Meet Shawn Achor, Happiness Researcher

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How does the science of happiness work? What’s the connection between happiness and success? And how do you test hypotheses about happiness in the real world, outside of the lab? CFW friend Shawn Achor sat down with us to explain the whys and hows of happiness research—and why his findings are important for your life.

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SHAWN ACHOR is the New York Times best-selling author of The Happiness Advantage and Before Happiness. His most recent book, titled Big Potential: How Transforming the Pursuit of Success Raises Our Achievement, Happiness, and Well-Being, hit the shelves in January. Achor spent twelve years at Harvard, where he won over a dozen distinguished teaching awards and delivered lectures on positive psychology in the most popular class at Harvard. Achor graduated magna cum laude from Harvard and earned an MS from Harvard Divinity School in Christian and Buddhist ethics. He has since become one of the world’s leading experts on the connection between happiness and success. Achor has now worked with over a third of the Fortune 100 companies and with places like the NFL, the Pentagon, and the U.S. Treasury. To do his work, he has traveled to fifty-one countries, speaking to farmers in Zimbabwe, CEOs in China, doctors in Dubai, and schoolchildren in South Africa. In 2014, Oprah Winfrey did a two-hour interview with Achor on the science of happiness and meaning. His research on happiness made the cover of Harvard Business Review, his TED talk is one of the most popular of all time with over 14 million views, and his lecture airing on PBS has been seen by millions. @shawnachor