1373: Sonja Lyubomirsky | Five Mindsets to Get You More of What Matters

0:00 Coming up next on the Jordan Harbinger show. We talk about wealth, people who have it all success or wealth. That wealth or success or fame amplifies what you already have, right? So if you're a generous person before you got rich, you become even more generous. If you are a greedy person, you become even more greedy. If you're social, you become more social. If you're anti social, you become more anti-social. But the problem with meritocracies Is that if you don't succeed and if you're not happy, the only person you can blame is yourself. Right. So there's actually more suicidality, more depression, anxiety. in more meritocratic cultures, I believe. The difference is that happy people

0:31 Feel loved. Welcome to the show. I'm Jordan Harbinger. On the Jordan Harbinger show, we decode the stories, secrets, and skills of the world's most fascinating people. Our mission is to help you become a better informed, more critical thinker through long form conversations with a variety of amazing folks, from spies to CEOs, athletes, authors, thinkers, and performers, even the occasional extreme athlete, music mogul, or real life pirate. If you're new to the show or you want to tell your friends about the show, I suggest our episode Starter Packs. These are collections of some of our favorite episodes on topics like persuasion and negotiation, psychology, geopolitics, disinformation, China, North Korea, crime and cults, and more.

1:11 That'll help new listeners get a taste of everything we do here on the show, just visit JordanHarbinger.com slash start or search for us in your Spotify app to get started. Today on the show, how can you be surrounded by people who genuinely love you, spouse, kids, friends, co workers, and still feel completely alone? Today we're talking with happiness researcher Sonia Ludwomirsky, author of How to Feel Loved, about the surprisingly massive gap between being loved and actually having that love register psychologically. We'll get into why money, status, attractiveness, achievement, and optimizing your dating life like you're buying a used Porsche can get you attention without getting you intimacy. And why the whole love language thing might be a lot shakier than Instagram therapists would have you believe, and why vulnerability does not mean turning dinner into an unsolicited director's cut of your childhood trauma. We'll also get into listening, radical curiosity, AI girlfriends and boyfriends, MDMA and chemically assisted connection, and the uncomfortable possibility that these tools won't actually fix your relationship. They'll merely reveal that you picked the wrong person.

2:13 So yeah, nice light episode about happiness today. Here we go with Sonia Lubomirsky. So this is an interesting subject, how to feel loved. I think a lot of people might think it's too squishy. You're studying love from a science perspective. I mean, isn't that the realm of Poets and I don't know, the scribes. Almost everything in psychology sounds like that, right? Sounds squishy or like fuzzy. So I started study happiness actually.

2:38 Thirty seven years ago, if you can imagine that in nineteen eighty nine. Nobody was happy in the eighties. But no one was really studying it except for one person, Ed Deaner. And it was considered this very fuzzy, unscific topic, and I felt really insecure, like what am I doing studying happiness? And love, I guess, seems even more or equally fuzzy and unscientific. And yet of course we can study all these things. Psychology wouldn't exist if we couldn't measure and intervene. and investigate these topics. This is n has nothing to do with your book. But how do you measure happiness in science?'Cause you have to have a scientific you have to define it. We let people in a way define it for themselves, but we measure happiness I define happiness as really having two components. This is the way researchers define happiness that The first component is

3:19 experiencing positive emotions, right? So happy people Experience fairly frequent positive emotions. What positive emotions? It could be anything, right? For some people it might be tranquility if you live in Taiwan. Serenity, calm, tranquility. Maybe you haven't been to Taipei. Yeah, yeah, but I mean in Asian cultures it's more valued. Yeah. In American culture it's more like enthusiasm, excitement, joy is more highly valued. That's funny, it's cultural. I had not thought about that.

3:43 That's what I would define it as. If something's tranquil, I don't think I'm happy. I'm probably borderline bored. And that's fine. And then pride, curiosity, affection, you know, those are also Positive states, emotions. So anyway, so people who are happy experience fairly frequent positive emotions. Not all the time, of course. Yeah. But that's not enough. That's the first component. The second component of happiness is feeling like your life is good. Like you're satisfied with your life.

4:06 You're fairly satisfied with how progress you're making towards your life goals. So those are really the two components of happiness. Life satisfaction. And positive emotions. That makes sense, I suppose. It's tough, right?'Cause there's a lot of people say, like, Oh, are you happy with where you are now? Yeah, of course. But then I see people of way more than me and they're miserable. And it seems like such an arbitrary line. You you really need both those components. My example I use is When I had my first two kids, I was so satisfied with my life. I had this great marriage and

4:34 Job and I had a boy and a girl, exactly what I wanted. And yet every day, like I actually was really unhappy. I had a lot of negative emotions, right? I wasn't sleeping and yeah, and the two year old was d having tantrums all the time. Anyway. And so I wasn't a truly happy person'cause I only had one component of happiness and not the other component. That tracks. My kids are four and six, almost seven. And I'm very happy with the fact that they exist and that they're growing well.

4:57 But yeah, there are some days where I go, Well, I slept two hours'cause he barfed all over me at four o'clock in the morning or one o'clock in the morning and That wasn't positive emotion, but it didn't really affect my overall happiness. It was like a momentary lapse. Just like people who seem like they have everything, they can afford to eat really great desserts every time they go out to eat. But they're terrible, miserable, and they have road rage because they're on the red line all the time with their emotions. Yeah. Yeah. So when you see these unhappy people that seem to have it all, what is often the problem? Is it that there's things we can't see that are making them miserable, like their greater life is very unhappy, or are there just some people

5:34 That for whatever reason live in negative emotions all the time and they can't help it. There are definitely individual differences. There's a huge genetic component to happiness. That's bad. It's bad news in some ways, but it doesn't mean you can't change it. It just means it's harder, right? You have to put more work into it if you're sort of unlucky to have a base a set range, like a range of happiness that's a little bit lower. And so some people are just unlucky. I actually heard something really wise the other day where which is that We talk about wealth, right? People who have it all or success or wealth. That wealth or success or fame

6:04 amplifies what you already have, right? So if you are a generous person before you got rich, you become even more generous, right? If you are a greedy person, you become even more greedy. If you are social, you become more social. If you're anti social, you become more anti social. So that happens, but also social comparison is so powerful and compelling. We compare ourselves to others. You can argue that's adaptive, right? Like it's useful for us to see where we are. But it was adaptive in their ancestral past. And we tended to compare to people who are like a little bit better off than us. We're like, Oh, maybe we should work a little harder, maybe we should

6:35 Blah blah blah. Do this more. And yet now, starting the age of television, we started to it was like remember Life Styles of the Rich and Famous was like the first show that w everyone was like, Oh my God. I didn't know that there was s this life state. I need an island. Exactly. Yeah. And of course with social media now we're exposed to it every second of every day. So no matter how rich you are, I remember we listening to a radio show, they were talking about these two mansions on a hill. Beautiful mansions, really rich people. And you know what? The person in the one mansion is thinking the other mansion is like a little bit better.

7:05 view is a little bit better, right? Or they have a better deck or whatever. And so there's always someone better to compare yourself to that's the problem. So you have to really kinda let that go and it's really hard to let it go. Do we know why we compare ourselves to people that are just slightly above us?'Cause you're right. I don't look at the house on the hill that has a wraparound three sixty view of LA and go Man, almost. I just need to work a little harder, right? And you find out it's I don't know, John Grisham's house or something, or uh Michael Bay, some director, right? And I don't think about that. And I don't look at my friends who sold I don't know, ten million books or something. I don't look at buddies like James Clear or Mark Manson and go like oh I need a book that has outsold every other book this decade.

7:42 I don't do that, but I don't even look at other podcaster and care, but I probably My neighbors, maybe? I don't know. It's the line is again totally arbitrary who I compare myself to and who I ignore. And people differ'cause some people do compare themselves to the super successful and like oh I got So there's a a researcher in my field called his name is Leon Festringer, and he had this theory of social comparison, the first big theory. And he said is basically evolutionarily adaptive to compare a little bit higher, right?'Cause that's inspires us To work a little harder, do a little bit more.

8:12 But for example, if I'm studying the violin And I'm looking at like Yo Yo Ma, that'll inspire me, hopefully. I'm not gonna feel bad. I'm not him. Or maybe if you wanna be a film director, you look at someone's really successful and that might hopefully that's inspiring to you. Yeah. But someone who's a little better off. So someone in your film school class. Or your writing class and they just publish their first short story in the New York. I want them to get hit by it. Yeah. Not really. Yeah. I mean in college we used to have these jokes about it, right? Someone would be like, Hey, I just won five national scholarships. And I didn't, so I feel a little bit bad about that. Yeah. Yeah. No kidding. Are you Russian? Yes, I am, yeah. I know a few Russians. Whenever I ask them questions like, Oh, are you generally happy with your

8:52 These are simultaneously the most stoic, but also the most miserable, and I can't decide which it is. What's going on with that? Like if I ask a Russian guy if he's happy, he'll look at you like you just asked him if he planned to grow another foot and a half by the weekend. Okay. So I do have some insight into this. I am Russian, but I came to the US when I was about ten years old. So I'm very Americanized. So I'm actually more American than Russian. We actually have a paper that Russians don't appear h happy in public, but they do appear happy in private. So if you go inside the Russian home They'll be drinking and singing. They actually will look a lot happier than the average American hope.

9:25 When I first immigrated here I would be invited sometimes to my friends' dinners and I thought they were just ridiculously serious. They'd be like, Will you please pass the salt? And they would have this very quiet conversation, whereas in a Russian home Sometimes they're yelling I thought something to do. Exactly, of course, of course. They're like reciting poetry Anyway, so there's a little bit of a notion of the evil eye that if you appear successful or happy in public that something bad will happen to you when when I have had my first baby in LA

9:52 My mom were like, Sonia, you cannot take the babs. Do not take her baby. You've heard this. They'll be envious that you have this beautiful baby I'm like, This is ridiculous. I'm not gonna stay at home all day with the baby and not show my face. Yeah. That's a Russian. I stayed in Ukraine for f several months, twenty five years ago. with Russians. And they were quite happy at home. The drinking definitely had something to do with it. But there was almost this don't get too happy about something because it's probably just going to disappoint you later. And I thought that was the weirdest way to look at anything. I remember being like oh this is so great. Aren't you excited for this? And they were like, A little. Everything was cautious. That's because life in the Soviet Union or Russia really was like that. Like you really can't ever depend on anything

10:31 We're lucky in America, right? It's a meritocracy. I mean, whatever you could argue about what's happening right now, it's less so. But the problem with meritocracies Is that if you don't succeed and if you're not happy, the only person you can blame is yourself. Really? That's interesting. So the government is against me and there's no upward mobility. Oh well everybody else is in the same boat except for the Pullet bureau. So it's not my fault. But here it's like Hey, your business didn't succeed.

10:59 And maybe it's because your crop got wiped out by a tornado, but somehow everyone still blames you because it's America and you could have done something to avoid it. Yeah, that's an interesting insight. Okay. So onto the topic of love, your the topic of your current book. How can somebody be surrounded by people who genuinely love them? And still feel completely unloved. Yeah, is that interesting. I mean, it's often not such a so black and white. My co-author Harry Reese and I did a survey expressly for our book, and we asked people, Do you feel loved in your relationships and seventy percent

11:28 could name at least one relationship in their life that's significant when they don't feel as loved as they want to be. And I think that number is actually an understatement. I bet there's more than that. And so yeah, so maybe you want to be loved a little bit more, a little bit more frequently. Why that is, I'm not really an expert on the why. I think there's lots of reasons. It could be somehow You're not seeing you're not aware of it. It's not getting in. You're not taking it seriously, you don't think it's authentic.

11:50 Imagine this is a cup of love. And you're pouring love into my cup of love, and maybe there's a leak in the bottom and it's somehow leaking out. Or maybe the top has only a very small opening, it's not quite getting in. Okay. Some people think this is a metaphor for anxious attachment. And avoid an attachment. So people who are insecurely attached, maybe you're not the love is not getting in somehow. But the point being is that It's a common that it happens. That we can be loved.

12:14 But not feel loved, and by the way. You can be smart and not feel smart. We don't know people who are beautiful and don't think they're beautiful, right? So This is not just unique to love. Yeah, that well, it makes me a little bit sad, I suppose. What is the difference between intellectually knowing that somebody loves me and then feeling it in my body or knowing it in a different level. Yeah. I mean well feeling love basically is really feeling like there's someone I mean the way we define it, it's a

12:37 You feel that there's sort of care, warmth, affection. And you really feel like you matter to the other person. You make a difference in their life. And you really feel it in your bones. And so that's really what feeling loved is like. But isn't that a weirdly subjective interpretation on my part of their behavior? They almost can't really control that. That's actually what our quite empowering'cause when people don't feel love, they think, Oh Maybe there's something wrong with me.

13:01 I need to like make myself more lovable. I have to n show you how wonderful I am, right? Or how what good qualities I have. Or I have to somehow change you, change you to love me more. And yet it's actually more under your control. You don't have to change yourself. You don't have to change the other person. Well, we argue is all you have to do Is change the conversation. Okay. When you think about it, a relationship is a series of conversations, right? Even when you're not talking, right, you're always communicating.

13:26 And so you it's just take it one conversation at a time and the next conversation do something to make the other person feel more loved and to make you feel more loved. It's sort of a dynamic process. In the next conversation. So it's really about changing the conversations in your lives, which seems a lot more feasible and workable and controllable, right? Yeah, that's true. It seems strange that there's two people who could get the same treatment. One person feels really loved and fulfilled by that and the other person is like completely doesn't have absorbed that at all. I know. It could be self esteem, by the way. We talk a little bit about like if you don't have self love first of all is gonna leak out so the other person's g is gonna sense that

13:59 Yeah, you're not gonna really believe when you're saying I love you, I'm not really gonna believe it. And so one of the keys to feeling loved is to be known. So people who really don't show themselves to others if I'm not really Showing what matters to me to you? And I'm not showing you who I really am. I'm not really even if you say I love you

14:17 I'll be like he doesn't know me, how what is he loving? When he says I love you What part of me is he loving? Just this one little side that I'm showing, right? Sure. So that's one of the keys is to really show more of yourself. Tell me about this television appearance. You opened the book with this. It's a fun anecdote, I think. So oh yeah, I was asked a long time ago. Well, you know, I'm a happiness expert. I've been on lots of TV shows and I often get asked questions like what is the secret to happiness? Or like what are the top three I still remember? This is varied mass media soundbite nonsense. I still remember like the very last minute the producer runs in and they're like, the host wants to know. I think it was Jane Paulie. What are the top three secrets to happiness? I'm like oh, thirty eight seconds before you go live on television. And so it's I always hated that question, like what is the secret to happiness? And I start talking to Harry Reese, who's a eminent relationship scientist.

15:03 He said I don't know what the secret to happiness is, but I know the difference between people who are happy and unhappy. The difference is that happy people Feel loved. That's one like source of this whole book. the thirty seven years of research that I've been doing. So nineteen ninety eight.

15:21 So it's less than three. Which is what, twenty eight years ago. Bill Clinton was in the White House. This was a long time ago. my lab, my graduate students and I, we pioneered what we call happiness intervention. So we started doing These studies experiments to test what kind of practices make people happier. So interventions are like clinical trials, right? But instead of testing a vaccine, you know, or a medication or surgery, we're testing like gratitude.

15:44 Or kindness or you know, anything you can do to be happier. And after twenty eight years of these interventions, or maybe five years ago, so It hit us, it hit me. We have an epiphany, which is that Almost all of the interventions that work

15:57 To make us happier the reason they work. Is they make us feel more connected to and loved by others. So really feeling loved is the key. So when I write a gratitude letter to my mom. It makes me feel more loved by her when I do an act of kindness for my mom or for my colleague or for my best friend. It makes me feel more loved or connected to them. So that's really the key to happiness. Huh. Okay. This is

16:18 fascinating because now uh um recontextualizing all this behavior from my wife to my kids. Oh, okay, this is maybe why they're doing this and I guess It's probably more obvious when you come at it from that frame. Like of course there this is why we do this. It's all about connection. Yeah. And so now when we don't feel connected or loved. It almost feels like we're gonna die, right? Yeah. It feels awful it seems like we shouldn't have necessarily evolved that, right? Like why would you feel lonely if you're still socially connected? I know, I know. Yeah, that's a that's a really great question. Like why would you I mean I would say again

16:49 I guess you're not truly if you're feeling lonely. I mean unless there's a biological problem'cause I think there's some people who are depressed who just feel lonely and they're not really irrational. Yeah. But for let's say the rest of us Loneliness is a signal that there's something off. Like that you need to kind of re put more energy into reconnecting. Or maybe there's a relationship that sort of needs to repair and that's healthy, right? That's good. It's a signal. So think of it as a signal. Now, obviously if you're lonely all the time, that's not very adaptive. But momentary feelings of loneliness when people move to a new city or they start a new career, right? They might feel lonely at first. That's okay. You know, that means that they need to like work hard at connecting. I don't know if this is a guy thing or a me thing or something, but I remember when I was working like sixteen hour days alone in an office

17:30 My business partners were out like drinking and wasting their time and not helping. I didn't notice that I was lonely, but then my buddy was like, Hey, let's go eat sushi, which I hadn't I don't know, I probably hadn't gone out and done anything for literally years at this point. Just work. And it felt like years anyway. And I went out and I ate sushi. mediocre sushi in Santa Monica with this friend that I hadn't seen in a while. And I remember leaving and being like This was the best night. that I've ever had.

17:56 This person is basic and and I was like, Wait, real talk, this is not my best friend. I haven't known him since I was four years old or anything. Why does it feel that way? And I remember sitting down and going. Maybe I need to relax a little more than I am. I can stress enough. Feeling connected is the key to happiness.

18:12 Of course, working on your relationships really matters, right? That's why your relationship with your wife, your kids, your Best friend, your colleagues. really matter by the way our book is called How to Feel Loved. It's not only about romantic relationships, it's about all kinds of relationships. We even have a chapter, how does this apply to parent child relationships, to colleague, to boss employee relationships? Because feeling loved is important in all contexts. You know, and you can again love you can define very broadly. Sure. I was gonna say you're working at Amazon and your boss maybe doesn't love you per se. But if you ask people, they will say like their colleagues that they feel loved by or that they love. I wish we could.

18:43 bring the word love more into our daily life. I use it with my friends all the time. In fact, my kids get confused because I'll be on the phone I'll be like I love you so much. And they're like, Mom, who are you talking to? I'm like, Oh, I'm talking to my friend Who you've never met. Who's medium close to anything else. I would say medium close, but yeah I I Love is great, right? Let's bring love back. Guys have trouble with this. Course. I can count on one hand the number of guys who I see and they're like, I love you, man, I haven't seen you in so long. I mean there there's also that moment where it's like

19:09 Do I say it back now? I don't know. Do I have to say it back? I dare you this week to say I love you to a male friend. I did it yesterday. Oh I saw my friend who I've known since I was five. But that wasn't that hard. I've known him since I was five. I was talking to a male friend. Who says he has a friend who they've known each other forever, too. And My friend is always saying to the guy. I love you, but he never says it back. And he's like, look, I know he loves me, he just whatever reason, he just can't say it. That's okay.

19:33 'Cause you know they love you. Yeah. Very much a guy thing. That could be you. That could be you, yeah. I don't have a problem saying it, but I think most guys do. It's very vulnerable. I bet you half my friends barely even say it to their wife. They probably send a text. It's very vulnerable, but it's so important. This is I mean, this one way that you feel loved when the other person expresses it. And again, one of the keys to feeling loved is to be known. And part of being known is to be vulnerable, right? Because you have to show parts of yourself that are vulnerable. And if you're not willing to show that, You have to take that risk. You have to take that risk if you want to feel love. Just like with anything in life, if you want to

20:05 Have a great career, have children, ask out that beautiful woman. You have to take a risk. This is funny because I if we give the listener the homework to go say I love you to a friend. All of the women are gonna go. Okay. I've done that eight times this week and all the guys are gonna go Is this optional? I guess I'll call my mom. That's gonna be something like that. I'll be so happy if half your male listeners will say I love you to someone this week. They wouldn't have otherwise. And don't do it by email Don't you know what it's a good start? You know what? It's a start. So that counts. That's like a first step. Yes. Start with a text or email.

20:36 And then you can go on and when you feel comfortable with that. That's true. That you can say it all. We can give them the crutches, send it as a text. And then nervously stare at your phone where the dots come back and see what the person's gonna say. Tell us about Erica. She's got the sort of perfect life and still You can be surrounded by people.

20:54 and still feel lonely, right? And in fact that's the definition of loneliness. Or you can have people in your life who love you and you don't feel loved. And so we have lots of examples of people like that. And the book is really about like what to do, right? If you're in that situation. And and really what to do is you need to go first. It's actually a little bit counterintuitive. If you don't feel loved and I'm actually thinking of a family member in my life who I don't feel as loved as bias as I'd like to be.

21:17 What do I do? I need to go first and make them feel loved. And hopefully they'll reciprocate, right? And how do you make them feel loved? Again, the key to feeling love is to be known, but also to know the other person. I need to really get to know that person. So think about that person, whether it's a colleague or best friend or child or f parent. that you want to feel more loved by. You need to show interest in them, curiosity in them, ask them questions. So How do you make someone feel loved?

21:40 by really getting to know what matters to them. But it has to be genuine authentic, right? You can't fake it. Like you start by asking questions. Ask them, show genuine curiosity. in their story, in their inner life. You know how people are always telling you about the details of their day and they're going on and on and on. Actually I was just stuck in line behind a woman at the checkout and she's just like, Oh, this parking lot she's going on and on about something. She's talking to you? No, she's talking to the cashier. Oh, okay. I need to like buy my bagel and I have compassion for people like that. Yeah. But also clearly like she's lonely. Very, yeah. And the cashier's like being friendly, but you know, really needs to get on. And she's like, Oh, because this parking lot. But why is it that people feel the need to tell each other people like the details of their day?

22:21 Which are usually really boring. They really want to be seen and heard, right? And so if that person showed true interest in that woman's story, she would probably feel loved. And by the way, you can feel loved temporarily even by a stranger. I think about as drops of love. Imagine drops of water falling on you. Great, right?

22:39 Anyway, so If I want to feel more loved by a family member Mm the first thing I do is show curiosity in them and ask them questions and think about their h interests and hobbies and ask about those. Can you ask about the mundane details of their life like it? How was your walk this morning? I mean, does that count or do you go deeper than that right off the bat? I'm all for deep conversation. I think we don't have those enough. I'm done with small talk, but sometimes the small talk is a lubricant that you have to kinda start. It's like a social lubricant. Sure. You have to read the rube, you don't wanna go deep too fast too soon.

23:06 'Cause people's like walls will go right up. Yeah. But most people so there's actually a whole set of research studies on this that We think if we ask people deep personal questions they will think, Oh, you're prying, right? Or it's gonna be uncomfortable. But on average

23:20 People want to be asked, they want to be seen. I was an exchange student in German in the nineties and I have a host family there. The mother passed away But twenty plus whatever years ago, the f host father had left her for another woman. They came to my wedding and I was like, So What happened there? And he w told me.

23:39 And then I said, What is my host brother, what does he think? And he goes, Oh, we've never talked about this You and I just talked about this on the walk to the bar from the car. Ten times more than I've ever spoken to my son about this. Oh that Sounds like a problem.

23:55 You should probably Handle that. I think you just have to start. Start with a little bit. And in fact, even like my kids, I think I asked them like Do you ask your dad this question? They're like, Oh no, I don't want to ask him that. I'm like, actually you should ask him. I think he'll we want to be asked. Our kids almost never ask parents questions. In fact, the other device, the other kind of recommendation I have for your listeners is like

24:13 Call your mom or dad or caregiver and ask them questions. Be curious about their life,'cause that's pretty rare too. Apparently admiration and attention aren't the same thing as love, bad news for influencers and potentially devastating news for LinkedIn. We'll be right back. This episode is also sponsored in part by BetterHelp. You've heard me talk about BetterHelp for years now, but let's be honest, I'm also the guy reading the ad, so rather than taking my word for it, go see what the people who have actually used the service are saying, and of course I've used it too. But BetterHelp has a reviews page at betterhelp.com slash reviews where you can look through customer feedback for yourself.

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27:30 Thank you for your support. Now? Back to Sonia Lubomirsky. I started interviewing my parents on video just because They're in their mid eighties and it's probably one of my last chances. My mom was diagnosed with Alzheimer's, so

27:43 Now's the time before she doesn't want to or can't remember things or something like that. And I've got these little cards they're I can't remember what they're called. They sell them on Amazon. Conversation cards. It's something like that. Yeah, but I can't remember the brand or anything, but It probably doesn't even matter. There's a million varieties. And there's ones for children, there's ones for friends, there's ones for family, there's ones for parents. A lot of them are kinda crap cliche nonsense, but so those go toward the back.

28:05 But you'd be surprised, well, maybe not you, but many people would be surprised what you get out of your mom and dad. What's a piece of advice you'd wish you'd taken earlier, and you think, Oh, this is silly. And my dad will just come up with something when I was Seventeen. And you're just like, Oh, I've never heard this story. And my mom will be like I never heard that story either. And it's pretty incredible to get that

28:26 On video. Amazing. I'm so glad you're doing that. On Father's Day this year. The New York Times published this article saying something like questions to ask your dad. I have four kids. So I sent them to all of them. I hoping that they would ask and I think some of them actually did. Okay. And they were great questions. There were like Who were you before you became a dad? What is something you would have told your younger self about being a father.

28:47 Or like, I don't know, what was like the scariest thing about being a father or things like that. Yeah. It was all about fatherhood. Uh, my favorite actually conversation deck, and I don't get any money from them. It's called the and you know, like weird name. And so they have really good questions, but as you say, there's tons of them. Yeah. So the word the and then and, right? Yeah. And they also have for like strangers. And some of them are so good. My favorite question This is like the most advanced level question you can ask.

29:12 Especially if a romantic partner or a best friend is. Ask me something you're afraid to ask me. Oh yeah. I've gotten that card before and I put it right in the back because I'm afraid to ask that question. Yeah, it's a really hard one. Oof. I remember having being in a relationship, one of the questions we we talked about was like, What's the hardest thing about our relationship? Ooh things like that. What do you think I could have achieved or like a dream that I have not been about the other person, not about yourself. Anyway, so

29:40 If you're at a loss for words, use these conversation cards. It's called the and I'll say, Team, when you put this in the show notes, dump it in the Slack because I'm gonna forget to go and buy that that by the end of the show. So you guys remind me. Yeah. I'll grab that. I feel like you just can't get enough. And like you I have three or four decks. A bunch of the questions are probably the same, but I don't care because I don't know, nine dollars or something like that. And the gems you get out of your parents, wife, whatever kids are Priceless. The point about that is getting to know the other person, right? So that you people feel love. When you're genuinely interested in asking these questions, obviously you don't don't just

30:13 do it in a rote way, so you're not really interested. And you really want to hear the answer. And then but by the way, when they're telling the story and they're answering You wanna really listen. One of the mindsets we talk about in our in my book is called listening to learn. You really listening to learn something and Not trying to fix it. You're really paying attention, right? So that's really key. And it's even more key, I think, with people we've known for a long time. So the research shows that we stop being curious about the people we've known the longest. That totally tracks. Of course. Yeah. Well, I sleep with her every night. What am I I don't gonna ask a new question. I couldn't even think of a new question. But you know what? And in fact actually sex is actually a great space for that. We just assumed that everything we've been doing for years is they still like doing, right?

30:55 So it actually is worth asking. Um do you still like the you know, maybe we should try something new. I never like that actually. Exactly sorry if I lied to you on our fifth date and I never corrected the And that's really hard to say after many years. Twenty years later. What? Yeah, exactly. But it's very vulnerable, but you know it's worth talking about. But anyway, that's just one space. But the people we've known for l the longest we think we know everything about them, and yet we Course we don't.

31:20 In part because we're always changing, right? Every day, like You're having new Interviews and experiences and thoughts and dreams and wishes and self doubts and whatever, anxieties. Yeah. both good and bad things, those are all new every day. So there's always new things happening and hopefully you're evolving too. So we wanna keep being curious about the people even th that we've known the longest. Yeah, that's a good point, especially I think when kids come into the picture because for example, I'll go on a two week trip to Laos with a group of entrepreneurs or something like that.

31:50 But my wife stays back with the kids. So she's having two weeks of experiences being a mom with the kids. Maybe some of it's routine, maybe some of it's not. And I'm in another country with a bunch of new people climbing a mountain literally and I don't know to avoiding minefields or something like that. So then I come back and it How was your trip? Jeez, where do I even start? I it would take me three hours to explain the first two days. And then you just kind of go, Well, it was fun. You also you don't want to kind of like boast or sort of show It was great. I really enjoyed the break I took from you and the kids. How was waking up at four o'clock in the morning every night. And I remember like I've always worked, but there was a time where I would be home with the kids and my husband was a lawyer and he would come back and I felt like I had nothing to tell him.

32:31 And now thinking back on it, of course there's so many things. It's not just oh, I did this and I did that and then I changed the diaper. It was more like How are you feeling now about being a mother or like Are you kinda anxious about this thing, or like did you feel like this friendship of yours is improving or deteriorating. Yeah, I mean there's just so many things that we're thinking in our heads that we could be talking about with our spouse. It's true. I talk a lot with my wife, but some stuff that we don't often

32:54 Do the deep. Stuff I would say. Unless we're in the car,'cause we have one of those decks is in the car. And we pull those out and it's like actually the cars are good. That's the pro tip. No one's like, Oh, I have to go make dinner now or no one's getting a phone call. You're just in a car, one of you is driving and the other person is sitting there holding the card. Right. And when your kids get older, that's also the time to have deep conversations with them'cause they can't run away. Or like a obviously a walk, a hike.

33:18 I I totally agree. I mean, I remember having I wanted to talk to my two teenagers about porn. Oh God, how do you even start that council? I know, and I but I wanted to sort of tell'em it's really not that realistic. Yeah, I I kind of I don't know, I wanted to say a few things about it. And so I decided to do it in the car. It was a boy and a girl. I really wanted to talk to the boy more than the girl. Yeah, she he's probably slightly more interested in it. And it was a little awkward, and it was actually hilarious because they couldn't run away. It was very awkward. He didn't say anything. How old was he at the time? I think they were both eighteen, sixteen, seventy. So okay. Did they have smartphones and stuff by then? Was that what year? Like was this? Maybe they had phones, but not like smartphones. But anyway, so he had seen plenty of more by then. I'm sure he had. I'm sure he had. I'm sure he had. Oh man. But anyway it was really awkward. So he Really didn't say anything, but the girl was hilarious.

34:05 She saw how awkward it was. It was actually really sweet of her. She decided to make it easy for us. She started asking me a lot of questions. So she's asking me all these questions because it wasn't really about her. So she's like, Oh well, Mom, what do you think about this? Anyway, so the point of the story is Have those hard conversations in the car. I cannot imagine talking about porn with my mother. I just wanted to say a few things. I just want you to know women don't necessarily want what you're seeing. Mostly they're like, We know. Yeah, we can tell. It looks horrible. But you know what though? A lot of guys don't know that. I get letters from people like that or I talk to people online and I'm like, Oh God, the line between reality and fantasy for you is completely blurred.

34:44 And then I'm like, what is this person like in real life? Yeah. How do they function? Do they think action movies are real too? I mean, I'm so confused. What is happening right now. Hilarious, hilarious. And then you're thinking, Am I talking really to a thirty year old? Because this person is thirteen years old in my mentally. So yeah, so deep conversations are important. The key to feeling loved is to know and to be known. And to do that is to have real conversations, authentic, deep conversations about things that matter They don't have to be negative, it doesn't have to be your secrets or traumas.

35:14 It could just be about, hey, that TV show everyone else loves. I actually don't like it. I think it's really boring. Yeah. Yeah, and that's vulnerable also to admit sometimes. Yeah, just what really is on your mind. What really matters. On a first date I will sometimes ask that, what do you think about a lot? Like when you wake up in the morning or in the shower and driving in the middle of the night. What are your thoughts turn to And that's actually a good question to ask because it doesn't have to be like really vulnerable. You know, it could be like oh I think about my mom getting older. You know. But it could be like I actually get have anxiety, like I'll be anxious about little things at work or with kids. And so in the middle of the night I'll think I'll have these little anxious thoughts. So That's a little vulnerable, but it's also shows a little bit more of myself. Yeah, that's true. That's true. And then I suppose you could say, Is there anything I could do to help with those particular bits of anxiety? And you go, No, I just love worrying. It's my second favorite hobby. But it shows your true self. I I don't I just I'm just so bored with small talk. Again, it's not a good way of knowing and being known. No

36:05 If you're into uh whatever, world cup, you can spend hours talking about it. That's great. What I call kind of medium talk. It's like you're interested in the topic, great, you can really relate. But that's not how you really connect. Well, you can connect a little bit like that, but to really connect in a deep way where you're like, Oh that person, he likes Barcelona. I feel seen. He loves Spain. Yeah. Messy. Yeah, I I pick on guys a little bit when it these topic happen because I one I am one and I've seen how they connect and a lot of it is just

36:35 Especially in light of the fact that I had dinner with my childhood friend who I met when I was five last night, and he was like, Hey man Dump of all of these real It wasn't like hey, so what's cracking? It was like hey Both of my kids have special needs, not mine, but his and So that's been really tough and I've been working seventeen hour days. And he wasn't even just ranting. It was we just started real. It's like factual. Yeah. Yes, we started real because I've known him over forty years.

37:01 There's no pretense left, man. That stuff Expired in the eighties. Right. That's great. I remember my husband coming back from like having dinner with a fri a colleague. And they'd spent hours talking and I said to him, Oh, you know, I heard that he is getting a divorce. And my husband's like

37:16 Really? And I'm like This didn't come up. Yeah. This didn't come up in your three hour dinner. I know. I'm like what you didn't mention But I think that's a guy thing. So is Whatever. They talked about football. I don't know what they talked about. And also it's the other guy maybe didn't even hide it. He just didn't think to even discuss that because why would you? Anyway so deep Being known and knowing the other is really key. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, but his wife had a three hour dinner with her friend and they only talked about the divorce. That's all they talked about the whole time. With three minutes at the end to talk about the other person's kids because it's polite. Yeah, that's so

37:49 Gosh guys, we gotta get those cards. It's crazy how romantic partners are v both the people who can make us feel the most loved and the people with whom we feel the maybe the largest deficit in Love or connection. You have data on this, I assume, right, from your surveys and everything? Yeah, yeah, there's the forty percent in our survey said they wish they felt more loved by their romantic partner. But the romantic partner was also the person that they felt most loved by.

38:17 Oh, that's interesting. So it's you love me the most, but I still want a little bit more. Or it's a little bit different people who are saying I really feel loved by my partner and then another set is like I'm not feeling loved by my partner. But they're both a big group of people, maybe forty forty or something. Yeah. Oh, I see. Yeah. Okay. So it could be that too. Yeah. Do most people Feel loved or most people don't feel loved? What does the survey data say on this? Well again, I think most people feel loved, but seventy percent would like to feel more loved in at least one relationship in their life. That means that maybe many other relationships they're feeling loved enough. So that could be with their kid or their mom or their colleague or their boss or their romantic partner, forty percent. Wanna feel more loved by the romantic partner. Yeah, that doesn't mean they don't feel loved at all, just not enough. Huh.

39:00 I feel loved by all of the people that I care to be loved by generally. So I think you're in the thirty percent. Okay. My parents are great, my wife's great, my kids are great. Yeah. Got a some close friends. Everybody else, they're dead to me, I don't care. No um but I mean I don't care if like the barista I see in the morning loves me. That's not really high on my List. But the close relationships, yeah, I don't have anybody where I'm like, Oh gosh. I'm really on the rocks with this person. So maybe you're doing all the right things because the right things to do again are sharing, listening, showing curiosity showing warmth and acceptance of the other person. So By the way, when I've been on a podcast to talk about my book, How to Feel Love, some of them say, Like, so you basically wrote a book about podcasting. Because it's all about sharing, listening, curiosity, right? Okay. But you probably already are good at those things. Yes, but also you know what, I gotta give credit where credit is due.

39:47 My friends are really good at these things too. Like I mentioned, my friend was the one who started last night was like How are your kids doing? My kids both have special needs. My wife's losing her mind. I've been working seventeen hour day. I didn't say hey let's ditch the small talk. Let's do this And my producer, Gabriel, who's also I would say one of my best friends, definitely he'll just say like, Hey man, how are you? By the way, I've been meaning to ask you, how are you feeling about your mom being diagnosed with Alzheimer's? And that's like the f this is not a shortened version of the conversation. This is how the phone call starts. So they do that for me and I go, Okay, this is years ago I would go, Oh, okay, we're doing this. And now I'm just used to it.

40:23 So I have that and then I think that's probably rubbed off on me. With other relationships. That's awesome. And you know, if more of us do that. is gonna rub off on others, right? So we can clearly start a revolution. Yeah. It's contagious. Exactly. More and more people are gonna be Engaging in conversations that matter. I think it actually is contagious because if you have for example, to your point earlier, if your friend says I love you, man, we don't see each other enough

40:47 you go, Wow, that felt pretty good. Then you do it to your other friend. I'm getting emotional right now, even telling the story because you're like, I want to deliver that. That felt amazing. you know, he does the same thing, calls his sister and says the same thing. I feel like it really actually is quite contagious'cause the feeling is especially for guys who like me who are starved for that shit.

41:04 I feel like it's quenching a thirst that you didn't know you had. Amazing. Now there's a a friend and colleague whose name is Nick Epley and he has all this really cool research. I think he's been on my show. And he's a great guy. Love him. But he has this really beautiful research and almost all of it is like we underestimate how rewarding X is. And so one cool study is like reaching out to friends, old friends, or or you know, whatever, old new friends. And just like sending a text, Hey I'm thinking about you or how you doing? And we don't do it enough'cause we're like, Oh, I don't know, it's been a while, maybe they don't want to hear from me, they'll be a little awkward. But on average

41:38 People love to get those texts. Like, right? Wouldn't you want to get that text right now? I have a free course that I sometimes shill on the show. It's called Six Minute Networking. It it's free it's at sixminute networking dot com. And I think the first exercise is Every weekday. go to the bottom of your phone list because those are the threads that are like five years old,'cause it sorts by recent, usually. You skip the ex girlfriends or ex boyfriends, whatever, but then send a message that's like, Hey, I haven't talked to you in such a long time Jesus. Look the last message is from prepend. I have had two kids since then. Here's a photo of them.

42:11 Is this even still your phone number? And then you use your full name because if it's not saved, they're not gonna answer you, right? Because it's embarrassing. And you do it with four because two might be like dead number New phone who dis or I was your boss at a movie theater twenty years ago. I don't really care.

42:27 So then you get one or two responses and those people are universally thrilled to hear from you. Totally. Yeah. It's so funny. Even I know this. And I forget, I got a text. From a colleague, friend, old friend. Who I really hadn't talked to in years, and he said, I think about you more than you will know. Wow. By the way this isn't like a romantic thing to say. No, it's just in context, it's a nice thing. And I was like, Oh my God. And I just thought he never thought about me. And so I think we we underestimate how important that is. And that also applies to, by the way, to doing little acts of kindness for people, to giving compliments.

43:00 to expressing gratitude, right? I have a whole line of research on gratitude. It's good for the self, it's good for others, is good for connection, right? Just say like, I really appreciate that thing that you did for me. We just don't do that enough. One of the other elements of the exercise that I failed to mention is if something reminds you of someone Instead of just going, Oh, that reminds me of Tim, you go Oh, I need to text this person.

43:19 You can take a photo of the weird thing on the menu that Tim made once and made everybody barf. And you can send him a photo, Hey, this restaurant makes your favorite food. And suddenly everyone's laughing. About this. I love that. Because again, you think of someone else much more often than you ever Tell them. Yeah. Always. People will see me on a podcast, right? And like a lot of people will write like hey, I saw you, but most people don't. If I see someone mention a newspaper, I don't necessarily write to Hey, I saw you

43:45 But I think it's cool. I love it when they do. It's just like a little connection. Some of the craziest things have come out of this. I I don't know if you know Graham Wood, he's a journal. He writes for The Atlantic and things like that. He writes about, you know, ISIS or Iran. So he wrote a piece for the Atlantic. I happen to see it in social media pop up or something like that. And I was like, Grand Wood, I haven't talked to that guy in a really long time since he's been on the show. He had a book about ISIS. So I sent him a text and he's like Where are you, Jordan? I haven't talked to you in forever. I'm actually in China and I said, That's weird, I'm in China. He goes, Oh yeah, I'm in Yunnan actually with my kids. And I said, I'm in Yunnan right now with my kids. And I said, Where are you, Dali? He goes, Yeah. I go, Where w no, I'm I am too. I'm at a coffee shop, he said me too.

44:21 Yeah, he was thirty seconds walk from where I was in freaking China. And I texted him because I read his piece on Iran. Yeah, so those are such great connections. I guess we wanna do those just d again, encouragement to your listeners, like Just do it a little bit more often that you do. Like we were sometimes we're working, we don't have time to write that text, but people love hearing from you. Yeah. If you're really working that hard, throw it in your to do app. Yeah.'Cause it's just it is Such a light touch thing to do. Sending a text is ten seconds.

44:48 What people are afraid of is they're like, Oh, but then they're gonna wanna have lunch and I'm like, Don't flatter yourself. These people are all busy. Yeah. And if they do say, Oh, we should get together and do something and you don't have time You can say that. But people are just obsessed with the idea that and I think they're scared to reconnect because I don't know, again, it feels vulnerable or something. Like what is really the danger of all these people suddenly wanting to hang out with you? Like how cool are you really? But basically you're right. Either you think you'll be rejected, they don't want to hear from you, or the other way Oh, they're gonna wanna be like I have had that, by the way, worry myself.

45:19 But you're right, look, we're adults. We can always say Yes, things could be awkward. You can always just It's also texting. You can just pretend you didn't see it if they keep asking you to hang out, right? Um No, that's not the what mature people do. Why does another person and I'm making a an assumption here, so maybe this is incorrect, but why does another person understanding us? Why does that make the world feel physically less threatening? Yeah, again, we all wanna really feel seen and heard. And yet feeling safe versus feeling at risk, right? That's all like I mean the the important kind of things is to feel safe versus to feel at risk, to feel whole or like healthy as opposed to broken.

45:55 And to feel at home versus lost, right? I guess when we're like in our family, we have we have a great family life, our caregivers, we just feel so loved. and safe with them, right? And we feel like really unknown by them. And so I think that's that feeling that we're kind of searching for. in our relationships as adults. So When we find a romantic partner that really understands us and we feel really safe with them. I guess it kinda brings us back to that room feeling, you know?

46:20 I'm just speculating, I'm not a developmental psychologist. But yeah, feeling understood again The key to feeling loved is to really be known and know the other person and sort of feeling understood. Tell me about the spouse handholding experiment. I feel like that were they gonna zap somebody or sting somebody or poke somebody. Anyway, they were like oh hold your husband's hand and then it was like they were way less anxious about the pain stimulus. Yeah, exactly. And I actually had that experience where I had to get an amnio. What is that? When you're pregnant and they're testing to make sure the baby's okay. Like they put this like Oh, they test the fluid. Yeah, yeah. They put this giant needle or something into your could be painful. Yeah. It sounds really horrible and my stomach is clenching up. I got pregnant my when my daughter was like twelve. And my husband had this trial in D C and so he couldn't be there for the MNO. is I asked her to come with me.

47:06 And it was like magic. Like it really was painful because he couldn't find like the fetal cells are like floating around. Oh my God, my stomach is hurting in sympathy for you. It's not really that painful. It's a little painful. But because he couldn't really find the feel so he kept poking more and more But my daughter I just held her hand and she was twelve. And it's like I didn't feel the pain. How long is the needle?'Cause it's got to go through abdominal muscle and fat into the womb. It's a big thing. My God. But the thing is you're so excited to have the procedure because you really want to know and they also tell you the gender, so it's kind of exciting. I'm just imagining like a five inch long

47:41 Serenity. Anyway but the point is, yeah, like A loved one, you holding their hand, it liter literally reduces pain, eliminates pain. So it's like magic. The goal is not to trick somebody into loving you more by becoming their unpaid emotional support animal, which is really good news because those vests look ridiculous. We'll be right back. This episode is sponsored in part by Paca. Everyone needs that one hoodie, the one you throw on for a flight or a walk or a lazy day at home, pretty much anytime you want to be comfy. The problem is finding one that's cozy without feeling heavy or looking worn out after just a few washes. My favorite hands down is the Alpaca Fibre hoodie from Paca. Now it's the hoodie I always reach for, and I love it so much. I ordered a couple different colors.

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49:55 Progressive Casualty Insurance Company and Affiliates National average twelve month savings of nine hundred and forty six dollars. By new customers surveyed who saved with the progressive between June twenty twenty four and May twenty twenty five. Potential savings will vary. If you like this episode of the show, I invite you to do what smart and considerate listeners do, which is take a moment, support our sponsors, they make the show possible. All of the deals and discounts are searchable and clickable on the website at JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. If you can't remember the name of a sponsor, you can't find the code, email me, Jordan at JordanHarbinger.com. We're happy to dig those up for you. It is that important that you support those who support the show. Now back to Sonia Lubomirsky.

50:33 My son is super afraid of shots. He's not even afraid of the needle. He just gets anxiety around the shots. My daughter doesn't even seem to care. She's foreign super tough. But my son is he'll melt down before we get in the car to go to the doctor if he thinks he might get a shot. And you know, it gets worse as they get older'cause they are anticipating better the older they are. Anyway, yeah, so you hold his hand. I always had them on their m on my lap or whatever. One time he had to get a vaccine for something. And I asked him if it would make him feel better if I also got it and she's like I can't vaccinate you for Rubella, you're forty five years old. And I said How much for a fake vaccine? That's hilarious. I mean they do sham vaccines, right? They do study.

51:13 Vaccine. That's hilarious. Yeah, yeah. Well'cause we have done that like Covid vaccines, like we do it all together as a family. Yeah. It's interesting. It w it's almost like love or if the feeling of love helps us Share the load, share the burden. Totally share the pain, share the Yeah, yeah. Love is is incredible. That's why I'm like, but let's bring love back. Yeah. To every relationship. My colleague Barb Frederick, yeah, she's the one who has this theory of sort of drops of love. Yeah, I used to think it's like love is this grand thing. I think it's actually a Russian, like You can only fall in love once in your life. 'Cause more than that, that's not really love. And now I'm like, no, like as Barb says, there could be little drops of love. Like we could be talking and have like a little drop of love between us.

51:51 That's beautiful. You know, it doesn't last long, that's okay. And maybe with a colleague there's more drops or balloons. So great. Yeah, let's bring it back. Is it a Russian literature idea that it you can only fall in love once? Where does that come from? I don't know. It probably is part of the culture. I don't know. It could just be me. But I've always thought like my friends w I remember being young and my friends would be like every boyfriend they had They were like, Oh, I was in love with him.

52:13 And I was like, really? Was that like really true love? And I do think that they were defining love in a very loose way. It's more like crush or infatuation, they called love, you know. I still don't think I've been in love like that many times in my life. Like really, really true love. I mean, I guess my my criteria, I don't know if this is a Russian thing, is like how long does it take you to get over it, right? If you're over it like a month later. I don't think that was real love. That's a good point. It should take at least probably a year or more. That's grim. Well, that's for romantic love. I see. But still gosh. Yeah, yeah. The book has some examples of quiet moments of love. I would love to talk about these because I feel like these are pretty salient, especially for people who think love is, like you said, grandios or has to be a Big gesture. I mean my favorite example is again it could be your friend or or colleague or a partner. They get you something, they get you that cup of coffee or the croissant or the gum or whatever, the sweater, the blanket.

53:05 Before like you even knew that you needed it. My wife, she lives for this kind of stuff. I'm like, Oh, I made you some tea. Even if she doesn't even want it, it's cloud nine. And I need to do more of it, but it's not my and we'll talk about this soon, love language, so it's not at the top of my mind most of the time. I do encourage you to do it because I think again, as a mother of four I'm constantly like mothering others. And so I'll tell my kids, I'm like, I want someone to bring me my slippers. And sometimes they'll bring me my slippers. And my friends are great at that so I I love parties. I go to a lot of parties. Adults have parties? God, I have the wrong friends. Yeah, well, you have your kids are too small, so you have to just wait until they're older. Oh, you're going to kid parties. No no no. I meant like adult parties. I'm gonna meant you're like probably too busy. That's true. Yeah. I mean not getting invited to these things because you're like it's gonna be lame and leave it eight. There are great parties out there. Okay. Anyway, so we go to parties

53:52 And my friends will come they'll like bring me a a drink of water, they'll bring me a blanket, and they're like, Sonia, you you need a drink of water. What kind of parties are these where you get a blanket and water? They go on very late, right? So anyway, the idea is that they see me. I feel seen. they see that I need something that I maybe I didn't even know I needed until I got it. And so again, that's like feeling seen, feeling known is so important. It's really interesting how my wife reacts to Me making tea again, even if she doesn't really want it in the moment or isn't that thirsty. Or She'll be sitting on the couch and I'll bring a blanket. She's not cold.

54:28 It's just the gesture and this stuff means the world to her. I've been trying to program my brain to f fricking remember to do this and it's not easy. Let's talk about love languages, okay? The researchers have basically debunked the idea of love languages. That's what I think. Yeah. And we had we have a whole section of the book that's like a a summary of that. But I still love the idea of love languages. Okay, and I'll explain why. So you know, there's idea there's this sort What is it? Wars of affirmation, physical touch. Acts of service gifts.

54:55 And Quality time. So this is w the debunking part. One is of course a lot more than five. There's like so many more ways that you can connect you can connect through your spirituality or actually giving each other space or whatever. There's a million ways to connect.

55:10 So it's not really five. And the biggest thing is there's this idea that you have to match in your love languages. And if you don't match, the relationship doesn't last. And that's false, right? So the fact that you guys aren't matching Doesn't matter. It turns out

55:22 that there's two love languages that we all actually want. To some extent. And those are wars of information and quality time. We all kinda want that. Great. And it turns out that the more love languages that you express your love in, the better. Oh yeah. So it's not like has to be the one matching one. Having said that, there's some truth to it. Again, I think it's a good heuristic.

55:43 I talk about love languages all the time. Yeah, I was dating someone who kept sending me things in the mail. Okay. This is a long time ago, I assume. No, not a long time ago. Oh okay. Yeah, I'm single. Oh okay. Sending me things in the mail. And it was cute. It was like little books with like little handwritten notes. Actually that's kind of romantic, I'm not gonna lie. Guy's got some swag. It is, and yet it's not really my love language, right? So what I really wanted him, I think, is more you to do words of affirmation to actually say things. What was in the notes? Well, the notes were like cute little funny things. They weren't like I love you. They were more like they were cute, right. Yeah.

56:16 And they really were coming in the mail, which is rare, right? Yes. That's why I thought it was nineteen ninety seven when you're talking about. Oh, that's why you said Yeah. And I realized his love language is gifts and mine is words of affirmation, or or sort of other things. It's a good heuristic to kind of realize that. Oh, he's expressing love in this different way. Poor guy spent a hundred dollars on postage, he's still single. Yeah. Anyway, so I do think they're a good heuristic. But they don't predict relationship duration, right? So basically again, the key is quality time and words of affirmation are good for everyone. Everyone wants those. And the more love languages you use, the better. So that's sort of the bottom line.

56:52 That's interesting. I'm glad to hear that because For a long time everybody was like, Oh, these five love line Oh no, this is all researched and it's all facts and I kinda Except it that But then as I started realizing that science was more important than trendy self help, I started researching the sources

57:09 And it's like oh just kidding, this is religious sort of Based in religion, not scientific. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Okay, but having said that, if you recognize your wife loves you to make tea for her or whatever, bring her your slippers. Great. I find that useful, but I'm glad that the whole hey, if you don't match your relationship's not doomed is not. Obviously it's not. I don't know. Maybe I'm just waiting out the clock, making that T, delaying the inevitable. I don't know. That's Some people certainly think that. I mean I've seen do you know Doctor Max Butterfield? He's on social media. He's the guy who goes, Max Butterfield, Doctor Max Butterfield.

57:42 And he debunks. the trendy social media relationship advice. There's people out there that believe that your soulmate exists, first of all, but not a thing, and that you m have to look similar to them or it's not gonna work out. There's all kinds of you think five languages is junk science. You haven't seen nothing yet. There's a lot of people will accept as gospel absolute nonsense. 'Cause my kids watch TikTok, hopefully not too much. Yeah. But they will tell me stuff. I'm like, Oh my God And some of it is interesting and some of it is actually factual things that they're just learning about the world. Of course. They're like, Do you know about this rare disease? And it's true, like it exists. But I'm like, do you really need to spend hours like going this rabbit hole of this rare disease? My kid and I watch he's six we watch YouTube videos at night, those shorts. Yeah. And there's this series that pops up in my explore tab constantly. It's called Scientifically Interesting Ways to Die. And it's like a Soviet guy who got blast in the face by a gamma ray laser whatever.

58:35 And like his brain cooked and I'm I know my son's like, Wait a minute, I wanna know more. It's so funny,'cause my daughter who's thirteen now, but she was from a young age, she was always asking me, She's like, Mom, would you rather die drowning in blah blah blah. Or and she was always and she still asked me questions like Would you rather die X or Y way? I'm like Why are they obsessed with this anyway? But your kids are watching TikTok and they're learning facts. And they're learning facts about weird things. But probably also things that are wrong. So but we do talk about them. Yeah, I wonder, do they come to you and say, Is this science or is this nonsense? Yeah, yeah. I mean they'll say like, Oh, I read this. Actually it's my two oldest daughters They do a lot of reading, like actual stuff. So they we will out actually argue because I'll be like, No, no, there's research behind this and and they're like No, there there isn't. Like that's total bullshit. So they actually are More skeptical than even I am. Good for them. I was actually reading about acupuncture. There's actually quite a bit I think, I believe like this quite a bit of research that supports that

59:26 Acupuncture works for certainly I didn't know that. I thought it was all placebo. Well, there's new research about this layer of the skin that's beneath the skin, that what is it called? The ethyl I don't know how to pronounce it. Yeah, that's one of those. We'll look that up. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But anyway, my daughter my oldest daughter's like, No, that's not valid. I don't know. I'm not gonna sell that question, that's not my expertise, but the point is like my kids are actually more skeptical now than I am. That's good, because we need more of that. I'd rather have people be too skeptical than not skeptic enough. In the book you suggest that things like hate crimes, school shootings, even other forms of violence may share a root in people not feeling loved enough. I assume people who are critical of your work go, Well, that's an enormous causal leap. What are you doing with this? It is an enormous causal leap, yeah, yeah. There's not like actual like experiments showing that, but we're speculating that some of the Polarization in our society, sort of violence, hatred. phenomena like incels. Yeah. People who belong to gangs. Like I would speculate if those people individuals felt more loved, their lives might be different. I actually went to a dinner where there was an expert on terrorism.

1:00:26 And how people get recruited into terrorist activities. That would be interesting. These are all like guys who don't have families and aren't close to their families. And I'm like, Yeah, if they had like a someone who really loved them, you're not blowing yourself up and yeah, less likely they're gonna join a terrorist organization, right? So that's kind of almost obvious. But it would it is speculation. It's all kind of like Anecdotal evidence. I don't have research. Oh man, it would be really interesting to go talk to a bunch of gang members or former gang members in a prison or even not and find out the answer to this question. Yeah, feeling loved is really key. And actually I'm thinking about also research on mentoring, which is basically A mentor really makes you feel understood and loved in a way. Um, there's research that shows that kids who grow up in poverty And let's say they're, you know, at least we know intelligent kids. If they have at least one adult in their life that pays attention to them.

1:01:14 their outcomes are like completely different. They're doing really well. You just one person Big Brother, big sister, scientific evidence. Yeah, it could be that, it could be the priest, it could be the one teacher. Wow. You know, my husband went to this horrible school, but this one teacher recognized how smart he was became a lawyer. Yeah. Wow. Yeah, he came kind of from a you know working class Yeah, this one teacher recognized how smart he was. Everyone else was like, Oh, didn't even notice, right? And like started giving him all these books to read. They're all kind of more advanced. And yeah, it just sort of takes one person to kinda see you. Oh, you should talk about this all the time. I have a friend. Who was in the special needs classes actually was like highly intelligent.

1:01:49 Miscategorized and there's one teacher who recognized Actually you're brilliant. You shouldn't be in those classes, you should be in the advanced classes. Anyway. But it's really about feeling seen. understood, known, and loved, I'm gonna use the word love, you know, that mentor

1:02:03 makes you feel loved, makes you feel seen. That is super interesting. I had several teachers like that because I had a bit of a rough start. I I guess probably the combo of being a boy, being a little bit AD D, and having a lot of trouble paying attention. Yeah. a lot of my teachers were like, Y need' remedial this, that and the other thing and my mom was like But he can read at a sixth grade level and he's in second grade. And they're like, You just think that because you're a teacher. And my mom was like, I'm a s special ed teacher

1:02:31 My son is not in and they were like And then one teacher was like Wait a minute. What's going on here? You don't belong in this class. So she plucked me from remedial math and put me into a gifted and talented program. Where I was building cities and stuff. And that kind of changed the way that I viewed myself in fourth grade. Obviously, more than one person is better. But again, feeling known. If people see you and know you, understand you, again, it all comes down we are sort of the same theme, right, is running through this.

1:03:00 be that person for someone else because you think like, Oh yeah, my cousin's having a little bit of trouble and Blah blah blah. But yeah, he's smart. He'll figure it out. It's like you might want to tell him some of that stuff, actually. Yeah, that hadn't occurred to me until now. What are people usually chasing? They say they want love, but then they get ten plastic surgeries. They try to get rich and or pose rich on Instagram. They want to be famous. They're seeking status, achievement. What are they Well again, like most of us when we don't feel love, we think, Oh, we need to make ourselves more lovable somehow. And how do we do the money, status, fame, beauty, power, right? I have a whole book called The Myths of Happiness, which is about this, how like

1:03:37 Chasing those things don't actually make us happy. Happier. For lots of reasons, including we just get used to the new level of whatever we get and we just want more. I yeah, see that. That makes sense, right? You're never famous if I feel like one of the most miserable places to be would be the person who's almost the famous You're almost George Clooney.

1:03:55 But not quite. And you probably won't ever be that person is miserable, right? Because they have almost what they think they want. There's actually this great anecdote where like there's two billionaires talking in there, one guy is sort of showing off about all the stuff he has, maybe like his private jet is even nicer. That he has this and he has that that the other guy doesn't have. And the other guy says. You know, actually I have something that you don't have. Yeah, enough. Enough. That is an anecdote. This is one of those apocryphal story. But anyway, yeah, so we chase those things. Again, money those are called extrinsic goals in psychology. money, power, fame, beauty, popularity. And those aren't necessarily inherently bad, right? Yeah, so we chase those things we think they'll make us happier and more love. But really again, feeling loved comes from

1:04:36 being known and knowing the other. It's really that more obviously, by the way, it's not a bad thing to have some money and some authority and not be unattractive and all of that. Working on those things isn't a bad thing. But chasing those things doesn't make you happier. Yeah. This is slightly unrelated, but I was doing a show about yachts and boats and rich people who have them, right? And the amount of crazy psychopathic battling that goes into which slip you get at the marina is

1:05:05 Absolutely unhinged. And it's kind of funny for those of us that are never gonna buy a hundred million dollar yacht. These people will go absolutely ape shit about which slip they get,'cause it's all status game. Do you have to walk further to your boat? And then when you do, you're walking past Mark Cuban's boat and Jeff Bezos' boat and they're all bigger.

1:05:23 It burns inside. you become really irritated or angry or sad or upset, you know, about really small things. Yes. I might get really upset when my flight is delayed by four hours. But the really super rich successful person might be upset if their private jet is delayed by twenty minutes, right? But it's still the same level of negative emotion, right? Yeah. I will say Flying on a jet is probably one of the first moves I would make if I had the money to do it. T SA is just grinding me down to a network. Why does admiration feel intoxicating but doesn't actually make us feel known at all? Because mostly what we're trying to do when we meet each other

1:05:59 We wanna impress each other, right? Like I want you to think that I'm smart and funny and interesting. Yeah. So far, so good, by the way. You too. Um and so I might succeed in getting you to admire me and I might succeed in impressing you, but it's not gonna forge a connection. And again, there's nothing necessarily wrong with trying to impress someone unless you overdo it. Cause if I'm trying to impress you. I'm focusing on myself and not on you. Oh, that's a good point. I'm focusing on how I'm coming across As opposed to really focusing on you and being really present. And remember

1:06:27 We talk about five mindsets in our book, and you know, that sort of curiosity radical curiosity and listening to learn are like two major ones. I'm not really listening or curious about you'cause I'm focusing on myself on how I'm coming across, right? And so I'm not gonna really make you feel loved and connected. Yeah, I'm not truly present with you. There's an anecdote another anecdote that I'm gonna get the people wrong, but it was like Benjamin Disraeli and some actress You know this one? So Gladstone and Israeli were running for office at the same time, right?

1:06:52 one person makes you feel like they're the most interesting person in the world or they make you feel interesting. And that's exactly that's what radical curiosity and listening to learn mindsets are about I'm so interested in in your story. But asking questions is really important. So I'm not just making eye contact and nodding. I mean that's fine. That's not enough. I almost feel get weirded out sometimes when people are too They're doing the mirroring thing because they read it. Or the guy the hostage negotiator, right? Chris Voss. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, yeah, fine. You can you know it's good to make eye contact, all that. But when you ask questions. Then you know the person is really with you, right? Especially when they're asking a question that's like really guess what you just said, maybe takes it in a new level.

1:07:28 And so that makes you feel like, wow, she's really interested in what I have to say. I've told this story on the show before, so I'll try to keep it short, but when I lived in New York, I had a cab driver and I was with a bunch of friends and I sat on the front, so I was talking with the cab driver and he was kind of in a bad mood. And he had come from, I think, Somalia or Ethiopia, I can't remember, and He was like kind of annoyed'cause he'd probably been working like seventeen hours a day. And I wanted to go in the opposite direction. He really didn't want to take me, but we was already in the car and there was four of us. He was like fine. And I started asking him, you know, when did you come to the United States? And he told me and then I said, Man

1:07:59 Imagine this, in twenty years your kids are gonna be successful. They're gonna have gone to college and stuff like that. And they're gonna be telling all their friends, like, Yeah, my dad was a cab driver in New York and he paid for all this. We otherwise I would live in a war zone. Somalia and he Was so Fricking happy.

1:08:16 When he dropped me off, he was like This is amazing. Like you're such a good guy. And the next day I was walking down the street with my girlfriend. in Manhattan and a cab cuts through four lanes of traffic or whatever it was on Broadway and the guy goes Jordan and I was like it's the guy. He saw me on the side of the road and he was so

1:08:35 This man had never been happier to see anybody in his no no one has ever been that happy to see me. Except for my own children and this cab driver. I remembered that because I was like wow, this guy needed just a little bit of real human connection. And really being seen and being asked questions like tell me about your life, like how often does that happen? Actually I have a similar story. I don't I'm not I don't wanna upstage you. Yeah, yeah, I had a r uber, like really early flight. And I usually actually am not chatty with drivers, but this time I I was And so the guy also was from Somalia, that's why it made me think about it.

1:09:05 And so I was asking him, so he was from some he was adopted, and actually adopted by kind of like a well off family in Berkeley. So he actually does well, but He had discovered like two years ago. His biological family in Somalia. And we connected with them and he has I don't know eighteen brothers and sisters or something. They're all very poor, right, living in Somali. So he told me every Friday He drives an Uber and all the earnings that he makes.

1:09:29 he sends to the biological family. That's pretty cool. Isn't that incredible? Yeah. When the guy was like, I don't know, thirty And so when I got out, I just said to him I just have to tell you'cause it was a little awkward, but I was like I'm just gonna say this. If I were your mom, I would be so proud of you that you're doing this. So I just said something like that. And it was just very moving for both of us. And so this is sort of Nick Epley's thing. Talk to your driver, talk to your barista. Which I don't usually do. I'm just kinda busy and I just wanna go.

1:09:54 But it can impact someone's life. What meaningful work that must be. Right,'cause an Uber driver, I feel like a lot of these guys are rightfully not very inspired by what they do for a living, this guy must just think I'm on a mission right now. Every five dollar Ride I take or two dollar tip.

1:10:11 That's lunch in Somalia for this whole family, potentially. It's way more worth it. Plus he has a regular job, so he's not killing himself doing the Uber. Right, exactly. Yeah. Wow, that's really something. There's a woman in the book searching for the four sixes, which I thought was funny. What was this? It was six figure income, six pack abs, six feet tall, six inch, you know what. Exactly. So this is actually a friend of my co-author, Harry. Oh, so you know this person? He knows her. I don't know her. She admitted she wants a guy with six figures, six back, six feet tall, and a six inch penis. Yeah, she's looking for the four six. She hasn't found it but hilariously. one of my friends came up to me and they were like, Oh I see that you mention our friend and I'll just call them Suzy. Sure. I see you mention our friend Susie in the book and I'm like, What do you mean?'Cause Suzy is not in the book and he's like, Well, you know, the four sixes

1:10:57 It actually is hilarious because that is not about Susie, but this friend clearly thought Susie's the kind of person to be looking for the four sixes anyway is hilarious. If your dating checklist requires six figures, six pack abs, six feet and six inches, congratulations, you have built a CAPTCHA for loneliness. We'll be right back. Don't forget about our newsletter Wee BitWiser. It is specific, actionable, practical, and have an immediate impact on your decisions in psychology or your relationships. You never know what you're gonna get. It's a two minute read almost every Wednesday, and if you haven't signed up yet, I invite you to come check it out. It is a great companion to the show. JordanHarbinger.com slash news is where you can find it. Now for the rest of my conversation with Sonja Lubomirsky.

1:11:42 She's still single, surprise, surprise. Which is funny because actually Is that really that rare? I don't know. Ma the abs maybe in the United States are a tough that's a tough one. Well actually if you go on dating abs A lot of men I just delete them, but They just show their abs, just their chest and nothing else. I'm like That's weird. I don't even see their face. I'm like anyway, so you can get that, but if you put your abs in in your chest on the dating app. Maybe you don't want to show your face because it's embarrassing. Again, I just delete anyone who doesn't show their face. Guys are so weird with this stuff, but I guess there's women looking for the four sixes, so what are you gonna do? Exactly. How do you signal that on the app?

1:12:17 You just have to put the four sixes in the app. And people know what that means. I had been on off of dating apps for a long time. I finally got on like a week ago. So it's actually been kind of hilarious, but also like gross. There are definitely men who will talk about yeah, at least they will put on the app. I'll let you guess which ones. Yeah. But anyway, anyways. That's so funny. These people are trying to optimize, right? They're saying I will be happy or satisfied when I have somebody as the four sixes, but are those the channels that make people happy? Of course not. Yeah. Well again, getting back to Love and feeling loved is about being known and knowing the other and

1:12:51 having conversations that are deep and sharing and listening and accepting people That's really the key. It's not about the four sixes, you know. By the way It doesn't hurt to have the four sixes, right? So again, I'm not saying that success, status, money, power, fame, beauty, like People who have those things actually are a little happier than people who don't. Wow, do those setups, guys. Stretch that penis. Hilariously. But again, we talk about these five mindsets, right? So it's like

1:13:15 You first show curiosity in the other person, radical curiosity. Then they start telling their story, right? Then you listen to learn, right? Instead of listen to respond, right? Usually when we're listening, we're like rehearsing our response, right? We all do this. So you're listening. And then you share, right? The idea is that you reciprocate, you ask me questions and I'm sharing. And then the other two mindsets are called open heart, which is basically showing kindness, believing in the other person.

1:13:38 Being warm. I mean that's kind of almost obvious. Most of relationships have that. I actually struggle with that. I don't know, it's not my nature. To be warm, really. Oh, I think you're warm or warm enough. I gotta tell my friends and family Yeah. That's funny. I mean there are people who have a coolness to them. I think you're more like warm with an edge. Yeah. I gotta have that for the show. I can't just be all fluffy. Yeah, exactly, exactly. So open heart, but most relationships have the open heart.

1:14:01 They just may not have the other things. A lot of people will say like You know, yeah, I love my girlfriend, but she's not curious about me. Or we're not really sharing. And then the last one we call multiplicity mindset, which is understanding that we humans are so complicated and messy and we have both positive and negative qualities and I'm kind, but I'm sometimes I'm selfish, you know, and I'm loyal, but sometimes I'm narcissistic, right? We all have those qualities or traits and behaviors. We don't want to judge a person just by one bad action. And that sort of acceptance, forgiveness.

1:14:30 And so yeah, we need all kind of all of these five mindsets and we actually created a quiz. So if you want to find out we can link to it in the show notes, yeah. It's in howtofeel love.com, which is the but yeah, that would be great if you could link to the quiz because People really like the quiz. You think about a relationship in your life and then it's just a five minute quiz. And then it tells you like which mindset you're sort of best at and which is sort of in need of improvement. And then there's lots of tips about how to improve it. How to improve it. Yeah. So if listening is your

1:14:55 Achilles heel or like Warmth and compassion. People will always write in and go, Oh, you guys are so compassionate on the show'cause I do this Friday. advice segment with my producer, Gabriel. I'm not the warm one though, he really is, and it sort of makes me do it. People are like, you guys do such a great job validating people's feelings. And I'm like, I would never do that in real life. It's all I've got. I have to challenge you on this, and I'm not just flattering because I'm actually very like honest. I've been called a bitch, you know, because I'll like give people like feedback. I do think you have warmth. You're just kind of how do I say it? Yeah, warmth because you have some positive energy, right? I think people who have

1:15:30 No positive energy. Then it's hard to have warmth. So you have positive energy, a little warmth with a little edge. Good. Hey, I like that. It could be the caffeine, but I'll take it. Yeah, that's great. I wonder if you think I mean you use dating apps. Are they training us to filter for dating market value as opposed to

1:15:48 They can't really ask if we can build mutual understanding. So it seems like they're filtering for the wrong people. I know. It's so hard. I don't know. Lots of people have written about dating apps. I mean Well, many of our friends, right, have found friends and partners on dating apps. Actually, my best friend in LA, I actually met on a dating app. We realized we weren't attracted to each other, but we became best friends. So amazing, right? So They're good people on them and so I don't know, I think you just have to keep trying and keep eating people. But you're right. What do you see on them? You see pictures, mostly people are filtering by photo. Sure. Just by attractiveness. Although sometimes it's a little bit more than that. There's like a little uh signal, right? This is like kinda the type of person that you tend to get along with. I don't know. So it's like a goofy person and then there's a dog in the next photo and you're like oh like Yeah, there's like little signals in the photos, right? So it's not just being shallow or racist or whatever.

1:16:32 But people will write things and sometimes that they're a little revealing about themselves in the whatever app it is, you know, whatever the profile says. So It's really hard. It's really hard. One of my friends, Arthur Brooks, you may know him. Yeah. He's brilliant. Actually, he has lots of great wisdom and advice. But I remember talking to him and you was saying how the problem with dating apps is that we're women are kind of looking for They're twin. Like you kind of want someone who shares sort of your values and interests. And then you date them and then you're not attracted to them. You're like, I wonder why I'm not attracted to them because they're your twins. Yeah. You know, that's not attractive, right? There's this theory of love that you need. closeness, but you also need differentiation, right? So

1:17:06 Closeness is great. There's no such thing as too much closeness or connection, but you need some differentiation, sort of some edge, right? That makes sense. You don't want to be dating your brother, right? You want to date the genetic pool needs to have variance in the What do you make of these people who are spend forty five minutes trying to take a selfie in the pool in Las Vegas or at the airport? Yeah, I'm compassionate, right? Because our society is sort of set up that Beauty matters, right? It really does. It really does. You're gonna get more attention f not not just on social media, but walking through the airport, right? People are gonna look at you and hit on you. But I I feel a little sad, right, that people are are doing this. And also because

1:17:41 I'm comparing myself to the person's best selfie. Sure. Lighting is perfect. And that's always been true, you know, for like when we see billboards with models, right? They could get all these touch ups and that they don't really look like that. Yeah, they airbrush the mole off their stomach or whatever it is. And now, of course, with AI it's even worse, right? But even back then, right, what was it? Was it dove that had Yeah Positivity. Yeah, but it showed kind of like you take a model who actually when you look at That dropped dead gorgeous. And then you put all this makeup and she looks completely different.

1:18:11 So it's nice to remember that'cause we're comparing ourselves to that drop dead gorgeous cover girl. That's a good point. Can you walk us through the relationships you saw? Exercise. I thought that was quite interesting and useful. So we have this idea that we're kinda you and I, so Jordan and I, we're kinda sitting on a relationship seesaw. And the idea is that we're mostly not really showing our full selves to each other. So we call it a seesaw spelled with S E A, like we're in the sea. Yes. We're in the water. Clever. So we're in the water because we're kinda like Immersed in water, I'm only showing kind of the tip of myself to you. You're showing the tip of yourself. To me, that's just how it is. With most of us in our in our lives.

1:18:44 So how do we get to know each other better? Like how do I get known or be known or know you? First, I show curiosity in you. And by showing curiosity that's really genuine, it's like I'm pressing on the seesaw for my end. And it helps lift you out of the water, right? Because you're inspired and moved and You feel safe and trusting.

1:19:02 Just be a little bit more vulnerable and show a little bit more of yourself. And then I'm really truly listening to you, listening to learn instead of listening to respond. You lift yourself up a little bit more out of the water, right? Now I kind of see you more And then what do you do? You reciprocate. by kind of pressing on your end of the seesaw and then you lift me out of the water and then I share more about myself. And it's kind of this reciprocal process.

1:19:22 And then we add warmth and acceptance to it, and that those are the open heart and multiplicity mindset. So yeah. It's kinda this reciprocal dynamic process. I like this. I think it's a good analogy. It makes things easy to remember. You describe MDMA, so ecstasy the drug, essentially three four methane dioxymethamphetamine known as ecstasy or moly. We I do research on this. Research. Yes, research, yeah. Yeah, how's that going? Research is going great. How do you research that? Do you get pharmaceutical grade MDMA? Well I don't No wonder you have such great parties. I have a collaborator who gets the pharmaceutical grade Now I get the blanket and water thing way more clear now. That's hilarious. Yeah, in the lab. Yeah, we don't have access to that. Okay. We would get into m much, much trouble if we did. But yeah. So we actually have or my collaborator has done these studies giving people MDMA. Why do we study M DMA?'Cause it makes me people feel truly loved. And really connected and understood and seen and grateful and positive, right? So

1:20:16 incredible thing'cause it's hard to induce that feeling of truly feeling loved and understood in the lab. Yeah. But with MDMA you can do it in, you know, in half an hour, forty five minutes. So is the chemically induced love? Is that basically the same thing? It's so funny I have a whole paper on MD May if anyone's interested, you can sort of it up. Yeah. But my website is just Sonya Lemirsky dot com, which has all my papers. Good luck spelling it. We'll link it in the show notes. Yeah, sure, sure. But the book is how to feel love.com, but it has everything there too. But anyway. So If you take M D May people report

1:20:46 actually feeling more like themselves on MDMA. Okay, like when people get drunk. And let's say you get drunk and you're more social, but then next morning you don't necessarily think, Oh my god, I'm so glad I got drunk and I was more social. That's never happened. I mean some people do, like whatever, it reduces inhibitions, but yeah, usually you don't feel great. But MGMA people will report actually Because what happens is it takes down the walls or expands the walls around you. So We all have walls around us. That's totally normally they protect ourselves, but MDMA sort of helps reduce again, lower them or expand them.

1:21:18 And so I can be more myself. Also people are very curious on MDA, so all of the mindsets basically. are like dialed up on MGMA. And so that's why we study it. And so we've shown in our studies if you give people MGMA versus a control substance, placebo. And then you uh get them to have a conversation with each other. Ask them each other questions using conversation cards. Yeah. They'll feel closer and more trusting and It must be such a bummer to get the placebo when you're in an MDMA study. We did another study where the comparison was meth. If you can do that. Oh my God. So here's the thing. Wow. I don't want to like promote meth to the public, but generally. But it turns out people really can't tell the difference between meth and MDMA.

1:21:56 Kind of interesting right. MDMA is considered this like heart opening. Yeah, you do it in plant medicine. You go to the rave, maybe. By the way, it's not a plant. It's made in the lab, but whatever. It's heart opening. Yeah. Whereas the mouth is considered this like ghetto awful drug. Inject it when you're in an alley or something. Or not inject it but you don't inject it, then I think that's heroin, but But I'm not promoting meth because it's much more addictive. Okay. It's neurotoxic, cardiotoxic. So yeah, I'm not promoting it, but it turns out like when we did the studies comparing meth and MDMA. The results were almost identical. The meth also made me people feel like very connected, very loved. I don't think you need even say in our promoting meth. No one's like, Oh man, I've been so tempting to tell you when we got those results. I said to my collaborator, I said, I think we should call our paper. You know, we like wrote the paper about it. We should call it Breaking Good. Oh, I see what you did there. That's great, actually. She looked at me like I was insane. And she's like, No, we're not calling our paper that. That's too bad. That is a great title and I think easy to remember versus what is the paper called now? Who knows, right? The effects of whatever I don't know. Three four methylene dioxide.

1:22:56 Sorry. Yeah. Oh man. One anecdotal claim, well, many people will claim, like you said, plant medicine, it can condense years of psychotherapy into an afternoon. Totally. It's true. It's true. Really? I'm watching this show with my daughter about the nineteen twenties Germany and they're using hypnosis to get someone who has war trauma, whatever it used to be called. Shell shock. Shell shock. Yeah. And getting back to that horrible combat experience. And I said to her, You can just use MDMA for that, or you can use Ibucaine. I mean there's actually there's psychedelic drugs that actually that really work, you know, for many people. Or Ibogaine. I can't remember which one it is. It might be Ibogan. It's incredible. Again, not there's more clinical trials that need to be done but the study the research so far.

1:23:43 shows that it could be incredibly to kinda get lower the walls. And they deal with MDMA. I don't know much about as much about IBO game, but they deal with MDMA. is that it reduces fear. And so you can go back into that room, the field, the combat field, or if you're raped, they have rape victims take them. into that room where you're raped and you can process'cause you really need to go back And kind of integrate and process that experience. That would be really scary.

1:24:10 In fact, Rick Doblin, who does these studies has this talk where he says the combat veterans say and they call this ecstasy Because it's not fun. to do that kind of work on ecstasy, right? Like if you don't have trauma and you take it, it's great. You're just still. Get your blanket. Yeah. In the water, right? That's right. Wow, that's that man, this is very interesting stuff. I that's a whole separate show.

1:24:33 For the person listening who feels loved in theory but not in practice, what would you say as a conversation they should initiate tonight or this week? How do they start that? Show genuine curiosity make them feel loved first. Show genuine curiosity, listen, and hopefully they will reciprocate. Now Once in a while, or maybe more than once in a while, you do everything right. You show curiosity, you you listen, you share. And you know what, the other person just doesn't reciprocate. And I get asked that question, like what if they don't? What if you still don't feel loved by them. You're what it with banging your head against the wall. And what I say and you know I'm not a therapist, I'll just I'm like very blunt, you know, therapists will never actually tell you what they really think.

1:25:11 I'll say maybe you should walk away from that relationship. Maybe you should give up, maybe you should pause it. If it's a family member, you can't really walk away. maybe kind of accept that you're not gonna feel as loved as you want to feel by that relationship because that's sometimes gonna happen, you know. Yikes. Okay. What's one truth about feeling love that science has forced you to accept but most people maybe still don't want to hear. Yeah. I guess yeah, this I the idea that vulnerability It's called the vulnerability paradox. Like we think that being vulnerable or revealing a revealing a weakness

1:25:39 'Cause we all want to hide our shortcomings and weaknesses, right? Revealing weakness. Actually makes people like you more rather than less. When is done at the right time, place and setting and

1:25:49 The example I like to use is like John F. Kennedy after the Bay of Pigs, which was this huge disaster. He like went on television, he admitted he made a mistake. I can't remember any other president that has done anything like this. Of course, can you imagine today But his approval ratings shot way up. Wow. Cause people were like, Oh my God. And of course it was Kennedy and the way he did it and it's not gonna work for everyone the same way. But again, the vulnerability paradox is actually being vulnerable and actually sometimes revealing some a side of you that's not completely positive. can actually yeah help you connect and people will like you more. And this actually happened to me recently where I gave a talk And I totally bombed. Ouch. It's kind of a long story, but I completely blanked. I literally just stood there and I was like.

1:26:28 I don't know what to say next. I have no like I just completely forgot. Oh my gosh. So it was so mortifying, but so many people afterwards were like They loved it. It's like w they liked me more because I bombed this talk. I was truly shocked, even though I know about the vulnerability. It's like they're like it made you seem more human. Talk one star personality and delivery five stars. Yeah. That's funny. Good for you. That is a the only way you could handle bombing a talk like that. Other otherwise'cause everyone already knows, right? You can't pretend

1:26:56 You got no nothing left to fall back. Exactly. Like it was it's videotape. They're like oh I videotaped. Oh no. Oh gosh. Sonya Lubomirsky, thank you very much. This has been fun. Did I get it right? Yeah, you got it right. How to do that? Lubamirsky, which me means love and peace. Oh yeah. Lubov Mir is peace in Russia, like the Mir space station. Yeah. Thank you. It's been lovely. See, we the conversation really flowed between us. I never put it together. Your name means love and peace. That's pretty cool, actually. Urologist Doctor Justin Hooman reveals why fertility, testosterone, and erections can be your earliest warning signs of heart and metabolic disease, and why most men miss the signal. Our testosterone levels start to decline starting at the age of thirty. We say one to two percent every year.

1:27:41 The reproductive health is a snapshot of overall health. So if you do have low sperm counts, it's kind of a wake up call, hey. Fix your overall health picture. I try to keep it simple. What's good for your heart. It's good for your

1:27:52 Testicles, it's good for your sperm. So lifestyle is one of them. Within that I talk about diet, exercise, Sleep and stress. Optimize your diet, minimize your processed foods, vegetables, lean proteins, exercise wise combination of cardio. Heavy weightlifting, that's good for your hormonal health. We know you need good testosterone levels within the testicle.

1:28:12 in order to have good sperm health. testosterone replacement therapy, that shuts down your testosterone. There's genetic aspect to sperm health. There's not much you can do from a genetic standpoint. And then supplements is something a lot of guys talk about. So there's certain supplements within the fertility category that can help.

1:28:26 That's how you optimize. There's no question about it, we're unhealthier. Right, we're less healthy now than we were twenty years ago, forty years ago, fifty years ago. We're eating more processed foods. We wake up.

1:28:37 Or sitting at a desk all day. Coming back, watching Netflix all day and rinse and repeat. That's the whole thing. It's unhealthy living, really. It's poor food, poor exercise. We're consumed by screens and all of that just ultimately leads to unhealthy life. Men really aren't engaging the healthcare system.

1:28:52 But at the end of the day, it's not so objective as your cardiovascular health. We've been reproducing for However long as humans. All you really gotta do is what's good for your heart health, your overall health, is good for your reproductive health. Whether you're in your twenties, your forties, or facing infertility.

1:29:07 Episode twelve fifty four of the Jordan Harbinger Show could change how you think about men's health. Thanks again to Sonya Lubomirsky. The big takeaway here is that being loved and feeling loved are not the same thing. Someone can care about you enormously, but if you don't feel seen, understood, valued, and genuinely known, all of that love can somehow fail to make it through the firewall. And importantly, go first does not mean spend the next twenty years becoming a more efficient emotional vending machine for somebody who just never reciprocates. The five mindsets that she talks about in the book, sharing, listening, curiosity, and open heart.

1:29:42 Allowing people to be complicated human beings instead of reducing them to one trait or one mistake or one role. There's a lot more in the book about that. So maybe the better question isn't simply does this person love me? It's do we actually know each other? Are we still curious about each other? And does this relationship make it safer for both of us to become more visible? All things Sonya Lubomirsky will be in the show notes on the website, advertisers, deals, discount codes, and ways to support this podcast all at JordanHarbinger.com slash deals. Please consider supporting those who support the show. Our six minute networking course is still available, still free at six minute networking.com. I'm at Jordan Harbinger on Twitter and Instagram, and you can also connect with me on LinkedIn. And this show it's created in association with Podcast One. My team is Jen Harbinger, Jace Sanderson, Robert Fogarty, Tadas Sadlaus, Ian Baird, and Gabriel Mizrahi. Remember, we rise by lifting others. The fee for the show is you share it with friends when you find something useful or interesting. In fact, the greatest compliment you can really give us is to share the show with those you care about. So if you know somebody who's interested in love, dating, relationships, or improving their relationships, definitely share this episode with them. In the meantime, I hope you apply what you hear on the show so you can live what you learn.

1:30:51 And we'll see you next time.

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