If you can’t shake the idea that happiness lies just around the corner, that you’ll ‘be happy when…’ you achieve X, Y or Z, then this conversation will bring you into the present. Because as my guest reveals, the secret to happiness isn’t your future success, money or health, but something far simpler (which you can change today). It’s feeling loved.

That’s the conclusion happiness researcher Sonja Lyubomirsky has arrived at after 36 years studying what makes us content, and it’s the focus of this week’s episode. Sonja is Distinguished Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of several bestselling books on happiness. Her latest, written with relationship scientist Harry Reis, is called How to Feel Loved. It makes the case that being loved is not the same as feeling loved – and the latter is key to individual happiness and societal wellbeing.

During this warm and inspiring conversation, Sonja sets out her five mindsets – including Radical Curiosity, Sharing, and the Multiplicity Mindset – which can help us feel more loved. She demonstrates how we can all adopt them to forge better relationships with everyone from friends, partners and family members to colleagues and strangers.

We explore the idea of hedonic adaptation – why those things we assume will make us happy (good looks, a better job, a bigger house) bring short-lived rewards. We discuss why happier people tend to become more successful, rather than the other way round, and Sonja reveals fascinating research linking happiness to physical health and immunity.

Our conversation also takes in cultural attitudes to happiness, from Sonja’s early years in Russia to her decades living in the US, and what these differences reveal about the assumptions many of us hold without realising. Sonja shares a moving account of meeting the Dalai Lama, including his own definition of happiness. And we try out some of the exercises from her book live in the studio, including her Fast Friends questions designed to dissolve barriers and build closeness in minutes.

By the end of this powerful episode, you’ll understand why forgiveness, curiosity and honest conversation matter more to your happiness than almost anything else. You’ll feel more optimistic about your potential to feel loved. And you’ll come away with practical ways to bring valuable connections into your life, starting with your very next conversation.