1 Thing You Can Do Today to Be Happier | Sonja Lyubomirsky | TED

I’m a happiness scientist, and I've been a happiness scientist for 36 years. For my entire professional career, I've been obsessed with learning the secrets to being a happy person -- with trying to answer the question: Can anyone become happier? Now how do we even study something like that? Well, in 1998, my lab pioneered what we call happiness interventions. Happiness interventions are experiments with human participants. Over the years, we've done dozens of these experiments, testing whether practices like expressing gratitude or doing acts of kindness or simply acting like an extrovert make people happier. And they do. Under the right conditions. My students and I spent decades doing these experiments. This work made my career, and yet I realized that I hadn't really been listening to what the data were trying to tell me. And then it finally clicked. It dawned on me that almost all of the interventions that work to make us happier, they work precisely because they help us feel more connected to and loved by others. So writing a gratitude letter to my mom makes me feel more loved by her. And doing an act of kindness for my colleague makes me feel closer to him. In other words, what I learned is that to be a better happiness scientist, I had to become a love scientist. Because, as it turns out, the key to happiness is feeling connected and loved. And I know that sounds like a cliché, but many powerful ideas do once you distill them. The real challenge and opportunity is how to put it into practice. So then how do we connect? Well we can connect through touch or dance or eye contact. But let's face it, in Western culture, in many cultures, actually, we mostly connect by talking. Yet here's the problem with our social world today. Even when we're talking, we all have walls around us. There are walls around our friends, colleagues, neighbors, even family. We build those walls to protect ourselves, yet they also keep us from ever really letting anyone in. They keep us from becoming truly known. So this is literally my number one happiness tip. The one thing I wish everybody knew. We will feel more loved if we become more known, if we learn to talk to people in a way that takes down the walls between us. The secret is super simple, yet I think massively profound. If you do one thing today to be happier, let it be this. Approach your next conversation differently from what you've done before. First, by sharing from the heart. You take down your walls by sharing something real about yourself, not just your highlight reel. Whether with your best friend, colleague or first date, be brave enough to let others see the real you. Here's a simple practice. Start small. Pacing is really important. So don't immediately share your deepest secret or trauma. If you go deep too fast, everyone's walls will come right back up again. Instead, in the beginning, maybe say something honest, like "I've had a rough day" instead of "I'm fine. " Recent studies show that people will like you more when the conversation is deeper, as opposed to shallower. Two, you help the other person lower their walls when you listen to them in order to learn, not to respond. Quiet your voice so theirs can be heard. So during your next conversation, instead of mentally rehearsing your story, try to listen like there's going to be a quiz tomorrow. Furthermore, ask one more question than you’d normally ask, like: How did that really feel? Such questions signal that you're right there with them. When was the last time someone asked you a real question about your life? It's rare. Yet research shows that people yearn to be asked, and those who ask questions are better liked. And yet, you've probably all had this experience. Someone talks at you for an hour, tells you their whole life story, then walks away knowing nothing about you. Am I right? That's not what I meant. Sharing and listening hold hands. If you only share, it's a monologue. If you only listen, it's an interview. But when you do both, that's when the magic happens. And that's it. It's really that simple. By sharing a little more and listening a little deeper, all of us can learn to take the walls down. If we do, we’ll know one another better. We’ll feel more loved. And we’ll help the people in our lives feel more love too. Thank you. (Applause)