Psychologists Found The One Major Difference Between Truly Happy People & Chronically Miserable Folks
pikselstock | Shutterstock University of California, Riverside News reported that an unexpected epiphany led two psychologists to team up in their work to understand happiness and how people who feel it differ from those who don’t.
The desire to feel happy is a pretty universal experience for everyone. The Ipsos Global Happiness Study found that 64% of adults across the world considered themselves happy, which is a majority, but also means that almost half of the world doesn’t feel happy. It turns out that the secret to happiness isn’t exactly shocking, but it may be difficult to cultivate.
Psychologists determined that people who are truly happy actually feel loved by others.
Harry Reis, a psychology professor at the University of Rochester, and his colleague Sonja Lyubomirsky, a fellow psychology professor at UC Riverside, had a conversation on the subject about 10 years ago, and Reis shared something pretty profound. He thought that people who really are happy feel loved, while those who are miserable don’t.
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Reis’ thoughts really struck Lyubomirsky, and the pair ended up working together on a recently released book called “How to Feel Loved.” Lyubomirsky answered some questions about their research for UC Riverside News. She emphasized the fact that it’s easy to think someone is loved in our social media-obsessed world, but that’s not necessarily the case.
“One of the main theses is that to feel loved, you have to be known,” she said. “We all have positive and negative qualities, but if you’ve made a point of only showing this person your positive qualities — your ‘highlight reel’ — you will always wonder, ‘Would they still love me if they knew the real me?’”
Interestingly, happiness has less to do with whether or not someone is actually loved than it does with whether they feel loved.
This means there’s a very good chance that someone who is loved by the people around them won’t automatically feel happy. Their happiness doesn’t depend on the love itself, but on whether they can feel it. As Lyubomirsky explained, “If, for example, I write a letter of gratitude to my best friend, I feel more loved by my best friend. If I do a kindness for a neighbor or a colleague, I feel closer to them.”
Licensed therapist Abbey Sangmeister, MSEd, LPC, ACS, shared that certain mental health conditions, like depression, can affect a person’s ability to feel loved. She said, “Depression creates a fog around us that does not allow us to see or feel clearly, which can cause us to feel that no one loves us.”
Psychology professor Glenn Geher, PhD, added that “if you think about your lowest moments in life, my guess is that a good proportion of such moments might be found at times when you felt decidedly unloved.” Feeling a lack of love can lead to negative consequences, regardless of whether that love is actually absent or not.
If someone is truly happy, they don’t just know they’re loved, but they actually feel it, too.
In a separate interview with Greater Good Magazine, Lyubomirsky said, “A lot of people are loved, but they don’t feel loved. And if you don’t feel loved, it’s as though it’s not there. What I have discovered in my research is that feeling loved and feeling connected is really the key to happiness.”
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She added that if you don’t feel loved, it’s easy to think that you need to change yourself, or even change the other person, so that you can feel that way. In reality, it’s all about “changing the conversation.” Nothing about you is wrong, and you don’t need to change in order to feel love. You just have to better align your mindset with being ready to feel that love.
This means there is hope for everyone. No matter how loved or unloved and happy or miserable you may feel right now, simple perspective shifts are all it takes to put yourself in a place to more readily receive that love and feel it, which will make you happier.
Mary-Faith Martinez is a writer with a bachelor’s degree in English and Journalism who covers news, psychology, lifestyle, and human interest topics.
