The Science of Happiness: Five Simple Strategies for Reducing Anxiety and Increasing Connection | Sonja Lyubomirsky and Harry Reis
10% Happier with Dan Harris
10% Media, LLC
4.6 • 12.9K Ratings
🗓️ 16 February 2026
⏱️ 71 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What it really means to feel loved, and why many people who are loved don't feel it.
Sonja Lyubomirsky is a preeminent happiness expert and Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California. Harry Reis is one of the world's leading experts on relationships and Dean's Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Rochester. They are the authors of: HOW TO FEEL LOVED: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most.
In this episode we talk about:
- What it really means to feel loved, and why many people who are loved don't feel it
- An antidote to loneliness
- A broader definition of love beyond romance
- Why feeling loved may be the true key to happiness
- How feeling loved is more in your control than you think
- The "relationship seesaw": lifting others up to feel loved yourself
- The power of curiosity, listening, and reciprocity
- Why dropping emotional armor is necessary for real connection
- Practical tools for feeling more loved
- Tips on asking better questions and showing real enthusiasm
- Why genuine curiosity, reciprocity, and emotional pacing deepen connection more than performative listening
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is the 10% Happy Your Podcast. I'm Dan Harris. |
| 0:07.0 | Hey, hey, how we doing everybody? For many people, and this is certainly true for me for many years, |
| 0:24.6 | when we think about how to get happier, we tend to approach it as an individual pursuit. We engage in |
| 0:31.7 | what is sometimes called self-care, exercise, sleep, meditation, et cetera, et cetera. All that stuff is great. But the research |
| 0:39.3 | suggests that the most reliable source of happiness is actually the quality of your |
| 0:43.8 | relationships. To be clear, relationships are not easy. One of my perhaps overly glib lines about |
| 0:50.0 | this is that the human curse is that we need other people in order to be happy, and yet other |
| 0:55.7 | people can be a titanic pain in the ass. And that brings me to today's guests who have a really |
| 1:03.4 | empowering approach to this aspect of human happiness, which they describe as how to feel loved. |
| 1:13.5 | In fact, that is the title of their book, How to Feel Loved. One of the misconceptions that they're hammering away at in this book is that we often |
| 1:19.3 | think that feeling loved isn't really in our control. It's up to the other person. But my guests |
| 1:24.3 | flip this on its head and they argue that there are, in fact, strategies to feel loved, and they're often not the strategies that many of us fall back on. |
| 1:34.0 | In other words, we're looking for love in all the wrong places. |
| 1:37.3 | My guests are Sonia Lubomirsky, distinguished professor at the University of California, and Harry T. Reese, Dean's Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California and Harry T. Reese Dean's Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Rochester. |
| 1:49.1 | In this conversation, we talk about what it means to feel loved and why many people who are loved don't feel it. |
| 1:55.9 | We talk about an antidote to loneliness, a broader definition of love beyond romantic love, why feeling loved may actually be the true key to happiness. |
| 2:05.4 | We talk about their concept of the relationship seesaw. |
| 2:08.9 | I'll let them explain that. |
| 2:10.3 | The power of curiosity, listening and reciprocity, why dropping your armor is necessary, although difficult. |
| 2:17.3 | Some practical tools for feeling more loved, |
| 2:19.7 | and some tips on asking better questions. |
| 2:22.9 | Real quick, before we dive in here, don't forget to check out my new app. |
... |
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