The Resilient Mind - Trust Your Power, Trust Your Intuition, Trust Yourself - Oprah Winfrey

Episode Date: September 15, 2024

Oprah Gail Winfrey, or simply Oprah, is an American talk show host, television producer, actress, author, and philanthropist. She is worth 2.5 billion dollars. 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, trust your power, trust your intuition, trust yourself, with Oprah Winfrey. Get access to the Resilient Mind Journal by clicking the link in the show notes. Enjoy. Empowerment is authority. It is a sign permission slip to actually seize the day. It's the process of getting stronger and more confident and more engaged. and to be empowered is to move through the world without any kind of fear or any kind of apology. And with these gifts comes an even deeper privilege, I believe, and that is the ability to take

charge of your own life, to own yourself, and claim your rights. And here's what I know for sure, that to whom much is given, much is expected, and I have been given so much. I've earned it, I've been blessed with it, but I've been given a lot. And that's why I've chosen to use my life to lift other people up. 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

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, and if you ignore the whisper sooner or later, you'll get a scream. Whatever you resist, persist, 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 Eckhart Tolle, who's written this wonderful book, 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. I have a very big life. And so people with big lives can do big things.

And so I started to think about what was the best Christmas I ever had in my life. I grew up poor on welfare with my mother for part of my life. And I remember that the best Christmas of my life was where I was 12 years old. And my mother had said, we're not going to have Christmas because we can't afford it. I remember feeling like it's going to be really hard on Christmas morning to go outside. What am I going to do when everybody else is outside? That's what I thought. What am I going to do when everybody else is outside?

And what am I going to do when I have to go back to class and say I got nothing? So that's what I was mostly worried about. And then some nuns showed up. Some three nuns came to our house. And they gave me a doll and they bought us food and we had our Christmas. That was the best Christmas of my life because somebody remembered and I wasn't going to have to be the kid that said I got nothing. So I wanted to be able to create that same feeling for children who had nothing. So I decided to go to South Africa.

Originally, I wanted to do a million kids and then just realized with, I only had four weeks vacation. So in four weeks, I could not reach a million kids because I didn't want to just write a check, send a donation. I wanted to be able to look in each kid's face and say to that child, somebody remembered you. And so that's what I did with my life this Christmas. I took 41 people from here, hired another 50 people over there, and we were a

traveling caravan from one village to the next. We did 2,000 kids a day. We had parties for children who were orphans, and it was singularly, I will tell you, I could weep thinking about it, the singularly the best experience of my life. The singularly best experience of my life. The first day in Africa where we had 280 kids in a room, and every single one of those kids had lost a parent. Every single one of those children, they were age three to 17 in that room. And my team that you're talking about, I have the greatest team in the world. My team here in the United States had been in contact with the orphanages so that by the time

we got there, we had a present with every child's name on it. This summer, every black doll manufacturer in the country had sent me dolls. Because these girls had never seen black dolls. And so it was my mission to do for them what the nuns had done for me, was to let the African girls see a black doll. So I wanted every girl to have a black doll. I wanted every boy to have soccer balls. We bought radios.

We bought clothes. And the most important thing is we had their names on every box for every child. And I called up the children one by one. And when those children, you know, received their gifts and then waited for the next child, received their gifts and said, I said, nobody can open their presence until every child. everybody can open their presence. And on the count of three, when I counted the three, and those children opened their presence, was the single greatest moment of my life.

I have a big life, so I can take 50,000 presents and do that over and over and over again to orphanage after orphanage. But what I felt in that room from those kids is a lot of what you're talking about and what you're talking about and what you see in the faces of those women. When you look into the eyes of someone and you give them a gift, whether that be a physical gift or it'd be a gift from your spiritual self, from your presence, from the essence of you, and you see the light, you see the joy.

What I felt in that room was not just that I was remembered, that the child felt that I was remembered, but you felt a sense of hope, a sense of validation, a sense of validation that somebody cared about me. And I will tell you that of all the years and shows that I have done, and every theme for every show that I've done, the single common denominator that I found that every human being is looking for is validation.

Every single person needs to know, wants to feel that they matter, that they matter. And what happened in that room, that was the greatest day of my life, I knew that those children knew in that moment that they mattered, that they mattered. And so I encourage you,

it's exciting to be able to write a check. It's even more exciting to be able to touch one life, to be able to do that for one person. It's like Cynthia was saying, when you can do that for one person, when you can do that, you will know that your life has meaning. And I will tell you, when I left that place,

my friend Gail and I were there, and we're all boo-hoing. We're like, booing with the children. Oh, my God. And Gail was saying, what is it? What is it? We're so full. As Gail said to me, she said,

you know, as big as your show is, as big as your show is, what happened in that room seemed bigger. What happened in that room seemed bigger. And that is true. That is true for me who has this big life in a television show. And I'm telling you for everybody here, extending yourself beyond your world, your kids, your family, your stuff, and reaching out to somebody who is not like you,

somebody who is like you, who is in need, if you are feeling depressed or you are feeling down or you're feeling like things aren't going the way you want them to go in your life, the way you turn that around is to reach outside of yourself to somebody else. 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 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 life, 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. So I want to talk about my dream for you because I have been so blessed to live inside the dream of God. I figured out early on, you know, I had these dreams for myself. I used to tell my father I'm going to live in a house on a hill. I'm going to have a million dollars. And I learned early in my career that the dream I had for myself couldn't compare

to the dream that life had for me. So I figured out how to lean into life, to lean into life, and allow the flow that was designed for me to follow, to allow that flow to be my guide. And every decision I've ever made has come from listening to the flow that represents the truth in me that is also the truth in you. You already know the truth. You've been making decisions,

having choices fulfilled throughout your life since you were a kid. And being able to make the right choice based upon what is the truth of you is the dream and prayer I hold for you today. Because being able to do that has led me to this stage and many other stages throughout the world. It's the truth. you know everybody has what I call this instinct this inner voice it's called by many names intuition the divine the flow but everybody has it and the truth is every decision i've ever made that led me to the right space and place in my life i got there because i relied on that inner

voice, the truth of me. When I was 30 years old and about to leave Baltimore, because I felt something inside that thing, that instinct, that flow, that truth that said, it's time to move on. And every single person around me, except for my best friend Gail, that's why she is my best friend, Gail, said, you shouldn't move to Chicago. You should stay here. My boss has said, you're right here in Baltimore, your little fish in a big pond, you can grow old here. I go, that's the problem. I don't want to grow old doing the evening news here. So I listened to that inner voice that said, go.

And I knew whether I got the job in Chicago, which of course I did or not, that it was time to leave because the truth of me was urging me forward. and every decision I made after coming to Chicago when everybody said, you should just take a salary, it's too big of a risk to own yourself, to own your show. What if that show fails, then you're stuck? I said, I'm going to bet on myself because the truth of me, the inner voice

that I was allowed to get still and feel said, take the risk, bet on yourself. Every decision I've ever made, I've come back to that space and allowed myself to live in the place of intentional living. About 1989, after I'd been doing my show for three years, I ran across a book called The Seat of the Soul by Gary Zuccove. And in it, he talked about how every action follows is followed by a reaction,

which we all know is the third law of motion in physics. But he also said that before there's even a thought or an action, there is an intention. Something struck me about that. There's an intention that precedes every thought and every action, and the outcome of your experiences is determined by the intention. At the time, I was a kind of woman who tried to do everything that everybody wanted me to do because I just started making money.

The amount of money I made was being published. I got a lot of cousins instantly. A lot of people I used to know in school and friends of mine who all needed things, and I had problems saying no. So this principle of intention is what literally saved and changed the trajectory of my living. Because I started to make my decisions based on what I intended, not just what somebody else wanted me to do or what I thought would please them, but what do I really intend to happen from the outcome of this decision or this choice.

And so I started to apply this intentional living and this intentional thinking to everything in my life. I said to my producers, do not bring me a show or an idea unless you have a clear intention about why we're doing it, what you want to say, what you want the outcome to be. And changing the paradigm to just, from just doing a television show, from just being on TV, to actually intention. to actually intending to be of service to the viewers change the trajectory of the show. The reason we were number one for 25 solid years is because we intended to be. We intended to create and to use the opportunity of being able to speak to people every day, to use that as a platform to inform their lives in service intentionally. And I would say that the producers, do not bring me an idea that I cannot find my thread of truth in

so that I could sit in the seat and ask the questions with the intention of accomplishing something bigger than the interview. So I remember the first time I used this principle of intention. There was a mother on who had lost her 16-year-old daughter. She'd been murdered by her boyfriend, a junior in high school, popular, straight A's, cheerleader. Everybody loved her. Nobody ever suspected that the boyfriend was abusing her. I learned then, back in the 90s, that domestic violence. violence for young girls, for teenagers, is at the same rate of domestic violence for grown

women in this country. One out of four girls, 14 to 18, dating, are being abused by their boyfriends. So this girl had hidden it from her mother and her friends because girls hide it because they don't want anybody to know, and also because they want to keep the boyfriend. So I went into the green room, and I asked the mother, please tell me why you're here. What is your intention? She said, I'm here because your producers asked me to come.

I said, but what is the reason you said, yes? What is your true intention in being here? And she said, I want people to know that my daughter's life was big. than her death. Everywhere I go, people only want to talk about her death and how she died and how I didn't know or why I should have known. But I want people to know that my daughter, our daughter, was loved. She was loved by her siblings and loved by her friends and she loved us and she had a life that was bigger than her murder. And I said, good. I can do that. I can make sure that people know that your daughter's life meant something, that her being here on the planet Earth for 16 years truly mattered. And here's my intention.

I want everybody who hears your daughter's story to be able to see their friend, to see themselves, and to know that to remain silent can be a killer. And so every question that I ask you comes from the point of view of an intention to serve the life of your daughter so that her life would not have been in vain. That's the first show I won an Emmy for, when I aligned the intentions. And since that time, since that time, I don't make a decision without getting still, checking in with my inner truth, with what is the real reason I'm doing anything. this whole idea of quantum physics, physics, Newton's law, nature, the way, the order of things,

and how life and nature itself operates. And I could see a reflection of my own self, my own being, and all of that. And reading Newton's law, third law of motion, which says for every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction, was like a religious experience for me. I just understand me. All my bells and whistles and lights and dancing emojis went off because I could see that. I'd experienced a little bit of that in the color purple, that beautiful line where Whoopi as Miss Seeley says everything you try to do to me is already done to you. That struck me in particular in the movie. And I understood that everybody's actually saying the same thing. Newton's saying the same thing is Ms. Seeley is saying the same thing as what we in this country and in the other

countries call the golden rule that really what you put out is coming back all the time. And what really struck me is that it's not do unto others as you would have them do unto you. It really is when you do, it's already done because that's law. How did you turn your pain into purpose? Well, before the pain became a purpose, it was just an acknowledgement of what it happened to me. And one of the things we talk about in the What Happened to You book is that anything that has happened to you, and I wanted to just make this point to everybody, there's not a black woman in this room who hasn't been through something that helped her build strength, and then something else that helped you build strength, and then something else. else that helped you build strength. I mean, sometimes you go through so much you say, God, don't teach me nothing else new today. I don't need no more strength building.

But this is what I know is that strength time strength, time strength, time strength, time strength, time strength, time strength, time strength, time strength, equals powerful. So we're sitting in a room amongst ourselves with all of these powerful women who have their stories of what happened to you that you can now turn into post-traumatic wisdom. So what I was able to do was to take what had happened to me and to use it as an empathy builder for myself and for other people. And it is my empathy and connection that has allowed me to be the woman that I am today. And so anything that has happened to you, if you are willing to learn from it, to open up and no longer allow the stigma and shame to cause you to hide your secrets, but to know that your vulnerability is where your real strength lies and take that pain and turn it into something meaningful for yourself.

And as Maya used to say, I wouldn't take nothing for my journey now. not even the sexual abuse, the sexual assault. You know, when I was raped, I didn't even know, I didn't even know what a penis was. And like so many other people in this room who were also sexually assaulted when they were young, I didn't tell anybody because I knew it would be turned on me. I knew I was not in a safe environment where other adults would trust my word. And so I kept it to myself. Until I was literally on an Oprah Winfrey show, somebody shared their story of abuse

And I was like, I thought I was the only one. I thought it was the only person who had been raped at nine and molested until I was 14. So I think being able to take your pain and turn it into purpose and power begins first with being able to empathize with other people who've been through the same kind of pain. And everything that's happened to you has also happened for you if you allow it to be. there's not one thing that has happened to you that you cannot now turn into something that is useful and meaningful in the life that you are now leading forward. How do you stay on the positive path of, you know, positive karma? Not even with in regards to, you know, I would never do that again, but when you have so many negative forces, even in your family that can come in, how do you stay in a positive place with positive course? with positive karma.

If there are a lot of negative people in your life, don't look at them, look at the energy that you are creating to attract them. Don't look at them, look at yourself. What are you doing to draw those people? Because if you are surrounded by negative people, there's a part of you that's willing to tolerate that.

Is there not? I agree. I agree because there were a couple of negative people in my life. And I chose to keep them in my life because I didn't want to push them away. Like you don't push them away because they were friends. So you don't. It really comes down to, I mean, who do you want to be in the world?

Who do you want to be? Not what do you want to do, not what do you want to achieve. Who do you want to be? What is the kind of person when they're reading your eulogy? What do you want the words to be said about the kind of person you have? have been in the world. Do you know the answer to that question? Do you know the answer to that question?

I'm asking that of everybody. Do you know what that is? Because in the end, you know, I was just at one of my dear Harpo employees, been here for 20 years, her husband died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. It was the most beautiful ceremony. I left that ceremony wanting to be a better human being because the words that were said about him as a human being, as a father, as an uncle, as a friend, the words that people spoke about him were so loving and impassioned that I thought, gee, when I die,

I don't want people to talk about the number of shows I did. You want people to talk about how your love affected them, the love that you put out into the world. Yeah, affected them. So if that is the paradigm that you're living from, how can I serve and be the most loving, gracious, giving person, whatever my talent is, to all the girls that you're counseling? How do I do that with love? Ultimately, I'm telling you the negative energy will change. And when you become that force for yourself, you won't allow it. I don't care what their title or role is in your life. You just really won't. Sometimes you have to divorce your friend. and divorce your family members. And if you handle them with love in doing it, they will come back. You will have an opportunity to reconcile. I speak from what I know.

But I've had family members from whom I've said, I will not allow you to treat me this way. I will not allow you to treat me this way. And for one family member, it took them three years to get. When you get some sense, call me. And let me know that your senses has written. And what can you do when you've done all you can? You just stand. It's one of my favorite gospel songs.

Always gives me goosebumps fortification when I hear it, especially when Donnie McClurkin sings, prayed and cried, prayed and cried. After you've done all you can, you just stand. Well, I read a story today about a 65-year-old Ukrainian woman who used to pride herself on her beautiful embroidery work and now is sewing bulletproof vests for soldiers and grateful to still be standing to fight the war.

It got me thinking about what it means to keep standing in the face of the most grave adversity. Another story, a man named Yuri huddled in a church basement saying, it's hell here. Imagine 200 people sitting in one room for two days. We can't even breathe fresh air. Well, I don't want to imagine it, but I know we are not supposed to turn away

as the days drag on and the Ukrainian people keep standing in the face of such terror and devastation. So in our own lives, what can we do to keep standing for what's right, what's just, for what will bring us peace? Martha Beck says, peace is our home. We deserve. You deserve peace. What can you do this week to take a stand for peace in your own life and the lives of those that you love and make it so? And we know that what the world needs from all of us is more peace. Thank you for tuning in. Continue strengthening your mind by listening to our other episodes.