Oprah Winfrey 30 Minutes for the NEXT 30 Years of Your LIFE
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 know when i was a kid i thought i
was going to uh
be a social worker or be a teacher or
somehow be in an environment where i
would be connected and speaking to
people to honor that calling i had no
idea that god could dream this big dream
of
a television life for myself but
everybody has a calling
and your real job in life is to figure
out as soon as possible what that is
who you were meant to be
and begin to honor that in the best way
possible for yourself we have seen over
the years on the oprah show so many
people who’ve been able to rise to
success in their life and only able to
rise to success because they answered
the call lots of people think that it’s
about being famous or about being known
or about doing big big incredible things
what you’re going to hear today and see
through the stories
is that sometimes the calling is
right in your own neighborhood sometimes
the calling is
something that
was just a whisper to you and when you
begin to honor that whisper
and to follow that
you end up being the best that you could
be
i actually thought at the time
that being thin
uh
made me better
uh my identification with form my
wanting so
desperately to be in a size 10 gene was
so prominent
identifying with that that shortly after
this i gained five pounds
and i was invited to a party at the time
by don johnson remember dreamy dawn
johnson i was invited to a holiday party
and i did not go to that party because i
thought the five pounds
made me too fat
not good enough to be a don johnson’s
party sounds kind of sick now i know
but that’s what the ego does it is uh
it’s just it is sick it’s wily it’s
cunning it’s deceptive it’s an imposter
imposing on the real you making you
often think that you’re something that
you’re not
you’re not the shape of your body
you’re not your status
you’re not your position in life you’re
not the car you drive no matter how
fancy it is you’re not
your house or your square footage for
all of you watching right now here’s
another way to better understand ego
what i’m talking about eckhart taught me
this everybody try this from home or
wherever you are right now close your
eyes
and
notice what you’re thinking
notice your thoughts
now
who is thinking those thoughts
can you notice that there is a space
where you are observing the thoughts
and where you are aware of the thoughts
that you were observing
eckhart says you are that awareness
disguised as a person
and when i got that
i understood the difference between my
true self
and my ego self
over the years we’ve heard invaluable
information
that
in a moment of danger could be
life-saving
nothing i heard made a greater
impression on me than back in 1991 i
think we were beginning our fifth season
and a man named sanford strong came on
and and shared this never forgot it rule
number one and frankly it’s probably in
my opinion the most important
never
allow them
to take you somewhere else
never
if everyone in this room and everyone
watching this program has never drawn
the line
and made a decision
on crime protection
you better make it when they decide to
move you from crime scene number one to
crime scene number two because the crime
scene number two it’s going to be
isolated you won’t choose it you’ll be
the focus of the crime
i think what was so
interesting about that piece of advice
is at the time that we all heard that
we had been trained as women people
especially to believe that you just do
whatever they say whatever they say go
along with it and what’s important for
those of you who are watching right now
and
those of you who are on the internet
with us right now to know is that it’s
all about using your gut in the moment
and people who’ve survived horrific
circumstances talk about listening to
that intuition and every move being made
calculated on listening to what your gut
says
what the experts now say is do not allow
yourself to be taken to the second
location because anybody who is trying
to harm you
wants to get you to an isolated place
where they can do that without other
people seeing or knowing it so in that
moment of making the decision oh you’re
going to shoot me if you’re going to
shoot me
you have to shoot me now
rather than shoot me in isolation where
nobody can see you whenever somebody has
said something that made the little
hairs on my
arms or neck stand up i know that if
that’s happening to me that’s also
happening to somebody else too
the way to make movies is to do stuff
that you love because you know for 25
years i worked on the oprah show and
uh stephen will tell you that there were
date nights that i came home and i
almost you know it’s hard to even like
take off my clothes because i knew i was
going to be getting up four hours later
but i never really felt exhausted
like depl i never i felt exhausted but i
never felt depleted so do the work that
comes straight from
the soul of you from your background
from stories that you’ve grown up with
from stories that bring you passion from
stories that you
not just yearn to tell
but that if you don’t tell them they
won’t get told and when you when you are
operating you know the single the single
greatest uh
wisdom i think i’ve ever received other
than when people show you they are is
that
the key to fulfillment success
happiness contentment in life is when
you align
your personality
with what your soul actually came to do
i believe everybody has a soul and has
you know their own personal
spiritual energy so when you can use
your personality to serve whatever that
thing is
you can’t help but be successful so if
you do films that come from the interior
of your soul you do work you do art that
comes from the interior of you
it you cannot miss
it’s only when you’re doing stuff that
you think might make money you think it
may be
uh
a hit or you think it may uh bring you
some level of attention or success that
isn’t what does it i would have to say
that all of the great wonderful
experiences of my life that have brought
me to this moment have come from working
from the interior of myself and so
that’s why it feels so authentic because
it it actually is
so when you do that you’ll win
and everybody has a different talent
and the reason we’re all so messed up is
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 is 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
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 but 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 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
they say i need 500 you say i don’t have
it because i’m just trying to get my
rent paid
it’s harder when your
multi-billion 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 what i learned was is that
oh the 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 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
[Music]
yes i do love the children but somebody
else is gonna have to help the 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 just
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 because their phone
went off they were mortified over a
phone i said really
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
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
there was one woman out of all the
celebrities out of all of the
famous non-famous infamous people one
woman
who is she her name is tarai trent
listen to the story
i’m going to try to shorten it for you
guys okay tara right trent born and
raised 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 a girl you have to
educate the boyfriend yes that’s right
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 answer
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 tarai his younger sister is doing
his homework she begs the father to let
terrorize 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 a woman comes to the
village from an ngo heifer international
and asks what are your dreams this is
going to make me cry finally
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 and 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 terrorized trent
she goes back to the rock in zimbabwe
she writes her 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 uni and said 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 until 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 doctorate degree and last
year she became dr tararai 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
this guy and nico i found her in
nicholas christoph’s book
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 ch 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 could you not
have her there so we tape another show
with nicholas kristoff we go back and go
fine we’re gonna find that woman terror
right trend 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 have a
worse but the reason why she and as i
said this on my show the reason why tara
wright 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 you have to believe you
have to believe
over the years the century so many
teachers and poets and songwriters have
talked about the significance of knowing
yourself i know we’ve all heard to thine
own self be true shakespeare or
learning to love yourself is the
greatest love of all whitney houston
what i know for sure is
that in all the talk about loving
yourself you can’t begin to love
yourself or even be true to yourself
unless you know
who
you are
separate from your ego
so think about this for a moment you’re
at home listening watching me and taking
in the thoughts that i’m sharing right
now
and
there is an inner space that allows you
to perceive these thoughts
little not even a space i’m just using
the word space because there is no other
word there is
the
ability to
perceive what i’m saying
and be aware of what i’m saying
that is where the true you abide in that
awareness in the very center of yourself
and when you stray from that center you
get lost and you make mistakes
i learned this the hard way your ego
takes over
everybody has an ego i used to think the
ego showed itself through um
someone being arrogant or
stuck up or haughty
or the who does she think she is
prancing down a red carpet kind of thing
well
i’m in show business in the business of
showing myself
so i’m aware that there’s a lot of
egotism involved in this business and i
always thought that i
had my ego in check until i realized
that it’s not just the obvious it’s not
always acting out or showing off
in 2008
i chose eckhart tolle’s book a new earth
for my book club and this book will
change the way
you view your life and the people around
you and your world chapters three and
four literally changed the way i saw
myself and my ego
it changed for me what ego meant
and totally says it’s any identification
with form
meaning any identification identifying
with something that is not the center of
yourself that is possessions material
things cars
titles social status
or in my case identifying with the deep
desire to be thin
you will find true success and happiness
if you have only one goal there really
is only one and that is this
to fulfill
the highest
most truthful
expression
of yourself
as a human being
you want to max out your humanity
by using your energy to lift yourself up
your family and the people around you
theologian howard thurman said it best
he said don’t ask yourself what the
world needs
ask yourself what makes you come alive
and then go do that
because what the world needs is people
who have come alive
the world needs
[Music]
people like michael stahlzenberg from
fort lauderdale when michael was just
eight years old michael nearly died from
a bacterial infection that cost him both
of his hands and both of his feet
and in an instant this vibrant little
boy became a quadruple amputee
and his life
was changed forever
but in losing who he once was
michael discovered who he wanted to be
he refused to sit in that wheelchair all
day and feel sorry for himself so with
prosthetics he learned to walk
and run and play again
he joined his middle school lacrosse
team and last month when he learned that
so many victims of the boston marathon
bombing would become new amputees
michael decided to banish that darkness
with light
michael and his brother harris created
mikeysrun.com
to raise one million dollars for other
amputees
by the time harris runs the 2014 boston
marathon
more than a thousand miles away from
here
these two young brothers
are bringing people together to support
this boston community the way their
community came together to support
michael and when this 13 year old man
was asked about his fellow amputees he
said this
first
they will be sad
they’re losing something
they will never get back
and that’s scary
i was scared
[Music]
but they’ll be okay
they just don’t know that yet
we might not always know it
we might not always see it or hear it on
the news
or even feel it in our daily lives but i
have faith
that no matter what
class of 2013
you will be okay
and you will make sure our country is
okay
i have faith because of that
nine-year-old girl who went out and
collected the change
i have faith because of david and
francine wheeler i have faith because of
michael and harris stolzenberg and i
have faith because of you the network of
angels sitting here today one of them
khadijah williams who came to harvard
four years ago
khadijah had attended 12 schools in 12
years
living out of garbage bags
amongst pimps and prostitutes and drug
dealers
homeless
going into department stores walmart in
the morning to bathe herself so that she
wouldn’t smell in front of her
classmates
and today she graduates as a member of
the harvard class
of 2013. nobody’s journey is seamless or
smooth we all stumble we all have
setbacks if things go wrong you hit a
dead end as you will
it’s just life’s way of saying
time to change course
so ask every failure this is what i do
every failure every crisis every
difficult time i say what is this here
to teach me
and as soon as you get the lesson
you get to move on
if you really get the lesson you pass
and you don’t have to repeat the class
if you don’t get the lesson it shows up
wearing another pair of pants or skirt
to give you some remedial work
and what i found is that difficulties
come when you don’t pay attention to
life’s whisper
because life always whispers to you
first first and if you ignore the
whisper sooner or later you’ll get a
scream
whatever you resist persists but if you
ask the right question not why is this
happening but what is this here to teach
me
what is this here to teach me it puts
you in the place and space to get the
lesson you need my friend ed cartoli
who’s written this wonderful book
uh called a new earth
that’s all about letting the awareness
of who you are stimulate everything that
you do he puts it like this he says
don’t react against a bad situation
merge with that situation instead and
the solution will arise from the
challenge
because surrendering yourself doesn’t
mean giving up it means acting with
responsibility
okay
many of you know that as president
hennessey said i started this school
in africa
and
i founded the school where i’m trying to
give south african girls a shot at a
future like yours stanford
and i spent five years making sure that
school would be as beautiful as the
students
i wanted every girl to feel her worth
reflected in her surroundings so i
checked every blueprint
i picked every pillow
i was looking at the grout in between
the bricks i knew every thread count of
the sheets i chose every girl from the
villages from nine provinces and yet
last fall i was faced with a crisis i’d
never anticipated i was told that one of
the dorm matrons was suspected of sexual
abuse
well that was as you can imagine
devastating news
first i cried actually i sobbed for
about a half an hour
and then i said let’s get to it that’s
all you get is a half an hour you need
to focus on the now
what you need to do now so i contacted a
child trauma specialist i put together a
team of investigators i made sure the
girls had counseling and support and
gail and i got on a plane and flew to
south africa and the whole time i kept
asking that question
what is this here to teach me
and as difficult as that experience has
been
i got a lot of lessons
i understand now the mistakes i made
because i had been paying attention to
all of the wrong things
i built that school from the outside in
when what really mattered was the inside
out
so it’s a lesson that applies to all of
our lives as a whole what matters most
is what’s inside what matters most is
the sense of
integrity of quality and beauty i got
that lesson and what i know is is that
the girls came away with something too
they’ve emerged from this more resilient
and knowing that their voices
have power
[Music]
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 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 dream the seed of you
wants 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
[Music]
or trying to have
power
over something you have no control
another one of my favorite teachings is
the wizard of oz
when the wicked which is 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 own
oh but you are the master of that
you get to be the master of your own
fate you get to be the captain of your
own soul and if you just manage that if
you just took care of your territory
all the glorious glorious glorious
wondrous
wondrous opportunities and possibilities
that are waiting for you so the question
is what are you resisting
what are you pushing against
what are you not allowing what are you
blocking because you have this idea of
who and what you’re supposed to be
instead of
leaning into the dream that’s already
been created and waiting for you it’s
waiting for you and the second i mean it
doesn’t it’s an instant thing it’s a
shift in the way you see yourself and
the power from which you have come
[Music]
you