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 · last 12 months

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

So she Ubered to the hospital.

Husband of the year.

I got her an Uber XL, so that's fancy.

And she got there, and they said, ma'am, your water broke.

You need to stay here for six weeks trying to hold this baby in.

And two days later, she was rushed into emergency surgery.

We didn't even have a name for this child.

It was three months too early, and we almost lost her three times in a two-day period of time.

And she kept sparking back to life, and we found her name.

Her name is Zoe Sparks Acor, and she just turned eight.

But instead of going on a book tour to talk about research on how you pursue happiness and success, instead, my happiness as a researcher sat in the NICU in an incubator for the next 50 days while these doctors tried to keep her alive.

What happened in that moment overnight is my beliefs about what was important and how I mattered changed.

And what changed next in my life was because of those beliefs.

I remember holding Zoe's hand, this little three pound baby that was under the purple light with all those wires, just keeping her alive.

And I decided that I was gonna not only take a step back from work, but I was gonna become a full-time dad for the next couple of years to take care of Zoe and our family.

And it was amazing.

And it was also hard at the same time in a way I didn't expect, because I saw all these opportunities that I wanted seemed to pass me by and the world seemed like it was passing me by, but I'm grateful for that time because not only did it shift my beliefs, but also it gave me space.

And when the pandemic occurred, these hospitals and schools started reaching out about what could they do when they were suffering so much.

And I had the space, but also that meaningful belief

to try and help in those moments.

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