The Resilient Mind - Focus On You - Oprah Winfrey

Episode Date: July 24, 2024

Oprah Winfrey is a media mogul, actress, producer, and philanthropist. She is best known for her talk show, "The Oprah Winfrey Show," which ran from 1986 to 2011 and became one of the highest-rated talk show in television history. Its success helped her become the world’s first Black woman billionaire in 2003.Take action and strengthen your mind with The Resilient Mind Journal. Get your free digital copy today: ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download Now⁠⁠ Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the Resilient Mind podcast. In this episode, you will be listening to Focus on You with Oprah Winfrey. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. So one of the reasons I believe that I've been able to be so successful is because during the years where we had, you know, fierce competition from other shows and other people, I would always say to my producers, you can't run their race. You can only run yours. And you really can only run what you're doing. You can't even worry about your own fellow producers. You can only run your own race.

That lesson that Glinda the Good Witch gives to the Wicked Witch of the West, when she says, go away, you have no power here. That's a powerful lesson. Because I have seen over the years in so many interviews, and even in my real life experiences, people losing their power because you're giving your power to other people. You lose your power when you try to take control

of somebody else's energy because you have no power in any energy field other than that which is your own. And your real job in life is to figure out how do you master your field? how do you do that by consistently choosing love by living in the space of gratitude and knowing that that power that you feel from time to time comes from a source that is greater than yourself because nobody gets out of here alone nobody nobody is making it alone and when you are

trusting in your, when you are afraid, when you are sad, when you are unable to make a decision, when you are challenged, when you are moving in the direction of all that which is fearful, it's because you're trusting in your own power. I couldn't get here by my little bitty ego self. When you look at where I've come from, a little town, apartheid town, in Casillasco, Mississippi, in 1954, where there were more lynchings of black men per capita than any place else in the world. You had to be off the streets, literally, when white people walked down the streets. Where there was no vision or hope for you as a black man or black woman,

other than being a domestic or teaching in the colored school. and my ability to step into literally the flow and grace that I call God is what has gotten me here. And I consistently mind that because having a spiritual life isn't something that you can attain because you already are a spiritual life. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin said, we're spiritual beings having a human experience. I know this to be true. So it's not like you can go out seeking a spiritual life.

You already are one. And the real job is for you to become aware of the soul's calling and the spirit that resides in, above, around, and through you. And be about the business of fulfilling that. there is no one else in creation like you. There's nobody like you. And what you've come to do and what you have to offer is like no other. 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. And so I had a lot of great teachers, as we all do. I was doing an Oprah show about a decade ago. One of my greatest teachers was a man named John Diaz. We were doing a show called Would You Survive? And on Tuesday, October 31st in 2000, Singapore Airlines Flight, 006, a Boeing 747 from Taipei to Los Angeles took off with 179 souls aboard. Four crew and 79 passengers perished in that flight, a total of 83 fatalities. There was a typhoon rolling through at the time, and the plane went down the wrong runway.

Now, what's interesting, John Diaz was on that plane, and he had had several, several, several indications, whispers that he shouldn't have gotten on the plane. But he did anyway. He got on the plane, and he managed to be one of the survivors. And on the Oprah show, I was asking him, do you think it was, what do you think it was, that you were one of the survivors? And I said, do you think it was your position on the plane? Because he was in first class, and he was sitting on the right next to an exit door. He said, yes, I think it might have been the position of the plane. And also my quick thinking, he says, and the fact that I didn't stop moving.

So I said, you don't believe you're not a religious man. You don't believe that there was some kind of divine intervention going on there. He goes, no, I'm not a religious person. I don't believe as any, I do not believe that it was anything divine. I don't believe that. I did see, he said, as I got knocked back into the plane, that it looked like Dante's Inferno, with people strapped into their seats and just burning. And it seemed a bit to me as I turned and looked backwards, like there was a light coming out of the tops of their heads.

I guess you could call it an aura was leaving their bodies, and some lights were brighter than others. It changed, he said. It changed me. It gave me a new kind of. spirituality in a sense that I now believe somehow, I don't know how, but life continues on somehow through that light. And I thought, you know, I'm not a religious man, but I thought the brightness and dimness of the auras were how one lives one's life, so to speak. So that's one of the major things that really has changed with me since then, he says, I want to live my life, so my aura when it leaves is one of the brightest ones. I got chills when he said that. How does one lead a meaningful life? Because ultimately, isn't that what we all want? We want

to lead a life so that however we transition, people can say, wow, that was a bright one. That was a bright light. First of all, I think that it comes from a deep sense of awareness about who you are and why you're here. It comes from being in touch with on a regular basis, the appreciation and the holy gratitude that should fill each of our hearts on a regular basis, just knowing what a privilege it is to be here and to be human.

To me, successful is getting to the point where you are absolutely comfortable with yourself. It does not matter how many things you have acquired. The ability to learn to say no and not to feel guilty about it to me is about the greatest success I have achieved. The fact that I have, you know, in the public side, done whatever, it's all a part of a process for growing for me. But to me to have the kind of internal strength and internal courage it takes to say, No, I will not let you treat me this way is what success is all about.

It's the same thing that prevents you from being abused as a child, that prevents you from being abused as an adult that allows you to build success for yourself. I will not be treated this way. I demand only the best for myself. All the mistakes I've made in my life I've made because I was trying to please other people. There's not one that I've made because I did something because I really wanted to do this for myself. Every mistake I've ever made is because I went outside. of myself to do something for somebody else that I should not have, to please them,

just for the purpose of pleasing them. You are worthy to say no, that it's okay if you say no. It's okay if you say no and then people don't like you. That's really okay. The important thing is how you feel about what you're doing, how you feel about yourself. It's a long struggle, though. And I'm just hoping that, you know, in the work that I do on the show and the speaking that I do around the country and that young people who are watching this can be

get the lesson sooner than I did. Because it's painful, because you keep repeating it over and over and over until you get it right. And what I found is that every time you have to repeat the lesson, it gets worse because it's, you know, I call it God trying to get your attention, the universe trying to get your attention. So we didn't get your attention the first time, so we're going to have to hit you a little harder this time. So I'm still doing it. I'm still learning. I say this, I say, many times I say, the universe is always trying to get your attention. I use universe and God interchangeably. It's trying to get your attention. And some, Sometimes it starts out, any major problem you encounter, it always started out as a whisper.

By the time it gets to be a storm, you have been, you've had a pebble knock you upside the head, you've had a brick, you've had a brick wall, you've had the house to fall down. And before you know it, you're in the eye of the storm. But long before you're in the eye of the storm, you've had many warnings, like little clues. So now my goal in life is to not to have to hit the eye of the storm, is to catch it in a whisper. to get it the first time. And getting it comes from understanding your, I think the thing, the one thing that has allowed me to certainly achieve both material success and spiritual success is the ability to listen to my instinct. I call it my inner voice. It doesn't matter what you call it,

nature, instinct, higher power. But the ability to understand the difference between what your heart is saying, what your head is saying, I now always go with the heart, even when my My head is saying, oh, but this is the rational thing. This is really what you should do. I always go with that little feeling, the feeling. I am where I am today because I have allowed myself to listen to my feelings. I feel that luck is preparation meeting opportunity. One of the biggest lessons I've learned recently is that when you don't know what to do,

you should do nothing until you figure out what to do. Because a lot of times you feel like you're pressed against the wall and you've got to make a decision. You never have to do anything. No, don't know what to do. I do nothing. I wait. And that has been a big lesson.

To be willing, to be still with myself and trust myself and my higher power to help me make the right decision and to not feel pressured. See, I think, you know, we create stress for ourselves because you feel like you have to do whatever. You have to do it. You have to.

I don't feel that in me. You must know inside in the deepest part of your being, that you matter, not just that you matter, but also why. 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 from. 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 Rosalind, who was a genre painter in the 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 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, who were held in bondage on various ways. 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. Sarah, 41 years old, $900.

$800, Elizabeth, $57, $800. And I force myself to consider the absurdity and the obscenity 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 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. And even when I find myself in settings where I am the only black woman still, that kind of singularity, it doesn't make me uncomfortable. And I got to tell you, it never has made me uncomfortable.

One of my favorite teachers is Gary Zuccoff, who says that authentic power is when you learn to use your personality, to serve the energy of your soul. So you are the bigger soul that has a personality. When you figure out how to take, I have a big personality. It's lovely, it's charming. But it's not me. It's not me. I'm here to do my soul's work, and I use my personality to serve the soul's work. And if, 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 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. And that is why you're here. And when you can line up with whatever that is,

line up with that. And all you have to do is keep asking the question. And ask the question in purity, not in, when's it going to come? The reason why I was number one for 25 years is because 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, 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 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. Well, what took me from maybe to a certainty was actually a show I did with the Ku Klux Klan. And that's what why everything, this is what I wanted, 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, when you figure out that you are calling it in, when you actually start meditating, or praying or having a spiritual practice, which is the 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 fill your cup so that you can be so full your cup runneth over and you have enough to give to other people. If you don't fill your cup, you end up dry it up. You end up tired, exhausted, and don't have enough to give to other people. You end up resentful

every time somebody ask 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. That's your job. So it went from calling to, I mean, I was happy to just to be on TV. I've been on TV since I was 19. I met my best friend, Gail, in Baltimore. I knew that that wasn't my calling being a television reporter. I hated it.

She loves it. And I knew, I knew, she loves it. I hated it. I always felt out of alignment with myself. But my father was like, girl, don't give up that job. You're making $25,000 year and you 25? Don't give up that job. So I had those voices, but every day I was, I wouldn't say agony.

I was trying to find how can I be myself, be real on the air. And I always felt like I was pretending and that I was out of alignment. And then when they got ready to fire me, they were in a fire me. They were going to fire me, but they didn't want to release me from the contract. So they thought, well, let's just pay her out and we can get her to do this talk show thing. So they literally put me on the talk show to get me out of the way. And the very first day I sat on there interviewing the Carville Ice Cream Man about his multiple flavors. And Benny from all my children, remember?

Benny used to be on all my children. That was my two first guests. And doing dialing for dollars in between, I knew that I had. had come home to myself. I could not predict that it would turn into what it has, but I knew that I could finally breathe and I was no longer pretending to restrict my feelings because I'd go out on stories and I would empathize with people. I'd feel bad for them and that would show up in the work and then I would get a little slip for my boss because I had a really aggressive bad boss. So I started to feel then, oh, this is the job that I want, but I didn't know about calling.

Holding on to what you really intended, what is the larger vision for what you're trying to do. It's what Stephen Covey has often recalled, beginning with the end in mind. Holding the end in mind is what has gotten me through every crisis, either business or philanthropically. You know, for years on my show, people would stop me in the street. And they would say, oh, you change my life, you change my life. And when you hear that a lot, starts to, you're like, oh, really, I change your life. So I started turning it around to people to say, all right, tell me how I did that. And then for the first few times, people were thrown, like, tell me how I did that.

But to know that you've been able to do something that changed, as I said, my favorite work for the girls, and they love it, is the trajectory. Your life is going this way. and somebody comes along and offers, makes an offering that can hit the core nerve, central nerve of your being, your existence, and changes the way you see yourself in the world. That's what I'm looking for. Wherever you are in your life, whatever space you hold, whatever your status is, you have the power to give back from where you are, and to use your life, because that's what all of our lives are for,

to use your life as a force for something that is bigger than yourself, and that the law of nature that says what you put out comes back, that when you do that and it comes from the center of yourself, not just from writing a check or I'm going to do this because it looks good or I'm going to show up in church, I'm going to tithe, or whatever, but you do that from the center of yourself, that that is what true humanity is all about. So I wanted to, you know, for me, anytime I get anything,

and that's just the nature of myself, I do something called Super Soul Sunday, and I was interviewing Carolyn Mace, who wrote a book called Anatomy of Spirit. And what's really exciting for me is that we were able to broadcast that, not just on the cable platform, but to also blast it around the world.

So we simulcast it around the world. So all around the world, people are tweeting in thousands of people at the same time. And she said something that really hit a nerve. I knew it would hit a nerve with everybody because it hit a nerve with me. She was talking about how most people lead their lives following a course that is not their own, and that unless you can find the course that is truly your own, you will remain off course. And she was talking about how so many women betray themselves and that when you betray yourself in relationships, regardless of what those relationships are,

that you are no different than the person who hurt you. Now, that's just a simple little sentence when you betray yourself. You're no different than the person who hurt you. The reason why I wanted to do that show is so that people would feel and be able to discover a path to better themselves, a way to see themselves differently. And that one little phrase, when you betray yourself, you become no different than the people who hurt you.

Open the door for that. I in that way am validated because I'm very clear about what my purpose on earth is. I'm very clear that the work that I do on television is just a way of me manifesting myself as a vessel and a vehicle for the larger energy that I call God. There is no real doing in the world without being first. For me, being your presence, your connection to yourself, and that which is greater than yourself is far more important than what you do, but also is the thing that fuels what you do. And I know that one of the things that is so important for what happens here at the graduate

school is that you have leaders who are self-actualized and understand what your contribution, to change the world can be. You can only do that if you know yourself. You can only do that unless you cannot do it unless you take the time to actually know who you are and why you are here. Now I happen to know for sure that every human being comes, comes call.

And that the calling goes beyond the definition of what your job is. There is an innate supreme moment of destiny for everybody. And that's why when I was in Baltimore, I could feel this isn't it, this isn't it. And then in Chicago, after 25 years of success on the show, I started to feel, this isn't it. There's something more, something more, something more that's calling me to what is the supreme moment. And everybody has that. And you cannot fulfill it unless you have a level of self-aware.

to be connected to what is the inner voice or the instinct, I call it your emotional GPS system that allows you to make the best decisions for yourself. And every decision that has profited me has come from me listening to that inner voice first. And every time I've gotten into a situation where I was in trouble, it's because I didn't listen to it. I overrode that voice, that instinct with my own, with my own head, my own thinking. I tried to rationalize it. I tried to tell myself, But, you know, okay, you're going to make a lot of money. Oh, no. And so I am, I sit here, profitable, successful by all the definitions of the world.

But what really, really, really resonates deeply with me is that I live a fantastic life. My inner life is really intact. I live from the inside out. And so everything that I have, I have because I let it be fueled by who I am. And what I realize my contributions to the planet. And what my real contribution is, it looks like I was a talk show host. It looks like, you know, I'm in the movies. It looks like, you know, I have a network.

But my real contribution, the reason why I'm here, is to help connect people to themselves and the higher ideas of consciousness. I'm here to help raise consciousness. I live by the third law of motion in physics. For every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction. That is my religion. I know that what I'm thinking and therefore going to act on is going to come back to me in a circular motion

just like gravity, like what goes up, comes down. And so what also propels the action is the intention. So I don't do anything without being fully clear about why I intend to do it, because the intention is going to determine the reaction, the result, or the consequence. In every circumstance, I don't care what it is. Everything is fueled that comes from me really wanting to be a better person on earth. And this is what I know to be true. One of the reasons why I live such a fantastic life is because I pay attention. I pay attention

to my life. And your life is your greatest teacher. Every single thing that's happening to you, every day, your joys, your sadnesses, your challenges, your worries, your, everything is happening to bring you closer to in here. Everything is trying to take you home to yourself. And when you're at home with yourself, when you're solidly there, connected to whatever you call creation, even if you don't call it anything, connected to an energy force that is, that has unlimited power for you. When you can connect it to that, you, you are your best. best. One of my greatest lessons came from a guy who wrote a book called Seed of the Soul. I was doing them on the show, and I started talking this consciousness spiritual talk two months

after I started the show. And my producers would all be like, oh, God, there she goes in. But I knew that even though masses of people were not tuning in for that, that the whole purpose of that platform was to try to lift people up. And now I have a network and I can articulate what it is I'm trying to do. I'm trying to bring little pieces of of light into people's lives. Because what is my job? My job is not to be an interviewer. My job is not to be a talk show host

or just to own a network. I am here to raise the level of consciousness, to connect people to ideas and stories so that they can see themselves and live better lives. How do you change a person's life? I had prior to starting my school in South Africa, I had this big idea that I was going to emotional, that I was going to take all 100 families out of the projects and greenie green.

And I was going to give them a new life and I was going to buy them homes and stuff. And that did not work. It failed miserably. I had a big sister program that I started, fail miserably. So I realized that for me, first of all, I realize you don't change, as you all are recognizing through the C program. You first have to change the way a person thinks and sees themselves. So you've got to create a sense of aspiration, a sense of hopefulness, so a person can see, can begin to even have a vision for a better life. And if you can't connect to that, then you lose.

You lose and they lose. And it's just money after money after money. So for me, it's using my philanthropy to do what I have found to be enormously helpful. You know, the light in my life was education. So for me, in the beginning, when I started to make money, especially when it's published, everybody and their brother, and then you've got to make a decision. Am I going to do what everybody else wants me to do? Or am I going to be led by who I really am? And I learned, as will happen to anybody who's successful in your family, people start treating you like the First National Bank. And you've got to decide. You've got to draw the boundaries yourself and decide how are you going to use your money, your talent, your time in such a way that it's going to serve you first, because if it doesn't allow you to be filled up, then you get depleted. So my decisions are now emotional and logical, meaning I choose education, but I do it in such a way that's actually going to benefit the person that I'm serving.

Then it's not just, oh, I want to help people. When people show you who they are, believe them the first time. Live your life from a point of view of truth. And you, You will survive everything. Everything. I believe even death. You will survive everything if you can live your life from a point of view of truth. That took me a while to get, pretending to be something I wasn't, wanting to be somebody I couldn't. But understanding deep inside myself when I was willing to listen that my own truth and only my own truth could set me free.

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. I remember being taken off the air in Baltimore, being told that I was no longer 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, which really wasn't very effective as a news reporter to be covered in a fire. And it wasn't until I was demoted as a on-air anchorwoman and thrown into the talk show arena to get 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. Be grateful. I have kept a journal since I was 15 years old, and if you look back on my journal when I was 15, 16, it's all filled with boy troubles, men troubles, my daddy wouldn't let me go to Shoney's, when Anthony Odie, things like that. As I've grown older, I've learned to appreciate living in the moment, and I ask that you do too. I've asked all of my viewers in America and across the world to do this one thing.

Keep a grateful journal. Every night list five things that happened this day in days to come that you are grateful for. What it will begin to do is to change your perspective of your day. and your life. I believe that if you can learn to focus on what you have, you will always see that the universe is abundant and you will have more. If you concentrate and focus in your life on what you don't have, you will never have enough. Be grateful. Keep a journal. Create the highest, grandest vision possible for your life because you become what you believe. when I was a little girl, Mississippi, growing up on the farm, only buckwheat is 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 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. If you can be still long enough 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, 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 have. done speaks to the possibility, not that I am special, but that it could be done.

Hold the highest, grandest vision for yourself. I'm not afraid because I know that all of us have limited time here, but the real question is who are you and what do you want to do with it? And how are you going to use who you are? My favorite line from Seed of the Soul is when the personality, comes to serve the energy of your soul, that is authentic empowerment. When you align your personality

with what your soul came to, and everybody has it, align your personality with your purpose, and nobody can touch you. And you wake up every day, and you are fired up. You just, he's like, oh my God, another day! It's so great!

Because everybody has a purpose. So your whole thing is to figure out what that is. Your real job, is to figure out why you're really here and then get about the business of doing that. That's it. So how do you continue to prepare yourself to live out the highest, fullest, truest expression of yourself as a human being? I just want to end with this.

There are no mistakes. There really aren't any because you have a supreme destiny. When you're in your little mind, in your little personality mind, where you're not centered, where you really don't know who you are, that you come from something great, and bigger and that we really all are the same. When you don't know that, you get all flustered, you get stressed all the time, wanting something to be what it isn't. There's a supreme moment of destiny, calling on your life. Your job is to feel that, to hear that, to know that. And sometimes, when you're not listening, you get taken off track. You get in the wrong marriage, the wrong relationship,

you take the wrong job. But it's all leading to the same path. There are, no wrong paths. There are none. There's no such thing as failure really, because failure is just that thing trying to move you in another direction. So you get as much from your losses as you do from your victories, because the losses are there to wake you up. So when you understand that, you don't allow yourself to be completely thrown by a grade or by a circumstance, because your life is bigger than any one experience. And if I had, I always ask people on Super Soul Sunday to tell me, what would you say to your younger self?

Every person says in one form or another, I would have said, relax. It's going to be okay. It really is going to be okay. Because even if you're on a detour right now, and that's how you know when you're not at ease with yourself, when you're feeling like, oh, yeah, Genevita. That is the cue that you need to be moving in another direction. Don't let yourself get all thrown off, continue to be thrown off course.

When you're feeling off course, that's the key. How do I turn around? So when everybody was talking about, when I started this network, if I had only known, good Lord, how difficult it would be, 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. 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 because failure is just there to point you in a different direction. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes. Thank you.