The best way to describe Sonja Lyubomirsky is simple. She is the heir apparent to the greatest happiness researcher of all time, Dr. Ed Diener (here’s an ode to him coauthored with his son - free download). And she earned it the hard way. One scientific discovery after another that if carefully read, will transform your daily habits for the better. To help everyone access this practical wisdom, she produces one of the only newsletters that Sign up for The Happiness Files - here.
And get ready to order her new book with Dr. Harry Resis, which I predict will be a bestseller. More details - here.
Sonja has shown that well-being interventions require a consideration of how well they fit a person’s values, motivation, and personality. Gratitude operates differently in different cultures. There are antidotes to developing an (unfortunate) tolerance for positive experiences, such that more and more is needed to extract the same benefits (that is, you can escape the hedonic treadmill). And I previously wrote about her amazing analysis of the complicated relationship between parenting and well-being- here.
This is just a sampling from more than 200 scientific works that other scholars have cited over 89,000 times. Read a few of the highlights below, and try not to rethink your life (get access to nearly all her publications - here).
Across randomized trials, positive activities produce medium-sized improvements in well-being and reductions in depression. They are noticeable and not a placebo. r ≈ .29 for happiness boosts and r ≈ .31 for lowering depressive symptoms. If you can feel a 5 to 10% lift after adding in a workout routine, you can feel this.
Dose matters. Packing five kind acts into a single day each week outperforms sprinkling them across five days. Strong dose. Less often. Your brain notices novelty, then rewards you (link).
Your brain normalizes upgrades. New marriage, new job, new car. The thrill fades because positive emotions decline and your aspirations ratchet up. Sonja’s team tested this process prospectively and showed two reliable brakes. Keep appreciating the change, and engineer variety in the downstream experiences it creates. If exercise is your change, rotate locations, partners, and challenges every week. If you got a promotion, vary the ways you use your new autonomy, and keep posting little notes of “why this still matters” to reread. Hedonic Adaptation is real, but not inevitable. In a three-month, three-wave study of 481 students, her Hedonic Adaptation Prevention model got support (link).
If Diener built the cathedral, Lyubomirsky is doing the renovations that make people want to live there or travel for a visit, if only to take pictures. She showed that happiness is a practice with dosage, variety, and fit. She mapped when “feel-good” activities fail and how to stop the slide. And much more.
This is what happens when a scientist refuses to be satisfied with motivational slogans and keeps asking the rude questions that make our lives better.
To give you a sneak preview of our conversation, enjoy her metaphor of attachment styles in less than one minute:
🔒 For the Curious
With the utmost pleasure, below is a 60-minute, unfiltered conversation from November 17th with one of the most intelligent, open-minded, and vitality-enhancing people I know.
Listen, Watch, + Read the Transcript:
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Comment - I will respond here and in the chat room and virtual calls.
Todd B. Kashdan is the author of several books including The Upside of Your Dark Side (Penguin) and The Art of Insubordination: How to Dissent and Defy Effectively (Avery/Penguin) and Professor of Psychology and Founder of The Well-Being Laboratory at George Mason University.
