like, Oh, if we fight, that's bad. If we don't fight, that's good.

But it's not necessarily, that's not, that's not really the key. It's not necessarily even about communication, but it's about sort of like these very everyday moments, you know, you know, when someone's making a bid for attention, you respond to that. It's about sort of this like moments of responsiveness, which again, my new book, how to feel loved is really about that too.

It's about these conversations that you're having, whether this is about romantic relationships, but we're talking about all kinds of relationships. Like how do you respond? You, you listen, you show curiosity, you share.

Um, and, but really even more than that, but what really the memorable part that I took away is like, he, he got me and talks about these four, four horsemen of the apocalypse, four things that if you find yourself doing this in your relationship, that is not good. Right. Um, and they are contempt, criticism, stonewalling and defensiveness.

And that, yeah. And that contempt is the worst one. If you find yourself showing contempt, that is like the biggest predictor of like relationship, you know, breakup.

And I remember, I mean, it's so, it's like an example of that. Well, one example is when you find yourself rolling your eyes at someone, not necessarily that even they see it. Cause you're just like, you know what I mean?

Like just, just find yourself a moment. We probably have all done it where you just kind of roll your eyes and it's not, it's one thing to roll your eyes at like the TV screen, but to roll your eyes at this romantic, you know, someone you love and I actually, that happened to me once in a romantic relationship where I found myself rolling my eyes. I don't remember thinking, oh my God, like this is the end.

Um, now of course you can save the relationship and you can work on it. And, and, um, but I, I just remember that that lesson was like a really important lesson. You find yourself, you get, again, criticizing a lot, being defensive, you know, like, what does that mean?

Like, think about what that means. Um, so it's really relevant to my new book because in the new book, it's really more of a positive approach. It's like, it's about listening, curiosity, uh, you know, accepting someone for their flaws, showing warmth, uh, sharing, and if you find yourself not doing those things, like that's a diagnostic too, we actually found some of the early readers of our book have like broken up with their, with their after reading our book because they're like, oh my God, I realized like, because they're using it as a diagnostic. They're like, I realized that my, my girlfriend just isn't showing any curiosity in me.

So it's a little bit like Gottman, but Gottman's are more like the negative behaviors and ours are like lack of positives. Like what if she's not showing curiosity in you? What if you're not sharing and she's not sharing or he's not listening?

Doesn't mean it's not fixable by the way. Absolutely. We can work on those things, but it's a, it's a diagnostic.

We actually have a quiz we created that people can take to sort of take this diagnostic to sort of see where you are.

[Neil Pasricha]

I love that quiz. It's like howtofeellove.com. That's one great thing about the Gottman book too, is it's just really laden with quizzes.

So even, you know, first principles enhance your love maps. And I was like, what does that even mean? But of course, when you open the chapter, it's like you and your partner each fill out this survey and it's like, name two of my best friends, name two of my favorite movies, name two.

And you're sort of like, oh, well, if you score, you know, more than 10 out of 20, you know, your partner pretty well. If you score less, it's time to invest in getting to know them better. Right?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Right. You're not listening, showing curiosity, right?

[Neil Pasricha]

You're not showing curiosity. Number two, nurture your fondness and admiration. Number three, turn toward each other instead of away.

Yeah. Um, I was going to ask you about these principles in the context of children and having, um, as, uh, because I have four kids and it's pretty rare now. And, uh, I hope it's not rare for the future because it looks like our global population is about to decline for the first time in a long time.

I wondered how you thought about these principles of relationships, both in your 25 year marriage, but also as you're dating now, um, in the context of having. Kids like, right.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

So you're drawing Gottman's principles or yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Um, well, I mean, absolutely. Like the very, they're very relevant. I mean, again, he talks about romantic relationships, but yeah, if you find yourself rolling your eyes at something, your kid says, or, well, they will roll when they're teenagers, they will roll their eyes at you.

So that might be, that might actually might be an exception where like, that's just like a teen thing to do. And that, that doesn't necessarily mean that your relationship is doomed.

[Neil Pasricha]

Um, but like, I was also thinking of it like more, like, how do you have time to take care and nurture and practice the relationship with your primary partner when you have the demands of children around you, you know?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

And you're, you're asking for a friend.

[Neil Pasricha]

Um, yeah, no, I'm asking very much. So for me, no, no.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

It's in, by the way, I'm kind of in awe that you have four kids. Cause I have four kids, but they're like 12, 14 years apart, like two and two. So it was just completely different.

[Neil Pasricha]

So you think mine's harder? I think yours is harder.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

No, mine is so much easier. Right. Cause the older ones, they were like the babysitters for our younger ones.

Yeah. They were 12 and 14. Um, and then, you know, anyway, so, uh, it's really hard.

It's really, really, really, really hard. Um, maintaining passion is really, really hard. And, and again, again, I'm getting back to sort of, you know, what we talk about in our books, sort of the sharing and listening curiosity, like having the capacity, the bandwidth, you know, and, and I'm like, actually Carrie Reese, my coauthors talks about how often couples will save that connection time for like the worst time of the day, right?

They come home from work, they're tired, blah, blah, they're making dinner. They're helping their kids with homework or whatever. Finally, it's like 10 30 PM.

And now you're, the kids are in bed. You're sitting and you've done your email or whatever, and you're sitting together and like, that's your time together. And he's like, that's not good.

You know, that's like not leaving time. That's not prioritizing your marriage. And I always say, I'm not the only one who says that, like the best thing that you could give your kids is a, is a good marriage, right?

[Neil Pasricha]

It's a happy marriage. Right.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Um, because they're, they're going to benefit from that. Um, and, uh, anyway, so it's incredibly hard. So, so, but to remember like the sharing, listening, curiosity, how can you do that?

You know, you know, when can you find time to maybe it's having a date night, maybe it's like you call on the phone in the middle of the day and you're like, when you have the capacity, when you have the energy to be like, tell me, cause we all want to be seen and heard and when you say, how was your day and she says fine or okay, like how much capacity do you have to actually listen to the details of like, oh, that colleague said this thing that upset her or, you know, this, or she, you know, her, you know, whatever, she couldn't find a parking spot. Often it's like the details of the day that we really want to the other person to like care and hear about, and, and we often don't have that capacity. So sort of finding that time.

[Neil Pasricha]

I think that's so such a profound point though, which is like, and you make the point about not doing it when it's like the worst possible time, like Leslie and I have a phrase that we sometimes use, which is I'm dead to the world. And so if we get up to our bedroom and it's like the end of the night, we've put the kids to bed and like, you know, one person instinctively wants to say, Hey, what about that thing with my mom? Or what about that thing?

We just say I'm dead to the world. And it just basically means you cannot ask me about anything outside of the, outside of this room. Yeah.

And we do have a weekly date night. That is something that when we miss it for two, three weeks, we notice it. Like they're more friction does start to bubble up.

So the date night's important. And then one game that we tried to use on our date night, not always perfect, but we try to bring it up is this game called CQD. My wife, Leslie invented it.

CQD stands for compliment, question, dream. So each person is forced to, you know, come up with a compliment for each other. Then a question, which you then both answer and then a dream or a vision.

And usually on a date that just like sparks us into a conversation about one of the topics, but you know, just a couple of things that we have been trying.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

By the way, that the, I love it. By the way, there's research on compliments and how important they are and how people don't give each other enough compliments. I love that.

And then the questions like we don't ask each other enough questions again, back to Nick Eppley at Chicago. He, he has these studies that show that people think that asking deep questions is, will be uncomfortable. That the other person, it's a little bit easier with a romantic partner, but just think of everyone in your life.

The other person will like, think we're prying or being nosy, but actually on average, like we want to be asked, like we crave to be known and seen and heard. So yeah. So ask, ask real questions of each other, not just how are you?

[Neil Pasricha]

we crave to be known, ask real questions. That's great. Great.

I want to, before we jump off this book into your third and final book, I wanted to ask you about MDMA because, you've been on the record as saying, both on Rich Roll and you put out a paper saying that, you know, you think MDMA could be a valuable research tool for understanding psychological neurobiological mechanisms. I've never tried it. I'm very curious about it.

I've been, I've been told by a few friends, Hey, have you and Leslie ever tried, you know, a small dose of MDMA? My friend Mel Robbins has been public about using MDMA in her relationship and for her, you know, kind of, family therapy, couple's therapy. It seems like we're on the precipice here and you've been open about your experimentation with it and I'm very curious about it.

So I guess I'm just trying to ask you like, what questions does somebody ask before they, enter into MDMA, use for relationship purposes for, to increase connection, what have you seen from any early research and can you kind of tell us where the science is today?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah. I am a huge proponent. Actually, it's funny.

I hate to say like proponent because I want to be sort of an unbiased scientist and yet there's, there's both tons of clinical anecdotal evidence. You know, therapists have been using MDMA for decades, right? With couples kind of underground.

And one of my neighbors mentioned that he, he wrote his divorce settlement on MDMA with his ex-wife, like, which I thought was like a brilliant idea because it makes you basically what happens when you're on MDMA is that it lowers the walls, it makes you less defensive, more loving, more grateful. You see beauty in the other person. And so really, and so people, you can actually talk about hard things.

Actually, one thing that's good for a relationship is like, if you want to talk about something hard, let's say you get a job offer in another city and you want to talk about that because that maybe the other person really doesn't want to move, right? That's a really hard problem in a relationship. And then under MDMA, under the influence of MDMA, like you can talk about these, these hard topics without defensiveness, which is, which is being like, oh, you know, so that's how you feel.

[Neil Pasricha]

It lowers the fear receptors, as I understand.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

And that's why it's used for, for people who've had trauma. Like, imagine like if you've been in combat, like women who've been raped on under MDMA, they can go back into that room and they can process that experience because otherwise they can't, right, because it's so awful. And they're, they're so afraid.

And, you know, therapists will say, like, you can't totally get over something without kind of processing, integrating it. So you have to kind of go back into that room, is my understanding. And so MDMA helps you resolve trauma, address trauma.

But even without trauma, it sort of helps you just have like really honest, loving conversations. And also just like, even if there's nothing difficult to talk about, it just builds love and like warmth and, you know, yeah, towards each other.

[Neil Pasricha]

And MDMA is the same in, in your mind as molly or ecstasy, correct?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah, it's the same. So MDMA, it's just the chemical term, 3,4-methylene-dioxybethamphetamine. Um, um, into molly and ecstasy, sometimes we'll have like other things in them, but yeah, they're the same.

[Neil Pasricha]

They're the same thing. And then he suggested, uh, you know, cause right now, of course it's illegal for most of the world, right? And we're talking about, you're at the cutting edge of science.

You're at the cutting edge of research. You're speaking to researchers, you're putting up papers. So we have both that emerging world together with the fact that, you know, it's gray market, it's black market.

And people like me, you know, my fear is like, how do I know this is a good quality? Where am I getting it from? How much do I take?

What's the guide? Like we're missing that whole architecture, which, which for someone like me, I like a cautious left brain person. Like I kind of feel like I need that, but I also don't want to wait till it's potentially never legalized for my whole life.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Exactly. I mean, there are places where it's decriminalized. It's really never, no place where it's legal.

And that's always a problem, right? Like we use research grade MDMA, you know, for our studies that we obviously can't, can't touch, um, only for research. Um, you know, my, I guess my biggest, uh, advice there is, you know, there, there, there's a batch that people have, you know, they make it in a lab.

There's batches of MDMA that maybe you have friends or clinicians that have relied on the same batch. Uh, and, you know, and there's been no, uh, dangerous sort of effects. Um, you know, but there's always a danger, right?

With always danger with something that's illegal, that it's not regulated. It's not, yeah, you don't know what's, what's in it. Uh, you can also use like things like fentanyl strips to, to test for there's all kinds of testing kits one can use to make sure there's nothing in, in there, uh, that's harmful to you.

[Neil Pasricha]

Okay. So you're pushing the science forward a little bit. You're coming out as an active proponent, which sounds like, uh, makes a lot of sense based on your background there.

And we are all kind of eagerly watching this space, um, as things move ahead. Um, thank you so much for your openness there. I really appreciate it.

And I, I want to be part of the movement to sort of understanding, right? Like we're all trying to figure this out. Um, so people like you, people like, you know, Tim Ferriss, people like Rich Roll that, you know, are coming publicly and saying Rich Roll just, just talked about how he went to Mexico and did like a psilocybin experience.

He's been really public and open about that. Yeah. Kind of a surprise, you know, for a guy that's been very sober for very long, but not seeing those as, you know, challenging each other, but more just looking to the human condition.

Right, right. Now, research, science, nonfiction, scratching that left brain. This all goes together with your third and final book, which is come as you are by Emily Nagoski.

Emily, of course, was our guest on chapter 146 of this podcast. We love her. She's born in 1977.

She became a peer health educator at the university of Delaware during undergrad, which then began this 30 plus year career in sex education, including being director of wellness at Smith college. Um, this book come as you are is like, it's a phenomenal cover, right? It's a giant bright pink cover, which has a double ended zipper opens up into like a red reveal below to be blunt.

It looks like a labia and a vagina. Um, come as you are is in four words down the middle. With the subtitle in between the surprising new science that will transform your sex life.

So, uh, by the way, Emily, I don't know if you knew this is also a trained Gottman seven principles educator as a side note. Do we have some heads? You can follow this.

This somewhat reveals Melville Dewey's 1873 prudishness, but it's 613.9 for technology slash medicine slash birth control, reproductive sex, hygiene, and sexual techniques. So you tell us about your relationship with come as you are by Emily Nagoski.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Oh, such an amazing book. Um, I also give it to friends, basically anyone who has sex with women. So like if you're a man or a woman who has sex a little bit, or if you're a woman and you want to understand your sexuality better, I thought I knew a lot about female sexuality and this book, it's just so also really accessible and this idea, I guess that at the heart of the blogger style, what it's like she's written, she's writing it like blogger style.

Like, yeah, I mean, it's, it's just so easy to read. Um, yeah, so accessible. Um, I've actually gave it to a friend whose son is 17 and is starting to have sex with his girlfriend.

And I'm like, he should read this book. Like, and, you know, we don't know if he's actually going to read it. Uh, but, um, you know, as a 17 year old, but anyway, um, it's, uh, at the heart of the book is sort of this dual control sort of action model of sexuality, this idea that you, there's sort of accelerators and their brakes, you know, like what turns you on is sort of the accelerator.

And sometimes maybe your accelerator, you're really hard to turn on. And then, and then the brakes are like some people, it's like very easy to kind of turn off or not turn on, right. Cause there's lots of breaks.

The breaks could be like stress or a body image issues or things like that. Um, and, and so that, that was like so simple and almost kind of obvious, but like really helped me understand sexuality. And then the other thing that like was really kind of a game changing for me and my friends, cause we talk about this book a lot, um, is the idea that context matters.

Right. And so I'll just say it in a really simple way that often, like my friends and I will talk about like, you know, wanting to have sex with a guy and we're just sort of not turned on and we kind of blame the guy. So we're just talking about straight people and not blame like he's a bad person, but we're just like, oh, I guess we're just sort of not attracted to him enough, you know?

Um, and, and what, what Nagoski shows is that actually context really matters and that we, that the woman, well, both people can really set up like a context, like an environment where things are just going to go better. Right. That, that, that are where there's like the accelerator and that there's fewer brakes.

And so it's like, it's like, we're in part responsible for our own, like, you know, uh, arousal sort of, or being sort of turned on. It's not just like, oh, the guy's not, you know, whatever, we're not attracted enough to him. So that was actually really, seemed almost obvious, but that was like really, um, uh, a big epiphany, I think for, for my friends and I.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah, absolutely. I, this book has been on my shelf for years. I, uh, interviewed Emily, um, thought it was a great book.

I love her, her knack for chapter titles. Like she, she kind of demystifies it. She has this chapter called when someone yucks your yum, which I always thought was one of the best chapter titles I've ever, uh, discussed.

I reached out to Emily, by the way. She says she's very flattered that her book is one of your three most formative and she loves and has read many times your other two formative books, by the way. Amazing.

And then she actually sent us a question for you. I really love bringing questions from past guests. So here's what she sent me.

Emily says for Sonia, I have been looking for all the effective strategies to help people let go of culturally constructed aspirational ideals and instead believe that who they truly are is someone worth being. What have you found to be the most effective ways to help people make this transition, which I feel is our shared job?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Wow. So interesting. If I understand the question correctly.

So these culturally constructed aspirations, a lot of these are what we call extrinsic goals, right? In psychology, right? So like it's sort of money, power, beauty, sort of status, fame.

So those are the things that accomplishment and that, that we chase. And we think those are the things that like will make us happy. Um, and by the way, I still kind of chase those things too.

Like, I think we all, you know, even if we know very well that that's not the chasing that doesn't make it make us happy, but it's really like the intrinsic goals that are associated with happiness. And those are really goals having to do with connecting with others, with contributing society. You know, um, we talked about this a little bit, you know, helping others and, and, and growing as a person.

It's like that, those are really the things that the intrinsic goals are associated with happiness. Pursuing extrinsic goals are, is not associated with happiness. Right.

So sort of lots of research on that. And so I assume sort of, yeah. So the question, is that how you understand the question?

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah, exactly. I, I've been looking at all the effective ways we can let people help people let go of culture, constructed aspirational ideals, instead believe who they truly are as someone worth being, because I think in a lot of her work with, with in sex, as you said, she's dealing with all the kind of, I should be like this. Or I can't do that.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Right. The should. So again, it's like, I guess the first step is awareness, right?

That, that, that there's these again, sort of beauty and sort of body image issues are big, you know, in sexuality break. Um, so beauty, fame, you know, sort of kind of outward status, success, you know, money, power, you know, popularity, like those are the things that like, yeah, pursuing them doesn't make us happy. So the awareness of that, I guess, is the first step.

And then really could, you know, focusing on those, again, those three buckets that I mentioned, connection, anything to do with other people, connecting with others, connection, contribution, anything to do with helping others, whether it's our cousin or society as a whole, um, and then personal growth. It could be learning a new skill, a new language traveling. Um, so really focusing on those three things are going to make us happier.

And I think it's, it's going to, you're going to be, yeah, your sexist life is going to improve too. I think when you're, when you're sort of happier, um, in yourself, right.

[Neil Pasricha]

It sounds, it sounds like it will. And it's something that we can all kind of invest in and work on no matter where you are in your sexual life. It's a dimension of our selves that, you know, a lot of us struggle with.

And you know, if you have kids and that's getting in the way, that's one thing. If you have, um, no kids and you're single and you're working on, you know, it's, it's, we live in a day and age where dating's more complicated, meeting people's more complicated. Uh, um, I admire that you're out there and you're dating because I have friends that are, you know, coming out of a marriage right now and they're struggling.

They're struggling with even dating. Like they're struggling to get out there again. And, you know, the act of dating is difficult and can be very rewarding.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

But well, again, like sharing, and I actually, I actually like dating and partly because I'm a social person, but it's sort of sharing curiosity and listening, right? Those are the key, uh, uh, with, with dating or any kind of relationship. Right.

So if you're doing that, but if you're just trying to impress the other person, you know, then that's not going to work. Right. Um, and so, um, yeah, I, I kind of find it as a challenge.

[Neil Pasricha]

Any rules you have for dating these days? Like any, you know, you're dating now. So what?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah. So again, I would say this is really relevant to how to feel loved is that most of us, when we meet a new person, we're trying to impress them and that's very normal, very human. I want you to think that I'm kind and interesting and funny and smart.

Um, and so in my experiences, a lot of the time, and I'm sure this happens with both genders, but since I date men, I can see this, the guy will just talk the entire time and he just talks on and on. Right. And I get it.

Like he's trying to impress me and others, you know, that, that he's smart and interesting and, but it doesn't forge a connection. Right. And I have actually have sometimes interrupted them and actually said, do you realize that in the last 45 minutes, you have not asked me a single question.

Right. Which by the way, sometimes I'm just, I can be kind of brave and saying that sometimes it just like ends the date and the guy's all huffy and that's fine. I don't want to go out with him anyway.

Um, but once in a while, like there's a story that I should have told this before one guy, when I said that, he said, Oh my God, he's like, I'm so sorry. You know, when I, um, you know, when I get nervous, I talk too much. And that was beautiful.

And then that led us to like to have a connection, uh, and to let us to have further dates. Um, and so, yeah, so it's again, feeling loved or feeling connected is sort of curiosity, genuine curiosity, listening and sharing. And when one person is talking nonstop the whole time, that's not happening.

Right. So that, that's my advice.

[Neil Pasricha]

Dealing love, genuine curiosity. I think that's a great, great line as well. So you've been very, it's a gift.

It is a gift. And you have given us the gift of your time. I want to be very respectful of your time.

I know you're back to back. I know the book's about to come out. You're in the middle of a lot of things just to close this off.

I've got three or four quick, fast money round questions that will end with a final piece of wisdom. So, so yeah. Hardcover, paperback, audio, or e what is your preferred book format?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Uh, paperback. Uh, but I also often do, I often read them on my phone because like, it's always with me. So, you know, I kind of like those two side by side, like a paperback, like actual book, it's not too heavy.

Uh, and the ebook to read, like when I'm standing in line where I'm just sort of waiting around.

[Neil Pasricha]

You'll jump into an ebook on your phone. Wow. Interesting.

Amazing. You're able to do that. How do you organize the books on your bookshelf?

Like at home?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Oh, good. Good question. Cause my, my, my, my husband, my ex-husband does it all alphabetically.

Um, but I do it by topic. I actually have a shelf. This is sort of my, my favorite books kind of of all time.

I have a couple of shelves like near my balcony. But then I also have a, I have all my, like, you know, I went to Harvard undergrad, I have all the, all the core classes I took, uh, the books from college, like that, those are really fun. I actually just had a friend look at them the other day.

She's like, Oh my God, I can't believe you have these books. I have all my like psychology, the happiness books, like the, the sort of like nonfiction, huge shelves of fiction and different kinds of fiction. Um, yes, it's more like, kind of like topic and genre.

[Neil Pasricha]

I love that. Yeah. Uh, do you have a, a white whale book or any book you've been chasing metaphorically in any sense, the longest, a book you've always wanted to read?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Oh, right. And haven't really, Oh yeah, yeah. I, um, like war and peace or brothers Karamazov.

Um, you know, I just did not tackle, you know, I know Russian and so I always think, Oh, I should read them in Russian, but my Russian is not that good. So I really should just give up the idea of reading in Russian, just reading them in English. So there you go.

[Neil Pasricha]

Nice. Okay, great. And by the way, no book guilt, no book shame is one of the underpinning values of this whole show.

Um, uh, do you have a favorite bookstore living or dead?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Oh, um, uh, good question. Um, uh, I like book soup in Los Angeles. Uh, there's like little, yeah, yeah.

There's like little stores here and there that I like. Um, but yeah, unfortunately I used to go to like the big bars and noble all the time near me. Cause it was like several stories and had like everything.

And then, then it closed down.

[Neil Pasricha]

You're in Riverside, right?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

No, I'm in Santa Monica. So, um, yeah. So I used to, yeah, I really, I guess it was the big bars and noble cause I had like so many sex shows that you can just get lost in, uh, closed down, unfortunately.

[Neil Pasricha]

Um, but we just interviewed James Don a couple of years ago on the podcast, the CEO of Barnes and Noble, and they are opening 40 more stores this year.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

I read that. I read that. Awesome.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah. And they're getting like 400 person lineups. They're opening them back up in neighborhoods like, you know, that have, have lost their Barnes and Noble years ago.

So the number one challenge our listeners have is making time to read. Is there anything you do that helps you make time for reading?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Yeah, yeah. I break it up into, I think you have to really be comfortable breaking it up to little chunks. I don't feel like, oh, I have to have a one, two, three hour, you know, period of time as I really, I read in small chunks.

I don't love it. I would love to have bigger chunks to read.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yeah.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

And so like, I like to actually, I read when I have lunch, I read when I have like, yeah, again, little bits of time here and there, and then audio books. Of course, I'm also, I didn't mention it, but I also am a big fan of when you're driving or, you know, walking or whatever. Um, so yeah.

[Neil Pasricha]

Any, any, don't be afraid to microdose.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

It exactly. Like, it doesn't matter. Like whatever helps you read.

It's some, I remember a dentist was, was asked once, like, what kind of floss is better? Is it like blah, blah, blah, this kind of floss. And he's like, it doesn't matter.

Whatever gets you to floss, just do it. And that's the same answer. Like whatever keeps you reading, just do it.

[Neil Pasricha]

I love that. Now, a final closing question. Feel free to take a big pause for this one.

It's the last question of the entire show. You are to my mind, one of the world's foremost researchers, period. And nevermind all your work on happiness and now love and then connection.

How to feel loved is an incredible book. I'm so glad it's out there, but from everything that you've learned and you've studied over your entire career, is there one piece of hard fought wisdom or advice you might share a piece of wisdom for everybody out there listening to the show to close us off?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Hmm. I'll say give more, I mean, give more compliments or express more gratitude to each other. Like you mentioned the voice note, you know, um, today.

Write a text. It could be a text, right? Cause it's only two seconds.

Write a text or a voice note and say, I really, I'm really grateful that you're in my life. I, uh, I really love the way you dress. I love your style.

I, I really love your last presentation. You gave it work, you know, blah, blah, blah. Like it, it, it means so much, right?

Uh, like it's a five second act that can really like make someone's day. Yeah. Yeah.

[Neil Pasricha]

Thank you, uh, professor Sonia Levamirsky. It's been a wonderful conversation. I really am so grateful for your incredible work and, uh, I'm I'm wishing this new book.

Well, I'll feature it in my book club as well. For those that don't get it, it's neil.blog. And do you want us to point, do you want us to point to any websites for you as well?

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

Absolutely. And the easiest one is this howtofeellove.com, right? The name of the book, howtofeellove.com.

[Neil Pasricha]

The quiz is up there. Everything's there.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

It has everything. Yeah.

[Neil Pasricha]

Thank you so much for commenting on three books. Thank you.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yay.

[Neil Pasricha]

Hey everybody. It's me, just Neil again, hanging out in my basement. Listen back to the wise, witty and wonderful professor Sonja Lyubomirsky.

By the way, after the conversation was over, she flipped her screen to show me her view because I thought she was in Riverside. She's been an associate professor, assistant professor, professor, and now distinguished professor. And I think like they just gave her the whole faculty.

I mean, she's been so prominent. I was like, are you in Riverside? She's like, no, I'm in, I'm in Santa Monica.

She turned her, she turned her laptop around and I could see like the sandy beach with like these cresting waves. And I was having the conversation from behind like three foot snow banks in Toronto. I was like, okay, that was a nice, just sort of ha moment.

Um, she's a real pleasure and delight to hang out with. I really love her, like her, her way of speaking. Like she's, she's, she's like me, I guess.

She's like, I don't know if jumpy is the right, that's the right word. Like, she's like, you know, she's, she's excited to talk. And then as a result, the conversation can be like going in a lot of different directions, which is what's so fun and beautiful about great conversations, including the one we're having right now.

So many quotes jump out for me from this chat, including most people report to have at least one relationship in their life they would like to feel more loved in. How'd you think about that? You know, it's like, I have this superficial reaction to that.

I'm like, you know, I feel very loved above, but then, you know, you think about a little deeper. It's like, oh, well, you know, I wish I felt love a little bit more here. And then you realize with the relationships you saw, that's up to me.

Like I can lean in, I can ask questions. I can sort of show a curious mindset. And there's the five mindsets of course, in the book, by the way, for those that can't wait to read it, there is the sharing mindset, the listening to learn mindset, the radical curiosity mindset, the open heart mindset, and the multiplicity mindset, which is very complex and interesting, kind of remembering that people are dimensional, as Nora McInerney told us back in our chat.

Okay. How about this one? We can be loved, but not feel loved, which is an important differentiator for her new book and her new work.

She says there are three buckets to determine happiness. Another quote, genetics, life circumstances, and what we do every day, i.e. what I would call intentional activities. This is kind of where a lot of the stuff I recommend comes in.

Two minute mornings, two minute evenings, playing rose, rose, thorn, bud, getting outside for nature walks, phoning a friend, you know, singing. These are all actual interventions we can do that we know prove help. Let's all be a little bit happier.

Now how about this one? How about this one? She gets into brass tacks a little bit.

The most powerful happiness booster is anything social. I'm a pretty social person, but yeah. I can, I can relate and understand this.

Even me. I'm like, I gotta be more social. I gotta read.

One of my favorite things to do, honestly, is, uh, when I have an NNO, you know, one night a week, I have a Neil's night out one night a week, which was last night. My wife has an LNO last night. She.

You know, went from teaching at her school. She met up with a friend. They went to a sauna and cold plunge place.

They went out for salads and she came home after bedtime. She gets a night out. For me, I'll often go, you know, see a movie by myself, go for a walk by myself.

But what do I do on the walk? I have my AirPods in, I have even a backup pair because I often like drain them. And I literally just call people.

I just go through my contact list, flip it in my thumb. And then I hit call. Now, as you know, you know, two or three out of, out of every three or four people don't answer the phone, but that means one person out of three or four does.

And if you make 12 calls, I find you get three good ones. And then I've got the walk, got some exercise, got some fresh air and had three social connections. So that's my latest thing I'm up to.

Uh, how about this? If I were to give you one tip to be happier, it would be go and have a 15 minute conversation with someone. That's a repeat of what I just, what we were just talking about.

The best thing that you could give your kids is a good marriage. Yeah. And it was, I guess, a bit awkward in the beginning of the conversation when I had researched her and found that she was married with kids.

And then she said, actually, I'm recently separated. And I debated sort of editing that out, but I left it in because I think that shows vulnerability and as a result, you know, we were able to get into some honesty there and she was open about kind of dating and it did not be live, the research that she revealed, which is that the number one thing you can do for your kids is the marriage. So, you know, I didn't, you know, I didn't want to be that kind of journalist where I'm like poking at a sore spot.

And, but I really admire her courage and talking about it and being comfortable talking about it, which was, which was interesting. And so I do not wish divorce upon anybody. My divorce, of course, was when we had no kids and we just bought a house.

And so, you know, we had less stuff to sort of decouple. And even then it was very complicated and stuck with me for a really long time. And still, I feel the sort of energy of it today.

So, Sonja Lyubomirsky, thank you for your courage, your vulnerability, your research, your work, your incredible new book, How to Feel Love, but also all the books and work you've done. You know, anything you ask her, she's like, well, I have a paper about that, I have a paper about that. She has got papers about so many things.

If you go to her website, SonyaLubomirsky.com or HowToFeelLove.com, you start going into her research and it is, you could spend a lifetime even just reading the amount of research she has done. It's just really amazing. Sonya has given us three more books to add to our top 1000, including number 542, Good Calories, Bad Calories by Gary Taubes, T-A-U-B-E-S.

Number 541, The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work by Dr. John Gottman, and number 540, Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski, who was our guest just last year, and so you can go back and listen to Emily. It was nice for us to get a question from Emily for Sonya as well. Thank you so much to all of you for listening.

Are you still here? Did you make it past the three second pause? If so, I want to welcome you back to the end of the podcast club.

This is one of three clubs that we have for three books listeners. How do you get into this? You just call 1-833-READALOT.

R-E-A-D-A-L-O-T. Leave us a voicemail. Get the secret code.

You can join our cover to cover club. That's people listening to every single chapter of the show, or you can join our secret club. Again, I already gave you the tip on how to do that.

So yeah, we were in France recently and Leslie and I went there. We took our kids offshore for the first time. We went to Paris.

We went skiing. I'd never been skiing kind of in anything other than hilly Ontario. So it was a first for me.

And in this kind of small mountain village, we, you know, I would always get up super early. I was always waking up at like 5am. So what would I do?

Cause you know, we're in a room, it's dark, everybody's sleeping. Cause I would tiptoe downstairs with my pen, with my notebook. Leslie very wisely before the trip started, got me a notebook because she knows I don't want to be on screens when I wake up.

So I come downstairs to the lobby of the hotel. There's one employee working. His name is Alex.

He's the overnight manager at the hotel. And we start talking because I have like two hours with him. You know, every morning we know talking from Sonia is, is, is a great ingredient for happiness.

And I get to know this guy. I'm writing, I'm talking to him. I'm hanging out with him.

And he has a fascinating life. He tells me that, you know, he grew up in a troubled home, a broken home, abusive home. And as a kid, he kind of sprung out on his own at a very young age.

As a teenager, biked all over Europe by himself. He was homeless, you know, kind of by choice, reading, living in a tent, making sure he was safe, but also being safe kind of from the abusive situation. And how he has designed his life so that he works in the high season in French ski resorts.

Making enough money and also getting room and board to then pay for a life where he lives the other half of the year, maybe more than half the year in Tokyo, Japan. I was so interested in this guy. What a fascinating mind.

And he had big thoughts and big ideas. And of course, I of course asked him, what are your three most formative books? And we talked about these three books at length.

And then I encouraged him to call and leave a voice note. So here is Alex, the overnight manager at the ski resort place. I met in France a few weeks ago with his books.

Let's go over to the phones now.

[Alex from France]

Hi Neil, this is Alex. I'm calling from France. So when we met, you asked me about three books that have changed my life.

And here is my choice. First, let me say that all of them are from American literature. Don't ask me why.

That's probably what I read the most. Let's talk about the first one. It takes place during the great depression in America.

It's written by Tom Cromer, K-R-O-M-E-R, completely unknown guy. And the original title is Waiting for Nothing. But it has been translated in French as Les Vagabonds de la fin, literally the anger tramps, which I like better.

It's more or less similar to my second choice, a book written by a so-called Jack Black, not related to the actor, but it was an alias for a man who wanted to stay anonymous. So my second book is called You Can't Win and takes place a little before the great depression. Both are written by experienced hobo who traveled through the States to find a way, legal or not, to survive.

Stories are rough. Death is around every corner. The outside is as cold as a jail.

You got nowhere to go, nobody to trust. And there's among this chaos, a deep reflection about our primary needs and rights. One quote I always remember from the first one, Waiting for Nothing, goes something like, who on earth are you to decree who has the right or not to lie down on some grass?

The political reflections behind those two books touched me deeply because at some point in my life, I chose to be kind of homeless and travel through Europe and this two year period taught me how hard life can be when you are on your own, alone in some stranger country. Those experiences taught me the price of comfort and the luck to have friends and family to rely on. Even if I gave away my whole personal library a few years ago, those two books never left me and they are so important to me, so that's why I chose them.

The third one I want to talk about, you know it very well because it's This is Water by David Foster Wallace. To me, Wallace is the most sensitive writer ever. When I was reading The Infinite Jest especially, I was like, this man absolutely understood what it means to be a human being.

This is Water is not a fiction. It's a very short speech he gave to students and you can even find it online for free, thanks to internet. But in fact, this is no speech.

This is some humble advice given by a worried man to future adults. And the most tragic part of the story is that Wallace couldn't be strong enough to follow his own advices, his own lesson in the end. That particular book took me time to reach my heart and brain.

But since then, I read it to several friends, hoping they would find the same message of hope and empathy I took from it. That's for sure the words who made me what I am now, calm, patient and curious about the others. Well, that's all folks, as they say.

[Neil Pasricha]

Thank you so much to Alex, my new friend in France for calling in. Isn't he an amazing mind? And how interesting are those books?

I'm going to order all three of them and read them. Because of course, when you hear somebody tell you about the books that changed their life immediately, if you're like me, you're very drawn to them. You're very like, now I really want to read this.

I do think it's the ultimate question. Um, all right. So now let's jump into a letter of the chapter, as we always do.

If I read your letter, if I play your voice note, drop us a line and I will send you a book. This chapter's letter comes from someone named Gina. Hi Neil.

Happy New Year. Hope this finds you well. I hesitated to write this, but I find you are quite an open-minded person.

So here goes, and I hope you take it in the spirit of goodwill, which it was intended. Overall, I greatly enjoyed your latest chapter with Salim Amin. Such a fashioning discussion, and I 100% agree with him about many things.

Not the least of which is the sad demise of journalism. Perhaps not surprisingly, a very low trust issue for Canadians. It had to do with a statement Amin made, presented as undisputed fact about the founding of Israel.

I can't say I'm in any way an expert in Israel or the Middle East, but I believe Amin completely oversimplified the narrative here in a way that is dangerous, potentially anti-Semitic, and ironically, in a way perpetuated by many left-wing slash progressive news organizations, social media accounts, and schools. The founding of Israel is an incredibly complex, and given the 2,000, 3,000 year history of all the people in that region needs to be taken into account. And all sides need to be given.

For instance, most people don't seem to know that Palestinians were offered a two-state solution at the time of Israel's founding, and rejected the offer, and have done so repeatedly with every other such offer made over the past 80 years. Even the very history of the word Palestine is disputed. The area of the Jews lived in during biblical times was known by that same geographic term.

By the way, I don't say this as an apologist of Netanyahu, who himself is very dangerous, just as a person with many Jewish friends who are quite literally fearing for their lives right now at what is happening in the world and their scapegoating. I was very sad and dismayed to hear this in your podcast, especially at a time of runaway antisemitism, and the morphing of anti-Zionism into antisemitism. Just see Bondi Beach, the tearing down of Mezuzahs in Toronto, the massacre in Manchester, et cetera, et cetera.

Um, all the best, Chena. Wow. Okay.

So as you guys know, I love and welcome critical letters and I read them on the show in addition to complimentary letters. Critical letters in some sense are a lot more interesting because complimentary letters, though I love them and thank you for sending them and please keep doing so. It's just, you know, it would be boring if I just kept saying so-and-so loves the show, right?

So, and I always say is if you're going to write a letter, please, please write a letter and do it in the form of a review in an email to me, neil.globalhappiness.org. Uh, you can go to threebooks.co, you can find it. And it's great because this is how I learned.

This is how we learned. I didn't realize when he said that he, and I can't remember the statement off the top of my head. Of course, it was our first chapter of the year.

I'm down in Nairobi. I'm talking to Salim Amin and his dad is Mo Amin. And he was talking about how, you know, the Palestinians, uh, at the time, you know, welcomed Israel.

And he gave us new information. Actually, I didn't know that post-World War II, um, as they were looking for a place to house this disenfranchised people, um, just the victims of the most unbelievable massacre, they were looking at East Africa and that's how the conversation got started. They were looking here, he said, you know, in Tanzania and in Kenya.

And then he said, I think something along the lines of this was deemed a little too savage or wild for them. So they found Israel. And so basically I take Gina's letter in full spirit and full knowledge and awareness.

I really appreciate it, Gina. Thank you so much for your courage to share it with me. Thank you for the education.

I will also share it back with Salim and I'll take it and marry it with Salim's thoughts. And all I can do is sort of then take these thoughts and sort of stew on them, think on them, you know, hope it kind of grows my own thinking and awareness as I hope it does for you as well. Um, if you have more thoughts on the subject, although I'm wary of getting into kind of a Middle East conversation, please give me a call.

1-833-READALOT or drop me a line. I love to keep the conversation from different chapters going. Hey, I'm still getting emails about the Mormon missionaries today.

Okay. Five years later, it's helpful and healthy. And I think it's part of what we need in society is open conversations like this.

So if this can be one of many homes for it, that's wonderful. Thank you so much to Gina for the letter and for the education, for the awareness. I really appreciate that.

There's things in there I didn't know, of course, and lots more I'm sure I don't. All right. Now let's close things off with a word of the chapter.

[Sonja Lyubomirsky]

That sometimes it just like ends the date and the guy's all huffy.

[Neil Pasricha]

Yes, indeed. It is a huffy. Huffy. H-U-F-F-Y an adjective, which according to Merriam-Webster means haughty, H-A-U-G-H-T-Y comma arrogant.

Interesting. Number two definition is roused to indignation or easily offended, also known as irritated or touchy. Huh.

I like that. She was talking, of course, about dating and I could kind of, we can kind of picture that huffy huffy. Well, did you know, back in the 1590s, the English noun huff first appeared to describe a puff of wind or a swell of sudden anger, huff, puff, huff, puff.

It makes sense to describe someone who's easily offended, petulant or ill humored. In the 1670s, the adjective first appeared describing people who are puffed with pride or puffed with arrogance. In 1778, the phrase started meaning to leave in a huff, recorded or associated the word with a sudden angry departure.

There's also the 1755 event, a word huffish. I did not know that word. That's a go.

I'm gonna start using that. Hey, I'm feeling a little huffish today, uh, which means petulant. And of course the adverb huffily, huffily.

It is considered an imitative, similar word to the word puff. That is a really interesting way to describe it. A puff of air, of pride, of sudden anger combined with the suffix Y, meaning someone puffed up with arrogance, quick to take offense, likely originating from the imitative, descriptive sounds of blowing or sighing.

Oh, I'm feeling a little huffy and puffy right now. I love this conversation. I love Professor Stolop, I love hanging out with all of you.

Can you believe we started this show in 2018, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26. This is the ninth year of three books. Thank you so much.

I don't take this for granted. There are thousands of people around the world, book lovers, writers, sellers, librarians. Everybody listened to the show, hanging out and having the nerdiest chats ever about what makes people them.

What makes people them? Which books form them, shape them. And if you leave the conversation, then one book is like, Oh, I got to add to my list.

I got to add to my list. My list is too much. I have too much to read, Neil.

I'm with you. I completely with you. I have way too many books, but I want to put my mind there.

I want to put my feelings there. I want to put my life there. I'd rather go down in a pile of books than in a pile of newspapers or in a scrolling social media screen.

Thank you for making this investment in yourself. Thank you for focusing your mind on what counts, the deep work, the wisdom that we can only get from books. Now, until next time, remember that you are what you eat and you are what you read.

Keep turning that page, everybody, and I'll talk to you soon. Take care.

Listen to the chapter here!