Top 30 Sonja Lyubomirsky Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Find a happy person, and you will find a project.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

2. “If you’re not happy today, then you won’t be happy tomorrow unless you take things into your own hands and take action.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

3. “In a nutshell, the fountain of happiness can be found in how you behave, what you think, and what goals you set every day of your life.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

4. “I use the term happiness to refer to the experience of joy, contentment, or positive well-being, combined with a sense that one’s life is good, meaningful, and worthwhile.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

5. “The combination of rumination and negative mood is toxic. Research shows that people who ruminate while sad or distraught are likely to feel besieged, powerless, self-critical, pessimistic, and generally negatively biased.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

6. “The practice of gratitude is incompatible with negative emotions and may actually diminish or deter such feelings as anger, bitterness, and greed.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

7. “Happiness is not out there for us to find. The reason that it’s not out there is that it’s inside us.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

8. “It turns out that the process of working toward a goal, participating in a valued and challenging activity, is as important to well-being as its attainment.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

9. “All that is required to become an optimist is to have the goal and to practice it. The more you rehearse optimistic thoughts, the more ‘natural’ and ‘ingrained’ they will become. With time they will be part of you, and you will have made yourself into an altogether different person.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

10. “I prefer to think of the creation or construction of happiness, because research shows that it’s in our power to fashion it for ourselves.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

11. “Gratitude is an antidote to negative emotions, a neutralizer of envy, hostility, worry, and irritation. It is savoring; it is not taking things for granted; it is present oriented.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

12. “Every day you have to renew your commitment. Some of the strategies should become habitual over time and not a huge effort.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

13. “It is equally important to investigate wellness as it is to study misery.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

14. “We found that the happiest people take pleasure in other people’s successes and show concern in the face of others’ failures. A completely different portrait, however, has emerged of a typical unhappy person – namely, as someone who is deflated rather than delighted about his peers’ accomplishments and triumphs and who is relieved rather than sympathetic in the face of his peers’ failures and undoings.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

15. “People prone to joyful anticipation, skilled at obtaining pleasure from looking forward and imagining future happy events, are especially likely to be optimistic and to experience intense emotions.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

16. “Forgiving people are less likely to be hateful, depressed, hostile, anxious, angry, and neurotic.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

17. “If we can accept as true that life circumstances are not the keys to happiness, we’ll be greatly empowered to pursue happiness for ourselves.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

18. “One way to practice empathy in your daily life is to notice every time someone does something that you do not understand. Try to work out such a person’s thoughts, feelings, and intentions.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

19. “It may be obvious that to achieve anything substantial in life – learn a profession, master a sport, raise a child – a good deal of effort is required.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

20. “Last but not least, the happiest people do have their share of stresses, crises, and even tragedies. They may become just as distressed and emotional in such circumstances as you or I, but their secret weapon is the poise and strength they show in coping in the face of challenge.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

21. “You have to participate relentlessly in the manifestations of your own blessings. And once you have achieved a state of happiness, you must never become lax about maintaining it, you must make a mighty effort to keep swimming upward into that happiness forever, to stay afloat on top of it.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

22. “Renew your commitment every day. Not only the strategy but the very act of recommitment will become easier and more automatic with time.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

23. “You must resolve to undertake a program to become happier. You must learn what you need to do. You must put weekly or even daily effort into it. You must commit to the goal for a long period of time, possibly for the rest of your life.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

24. “Frank Lloyd Wright observed: “Many wealthy people are little more than the janitors of their possessions.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

25. “Depression is an illness, not a failing. It’s what psychologists call a syndrome – that is, a group of signs and symptoms that form a pattern.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

26. “So go for it. Smile, laugh, stand tall, act lively, and give hugs. Act as if you were confident, optimistic, and outgoing. You’ll manage adversity, rise to the occasion, create instant connections, make friends and influence people, and become a happier person.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

27. “Don’t be the person who is waiting for this, that, or the other thing to happen before she can be happy.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

28. “To be sure, depression has been described as a syndrome distinguished by a deficit of positive emotions: a lack of joy, curiosity, contentment, enthusiasm – that is, an empty cup.4 Indeed, inability to take pleasure in joyful events is a hallmark of depression.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

29. “Most people recognize, however, that relief of symptoms is not the depressed person’s ultimate objective. If you are depressed, your goal is not just not to be depressed; your goal is to be happy.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

30. “Indeed, frequent positive emotions – feelings of joy, delight, contentment, serenity, curiosity, interest, vitality, enthusiasm, vigor, thrill, and pride – are the very hallmark of happiness.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

31. “Like interpersonal therapists, marital and family therapists recognize that depressed individuals often have problems with family relationships. Indeed, if you are married and depressed, you are very likely to be experiencing distress in your marriage.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

32. “I meditate every morning for twenty minutes. It is a sacred time that I protect from all intrusions or commitments, and for the rest of the day I am more centered and open-minded, not as sensitive or irritable or tense. I feel a sense of well-being that lasts all day. A day that I miss doing it is not the same, somehow wrecked.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

33. “The label comes from the conviction that empowering people to develop a positive state of mind – to live the most rewarding and happiest lives they can – is just as important as psychology’s traditional focus on repairing their weaknesses and healing their pathologies.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky

34. “The second reason to seek help for your depression is that it can wreak lasting damage on your life. Research shows that the toll depression takes is as great as that of a chronic physical disorder like diabetes, arthritis, or high blood pressure.”

— Sonja Lyubomirsky