Super Soul Special: Shawn Achor, Part 2: How to Find Happiness in Today’s World
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When you meet Sean Acor, there's no doubt this happiness expert is a happy guy. He's a Harvard-trained expert in a relatively new field called positive psychology, which is essentially the study of happiness. His TED Talk has been viewed more than 7 million times. In it, he turned the old equation between success and happiness on its head.

With his unique blend of science and spirituality, Sean believes happiness is a choice. He says it is about tapping into what really matters to you, what we all really long for, and deciding to make happiness a true pursuit. And while Sean appears to be one of those people who was just born happy, you might be surprised to find out he has lived through some very dark days.

It was when he was at Harvard studying religion that he first learned about other faiths and traditions. For Sean, who had grown up in a sheltered conservative home, discovering that there were many people in the world who had different paths to God, rocked not only the foundation of his faith, but his very being. Suddenly he began questioning everything, and he was no longer certain what he knew for sure, and it broke him wide open.

So you weren't always happy. You went through a period where you were depressed, actually, in college. I did. I went through two years of depression myself. And I think depression for everyone is... Like real depression. Yeah, real depression. I mean, I lost... I'm a skinny person naturally. I lost...

20 pounds from where I am right now. It crept up on me. Depression's different for everyone, but for me it was like I wandered out into the swamp and I couldn't remember how I got there, but more importantly I couldn't remember why I wanted to get back out of it. - Were you suicidal? - Not actively, but I remember there was this time where Mass Ave is the main street right outside of Harvard Yard, and I remember one day that I was walking and I saw a bus and I was like,

Walked right in front of him and did not hurry. And fortunately that person cared more about me than about not hitting me. And so, you know... But that is real depression when you're like, well, if it hits me, it does. And, you know, and I was not alone. And not only not at Harvard where they found that a large minority of the students actually contemplated suicide over the previous year. But this is about every human brain in the world as we're trying to wrestle with suicide.

who we are and that connection to meaning in our lives. And one of the things that I did to try and find my way back out of this is that I started journaling. So I have my journal and the very first entry I wrote was, "I don't remember being happy and I don't think I'll ever be happy again."

And it sounds almost melodramatic now, but in the midst of depression, that's what I felt. I just saw this art exhibit, and it's about this woman who photoshopped herself as a 30-year-old or later on in life into pictures of her when she was little. So sitting...

on a bench waiting for the bus. So you've got the 30-year-old sitting next to the 6-year-old. And I love that because I wish I could go back to that boy who wrote that journal entry and to anyone who's experiencing depression, I wish I could go back and

show him a glimpse that that was not the end of the story because someday I would be studying happiness. This too shall pass. Someday I'd marry someone who was a happiness researcher herself and then I'd be sitting here with you talking about happiness. I would have never believed it but I think that's

That's what I learned is that depression is not something we need to fear because it's not the end of the story. That our life can change dramatically. Yes, but I just want to make it clear that you're not saying that if you're depressed, you can journal your way out of it. No, what I'm saying is that if you can get yourself to do these positive habits, we have found people that will be able to walk

themselves out of depression. - You can get better. - What we need antidepressants for sometimes is to get people to the point where they could start journaling or that they could start exercise, start doing gratitude because some people have hit such a bottom, they don't believe their behavior matters at all. But what we wanna get somebody to is back to that sense that my behavior matters. So if I take one little step

and I see that it works, I'm more likely to take another step and another step. - Yeah, it's very interesting 'cause I remember going through depression when I had worked 10 years to create this film, Beloved, and then not a lot of people went to see it. I literally went into, I mean, I was like behind a veil, but I still had to work every day and I could feel myself slipping, slipping, slipping further down and I could hear laughter, see laughter, be around it, but just couldn't get myself up to that.

And I remember I actually prayed my way through it and had said, if I'm not better, given myself a period of time, that I'm going to seek some help about it. But I did exactly the things that you're saying. I journaled. I kept my gratitude. I talked to friends that I trusted.

and was able to work my way through it. But it is, it felt like an abyss. Like you are, like you're, like the world is going on and you're sort of behind it all. I call it being behind the veil. - And it seems permanent. I think that's the challenging part about depression is it convinces you that this is how the world is and can't change from this. - It seems permanent, but I will have to say, I knew I was depressed because I'd done enough shows to know this is depression.

but something greater than myself, higher power, call it whatever you want. I knew that this will not be the end of the story. I knew that I wouldn't be depressed always. It felt like it, but I knew because I know I have a bigger worldview, I could actually articulate, I am depressed. I need somebody to help me. And in positive psychology, we find that people that have these beliefs, these spiritual beliefs, we find that

it highly correlates with levels of happiness. The people who hold these beliefs, they're more likely to be happier. And the reason, one of the reasons for that is that they have access to that meaning. They have access to that there's more than just what's going on in this external world in front of me, that my behavior matters and that there are things that we could do. And you practice being in community and gratitude and prayer. And those things help change that world for us. If your small business has a problem,

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Well, one of the things you say in Before Happiness is that we need to diversify our meaning portfolio. That sounds like fancy business language, but what does that really mean? It just means that oftentimes we have one thing that we find meaningful, right? And that for some people, it's their child. Then their world shrinks down to there's only one place of meaning. Or for some people, it's a salesperson that's just...

getting my sales. And they have other things in their life, but all they really kind of focus on is that one thing. We find that if you have one thing that's meaningful and that's it, then you're in a very fragile place, right? Because if your child's sick... Because if that thing falls apart, you don't have this other... So the more meaning you have, actually, the more you can see that there's connections. And when something's not doing as well, you can actually...

be buoyed by those other parts of your life to still feel meaning so you can keep moving forward and you can use those meaningful points to work on that area that's frustrating. Let's talk for a moment about you being raised in a really religious home, fundamentalist Christian. Waco, Texas. I grew up for 18 years in Waco. And my parents actually came from California and they were transplants there. So we found ourselves in an environment where

Baylor is where my dad teaches psychology actually, and I didn't fall too far from the tree. But they didn't even allow dancing on campus until after I went off to college. Wow. So I went from an environment, and that was my world, right? So like-

- Kind of like Phil Jackson growing up in Pentecostal and not being able to dance or I loved him telling the story, we could go in the water on Sunday, but you couldn't splash and have fun. - Yeah, we had dances where you'd have to save room for Jesus between you and the person you're dancing with. But you had to be that far apart. That's when they had dances at our school. But all of this was based upon these ideas. There was one way of doing things and that's all I thought. I didn't know anyone from a different religion.

I didn't know anyone of a different race. So for me, going from Waco up to Boston for college was not only an opportunity, but it was mind blowing. And I found myself surrounded by a multiplicity of ways of experiencing the world. - So you went to Harvard and suddenly your world was rocked because you,

you went into divinity. - So I did. So I got to go to Harvard on a military scholarship. So I was there in the mornings at MIT studying weapons systems and engineering, and in the afternoon I was studying romantic poetry and religious texts. And I kept finding myself drawn to the religious part. And so I went to the divinity school. And at the divinity school, they say when you first go in that they have everything from A to Z at Harvard. They have everything from the Amish to Zen Buddhism.

everything in between. And suddenly I realized that there wasn't just one way, there was

an infinite number of ways of people trying to explore the spiritual path. And for me, I couldn't handle it because I had a very black and white vision of the world, very rigid structures. No gray. No gray. And so for me, that was fragile. And Pete, put your folks back home. We're praying for your salvation. They were. Not only that I was studying Buddhism. You started to study different religions. I studied Christian and Buddhist ethics at the Divinity School. So I was studying how...

your beliefs change your actions. And when people back home found out I was studying Buddhism, they were praying for me just because they knew I was going up north. But part of what I found very quickly was that the reason I'm so grateful for positive psychology is it helped me to say what I'm about to say, which is it helped me to be able to reconcile what I was seeing in Buddhism and Christianity. I really liked both.

Christianity was so focused on the faith and the belief and the way that you see the world, and Buddhism was focused upon practice. Compassion. Compassion. Actively. Actively doing it. But Buddhism isn't really a religion. It's not.

It's not. And so that's why they factored so well for me. It's a way of being. Yes. It's a practice. It's a life practice. Yeah. It's why I loved India so much. It's why I loved India so much because when I was in India, I could see that it was manifested in the culture. Yes. That spirituality was a way of being. Yes.

and a way of doing and a way of actively living your life. It wasn't just something people are talking about. - It was shocking back home when I would go home and say them, I actually felt like Buddhism made me more Christian because what it did was it made me practice

compassion. It made me practice... What Jesus was saying. Yes, it made me practice the peace. And you could see Jesus doing things like this. Like, actually, intentionally putting himself away from the disciples and all that, right before he even started his ministry. Well, I think that's what Jesus intended. That is what Jesus intended. So for me, like...

The fact that positive psychology validated what they're both saying, but also show me that faith without works is dead, that you could actually bring those two. My favorite Bible verse that I learned growing up, and it's what I do today, is in Romans. And when Paul was trying to convince Paul

the Romans were very sophisticated about Christianity. He said that no longer conform to the patterns of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. - Of your mind! - I love it. - Oh my God, I thought that was Deuteronomy though. - I think it's Romans. - Okay, you would know Mr. Divinity School. Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. - Be transformed by the renewing of your mind. - Oh, that's one of my favorites too. - And Buddhism taught the path to do that, which is why I felt like that the two,

helps so much and it's what I study now in positive psychology. Like when I talk about positive psychology, I can hear so much of what I grew up with and what I've seen at the Divinity School because it's happiness is a choice. - Yeah, absolutely.

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We talked last time about my baseline level of happiness and a lot of people are like, "Well, Oprah, I thought you were happy all the time." I'm not. I'm really just content but raising my happiness bar.

And one of the reasons why I feel such a deep sense of contentment and peace, now I got the peace thing going, is because I have naturally all my life been able to eliminate the noise. And I know you speak a lot about, before happiness, being able to take down the noise. Yeah. One of the things we're finding is that more and more people

kids are being diagnosed, and we see this with ADHD, attention deficit disorder. They can't focus. One of the things they found is they take kids who have attention deficit disorder, and they take them into a quiet, calm environment, or they take them into a noisy environment. And what they find is that when they take them into the calm environment, they don't

have as many of the attention deficit problems, they learn skill sets faster. We need that time away from this fast-paced world, which is why I think we actually need to turn our brains into noise-canceling headphones. We need to find a way of making it so that we can quiet both the external noise and the internal noise in our life. So what we found is if you just decrease the noise for a little bit, your brain can actually start to process

the meaning, but here's what happens. Your brain processes noise first and the negative things and then meaning. So if you've got a lot of noise, your brain never gets to meaning or gratitude within your life. - And doesn't that up the ante on the stress levels? - It does. - I would think, I can just tell in my own life. I like just centering myself and that brings me a great sense of contentment. I don't know if it's happiness.

But it does bring me a great level of peace and contentment. I mean, I couldn't be who I am without it. When I get lost and when I'm driving in a car and I have the radio going, I unconsciously, like my brain just like, okay, I've got to turn down the, because I'm lost. And I think sometimes we are lost in our lives, right? And we've got all this noise and we forget to turn off that radio because our brain naturally knows I need to decrease the amount of information that's coming in. But there's also a lot of internal noise. And I'm finding that with myself.

Is that like the voice in our heads that Michael Singer talks about? Yes, exactly. Eckhart Tolle talks about? It's that voice in your head. Like one of the things that meant so much to me was that like worry is something that like just eats away at people's levels of happiness and it gets in the way. Worry is just noise going on inside your brain. That's why I love what you say that if you, for example...

I'm not discouraging y'all from watching TV, but news programming, the last time there was a major disaster, I found myself sitting in front of the TV, sort of like mesmerized by the tragedy. Yes. And you're saying, only watch it if you can have some kind of effect on it, like

Like if you're gonna get up and you see that and now you're gonna make a donation to this disaster. But to sit and to watch it over and over and over again, it's like experiencing the trauma of it. - It is, and it's teaching your brain something. While you're watching this,

the television, your brain is learning that the world is mostly negative. You're learning that reality, that there's a skewed ratio of reality. So one of the things we find is if you study the negative, you actually start feeling the symptoms. It's called the medical school syndrome. So medical school syndrome is that the more you read about

medical, like the bad things that can happen to you, people actually start manifesting the symptoms. They actually get sicker. So I had, I have a brother-in-law who was at Yale Medical School and he called me on the phone and he said, Sean, I have leprosy. Which

Even at Yale, it was extraordinarily rare. But I had no idea how to console him because he'd just gone over an entire week of menopause. You could see that worry is constantly eating at us, right? And eating away at our happiness. And that's what's going on in the internal noise. That's the internal noise, right? That's the noise we need to cancel. So the way the noise-canceling headphones work is they actually make the opposite noise pattern, the noise wave to what you're hearing. So if I hear crying or an airplane motor,

the headphones do the opposite pattern and neutralizes it. That's a scientific explanation for what's going on. That's a scientific explanation. The same thing happens to us at our brain. We can turn our brain into that noise-canceling headphone by doing the opposite noise pattern of what we're hearing. So what we try and do is we have people create mantras, and you see them throughout every spiritual tradition where people try and say the same thing over and over again to quiet that negativity. So it's saying, like, I'm not going to equate worrying with love, which for me is...

such an important one i see it with so many people you know what mine is mine is no matter what the situation is all will be well all will be well all will be well yes and it may not turn out the way you want it to turn out but all will be well yes that's another way of saying this too shall pass but all will be well i i i don't i don't i don't do that thing where over and over and over in your head you worry because that's just wasted energy so i try to take that energy

that I'm wasting, that you would be wasting, and how do you turn that into something that will create a different vibration if I can't get to positive right away? Sometimes I can't get to positive right away. You can't say, oh, everything's going to turn out fine, but you can say, all will be well, meaning even if it doesn't turn out fine, you will be. So how do we, what are other ways we can

lessen the noise. I try to decrease things that are hypothetical. Think about, like, well, what if my plane doesn't get here? What if I don't make it to the shooting with Oprah because of all the flight problems we had yesterday? Like, the more I'm doing that, I'm actually heaping on worry to what I'm experiencing. Yesterday, I found myself... It took me 15 hours to get out here, and it was supposed to take seven or eight. And while I was there...

At one point, I calculated how much time extra it had taken me to get there, and I realized what I'm doing is I'm not choosing happiness right now. I'm actually choosing to make myself feel more unhappy. I'm quantifying and validating why I should feel unhappy, and that's a waste of my brain. So what we want people to do is just focus their brain on things that actually move them forward.

How do we become happier today? I think that to recognize the fact that this moment, the fact that you got to watch this conversation on happiness is a privilege, right? It's an opportunity that many people in the world didn't get.

We've got to not only be grateful for that moment, but take it to the next moment. And then the question, why did that show up in your life right now? Yes. Because people needed a little happiness lift. And to recognize that people around us need to hear what they didn't just get to hear. Like if there's somebody in your life who didn't get to hear about that happiness could be a choice, we need to actually be living models for that for other people. Yeah.

One of the other things I liked that we didn't mention before is you talk about random acts of kindness. Yes. Which for years on The Oprah Show, we actually created shows around random acts of kindness. And oh my God, you want to feel good about a day? Right. Do just something randomly good for somebody that they wouldn't expect. And it doesn't have to be like a big gift or something, just a random...

gesture. It's a happiness multiplier, right? Because not only does it make you happy and make those people happy, but as soon as you start talking about it, even thinking back to some of those random acts of kindness, we immediately start to smile. Yes. And what I love about it is... Yeah, I remember going through the door and knocking on the door of the woman. Do you remember that? Yeah. You were knocking on the door and saying, you have the day off. I've checked with your boss. Oh, that was such a fun moment. First she went, ah! Slammed the door. Right, right. Yeah.

Yeah. But the other thing it shows us is how much power we have. We have the power to actually change the reality we see around us. And one of the things we've talked about is that oftentimes we just feel like this world makes my happiness or not. Like if things are not going well, it's because of what the world is giving me. It's always about like,

of powerlessness compared to our genes or to our chemicals or to the environment. And what we're finding is that when you do a random act of kindness, it shatters that. Because what it says is, "Whoa, I could actually not only change my own levels of happiness, but I could change them for other people. I'm going to start writing the social script, and I'm going to write a script that causes people to be able to choose happiness better."

So where does science and positive psychology mesh for you? I think that science is just validating what we've been finding in religion for thousands of years. Because science and spirituality are usually placed at odds, as you know. But you say the science of positive psychology actually validates spirituality. How so? What I believe is that what we keep seeing over and over again is that science keeps showing us that

the things we've been learning in all these religious traditions were actually valid, right? But what science allows us to do is have another authority source, right? If somebody doesn't think that the Bible is the end all, then you can't say, well, the Bible says that God loves you or that when you do these positive things, good things will happen to you. You have to appeal to another authority source. What I'm finding that's so helpful

is not only is science validating, positive psychology is validating what we're finding in religion, but when you have both together... Positive psychology is validating what we're finding in religion. It's all the same. What I have found sitting here from the Super Soul Sunday point of view, and actually when we first started doing this show three years ago, some people would even write in and say, well, so-and-so...

Deepak Chopra, isn't he really saying the same thing as Eckhart Tolle? People were telling me that about my TED Talk. It's just different languaging. It's just different languages and different ways of expressing it. So maybe the way you express it will resonate with an audience or maybe the way what Deepak says will resonate with another audience and what...

Ayushanti says will resonate with another audience. The biggest comment I get after my talks, after I've gone through all this research, is people will be like, they'll come up with, thank you for validating who I've been my whole life, right? Like they needed the research to tell them, yes. It's okay. It's okay. Like, yes, I believe happiness, I can't wait to go home to tell my husband that...

because he really believes in science, or my wife, she really believes in science, that they're actually, we're saying the same things. And I think that you need those multiple languages. I think more and more people kind of need that analytic or the quantitative. - And you know what, Adyashanti was saying that we're all in search of the same thing, although we call it by different names. So whether, some people are in pursuit of money, some people are in pursuit of success, some people call it their religious path, they're looking for God, whatever, but it,

all is happiness. He says we're all in search of happiness. - I think you're right. I think that what we need to take some time to do is figure out what that happiness actually is, to redefine it, but also are there things that we're striving for? There's definitely things I've tried to pursue happiness that have not led me to happiness, that have led me away from happiness. So I do think that there are some things that cause us to deviate and what we need is we need more people like these spiritual leaders showing us

These are the things that actually can lead you to greater levels of happiness. Yeah. All right, Sean, what's a soul? A soul is the very essence of our being that causes us to feel joy and to connect to other people. And what is your definition of a God? I think the God is love. Everything that's love is God. And the more that we love other people, the more we bring God into this world. What is grace? What's your definition of grace? Grace is...

Grace is the recognition that I'm not judged based upon actions that I do or about things that have occurred in the world, but that I'm loved regardless and that it's infinite love. What's the lesson that took you the longest to learn? I think the thing that's taken me the longest to learn is that happiness

doesn't come automatically or all the time. I actually felt guilty that I felt depressed and that makes you feel even worse. And what I want people to realize is that happiness is a choice, but we're not judged by where we are at currently. And that if things are not good right now, that's not the end of the story for people. And I kind of wish that I learned earlier that like I shouldn't judge myself from where I'm at, but instead give myself that grace to

to believe that my behavior eventually will matter, but only if I'm linked to other people, that I'm nothing without other people. Why are we here? What is the purpose of human experience? I think the purpose of it is to experience the opportunity to choose love

and to choose to do things that lead us towards love. I feel like that this is, as a researcher, I feel like this is a big experiment, but one that has incredible meaning in the sense that it allows us to practice making the right choices, but is not the end of the story. That, you know, if I die before I've had the life lessons I want to have, I believe that's not the end of the story, that we're continually learning even after death.

Finish the sentence. What the world needs is... What the world needs is a revolution to recognize that we can be more than just our genes and this current world, but that we can actually choose to become a different person. I am fully in the present moment when...

fully in the present moment when I'm having spiritual conversations like this one where you get to talk about the things that matter most in life and I wish I'd take more time with my friends and family to create those moments. I am grateful for. I'm grateful for this opportunity to be with you but to also I'm grateful to study happiness knowing that I came from a place where I had forgotten what it felt like to be happy. Happiness is. Happiness is the joy we feel striving towards our potential.

Thank you so much. That was great. Thank you for having me. Yay! I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.

Hershey's Milk Chocolate with Whole Almonds makes for a wholly amazing, wholly delicious experience that's, well, wholly Hershey's. Everyone should get to experience the satisfying surprise of a whole almond tucked inside creamy Hershey's Chocolate. So don't wait your whole life to try Hershey's Milk Chocolate with Whole Almonds. And if you've already had it, then chances are you're already a lifelong fan of this confectionery delight. Find Hershey's Milk Chocolate with Whole Almonds wherever candy is sold.

If your small business has a problem, you could say, Ugh, just my luck. But you should say, Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. And we'll help get you back in business. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there.