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I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time.
Taking time to be more fully present.
Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.
When you meet Shawn Achor, 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 seven 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, just I'm a skinny person actually I lost. You know 20 pounds from where I am right now I I it was it would get crept up on me.
The passion is different for everyone but for me it's like I wandered out into the swamp and I can remember how I got there but more importantly I can remember why I wanted to get back out of it who are you suicidal not actively but I remember there's a time where NASA this the main street right outside of Harvard yard. And I remember one day that was walking and I saw bus us and I walked right in front of him and did not hurry, and fortunately that person cared more about me than...
OPRAH WINFREY... Not hitting you.
TUCKER CARLSON... About not hitting me.
And so, you know...
OPRAH WINFREY... But that is real...
TUCKER CARLSON... Yeah.
OPRAH WINFREY... Depression.
When you were like, well, if it hits me, it does...
TUCKER CARLSON... 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, you know, who we are and that connection of 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 six -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 that someday, I would be studying happiness.
That this, too, shall pass.
That 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 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 are depressed, you can journal your way out of it.
No. What I'm saying is that there's, if you can get yourself to do these positive habits, we have found people that'd 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 want to 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 because I remember going through a 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, I've given myself a period of time, then 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 through it.
But it is, it felt like an abyss.
Like you were, like you, like you're, like the world is going on, and you are sort of behind it all.
I call it being behind, behind the veil.
And it seems permanent.
I think that's the challenging part about depression, is it convinces you that this is, 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 done enough shows to know, this is depression.
Right. 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 world view, I could actually articulate, I am depressed, I need somebody to help me.
And in positive psychology, we find the 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.
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.
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Well, one of the things you say before happiness is that we need to diversify our meaning portfolio.
Well, 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 of your child's...
Because if that thing falls apart, there are you.
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 is 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, you know, 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.
So I went from an environment, that was my world.
So like... Kinda like Phil Jackson growing up in Pentecostal and not being able to dance.
Or I loved it you've been 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.
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.
And 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 studied.
You went into divinity.
So I did. So I went.
I got to go to Harvard on a military scholarship, so I was there in the mornings at MIT studying weapon 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'd 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 and 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, your folks back home were 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.
was saying how you know your beliefs change your actions and when people back home found out stay in for saying but as you know they were praying for me just because they knew I was going up north haha they a good but part of what what I found very quickly was that the reason I'm so grateful for positive psychology is that helped me to to say I'm about to say which is help me to be able to reconcile what I was saying in Buddhism Christian excital I really liked both.
that 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.
And... Actively... Actively doing it.
But Buddhism isn't really a religion.
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 practice of life practice.
It's why I loved India so much. It's why I love India so much because when I was in India, I could see that it was manifested in the culture that spirituality was a way of being 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 to 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 showed 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 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.
OK. The Romans. OK.
Yeah, Romans 12. You would know Mr. Devenedly 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 the two helped 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.
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We talked last time about, you know, on my baseline level happiness, and a lot of people were 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've 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 kids are being diagnosed, and we see this with ADHD, attention deficit disorder.
They can't focus. One thing that they found is they take kids who have attention deficit disorder, and they take them into a quiet, calm environment where 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 we can quiet both the external noise and the internal noise in our life.
So what we've 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 then 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 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, OK, 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.
So, because our brain naturally knows, I need to decrease the amount of information that's coming in.
But there's also 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 things that meant so much to me was that, like, worry is something that, like, just eats away at peoples' levels of happiness.
And it gets in the way.
It's worry. It's just noise going on inside your brain.
That's why I love what you say, that if you, for example, I'm not discouraging not 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.
And you were saying, only watch it if you can have some kind of effect on it.
Like if you're going to get up, and you see that.
And now you're going to 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.
And while you're watching the television, your brain is learning that the world is mostly negative.
You're learning 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 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 is extraordinarily rare.
But I had no idea how to console him because he'd just gotten over an entire week of menopause.
Like, you could see that worry is constantly eating at us.
And eating away at our happiness.
And that's what's going on in the internal.
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 to the opposite pattern and neutralizes it so it's a scientific explanation that was scientific expert same thing happens to us that are but we could turn our brain into that noise canceling headphone by doing the opposite noise pattern over hearing so what we try and do is we we have people create monitors and you see them throughout every spiritual traditions where people try and say the same thing over and over again to quiet that negativity so it's like, I'm not gonna equate worrying with love, which for me is such an important one.
I see it with so many people I talk with.
OPRAH WINFREY 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 wanted 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 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 is 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 well what if, 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?
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.
And we've got to not only be grateful for that moment, but take it to the next moment.
Yeah, and then the question, why did that show up in your life right now?
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, 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 even thinking back to some of those random acts of kindness, we immediately started to smile.
And what I love about it is.
Yeah, I remember going through the door and knocking on the door with a woman.
Do you remember that?
You were knocking on the door and saying, you have the day off.
I've checked with your boss.
That was such a fun moment.
At 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 a 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, where do they 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 the 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 what happened to you, you have to appeal to another authority source.
What I'm finding that's so helpful is not only is science validating, is 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's say, 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 Aayeshanti 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 a, I want to say 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 is true.
I can't wait to go home to tell my husband 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 and I think more and more people kind of need that analytic or the quantitative.
And you know what? Adi Ashanti 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 we're striving for?
Like 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 greater levels of happiness.
All right, John, 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 God?
I think that 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 that 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'd learned earlier that I shouldn't judge myself from where I'm at, but instead give myself that grace 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 allows us to practice making the right choices, but is not the end of the story, that if I die before I've had the life lessons that 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, also, I'm grateful to study happiness knowing that I came from a place where I'd forgotten what it felt like to be happy.
Happiness is... Happiness is the joy we feel striving towards our potential.
Yes! 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. 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.
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