Oprah Winfrey Motivational Speech [Link in Description]

You know, because when I started making money, my salary or earnings were published everywhere. I mean, the first year I thought, did I really make that much money? Oh my gosh, it was so hard for me. to find out where my limits were because I grew up poor and had nothing so it's easy when you have nothing and people ask you for money they say I need 500 I don't have it because I'm just trying to get my rent paid it's more difficult when your multi-million dollar salary is now in the newspaper and you have a lot of friends and cousins ​​you didn't have before, so how do you set boundaries?

Trouble setting boundaries for myself, even for strangers, people would just show up at my door in Chicago and say, “Oh brother, I left my husband please help me and I would because she knows I have it so don't try Now, although it's okay, no." I didn't try it now, I figured it out, so what I learned was that, oh, the reason 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. 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 my first no to 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 everyone thinks you just want to donate to everything so every letter I get starts with we know you love to the children, yes, I love the children, but someone else wants to have to help the children, so I told Stevie, uh, I told Stevie no and um, as a person who has that disease, I was waiting. so that he would then say: I will never talk to you again I will never call you again I will never sing a song for you and he didn't just say okay okay okay said okay check your and what I learned from that Many times you will have anguish and worry for things and you'll get into a state like someone said this morning because their phone went off, they were mortified about a phone.

I said really, you will put yourself in a state where the other person really is. I didn't even think about you to learn that he could specifically determine for myself what the limits were for me. What I wanted to do. Give my money. Give my time. Give my service. Who did I want to give it to when I made it? make that decision and just because you get 100 requests a week doesn't mean you have to try to fulfill all of that, just because you have all these demands on your time and on you doesn't mean you have to say Yes, you can decide because you own it of your destiny, the captain of your soul, as William Ernest Henley said, and the victory and the realization of that really changed the meaning of my life in the sense that I was no longer carried away by what other people wanted from me. do but I took charge of my own destiny by making decisions based on what I believe is the right next step for me Quincy Jones had I wouldn't even say an important role I would say the role in my acting career Quincy Jones discovered me and it's very interesting for me because when I was working as a television journalist in Baltimore and really all I wanted to do was be an actress, but I was doing television and at that moment I felt like I couldn't leave this job because this is what everyone else wants to do and if I leave this job, what am I going to do? um and I was going to a

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coach at the time the station sent me, you know, in all the broadcasting schools they sent everyone to the same woman and I was telling her you know I really don't want to do this what I really want. to do is to act and she says darling you don't want to act because if you wanted to act you would be doing it you want to be darling is a star because um if you wanted to act you would be waiting tables in New York you and I think now why am I going to wait tables if I'm already working in television so I said well what I think what's going to happen is I'm going to get found out because I want it so bad someone's going to have to find me out and she said you just dream, you dream, you're a dreamer so when it happened I called her and told her no you will do it.

I believe this, they discovered me and it really was a discovery, it's like one of those Lana Turner stories, only it wasn't a pharmacy, he was in his hotel room, he saw me on TV, it was incredible, the interesting thing about this is Which I really believe. that thoughts are the best vehicle for changing power and success in the world. It all starts with thoughts. I'm talking about the chairs we're sitting on in the room we're in. It all started because someone thought of it, so I came up with the color purple. I know this is going to sound strange to you.

I read the book. I got so many copies of that book. I passed it on to everyone I knew. If I was on the bus, I would pass it on to people and when I heard I started that there was going to be a movie. I started talking about it myself. I didn't know Quincy Jones or Steven Spielberg or how the hell I could get into this movie. I had never acted in my life, but it felt so. intensely that I had to be part of that movie. I just really think I created it for myself.

He loved her more than anything in the world and would have done anything to do it. Anything to do it. Turn your wounds into wisdom. You will do it. be hurt many times in your life you will make mistakes some people will call them failures but I have learned that failure is really God's way of saying sorry you are moving in the wrong direction it is just an experience just an experience just an experience I remember that I was taken off the air in Baltimore and told that I was no longer fit for television and that I couldn't present the news because I used to be in the stories and my own truth was that although I'm not a crier, I cried for the people in the stories. stories and, which really wasn't very effective as a news reporter, covering a fire and crying because people lost their homes, and it wasn't until I was demoted as an on-air anchor and thrown into the talk show field to get rid of of me, that I allowed my own truth to come to light and the first day I was on the air doing my first talk show in 1978 I felt like I was breathing, which is what your truth is.

Passion should come so naturally to you, so I took what had been a mistake, what had been perceived as a failure in my career as an anchor in the news business and turned it into a career on a talk show that It has gone well for me. What drives you to continue working so hard? Would you know that you and I are in the 60 category and when you are 60 you know that you have lived longer than you are realistically going to live, so when you realize that you have lived more than you are going to live .

You can say: Why don't you relax a little? Why don't you relax? Why have you decided to work harder than before? Because I think, David, everyone knows what worked. During all these years, whether it was the magazine, the one I still have or the program, I was able to understand that there is a common denominator in The Human Experience and I want the same thing that you want, which is the same thing that you want and you. What we all want is to be able to live the truest and highest expression of ourselves as a human being that does not end until you take your last breath.

What is the truest and highest Vision you have for yourself no matter where you are? in your life there's always the next level, there's always the next level until your last breath, so I feel like I always knew I would end the show when I felt like, oh, I've said everything I could say here in this. platform and then how will I be used if there is, if there is a theme song for my life? Amazing Grace would be one of them and keep using me until you wore me out would be another, you know that Bill Wither song, so I sit down. that until you have used your value as a human being you are not done when I started as a broadcaster I was 19, I was very insecure and they threw me on television pretending to be Barbara Walters and I looked nothing like her and I was still going to university , so I do everything. my classes in the morning from 8:00 to 1: and in the afternoon I work from 2:00 to 10:00 and I did the 6:00 news and I stayed up and studied and all that, you know, until 1 2 or 3:00 in the morning and then start the routine again and my classmates were so jealous of me that I remember taking my little paycheck of $115 and um at the time I thought it was a lot, but taking $15 and trying to appease Them, I would like everyone at any time, anyone who needed money, to always offer them, oh, you need $10, or take them out for pizza, order pizza for class and things like that, try to please all that sickness, there That's where it was the worst for me, I think.

I wanted to be accepted by them and I couldn't be because first of all I didn't have the time they wanted me to commit to and I didn't have the time to commit. I didn't have the time to be a part of all the other university activities or part of that whole lifestyle and it was very difficult for me socially, really one of the worst times of my life because I was trying to fit in at school and be part of that culture, but I was also trying to To build a career in television it is very difficult for me to even see myself successful because I still see myself in the process of achieving success.

For me, success is getting to the point where you feel absolutely comfortable with yourself and it doesn't matter how. many things that you have acquired, the ability to learn to say no and not feel guilty about it, for me it is the greatest success I have achieved, the fact that I have it in the eyes of the public, whatever is good, it is everything part. of a process to grow for me, but having the kind of inner strength and inner courage that it takes to say no, I will not let you treat me this way, that is what success is about, it is the same thing that prevents you from having been 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 only demand the best for myself you are worthy of saying no you 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 although it's a long struggle and I just hope that you know that in the work that I do on the show and in the talks I give around the country and that the young people who are watching this can learn the lesson before me because it is painful because you keep repeating it over and over again. until you get it right and what I discovered is that every time you have to repeat the lesson it gets worse because you know it's me.

I call it God trying to get your attention, the universe trying to get your attention, so we don't get your attention. 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 am still learning to create the highest possible Vision for your life because you become what you believed when I was a Little Mississippi who grew up on the farm with only buckwheat is a role model watching my grandmother boil cloth and a big pot iron through the screen door because we didn't have a washing machine and we did everything we had.

I looked at her and somehow realized within myself. and the spirit in myself that even though this was segregated Mississippi and I was black and female, my life could be bigger than what I saw. I remember I was four or five years old. I certainly couldn't articulate it, but it was a feeling and a feeling that I allowed myself to continue because if you were to ask me what the secret of my success is, it is because I understand that there is a power greater than me that governs my life and in the life in life yes You can stay long enough in all your endeavors, in the good times, in the difficult times, to connect with Source.

I call it God, you can call the force of nature whatever you want, Allah, the power, if you can connect with the source. and allow the energy that is your personality your vital force to connect with the greater force everything 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 I was there and to have been able to do what I did It speaks to the possibility not that it is special but that it can be done. I remember when I started school and I told my beloved friend Maya Angelo, I told her Maya, that's who I am.

I am so proud that I was able to create the school and I said this will be my greatest legacy and Maya told me you have no idea right you have no idea what your legacy will be she told me because your legacy is every life you have touched and that changed the way I looked at Legacy or what you leave behind or what you do because Maya was explaining to me that over all the years of watching your show, everyone who decided they were going to go. go back to school or lose weight or stop hitting your children or get out of a bad marriage all those people who have seen and experienced your voice and the same with everyone here you have no idea what your legacy will be is every life you have touched and we like to think about it.

I know you've done incredible things with your philanthropy. We like to think that these great philanthropic moments are the ones that leave the impact or will make the biggest difference in the world. but it's really what you do every day, it's how you use your life to be a light to someone else's, you know, and it'show you use your work as an expression of your own art, whatever it is from others who hear what I learned. beauty salon and asking them for the newsThe director had told me that my hair was too thick and my eyes were too far apart and that I needed a makeover and um sitting in a beauty salon in a French beauty salon allowing them to do a French perm on my black hair and burn off the perm. through my cerebral cortex and not being the woman I am now, so not having the courage to say this burns me and coming out bald a week later and having to go on air you learn a lot about yourself when you're black and a bald woman and trying to be a presenter, you learn, you learn, not D in Ross and that you're not Barbara Walters trying to be.

She was at that time. I received many lessons. I remember going on air many times. times and I didn't read my copy ahead of time and one night I was on the air and I came across the word b a r b a d oos um that may be Barbados to you but to me it was Barbados that night and I told the story as a host about A vote in Abena California I thought it was located near San Francisco and one of the worst, one of the worst, was when I came out of my barber shell because I was sitting there crossing my legs trying to talk like Barbara, be like Barbara and uh, I was reading a story about someone with a fiery attitude who if I had gone to Welsley I would have known was fiery and I started laughing at myself on air and I broke my Barbara shell and I had decided that day that laughing was okay even though Barbara hadn't. done at that time and it was through my series of mistakes that I learned that I could be a better Oprah than a better Barbara and I allowed Barbara to be my mentor as always.

That's how it has been and I decided to try to pursue the idea of ​​being myself and I'm delighted that I get paid so much every day just to be myself, but it was a long lesson to recognize that I had the instinct that the inner voice that told me you needed trying to find a way to respond to your own truth was the voice I needed to be still and listen to to understand this, just remember this because this will happen many times in your life when people show it to you. who they are, believe them the first time, not the 2 nights, that's particularly good when it comes to men's situations, because when he doesn't call you back the first time, when he mistreats you, the first time, when you see someone who shows you a lack of integrity or dishonesty the first time, know that many, many other occasions will follow that at some point in life will come back to haunt you or hurt you when people show you who they are, believe them the first time, live your life. life from a point of view of Truth and you will live your life from a point of view of Truth and 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. the truth.

Close your eyes for a moment, please. and breathe with me just close your eyes and if you place your thumb on your middle finger and put your other fingers around it and let's feel the vibration and pulse of your personal energy while you take three deep breaths with me, inhale and as you exhale just feel the vibration of the blood energy pulsing through your body through you and another inhale and another inhale and keep your eyes closed and let's think about this day, this day that you have had the grace to inhale and exhale thousands of times this day in the one that many of those bre took for granted, you were just waiting for the next one to arrive, but the truth is that there is no guarantee that the next one will arrive this day, how did you start the day, what were your thoughts this morning, how have you behaved during this day, how I have been allowed to have encounters and experiences, some challenges, some improvements in life that prompted you to move forward one more day here on planet Earth as a human being.

Let's think about that after everything you have been through on this day alone and the many days and years that passed, how you came to this prestigious and esteemed University, the decisions you made that have brought you to this day, open your heart and in quietly say to yourself the only prayer you will ever need. Thank you thank you thank you. Still here and this day you have another chance to do better and be better, another chance to be more than you were created and for. Thank you, thank you very much everyone for watching. I made this video because Charlene Benton asked me to.

If there is anyone you would like me to profile in a future top 10, check out the

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below and you can vote on who we should do next. I also want to give a quick shout out to Megan Lofton Megan. Thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, your only word and reviewing it and posting on your YouTube channel too. I really appreciate it a lot. I really appreciate the support and I'm so glad you enjoyed the book. Thank you. you again for watching, I believe in you, I hope you continue to believe in yourselves and whatever your word is, much love, I will see you soon.

I have paid attention to my life because I understand that my life is like yours always. speaking to you where you are in the language with the people with the circumstances and experiences that you can understand and interpret if you are willing to see that always in life God is speaking to you now. It took me a while to really understand this and understand it. I understood it, but once I did I started paying attention to everything and one of the reasons why I can now accept the fact that I can offer my Information and Wisdom Meetings and call myself a spiritual teacher is that every person who came to me program and I heard that there are like 37,000 guests that I've talked to, a lot of them came from dysfunctional backgrounds and a lot of them don't seem to be teachers, but every single one of them had something to say that was meaningful and valuable and that I could use.

Becoming my best self, which is what all of our jobs are. Your number one job is to become more of yourself and become your best self. How do you stay cool and how do you like it? What can you attribute to staying? in the business for so long I think every year you try to reinvent yourself and stay in touch with what other people are doing, thinking, feeling, I've always felt that my instinct and my ability to connect with the audience was what carried us through each moment. One day after the show, I now do something called after the show that airs with oxygen.

I've spent the last 16 years, half an hour an hour, just talking to people, so my audience comes from a cross-section of the entire country. I stay connected to what real people think, do, and want, and as I've gotten older, I've learned to appreciate living in the moment, and I ask you to do the same. I asked. I'm asking this class of graduates. To those of you here I have asked all my viewers in the United States and around the world to do this. Keep a gratitude journal every night. List five things that happened this day in the days to come that you are grateful for that will begin to happen.

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 do not have, you will never have enough. grateful keep a diary all of you are in my diary tonight