Oprah Winfrey: How to ATTRACT Anything You Want in Your Life

0:00 Want to be happy? Live a life, not just a business. Hey, it's Evan Carmichael, and this channel was created to help you overcome the number one challenge that is holding you back, a lack of belief in yourself. You watch these videos because you know you're capable of more. You have Michael Jordan level talent at something. So today, let's live your best belief life and get some of the best motivation from Oprah Winfrey. Enjoy. I always understood that there really was no difference between me and the audience. At times I might have had better shoes, but at the core the core of of of what really matters that we are the same. And you know how I know that? Cuz all of us are seeking the same

0:45 thing. You're here at this fabulous school and will go out into the world and each pursue based upon what you believe your talents are, what your skills are, maybe your gifts are, but you're seeking the same thing. Everybody wants to fulfill the highest truest expression of yourself as a human being. That's what you're looking for. the highest truest expression of yourself as a human being. And because I understand that, I understand that if you're working in a bakery and that's where you want to be and that may be the that may be what you've always wanted to do is to bake pies for people or bake cakes for people or to offer your gift, then then

1:33 that's that's for you. And there's no difference between you and me except that's how that's your platform. That's your show every day. So my understanding of that has allowed me to reach everyone to to reach everyone and and there's no way that you wouldn't because that's that's what I truly feel. The way through the challenge is to get still and ask yourself what is the next right move. not think about, oh, I got all of this to what is the next right move and then from that space make the next right move and the next right move and not to be overwhelmed by it because you know your life is bigger than that one moment. You know, you're not defined by what somebody says is a failure for you

2:19 because failure is just there to point you in a different direction. Nothing about my life is lucky. Nothing. A lot of grace, a lot of blessings, a lot of divine order. But I don't believe in luck. For me, luck is preparation. Meeting the moment of opportunity. There is no luck without you being prepared to handle that moment of opportunity. And so what I would say for myself is is that because of my hand in a hand and a force greater than my own, I have been prepared in ways that I didn't even know I was being prepared

3:04 for. And the truth is for me and for every person, every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for the moment that is to come. You don't have to hold yourself hostage to who you used to be or anything you ever used to do. Cuz who has lived and hasn't made mistakes? When I think about my 20s and what a foolish girl I was and how I would give over my power to men who really didn't mean me well. But now I hold no grudges against them either because I realize I'm the one who gave over the power because I didn't know any

3:50 better. And now that I know better, I know I don't have to do that again. It's one of the most powerful lessons any of us can ever know. If I leave you with nothing else, it's just know this for sure. There is not one thing that has ever happened to you. Not one experience, not one encounter, not one crisis, not one joyful thing that hasn't happened just to make you better and help you rise. every single thing you're calling in whether you know it or not. And when you figure out that you are calling it in, when you actually start meditating or praying or doing or having a spiritual practice, which is the

4:35 number one thing you need if you want to be successful in the world, you need something that gives back and nourishes you. Regardless of what you call that, you need to you need to fill your cup so that you can be so full your cup runth over and you have enough to give to other people. If you don't fill your cup, you end up dried up. You end up tired, exhausted, and don't have enough to give to other people. You end up resentful every time somebody asks you because your cup is empty and now they want some of yours. So, your number one job, your number one job is to fill your cup and make yourself whole. Also, if you want to have more confidence and learn from

5:20 billionaires, check out my 254 series. They're free. The links to join are in the description below. They think that success is supposed to happen like that. It was very difficult for me to figure out where my boundaries were because I'd grown up poor and didn't have anything. And now that I know better, I know I don't have to do that again. It's one of the most powerful lessons any of us can ever know. I think in order to actually do the stuff, yes, money is important. But I also think the thing that I hold the dearest and the reason why uh uh the noise about running for president moved me so uh humbly and

6:07 deeply is because it means that you have somewhere in the work gained the people's trust. Yes, you have. And there is nothing more important to me than having the trust of the people and the audience. And I I mean I recognize that it is the audience who came every day and watched you know from all over the world that actually yes that that that helped me to be who I am. So I think the uh the the renowned that that the stand the standing the the the ability to be trusted and to say something but also m listen don't play the billionaire thing small. Don't play the be small. It's it's it's a very big deal because it allows you to it allows you to it allows you to actually do the work.

6:53 So in instead of saying gee I would like to help so many people or you should go out and help so many people you can actually use that for yourself. And I am now at this stage of my career thinking about how to do that more poignantly and fruitfully. I'm now looking for ways that I can do that to uh create a level of sustainability in within our community. So for me the foundational base of empowerment, of entrepreneurship, of any kind of engagement, the foundational base of my success, of my well-being, my wholeness, my everything is knowing who I am and where I come

7:39 from. [Music] In my living room right now is a painting that I've owned now for 30 years. You can Google it. It's called To the Highest Bidder. And it's at the center of my house. And it's at the center of my house because it actually is symbolic of the foundation of not the house, but the foundation for my life. The painting is by Harry Roslin who was a genre painter painter in the uh early 20th late 19th century and the painting is over six feet tall and it shows a slave woman on the auction block holding her daughter's hand and I cannot come in the door my

8:24 front door or I cannot leave without passing that painting. I am reminded of where I come from every day of my life. And I am reminded because I never want to forget it. And in my library, I have a framed list of enslaved African-American people. Remember I showed you um who were held in bondage on various plantations listed in the ledgers alongside the cows and the horses and the buggies and the other property. And I pass this list every day and often I stop in front of it and just speak their names out loud and their ages. Jonas, 11 years old, $500.

9:15 Sarah, 41 years old, $900. Elizabeth, 57, $800. And I forced myself to consider the absurdity and the obscinity of prices being affixed to each one should they be placed up for sale. And I sometimes just pause before them with a prayer, particularly before I have to make a big decision about one of my companies or whether I move forward or whether I stay still. It reminds me, speaking those names out loud, not only of where I've come from, but how far I

10:01 have to go because of them. And it reminds me that I am never alone. It reminds me of what I've come through to get through. Everybody is feeding yourself on the hysteria and the negativity. You got to stay in the light. But one of the reasons why I was so excited is about a wrinkle in time because the message is that the darkness is spreading so fast these days. You must become a warrior of the light. And the reason that's so meaningful to me is because that's how I've led my whole life. And every moment in that film, I just felt like I'm just saying what I normally say. It's true. And and and for these times, the darkness is there to show you your light. Look at what has

10:49 happened. So if you put the focus on look at what happened with the darkness that showed up in Parkland and the darkness that showed up on the streets of Ferguson and the darkness that showed up in many many many many many homes in Chicago with shootings and uh senseless murders. It brings out the best in people. It brings out the best. And so that's what it's there. We live on a planet where there is darkness and light. I deeply believe is not that do unto others as you would have them do unto you. What you do is already done. That moment in the color purple where she says everything you ever try to do to me where Whoopi says that as everything you ever even try to do to me already done to you. So the law, the

11:36 third law of motion in physics says that what you're putting out is coming back all the time regardless of whether you know it or acknowledge it or not. One of the things I tried to do all those years on the Oprah show, sometimes people would criticize me because they felt that I didn't do enough for race or racism. But this is what I always understood that for me my role and my goal in life is to open this open people's hearts. That's what I do is I I try to tell stories that allow people to see themselves and the lives of other people. And for me, it was always more powerful and effective to do a show, for example, on single parents raising their

12:23 children and just on the panel of parents to have a black father and to show the photographs or images of that father putting his child to bed and reading a story at night. That to me is more powerful than doing a story on let's talk about uh fathers, black fathers who are raising their children because the goal for me is to show that we are all more alike than different and that in in our humanity, in our ability to express our humanness, we are the same. So when you see a father putting his child to bed at night and reading stories and that man is black and you know that's what your husband does and that's what you do, you you you feel a sense of connection and humanity. You

13:09 know what I'm saying? You see everything you try to do is already done. So when I figured that out, oh what I'm putting out is what's coming back. Let me get real clear about what it is I'm putting out. Real clear. So I read a book about 1989 called Seed of the Soul. And in that book, Gary Zukov talked about the laws of karma, of the laws of cause and effect, the third law of motion. And in that book, he talked about how intention, your intention is always one with the law. Meaning before you

13:55 even think about a thing, you have an intention for the thing and that the intention is going to determine the outcome. That's why the same people can go to the same church service and somebody walk down the aisle just to be seen to put some money in the church. and somebody else who just goes and just has a little bit to offer. The intention with which you give, the intention with which you serve determines the outcome. So when I figured that out, I went, "Whoa!" I changed everything I did on my show. I called in the producers and I said,

14:41 "From this day forward, I will no longer be speaking to the KKK. I will no longer be speaking to people who are fighting each other in a way that it is damaging to the character of myself and other people who watch. From this day forward, I am only going to do intentional television." I say to the my girls all of the time that your real work is to figure out where your power base is and to work on the alignment of your personality, your gifts that you have to give with the real reason why you're here. That's that's the number one thing

15:28 you have to do is to work on yourself and to fill yourself up and keep your cup full. Keep yourself full. Now, I used to be afraid of that. I used to be afraid particularly from people who say, "Oh, she she's so full of herself. She's so full herself." And now I embrace it. I I I consider it a compliment that I am full of myself. Because you only when you're full. I'm full. I'm overflowing. My cup runth over. I have so much I have so much to offer and so much to give. And I am not afraid of honoring myself. You know, it's miraculous when you think about it. My intention in creating

16:14 masterclass came from the understanding that everybody's story is the same. All stories are connected and there is nothing that anyone who's living on earth has ever felt or known or experienced on a soul level that hasn't been felt or known or experienced by someone else. One of the most difficult things in life is feeling that you are the only one. You are the only one who's traveled this path, who's felt this way. I had nowhere to go. I was homeless at the time. I lost my family. Next thing I know, I'm in this car for 3 years, man. I'm struggling. Who's experienced such devastation or joy or triumph or victory. So for me, I define a master as

17:03 someone who has fully stepped in and owned the full progress and trajectory of their life. Persistence pays off. That's lesson one. But hearing stories told from the mouth of people who know how to live, how to course correct, how to keep going, how to never quit, how to rejoice in the good times and have faith in the bad, those people are masters. Anyone who can do that is a master. And their ability to share their stories only helps the trajectory of others who listen. A lot of people don't know their purpose. And if you don't know your purpose, your immediate goal is to

17:50 figure that out. Cuz otherwise, you're just wandering around here. So the moment you can figure out what it is you're supposed to be doing, the sooner you are able to get about the business of doing that. My life is fueled by my being. Y and the being fuels the doing. So I come from a centered place. I come from a focused place. I come from compassion. Um, it's just it's just my nature. I come from a willingness to understand and to be understood, right? And I come from wanting to to to connect. I mean, the secret of that show for 25 years is that people could see themselves in me all over the world. They could see

18:36 themselves in me. And even as I became um more and more uh financially successful, which was a big surprise to me, I was like, "Oh my god, this is so exciting." Um You mean you got more than that 30,000? I got more than 30,000 by the time I was 30. So, so my, so but what what I realized is through the whole process because I'm grounded in my own self that although I could have more shoes, my feet stayed on the ground, although I was wearing better shoes. These are kind of cute today, too. Uh, so I could keep my feet on the ground even though I could get more shoes. And I could understand I could understand that it

19:23 really was because I was grounded. I' I've done the was doing and continue to this day to do the consciousness work. I work at staying awake. Dear beautiful brownskinned girl. And I use the word beautiful because I know that's never a word you would call yourself. I look into your eyes and I see the light and hope of myself. In this photo, you're just about to turn 20, posing outside the television station where you were recently hired as a reporter.

20:10 You look calm. You look happy. But I know how scared you are. If I could say anything to you, it would be relax. It's gonna be okay, girl. The reason why I was number one for 25 years is cuz I figured out early on there is no story anybody has ever heard that somebody else hasn't experienced. Nothing. And I also figured out um probably maybe the first or second year that all pain is the same. That a mother in Somalia feels the same way as a mother in Seattle when she loses her child. And the common denominator in the human

20:58 experience is our emotions and our feelings. And the more vulnerable and open you are willing to be with your story, the more actual understanding you create with other people and the more powerful you become. People don't think less of you for sharing your story. They think more of you for having the courage to share it. What would you say to your younger self? Oh honey, honey, honey. Oh, baby girl, what the world has in store for you? First of all, it would be relax. It would be stop being afraid and it would be everything's going to be all right. No matter what, you're going to be okay. What inspired me was um and is continues to be what continues to inspire me is a

21:46 primal and fundamental desire to fulfill the highest expression of myself as a human being. I don't want to die not having completely burned out every single possibility of my humanity. I just I just want to I when when I leave this planet I want everybody to say did that used it all up. Not another thing I could do. There wasn't another person I could have given of myself to. There wasn't another deed I could have done. there wasn't anything that you just want to you want to say I want to fill it up you want to take this whole

22:31 human existence which when you think about it Godfrey is really pretty damn miraculous it is it is it is when you think about what it means to be a human being on the planet earth right now that's pretty awesome so I just want to I want to I want to take that to the max I want to say no need to come back as a human first day I went to school I was in a classroom by the time I was uh you know six years old. Didn't go to school till I was six years old because I was lived with my grandmother at that time. Sure. But she had taught me how to read read the Bible, Bible stories. So I went into the classroom knowing Nicodemus, Shadrach, Meach, and Abedneo. I could spell all of those words. I thought I was, you know, I was preaching to the to my kindergarten teacher. So she was

23:18 like, "Who is this girl?" So, I was never placed in an environment where I was ever made to feel inferior. I always felt like I'm the smartest kid in this room. And because I was never placed in a in never put in a position where I was made to feel less than, I didn't grow up feeling less than, you know, and the rest, as they say, is history. And the rest they say is history. And it's all about what you believe. You know, I say this to uh when I I do something on my network now called Life Class. The fundamental key to success is what you believe is true for yourself. Not what you want, not what you desire. It's what do you believe? You know, you can say, I want to I want to be the most successful

24:04 person in the world, but if you believe that there's a glass ceiling and you're going to have a hard time kicking through that glass ceiling, you will be defined by the glass ceiling. And um the great beauty and gift of my life is that I was never defined by the box that other people tried to put me in time. This was early on, you know, because when I first started making money and it was, you know, my salary or my earnings were published all over the place. I mean, the first year I was like, really, did I make that much money? Oh my god. Um, it was very difficult for me to figure out where my boundaries were because I'd grown up poor and didn't have anything. So, it's easy when you don't have anything and people ask you for money and they say, "I need 500." You say, "I

24:49 don't have it cuz I'm just trying to get my rent paid." It's harder when your multi-million dollar salary is now in the paper and you get a lot of friends and cousins you didn't have before. So, how do you set boundaries for yourself? I was having trouble setting boundaries myself for myself for even strangers. People would just show up at my door in Chicago and say, "Oh, bro, I left my husband. Please help me." And I would because she knows I have it. So, don't try that now, though. Okay? Don't try that now. I figured it out. So what I learned was is that oh the

25:35 reason why people keep showing up is because my intention is to make them think that I'm such a nice person that you can ask me for anything. You can get me to do anything. I'm going to say yes. I'm going to say yes. So when Stevie called me this time, I thought I'd try out my first no on Stevie. Let's start big. He wanted me to donate some money to a charity and I didn't want to donate to the charity because I have my own charities and I care about a lot of people but the the the problem is when you you have money everybody thinks you just want to give to everything. So every letter I ever get starts with we know you love the children. Yes, I do love the children but somebody else is going to have to help the

26:20 children. So I said to Stevie, uh I said to Stevie, "No." And um as a person who has that disease to please, I was waiting for him then to to say, "I will never speak to you again. I will never call you. I will never sing a song for you." And he didn't. He just said, "Okay, okay. Okay. It's okay." He said, "Okay, check you later." And what I learned from that is many times you will have angst and worry about things and put yourself in a state like someone said this morning cuz their phone went off they were mortified over

27:06 a phone. I said really um you will put yourself in a state when the other person really isn't even thinking about you. So learning that I could specifically determine for myself what the boundaries were for me, what I wanted to do, give my money, give my time, give of my service to who I wanted to give it to when I did that. I get to make that decision. And just because you get a hundred requests a week doesn't mean you have to try to fulfill all of that. Just because you have all of these demands on your time and on you doesn't mean that you have to say yes. You get to decide

27:52 because you're the master of your fate, the captain of your soul, as William Ernest Henley said in Invictus. And understanding that really changed the meaning of my life in that I was not no longer driven by what other people wanted me to do, but took charge of my own destiny. Making choices based upon what do I feel is the next right move for me. Turn your wounds into wisdom. You will be wounded many times in your life. You'll make mistakes. Some people will call them failures, but I have learned that failure is really God's way of saying, "Excuse me, you're moving in the wrong direction." It's just an

28:38 experience. Just an experience. Just an experience. I remember being taken off the air in Baltimore being told that I was no longer be being fit for television and that I could not anchor the news because I used to go out on the stories and my own truth was even though I'm not a weeper, I would cry for the people in the stories and uh which really wasn't very effective as a news reporter to be covering a fire and uh crying cuz some people lost their house. Um, and it wasn't until they I was demoted as a onair anchorwoman and thrown into the talk show arena to get

29:24 rid of me that I allowed my own truth to come through. And the first day I was on the air doing my first talk show back in 1978, it felt like breathing, which is what your true passion should feel like. It should be so natural to you. And so I took what had been a mistake, what had been perceived as a failure with my career as an anchorwoman in the news business and turned it into a talk show career that's done okay for me. I was interviewing a woman uh on one of the shows. It was so impressive for me to see all the shows that we've done. Lord, made me tired looking at it. Uh but I was interviewing a woman. It was a show called The Mistress, The Wives Meet the Mistresses or some crazy thing. And this

30:10 woman was on and it was a live show and in the middle of it her husband tells the wife and our entire audience and the world that his mistress was pregnant. Yes. to this day makes my eyes water because I saw his wife's face and I felt her humiliation and I said I will quit TV if I have to do this I won't do this anymore and my producer was like what are we going to do this is what everybody's doing and then that same during that same time period so I said I'm not going to do anything like that anymore I'm not going to not going to bring people on TV. First of all, we all we didn't know

30:57 that moment was going to happen. They were like, "We didn't know it was going to happen." But that should not happen on television and I do not want to be a part of the energy that caused somebody to feel that cuz that's not going to come back to me. I got to pay for that. Then I was interviewing the KKK on stage. That was the day the one guy called me a monkey in the audience. And during commercial break, I could see them signaling each other and just watching them and their behavior. I thought, "Oh, they get it. I don't get it. They are using me. They are using this platform cuz they understand." Cuz I'm thinking, "Oh, I'm going to tell you all about the KKK." They were using it to recruit members for themselves. They were using it to recruit their base.

31:44 And I then went to the brutes and said, "We're not doing a show like that." So they said, "You're not going to do the mistresses. You're not you're not going to do what we going to do." So I said, "We we we are going to um create a baseline for ourselves that's based on intention." This was around 1989 when I'd read Gary Zukov's book called The Seat of the Soul. And that book was life-changing for me because in it he talked about the power of intention. And that cause and effect, what goes out comes back is determined by your intention. The energy of your intention is what determines your life.

32:30 Most people don't think about their intention. They just think about what they want to do. Most people don't think about why they want to do it. but what's going to come back to you. The energy that's going to come back to you is the real why of why you did it. And so I then said to my producers, we're not going to do any shows that are not intentional. So don't bring me an idea unless you have an intention for the show that you want the outcome to be. And we're going to strive to see if we can live up to our intentions. And so around the late 80s, we started a pre-show to talk about what the intention was and then a postshow after every single show to say, did we fulfill that intention? And that's about the time I realized this is bigger than me.

33:18 I actually miss I miss you guys. Yeah. I don't I I miss you guys. I miss because where I got fed every day was the audience. And I did not miss a day in 25 years because of the audience. I don't care how badly I felt. I don't care what kind of cold, what kind of flu. I would come because I knew that, you know, our our in our audience every day were a couple hundred, 350 people every day who have literally told their aunts, their cousins, they came with their mothers, they came with their friends. And I know that the preparation to get there, you've been coming from Iowa. You've been coming from Tennessee for days. So it's not just a, oh, I'm just going to Oprah show. You tell that girl I'm going to open. I'm going to open shop. And

34:05 this is the thing I think I have to just say everybody is feeding yourself on the hysteria and the negativity. You got to stay in the light. But one of the reasons why I was so excited is about a wrinkle in time because the message is that the darkness is spreading so fast these days. You must become a warrior of the light. And the reason that's so meaningful to me is because that's how I've led my whole life. And every moment in that film, I just felt like I'm just saying what I normally say. It's true. And and and for these times, the darkness is there to show you your light. Look at what has happened. So if you put the focus on look at what happened with the darkness that showed up in Parkland and the darkness that

34:51 showed up on the streets of Ferguson and the darkness that showed up in many many many many many homes in Chicago with shootings and uh senseless murders. It brings out the best in people. It brings out the best. And so that's what it's there. We live on a planet where there is darkness and light. I teach them that there is no life without cultivating a spiritual life because you are first and foremost a spiritual being having a human experience. And if you lose sight of that, it's easy to get lost in the world. And no one can save a world that they're lost in when they've lost sight of their own north star. So having a spiritual life actually means actively

35:36 and ritually creating the space in your life all the time for gratitude, for kindness, for empathy, for inspiration, for joy and for reverence for life in the home of your soul first and then working to spread that inner joy outward. It means slowing down. It means taking in the moment. It means being exactly where you are, not distracted somewhere else. It means knowing who you are and getting about the business of fulfilling why you really came to our planet. What drives you to keep working so hard? You could, you know, you and I are in the 60s category and so when

36:24 you're in your 60s, you know, you've lived more than you're going to live realistically. So when you realize you've lived more than you're going to live, you can say, "Why not relax a little bit? Why not just ease up? Why have you decided to even work harder than you did before?" Because I think, David, that everybody, you know, the thing that worked for me all these years, whether it was the magazine or which I still have or whether it was the show, I could I understood that there's a common denominator in the human experience. And I want the same thing you want, which is the same thing you want and you want. What we all want is to be able to live out the truest highest expression of ourselves as a human being. That doesn't end until you take your last breath. What is the

37:09 truest highest vision that you hold for yourself? No matter where you are in your life, there's always the next level. There's always a next level to the last breath. So I feel that I always knew that I would get be done with the show when I felt like, oh, I've said as much as I could say here on this platform. And then how will I be used? If you there were if there were a theme song to my life, Amazing Grace would be one of them. And keep on using me to use me up would be another one. You know that Bill Wither song. So I feel that until you have used your value as a human being, you're not done. Create the highest grandest vision

37:54 possible for your life because you become what you believe. When I was a little girl, Mississippi, growing up on the farm, only Buckweed as a role model, watching my grandmother boil clothes in a big iron pot through the screen door because we didn't have a washing machine and made everything we had. I watched her and realized somehow inside myself and the spirit of myself that although this was segregated Mississippi and I was colored and female that my life could be bigger greater than what I saw. I remember being four or five years old. I certainly couldn't articulate it but it was a feeling and a feeling that I

38:40 allowed myself to follow. I allowed myself to follow it because if you were to ask me what is the secret to my success, it is because I understand that there is a power greater than myself that rules my life. And in life, in life, if you can be still long enough in in all of your endeavors, the good times, the hard times to connect yourself to the source, I call it God. You can call it whatever you want to the force nature Allah the power. If you can connect yourself to the source and allow the energy that it is your personality your life force to be connected to the greater force

39:25 anything is possible for you. I am proof of that. I think that my life, the fact that I was born where I was born in the time that I was and have been able to do what I've done, speaks to the possibility, not that I am special, but that it could be done. what I learned going to a beauty salon and asking them after the news director had told me that my hair was too thick and my eyes were too far apart and I needed a makeover and um sitting in a beauty salon in a French beauty salon allowing them to put a French perm on my black hair and having the perm burn through my cerebral cortex and not being the woman that I am now. So not having the courage to say this is burning me

40:12 and coming out a week later bald and having to go on the air. You learn a lot about yourself when you're black and a woman and bald and trying to be an anchorwoman. You learn you learn you're not Diana Ross and that you're not Barbara Walters trying to be I was at the time. I had a lot of lessons. I remember going on the air many times and uh not reading my copy. ahead of time. And uh I was on the air one night and ran across the word B A R B- A D O S. Um that may be Barbados to you, but it was Barbados to me that night. And telling the story as an anger woman about a vote in Abstentia, California. I

40:58 thought it was located near San Francisco. And one of the worst, one of the worst, this is when I broke out of my Barbara shell cuz I'm sitting there crossing my legs trying to talk like Barbara, be like Barbara. And uh I was reading a story about someone with a blaze attitude, which if I had gone to Welssley, I would have known it was Blas. and I started to laugh at myself on the air and broke through my Barbara shell and had decided on that day that laughing was okay even though Barbara hadn't at that time um

41:47 and it was through my series of mistakes that I learned that I could be a better Oprah than I could be a better Barbara. And I allowed Barbara to be the mentor for me as she always has been. And I decided then to try to pursue the idea of being myself. And I am just thrilled that I get paid so much every day for just just being myself. But it was a lesson long in coming, recognizing that I had the instinct that the inner voice that told me that you need to try to find a way to answer to your own truth was the voice I needed to be still and listen to. Get this. This is just remember this cuz this will happen many times in your life. When people show you who they are, believe them the first time,

42:33 not the 29th time. That's particularly good when it comes to to to men situations cuz when he doesn't call back the first time, when you're mistreated the first time, when you see someone who shows you a lack of integrity or dishonesty, the first time, know that that will be followed by many, many, many other times that will at some point in life come back to haunt or hurt you. When people show you who they are, believe them the first time. Live your life from a point of view of truth and you will live your life from truth and you will survive everything. Everything. I

43:21 believe even death. You will survive everything if you can live your life from a point of view of truth. Close your eyes for a moment, will you please? and breathe with me. Just close your eyes and if you will put your thumb to your middle finger and gather your other fingers around and let's feel the vibration and pulse of your personal energy as you take three deep breaths with me. Inhale. And as you exhale, just feel the vibration,

44:06 energy, blood pulsating through your body, through you. And another inhale. And keep your eyes closed. And let's just think about this day.

44:53 this day that you have been graced to breathe in and out thousands of times. This day where many of those breaths were taken for granted, you just expected the next one to come. But the truth is there's no guarantee that the next one comes this day. How you started your day, what your thoughts were this morning, how you've carried yourself through this day. how you've been allowed to have

45:39 encounters and experiences, some challenging, some more life-enhancing, that pushed you forward another day of being here on the planet Earth as a human being. Let's just think about that. After all you've been through in this day alone and the many days and years past, how you got here to this prestigious esteemed university.

46:25 The choices you made that have brought you to this day. Open your heart and quietly to yourself say the only prayer that's ever needed. Thank you. You're still here and you get another chance this day

47:11 to do better and be better. Another chance to become more of who you were created and what you were created to fulfill. Thank you. And the number one lesson I could offer you where your work is concerned is this. Become so skilled, so vigilant, so flat out fantastic at what you do that your talent cannot be dismissed. You stop comparing yourself to other people. You're only on this planet to be you,

47:59 not someone else's imitation of you. I had to learn that the hard way on the air live anchoring the news. One night in my 20s when I first started broadcasting, I was 19, moved to an anchor by the time I was 20. And I was just pretending to be Barbara Walker Walters. I was just trying to talk like Barbara, act like Barb Barbara, hold my legs like Barbara. Um, and I was on the air and I hadn't read the copy fully and I called Canada. And I did that on the air. I cracked myself up cuz I thought Barbara would never call Canada. And that little breakthrough, that little crack, that little moment that I

48:44 stopped pretending allowed the real me to come through. Your life journey is about learning to become more of who you are and fulfilling the highest truest expression of yourself as a human being. You are responsible for your life. And if you're sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you, you are wasting your time. Because only you have the power to take responsibility to move your life forward. And the sooner you get that, the sooner your life gets into gear. What matters is now. this moment and your willingness to see this moment for

49:29 what it is, accept it, forgive the past, take responsibility, and move forward. Actually, I did this at the end of my uh uh show. I did my favorite guest of all times, and that's hard to do out of literally thousands and thousands. They they supposedly estimated that there's like 35,000 people I interviewed over the years. There was one woman out of all the celebrities, out of all of the famous, nonfamous, infamous people, one woman from Who was she? Her name is Tara Trent. Listen to the story. I'm going to try to shorten it for you, God. Okay. Tara Trent, born and raised

50:14 in a village in Zimbabwe. 11 years old. She's doing her brother's homework. She wants to go to school. Her father says, "No, you're gay. You have to educate the boy first. That's right. That was the tradition. That's right. The boy has to go to school. You can't go to school. So, she starts doing her brother's homework. She does his brother's homework. He goes to school. He gets all A's on his homework. Yet, he doesn't know the answers to the question. The teacher comes to the village to say, "What is going on here? This boy doesn't know the answers, but his homework's perfect." She finds out that Tara, his younger sister, is doing his homework. She begs the father to let Tara go to school. The father says, "No, she can't go to school." Finally, he marries her off. She marries at 11 and a half years old. She gets married. She has three children by the time she's 18 years old.

51:00 A woman comes to the village from an NGO, Heer International, and asks, "What are your dreams?" This is going to make me cry. Finally, you're going to make me cry. Ask her, "What are your dreams?" This child has never thought about what her dreams were. She says, "Write down your dreams." She writes down her dreams on a piece of paper and she folds them in a tin can and she buries them under a rock. The first dream was to be able to go to the school in go to a school in the United States of America and get a college degree. She ends up through some miracle of the NGO going to the United States. She gets a college degree. Wow. Yes. She gets a four-year degree in three years. Terite Trent. She goes back to the rock in Zimbabwe. She writes her

51:46 next goal on the piece of paper. She buries it under the rock. She writes, "I want to get a master's degree." She goes back to United States. She gets a master's degree. By this time, she now has five children. She's married to a man who still beats her. Incredible. She goes back to United States. She gets her master's degree. After the master's degree, she goes back to the rock in Zimbabwe. She writes down her final goal is to get a doctor degree. And last year she became Dr. Terara Trent. Where did you find it? Where did I find it? Um I found her in the in the Nicholas Kristoff's book called uh something the sky underneath the sky or the sky. Nichol I found her in Nicholas Kristoff's book. Incredible. Incredible.

52:33 And I was reading the story. I had Nicholas Kristoff on the show. Nicholas Kristoff, the famous New York Times writer, and she wasn't there. She wasn't a part of the show. I'm reading the story. I can't believe this book, the story of this woman as I'm reading the story. So, when we go to do the show, the producers have Nicholas Kristoff on. They bring on other guests, but this woman isn't there. I go, how how could you not have her there? So, we tape another show with Nicholas Kristoff. We go back, I go, find we're going to find that woman, Terrorite Trent. this time. By this time, she's living in the United States. We followed her back to Zimbabwe to the rock. We pulled the tin can from underneath the rock. And that is my favorite guest of all time. And the worst. Um, I don't have a worst. I don't

53:21 have a worst. But the reason why she and and as I said this on my show, the reason why Tara Trent is my favorite guest of all time is because she represents in that one story of the little girl in a village in Zimbabwe who had a dream and the heart and depth and discipline to pursue it. She represents everything I tried to say in every show in 25 years. She literally through her life story sums up the message that I was trying to give to every single one of my viewers. You can you can keep trying. Don't give up. The universe speaks to us always first in whispers.

54:07 And a whisper usually in your life feels like hm that's odd or hm that doesn't make any sense or hm is that right? It just really feels like that. It's that it's that kind of subtle. And if you don't pay attention to the whisper it gets louder and louder and louder. And I say it's like getting thumped upside the head. You don't pay attention to that. It's like getting a brick upside your head. you don't pay attention to that, the brick wall falls down. That is the pattern that I see in my life and so many other people's lives. And so I ask people, what are the whispers? What's whispering to you? Now I have paid attention to my life because

54:54 I understand that my life just like your life is always speaking to you where you are in the language with the people with the circumstances and experiences that you can understand and interpret if you are willing to see that always life God is speaking to you. Now, it took me a while to actually really get this and to understand it, but once I did, I started paying attention to everything. And one of the reasons why I can now accept the fact that I can offer my gatherings of information and wisdom

55:42 and call myself a spiritual teacher is that every single person who ever came on my show, and I hear there's like 37,000 guests I've talked to, a lot of them came from dysfunction, and a lot of them wouldn't appear to be teachers, but every one of them had something to say that was meaningful and valuable and that I could use to grow myself into the best of myself, which is what all of our jobs are. Your number one job is to become more of yourself and to grow yourself into the best of yourself. If you can find what is your passion, if you find what you love, you never get tired. or if you do get tired,

56:27 you you're fueled by the energy of your work and you know what you're supposed to do by how it feels. And so you know if you're doing the right thing if it feels like it's right to you. And when you hit the thing that feels right, you know it's right because it gives you your juice. And you know it's right because you would do it for nothing. You would do it for nothing and find a way to be able just to do it in order to be able to continue. That's how you know you're doing what you're supposed to be doing. It is your job to make yourself whole. Not perfect, but whole and full. Your real work in life, your real work is to fill yourself till your cup runth over

57:15 so that you're never grasping and needy, clamoring and insecure, but that you can live your life assured in your worthiness and your right to be here and to become the best version of yourself as a woman being. You came from very modest circumstances. You didn't come from a wealthy family, but modest is not the word. Well, I was trying to be polite. I mean, I was I was actually poor and I, you know, a lot of the girls at my school, actually, all the girls from my school are poor. And I was saying to them just recently, I was just in South Africa for a graduation, you know, you all are come come from the same circumstances. You are poor. And one of the girls raised their hand and said, "I don't like using that word." I go, "Well, if you're not poor, then you should excuse yourself because that's why I'm paying for you because you're in

58:01 this school. So, if you're not poor, you don't like the choice of the word." So I don't I don't have a problem with the word. I don't have any shame about it. I think you know probably earlier in my life or career the word would have bothered me but it truly it was it it was I was poor. No running water David or electricity living with an outhouse. My biggest frustration is not just with young women. My biggest frustration is also with young men, young people who think that, and I have a lot of this with my girls in college. They think that success is supposed to happen like that. Yeah. They think that there isn't a process to it. They think that they're

58:48 supposed to come out of college and have their brand. And um I recognize now that I am a brand, but I was resistant to being called a brand for many years cuz I was like I'm brand I'm not a brand. I'm a person. But how I got to be a brand was not trying to be a brand. How I got to be a brand was every day making choices that felt like this is the right move. Now that's the right move and now that's the next right move. The next right move. And so my frustration with young women and young men is that they think it's supposed to happen like this and they don't understand that there's a process to it. Social media. Yes. Social media. You did not get to be editor of Vogue magazine by not working and

59:34 working and working and working and working to get here. I love the theory of that there's 10,000 hours behind anybody who ever gets to be successful. Who are your dream dinner companions, dead or alive? Oh my gosh. I would like Jesus to come to dinner and explain. Explain. Is this what you wanted? Is this really what you wanted? Did you want the churches and the people and the Did you Did you want all that or were you looking for people to have a different level of consciousness? Did you want the Christ consciousness? Cuz I think a lot of people got it wrong. Jesus, if you went opera, what would you be doing with your life? I would definitely definitely definitely be teaching in a classroom because it's the thing that still brings me the greatest joy. Um I now teach by satellite to my

1:00:23 uh girls in in in school in South Africa and it is my favorite moment in the world when you can see someone get it. Okay, I know this is a short thing, but the other day I was teaching an eighth grade class and I was using my favorite quote from Maya Angelou where she says, "I come as one, but I stand as 10,000." Wow, that's a great one. Isn't it a great one? It's a great one. And I was saying to the girls, cuz sometimes they say, "Sometimes, you know, I feel so alone. I miss my parents. I miss cuz it's a boarding school." I say every time I walk into a room, girls, I feel like Maya Angelou said when she said I come as one I stand as 10,000. What does that mean? Close your eyes and think of

1:01:10 your parents. Think of your mother and your father. Now think of their mother and their father. Now think of their mother and their father. And I did that for like a minute till the girls started giggling. I go, "That's your 10,000." So when you walk into a room, you never walk alone. You walk with the 10,000 who've come before you and are with you and are constantly surrounding you and I could see them get it. Yeah. Which is just fantastic when the light goes on and you realize, oh, they got it. The beauty of my life, Edward, is that from I'd say 32, 33 on, I figured out how to be myself completely on television.

1:01:56 And all these years, I have made a fortune really being myself. So, I'm never not me. I'm never not the person that you see. You know, there are days when I am more open and warm than others. And one of the things that actually caused me in 1991 to get my own plane, I was in the airport and I was just minding my own business and a woman came up and she said, "You're not acting like you do on TV." And I said, "What's that?" She says, "Well, on TV you're hugging everybody and you're just sitting here and you're not hugging away." I'm just sitting here, man. I'm just waiting on the plane. So, um, if I'm in an airport, I'm not necessarily walking around hugging people, okay? But I am I am just always just myself. Life has dreamed a

1:02:43 dream for you and your go your goal your number one job is to figure out what that dream is and align yourself with the dream cuz the dream cannot come to you unless you're willing to meet it energetically in the same place. So if your energy is off, which I say to my girls all the time, they could teach this class right now on being in flow. If you are not in flow with God's dream for you, with life's dream for you, if you are out of order, if you are out of sync, it cannot come to you. It will not come because the whole purpose of your life is to line yourself up with the

1:03:29 purpose. And so if you are operating in fear, if you are operating in uh jealousy, jealousy will kill you. When you are synced up with life, life just gives to you. It opens doors. It creates experiences. It allows you to meet people. Things show up you never thought were going to show up. And you are doing what is the purpose of your soul being. I started the magazine. They said you will not see a profit for at least the next 5 years. And we were profitable the first month, the second month and and and have been since. And so I thought, oh, okay, those predictions that is not really true. I had no idea how difficult

1:04:14 it would be. However, I am really um there's an old uh spiritual that says wouldn't take nothing from a journey. Now I I really was speaking to Steon this morning. and he was saying it's a good thing that you went through that because you were living on the mountaintop for the past 25 years. You'd created this machine of the Oprah show that it just felt like walking into okay here we go. So no struggle, no just it it had become easy for me to do. So to be in a position to build from scratch this network and to go through everybody thinking it was going to fail and there were days when I had doubts myself like I had to force myself to actually practice what I had preached for years

1:05:00 about going inside staying with the vision taking having every step move you in the direction of the vision and trusting trusting that building the right team. It was difficult for some days. One of the things I started to get uh around mid to late no late mid to late 90s is that everybody that I had on the show at the end of the show would say something to me like um was that okay? Was that okay? How was that? Was that okay? Right at the end of the interview. And I started to then track it. It didn't matter if it was um I I I I had gone and done a show where I was in um a prison and I was interviewing a father who was

1:05:48 in jail for life for murdering his twin daughters. And at the end of the interview, even behind bars, he said to me, "Is that okay? How'd I do?" And Barack Obama said it when he sat in the chair the first time and George Bush said it. Beyonce said it at the end of she taught me how to twerk and then said, "Is that okay?" Right. Right. So that's an acquired skill, didn't I? Right. Yes. The twerking thing. But this is what I learned uh sitting in that chair for 25 years that at the end of the day whether you are interviewing me or I get to interview you whatever your profession is wherever you are in your life in your relationships every person that you encounter every experience the person

1:06:36 wants to know was that okay was that okay and what I started to hear was that what people are really saying is did you hear me? Did you hear me? And did what I say mean anything to you? And so I started to listen with that in mind, with that intention of validating that you're being here, you're speaking to me, you're taking the time to do this with me is important because you matter. And that's true for everybody who's watching or listening that every argument that you ever have, every encounter, the person just wants to know, did you hear me? Did you see me? And did I say anything that mattered? Everybody has a different talent. And the reason we're all so messed up is

1:07:21 because you're looking at everybody else's talent and wishing you had some of their talent. All the energy that you spend thinking about, wishing about, being jealous of, envious of anybody else is energy that you're not only putting out that's going to come back to you negatively, but you're taking that away from you. All your energy should be forced on what do I have to offer? What do I have to give? How can I be used in service? Because Dr. King's message of not everybody can be famous but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service and there is not a job in here that you can do that you don't switch the paradigm to service and not make that job more fulfilling. I

1:08:08 don't care what the job is. If you say I'm a singer, I'm a dancer, I'm an artist, I'm a teacher, I'm a nurse, I'm a doctor, I'm a janitor, I'm a I'm a clerk, I'm a If you say, if I look at this from how do I use this in service to something bigger than myself, it no longer becomes a job. It becomes an offering to the world. This is the beauty of of my life. There's not a thing that happens to me that I don't look at it as a teaching learning experience. And so whenever I'm going into any kind of crisis, I've said this many times before, I'm always looking for what is this here to teach me. Reading is the strongest

1:08:53 signal for success in the future that I've ever seen. It is the strongest strongest strongest. I got my first job in radio uh when I was 16 years old because I've been been broadcasting since I was 16 years old. But my first job I got because I was a great reader. When you are a great reader, you can articulate and speak and command the English language in ways that other people cannot and people think you're a lot smarter than you are lots of time. Have you ever met a person who was a great reader when they were young who was not successful? You never. Never. It is the absolute best foundation ever in life. The first law is the third law of motion in physics which says for every action there's an equal and opposite

1:09:39 reaction. And we showed that very beautifully in the color purple when Miss Cely says to mist everything you even try to do to me is already done to you. That is not just a a rhetorical saying that is law. That is Newton's third law of motion in physics which says everything that goes out is coming back. It's just like everything that goes up is coming down. May take it a long time to come down is coming down. Everything that goes out is coming back. It's coming back. So to answer the power of manifestation and meditation, what meditation does is sync you up with the source. What meditation does is allows you to literally tap into the power that

1:10:26 created you so that you are in alignment with that. And so when you carry that out into the world, everything that you do comes from the center of that alignment that's coming from the source that we call God, we call divine energy, divine intelligence, whatever name you want to give it, we call life. When you are synced up with life, life just gives to you. So when I first started making money, I was one of those people who felt I got to every time somebody ask me, I got to Yeah. So go crazy. You go crazy. You have to look within yourself. What do you want to do? That's that that means family members cuz you get a lot of cousins. Cousins. Wait a minute. When you get the Van Jones show, all of a sudden you get cousins following you. So

1:11:14 you decide for yourself. And so I have uh you know I've given away so much that people don't know because most of the time you don't hear about the people that I've helped. So people complain about what I did or didn't do. Y'all don't know me. You don't know me. I do. I do. And and and God does. So I don't have any Let me get let me get one more thing. I have all of that very much in check in your personal intention. So it is my intention, my intention to fulfill the dream of the creator. It is my intention to live to the highest calling and be pressed to the mark of the highest calling that I

1:12:01 have come to do. And when you can ask the creator, ask that which made you you, what is your dream for me? I guarantee you, instead of you trying to define the dream, what is your dream for me? If you're able to lean into the dream that the universe and all the forces of of of of light and love and power and grace by all the names that we call God has for you. Nobody can touch you. Nobody can touch you. That show was on for 25 years in Chicago and um when you did it, you won I think almost 50 Emmy

1:12:47 awards and it was voted one of the best TV shows in the history of TV. So you ended it though after 25 years to do other things and we'll talk about that. But you no regrets about ending that show. No, no reg no regrets whatsoever. You know, I I didn't want to be punch drunk in the ring still trying to uh come up with what is the next thing? What is the next thing? because over the years we became our own greatest competition. So when I first started uh went national in 1986, every time there'd be another talk show be, oh Haraldo River, what are we going to do? And then I realized a couple of years in that you run your own race better than anybody if you take the time to see what everybody else is doing. You lose your ground and that I could be a better me

1:13:33 than I could be anybody else. And so no need of trying to compare myself to other people. Know your own value. Absolutely. Okay. So when you're saying I know who I am and and I'm telling you it's the thread that runs through everything. It's the thing that allows you to stand in your own truth. And one of the things for years that myAngelo used to say to me is, "Baby, you need to know that you alone are enough. You alone are enough." Every single day, I would have a pre-show meeting and have the producers come in and state to me, "What is your intention? How do we want to use whoever is on this show, whatever is happening on this show

1:14:20 to serve the audience in a way that fulfills the mission of uplifting, enlightening, encouraging as well as entertaining? And if it doesn't do that, then I can't do it. I figured this out early on in the show. I had read this quote from uh Dr. King uh one of my favorite quotes from him that says, "Not everybody can be famous, but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service." And I literally shifted I used that quote to help me shift the way I saw the platform of television instead of like, oh, I'm I'm on TV. How do I use that platform as a as a platform of service? Is Amen. is

1:15:05 is what I did. Yeah. Yeah. We know. And you did that pretty well, too. But when you think about growing and being empowered yourself, it is what you've been able to do for other people that that leaves you the fullest. Yes. That absolutely. There's a bigger dream waiting for you. Just waiting for you to step into it. To step into it. Your life is big. Your life is huge. And we spend so much time wanting to be in somebody else's life. And you don't get honored. You don't get

1:15:52 revered. You don't get celebrating wanting what somebody else has because that which created you, divine intelligence that dreamed you from before your ancestors ever knew they would become your ancestors. That which dreamed the seed of you want you to know how special, how wondrous, how mysterious, how complex, how glorious, how phenomenal you are. And you get no credit messing in somebody else's territory

1:16:39 or trying to have power over something you have no control. Another one of my favorite teachings is the Wizard of Oz. When the witch wicked witch of the west says, "Go away from here because you don't have any power here." You have no power in any territory other than your

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