Shawn Achor

speaker

398 appearances 1 recordings 1 series first heard Jul 2026 last heard 14 Jul

Shawn Achor’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jul 2026 with 1.

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The Oprah Podcast · Your Life Changes When Your Beliefs Do with Shawn Achor and Oprah · 14 Jul 2026 podcast

We think that if they're born a pessimist, they die a pessimist, right?

If you're born into a family that doesn't have religious beliefs, you don't have religious beliefs.

But what we're finding is that change is actually radically possible.

I studied back at the divinity school and traditional, I studied Christian Buddhist, Christian ethics.

I'm a Christian and I compared it to Buddhist ethics.

because I want to understand how other people's different beliefs shape how we experience this world.

Why do we give?

Why do we forgive?

Why do we wake up in the morning?

And while I was doing that, I learned the traditional Buddhists believe that you have to work your way, inch your way towards enlightenment through these habits and willpower and determination.

And then there's Zen Buddhism, which believes that change can happen rapidly in a car accident, with the birth of a child, with seeing someone that you fall in love with.

It can happen in a NICU ward in a hospital.

And it can happen even on a snowy mountain in an emergency hut that suddenly our beliefs that held us back could start to change almost at the speed of light.

Well, it's actually one of the most powerful and predictive beliefs that we have, the belief that there's something greater than ourselves.

And I knew that I was gonna get pushed back by putting it in the book.

People would say, you're writing a science book, stay in your lane.

You can skip this chapter.

You can focus on the other beliefs for sure.

But from a scientific perspective,

Religious beliefs are actually neurologically different.

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