Americans are less happy than they’ve been in years thanks to the rise of digital media, increases in obesity and substance abuse and a host of socioeconomic concerns.
But researchers say they now know what the key to happiness is — and, unfortunately, it’s not quite as easy as downing a hot fudge sundae.
So, what’s the big secret and how can we use it to get happier?
Many people often focus their lives on being loved, but the real goal should be focusing on feeling loved, the psychologists posit. People are loved by others, but many don’t actually feel it.
“I do know people who are happy, and I know people who are unhappy, and I can tell you the main difference between them: Happy people feel loved,” Harry Reis, a professor of psychology at the University of Rochester, said in a statement shared by the school.
However, the key to feeling loved is not by making yourself more attractive or successful.
These strategies may work in the short-term, but are actually more likely to backfire at the end of the day, Reis noted.
Instead, people need to build a loving connection with another person. That jumpstarts a cycle of mutual love: you have to show more to get more.
Reis and Sonja Lyubomirsky – the co-author of their new book How to Feel Loved: The Five Mindsets That Get You More of What Matters Most and a distinguished psychology professor at the University of California at Riverside – call this a “relationship sea-saw.”
In the analogy, both people in the relationship are partially submerged in water as they use the play equipment.
“When we lift up the other person, it’s as if we lift them above the waterline,” Reis, who has spent the last five decades studying how close and romantic relationships work, said.
“All of a sudden, parts that were previously hidden are now visible.”
Lifting people above the waterline in love encourages the other person to reciprocate.
At the end of the day, we feel more loved because the other person is choosing to love us, according to Reis. That leads to a big personal pay-off.
When that happens, people are “happier and healthier. They’re more productive. They’re more successful in what they do.”