The Resilient Mind - Live A Brave Life - Oprah Winfrey

Episode Date: May 17, 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 Live a Brave Life with Oprah Winfrey. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. What I know for sure is if you focus on the substance, the success will come. And most importantly, let failure be your friend. There are going to be times, of course, where you're going to win a lot. a lot of things are going to go your way.

And it's wonderful to bask in that adulation and to feel proud of your successes. But it's the times when things go wrong when you fall or fail that you're actually going to learn the most about yourself. You know, all those years on the Oprah show, 25 years, we were the number one show for 25 years. And that's because I lived with the intention

to serve the audience. When I was able to shift the paradigm to start to looking at, wow, what I have instead of what I don't have, what I have instead of what I thought I'd lost, I was able to begin to turn things around. But it's those moments of being of uncertainty. It's the moments where all of my mistakes

show up on the evening news. I can tell if I've done something wrong. It's on the CNN crawl. I can read about it. But learning from the moments where things weren't going so great, being able to get still, to connect with that which I know is God,

the force, the power, greater than myself, and to come back and realize that in order to move forward, you move forward by taking the next right step. You don't have to know everything to do. You don't have to know all the steps to make, just what is the next right move. And then there's this. I leave you with this.

nobody makes it alone nobody i don't care what they look like i don't care what they're instapose nobody makes it alone and so you will get nowhere without a spiritual practice you need a spiritual practice and by that i mean not necessarily religion for some people it is church. For some people it is meditating, for some people it's dancing, some people it's singing. But you have got to find a way to nurture that which is the essence of you. You've got to find a way to continually give back to yourself. I am committed to service, service through my work, service through my life's purpose. And if you make a commitment, a conscious, intention to be committed to the work that you do, to the relationships that you have,

your life will unfold with such beauty and grace through that commitment. You know, every day for until the very final shows of the Oprah Winfrey show, I would have the producers come in and tell me ahead of time what their intention for every show was because I figured out around the second year of doing that show that, It wasn't just about being on television and performing, that here was this opportunity, this offering I could give to people through the service of a television show to better see themselves through the stories that we're telling and through those stories help themselves to improve their lives. So I started using television as a tool of service.

So as you're trying to figure out, what do I do, how should I do it? First of all, I will say this, that when you don't know what to do, my girls have heard this over 100 times. When you don't know what to do, you do nothing. You get still until you do know. Because when you have to ask everybody else, should I, should I, should I, should I do this, should I, should I? And that's whether it's buying a pair of shoes or going with a guy, buying a house, taking a job, should I, should I, should I, should I? When you have to ask everybody else, it means you don't really know the end. answer fully yourself. So you get still, be still and know the answer will come.

I've worked on the disease to please a lot. And as you've heard me say, that in 1989, I had a really big breakthrough with that, reading Gary Zuccoff's book on intention. So I started literally living an intentional life where I don't make any decisions unless I think about what is my true, pure motivation for doing it because I do recognize the law of cause and effect that says the intention informs even the cause so that before you have an action, there is a reason for you taking that action. And the reason for the action is what's going to actually show up in your life on the other end. That's what's going to come back to you, that intention. So that helped me a lot with the disease to please because I was always giving, giving, giving, giving, giving. And then

I was always so thrown when people would come back and ask for more. And I couldn't understand why they were asking for more. Well, people ask for more because your reason for giving it is so that they think that you're nice. That's your real intention. Well, they do think you're nice. They do think you're nice. And that is why they keep coming back. They come back because you're the nice one.

You're going to say yes when even you mean no. So you're the person I'm going to call to go pick up my kids when I can't or don't want to because you're going to say yes, even if you're. don't want to do it. So that's why people keep coming back when your intention is not really clear. So that took a lot of fear away for me. But at least for me, clarity of intention helped me live a more fearless life. You cannot live a brave life without disappointing some people. But those people who get disappointed, it's really okay. The people who really care for you, the people who are rooting for your rise will not be disappointed. The only people who are disappointed at people who have their own

agenda and their agenda is not aligned with your agenda and that's how I make myself brave. I say, well, the people who really care about you who are rooting for your rise, those people who are rooting for your rise, they're going to be okay when you say no. I never read any comments that are coming from negative people. If I start to read something and shut it down, I will not take that in. I have a kitchen cabinet, and I've had a kitchen cabinet since the beginning of my career. Different people have been in that kitchen cabinet over the years, but there are a few people who are my resource who I know are going to tell me the truth. Your cabinet can go through all of those comments, you know,

because feedback is great, and you can get it immediate now. Your cabinet will go through and they can share with you the things, even that are negative, but that are not being spirited. I'd come off the glory and the victory of 25 years of the Oprah show and was trying to put together the pieces of building a network without the right pieces. I really was trusting other people's ideas about how to do it. And it wasn't until I had the good sense to bring in my own team of people who I'd been working with, whom I'd been working with for the past. decade, that things start to actually fall into place for me. And, you know, one of the great, great, great things about, for me, doing interviews all these years on The Oprah Show and on

own was that I got to learn from other people's mistakes. So I paid really close attention to the stories. And I got to hear everything and everybody, all the theories and all the stories and all the layers and layers of dysfunction, along with people's victories and their triumph, I took it in. I was a student of it. I wasn't just a talk show host. I was a student. I became a student of life, other people's lives, and how to live well by listening to those stories. So I paid real attention. I'm at a point in my life where I can literally rejoice in the knowing space that I hold. There's a sense of confidence that can only come, I think,

when you know and are assured that you are living life well and not from the point of view of having a lot of things, but living life from the center space. When you're living bravely, when you're living bravely, because you're living your truth. It was during my show that I absolutely learned for sure for myself through other people's stories that there really isn't any such thing as failure. And I could see the thread of courage that was required every time you fell down.

I could also see that failure was just there to inform you to move in a different direction. It's just there to say, hey, not this way, over here, not over there, wrong place. And once I figured that out, it became easier to be brave. For me, education is about the most important thing, because that is what liberated me. Education is what liberated me. The ability to read saved my life. I would have been an entirely different person had I not been taught to read when I was at an early age. My entire life experience, my ability to believe in myself, and even in my darkest moments of sexual abuse,

and being physically abused and so forth. I knew there was another way. I knew there was a way out. I knew there was another kind of life because I'd read about it. I'd read about it. I knew there were other places and there was another way of being.

And so it saved my life. So that's why I now focus my attention on trying to do the same thing for other people, education. I don't think you ever stop giving. I really don't. I think it's an ongoing process. And it's not just about being able to write a check. It's being able to touch somebody's life

in such a way that Mrs. Duncan touched mine. It's being able to make a child see the light in him or herself, making someone else see that for themselves. I know that if I didn't have the money, listening to somebody who had it, I'd probably not believe them because you can't believe it. Because if you don't have money and you're just trying to make ends meet, you think if you just could make ends meet that would make everything all right for you. What I know is, is that if you do work that you love and work that fulfills you, the rest will come. And that I truly believe that the reason I've been able to be so financially successful

is because my focus has never, ever for one minute, been money. And the fact that the money has come has really surprised me. I've been just really surprised and delighted and very pleased and many times overwhelmed by it. But the money has never been the focus. The reason, you know, I think if you know, if you're on the road to success, is if you would do your job and not be paid for it. And I would do this job and take on a second job to make ends meet

if nobody paid me just for the opportunity to do it. That's how you know you're doing the right thing. One of the things that, if I may pat myself on the back for, is that I try to surround myself with people who are smarter than I am. I think that the ability to be as good as you can be comes from understanding who you are and what you can and cannot do. And what you can't do is far more important than what you can do if what you can't do is going to keep you from flying as high as you can. Now, when my lawyer first came to me and said, you can own your own show, it literally took the ceiling off my brain because I had never even thought that high before.

I never even thought that was possible. And everybody needs somebody in their life to say, yes, you can do it. I have a niece, pardon me, I have a niece who's 15, who several years ago, I said to her, the same thing my father. said to me, I said, you are too smart to get C's. I mean, I heard my father speaking. We were crossing the street one day, and she was talking about her grades. You're too smart to do that. You could be an A student. And she said, do you really think I can? Oh, of course. So you're such a bright person. And she started getting A's and said to me a year later, nobody ever told me I could. And I, you know, I think one of the most important lessons to learn is that we are all responsible for our lives.

But nobody gets through this life alone. Everybody needs something. somebody to show them a way out or way up. Everybody does. See, I feel best in surroundings where other people are smarter than I am because I feel like I can always learn something from them. One of the other big lessons I've learned, particularly in business, I think you have a responsibility to yourself to learn as much about your business as you can. And so I sign every check, although it is now tedious,

because the bills that come in from running, maintaining a studio, everything from Federal Express to Xerox to every tape that needs repaired and so forth, It gets to be a lot. I have stacks and piles of checks to do, and I know that there are a lot of successful people who don't do that. I still have a tenement mentality. I've been very, very poor in my life. And so the idea of having money and not being responsible in knowing how much money you have and keeping control of it, is not something that I personally can accept.

I know that there are other people who can, but it's just, it is not a possibility for me. I need to know where it is. I mean, there are times I think I want to go to the bank and say, show it to me because, you know, just seeing it on a piece of paper, anybody can print out a piece of paper. So, yeah, I watch it very carefully and try to maintain responsibility for it. But my success in business has come. You know, when I first started being a, quote, businesswoman, I worried about how do you do this? And I realize that you do this the same way as you do anything else.

You be fair. Try to be honest with other people and you be fair. So many people are worried about building a brand. I hear kids on social media talking about their brand. And I used to really resent the word when people would say to me, oh, you have this brand because I never, never even thought about a brand. I just thought about day in and day out, making the best right choice for me. But now I embrace it because I recognize people see me as a brand.

But for me, it's not a business. It is a question of what do you stand for? And I will say this, you're nothing if you're not the truth. I have made, I've made a living, I've made a life, I've made a fortune, really, from being true to myself. And that's the, if I could leave you with any message today, that is it. The biggest reward is not financial benefits, though it's really good. You can get a lot of great shoes. Nothing wrong with great shoes.

But those of you who have a lot of shoes know that having great shoes and a closet full of shoes or cars or houses or square footage doesn't fill up your life. It doesn't. But living a life of substance can. Substance through your service, your offering of your whole self. And the baseline for how do you live a life of substance is whatever is the truth for you. What do you stand for? So 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. 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 into 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 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 call 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 problem is when you have money, everybody thinks you just want to give to everything.

So I said to Stevie, I said to Stevie no. And as a person who has that disease to please, I was waiting for him then 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. What I learned from that is, many times you will have angst and worry about things. Put yourself in a state, like someone said this morning because her 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 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. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.