Dan Buettner

In

He’s an explorer, educator, photographer, Emmy Award-winning producer of documentaries and he holds three world records in endurance cycling.

Plus, he just so happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on the longevity habits of some of the healthiest people on Earth.

His last book, “Blue Zones: Lessons for Living Longer from the People Who’ve Lived the Longest,” was a huge best-seller, even catching the attention of Oprah who sent him to Costa Rica with Dr. Oz to illustrate his findings.

Now that he’s taught us all how to live longer, he’s going to help us live happier, too. His new book, Thrive, is the result of a five-year global lifestyle study. With his partners at National Geographic, he traveled to the happiest places on the planet, which were determined by a huge database featured evidence-based research on happiness.

Dan reveals the happiest places in the U.S., the Americas, Asia and Europe and explains why some people are much more successful at being happy than others.

Dan says his research has found that 35 percent of happiness is based on your genes, 20 percent on your luck — good or bad — and 40 percent is directly up to you.

So, how can you incorporate his findings into your own life?

He offers tips on how much TV you should watch, how much money you need to make and how many friends you need to have in your life.

Plus, he says you can toss out all those motivational books and tapes and instead look to the examples set by others around the world.

Dan just doesn’t talk the talk. He helped establish a vitality zone in an average city in middle America and just wait until you hear how his simple changes to the city and its citizens yielded dramatic results.