Tuesdays with Morrie Author Mitch Albom on the Root of Unhappiness

Mitch Albom was a successful sports journalist when, after many years, he reached out to Morrie Schwartz, his former college professor, to inquire about Morrie's health.

Morrie was dying from amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), also known as Lou Gehrig's disease, but he agreed to meet with Mitch. The pair had 18 thought-provoking meetings that inspired Mitch's best-selling book Tuesdays with Morrie.

During those conversations, Morrie gave Mitch a simple explanation for why so many people are unhappy with their lives. "He said that they walked through their lives like they were sleepwalking," Mitch tells Oprah, explaining that Morrie believed that many people were merely following someone else's dictates for how they should live while failing to find their own sense of meaning.

Here, Mitch explains how that obliviousness can lead to a lifetime of unhappiness.

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