Oprah Winfrey । 30 Minutes for the NEXT 30 Years of Your LIFE

knowing who you are knowing who you are being able to answer this question who am I and what do I want you know many times when I leave the country I am baffled by that question to explain what

your

occupation is I stayed there for 10

minutes

well, I am a talk show host, well , I'm more than a talk show, I'm a business woman, I'm a business man, I'm more than a business woman, my entrepreneur, I'm more than an entrepreneur, so I leave it blank or I. -employee so I'm not asking about the roles you play as daughters I'm not asking that question what are the roles you play as a daughter as a friend as a sister are you going to be a lawyer I'm going to teach you're going to be a pharmacist I'm asking the most important question of who I am who I really am my answer is I am a child of God I am what is born from everything that I am as Pierre de Chardin said a spiritual being who has a human experience comes following the breath of the ancestors still but following the breath of the angels and understanding That because I am connected to the source of all that is all that is possible for me, that is who I am and what I want?

I don't want to just be successful in the world. I don't want to just leave a mark or have a legacy. The answer to that question for me is: I want to achieve the highest and truest expression of myself as a human being. being I want to fulfill the promise that the creator dreamed when he dreamed the cells that formed me that I want you must have some type of vision for

your

life

even if you don't know the plan you have to have a direction in which one you choose to go. I was never the type of woman who liked to get in a car and just go for a ride.

I had a boyfriend who said, "Let's go for a walk. I want to know where we're going. Do we have a destination?" There's a plan, are we just putting together what I've learned? It is a great metaphor for

life

. You want to be in the driver's seat of your own life because if you're not, life will lead you to know who you really are in this space and time that we embody that's number one what do you want who are you number two? you must find a way to serve martin luther king said not everyone can be famous but everyone can be great because greatness is determined by service we now live in a world where everyone wants to be famous and where we admire people simply for being famous we believe that being known brings us value the truth is that all of that will fade over time the real truth is that service and meaning service and the meaning that you bring to your service is what is lasting to be able to whatever your occupation, work, talent or gift, our honorees today earn doctoral degrees in seemingly opposite fields, HIV and AIDS and the spoken word, but what they have in common is service using the spoken word in service to the community and the world using their knowledge and information about HIV, AIDS and medicine at the service of the world and if you look at the most successful people in the world, whether they know it or not, they have that paradigm of service that everyone talks about. mark zuckerberg and ipo service jay-z fast service through the word to the people through songs for many

years

.

I was really happy to be on TV and people would stop and say, "Oh, you on TV, yeah, I'm on TV, I like being on TV." It's a good job. I went back and looked closely at what I was doing on television and made the decision that I was no longer going to just be on television, but I was going to use television as a platform. a force for good and not be used by television and I will tell you my decision to make that significant change in the way I operated in television using television as a service changed my career exponentially service through medicine service through of art using whatever your product produces as a way to give back to the world when you change the paradigm of whatever you choose to do to serve and bring importance to that success.

I promise you that you will continue your service and importance equals success. That's number two, number three. so simple but so hard to do, always do the right thing, be excellent, people notice, think about how you notice when you go to taco bell, someone gives you an extra napkin and some salsa, you notice that you want to get back with that person because even at taco bell excellence is shown to be excellent let excellence be your brand everyone talks about building a brand i didn't even know what that was when people say you're a brand i would say no, I'm just Oprah, what I recognize now is that my choice in every way in every example in every experience to do the right and the excellent is what has created the brand and what I know is that when you are excellent you become unforgettable people remember you you stand out no matter what it is you become unforgettable woman and that is what we all want, we want to be unforgettable and not forgettable, so doing the right thing, even when no one knows that you are doing the right thing, will always bring you the right thing, I promise you Why, because the third law of motion is always present in every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction that is so true in all of our lives.

That's what Newton said. Celia in the color purple said it. Everything you're trying to do to me now. I've done it to you everything you're trying to do to me I've already done it to you so you don't have to worry about getting revenge or getting back at someone, making sure they pay, you just have to do the right thing and the right thing will follow you even when people don't support it. I remember that many times on my show there are many shows that you have never seen and the reason you didn't see them is because I got the last vote and I remember that in 2010 my hardest working team on television had done this interview with a woman.

Who turns out she was a Sunday school teacher by day and a sex addict by night? They said you won't believe it. We got her out, we have her with the men and we can show her and she was willing to show us. I all sat down with a woman for an interview that was recorded and during the interview process I told her why are you doing this and she said oh I want to help people, I want to tell my story and I want to help people, I said Do you have any children? She said yes.

I have a 10 year old son. I knew at that moment that this was never going to see the light of day, so we went off the air and I told the lady that we are not going to air that show and her. he said why my producer said why he knew they were filming it he knew what he was saying he knows what I said because his son will never outgrow it his son will never outgrow it and to me it's not worth a rating point, it's not worth it It's a point qualification for me to know that there is a ten year old boy who is destroyed because his mother went on the Oprah Winfrey show and told everyone in her business, "You do the right thing even when other people think it may not be that way and many times when you do". a decision to do the right thing you are immediately faced with the doubt that the right thing to do was that the right decision I don't know was that the right thing to do is that you always know it is the right thing when in the end there is peace you are rewarded by peace knowing that you did the right thing, The most important thing I have come to know by doing the right thing and making the right decisions is to understand what we talked about yesterday.

Everyone who leaves here has the potential for enormous success. The price that comes with it is that people don't always like you and they aren't always happy for you and if you surround yourself with people who aren't used to your success, they become fearful, they get scared because you are reflecting back to them something that they don't recognize now. They're going to say you know I'm really scared because you're reflecting something back to me that I don't recognize they're going to say you know what they're going to say I'm going to say who he thinks he is, who he thinks he is, that only happens when you're surrounded by people who don't want to and They aspire to the best for you, people who want the best for you, they want you to be the best you can be, so My biggest advice to you is to surround yourself with people who are going to fill your cup until the cup overflows, of so that when people tell you that you are so full of yourself you can say yes, I am full, I am so full that my cup is full. and you know that once your cup is overflowing you cannot spend your life with your gallon-sized offerings offering them to tiny people;

You have to surround yourself with gallon-sized people who can be in the same company with you so that you can You are not offering your gallons to those little pipes who can't stand the option of changing the world anyway. I love that song. I love hearing you all sing that song. And what I know for sure is that the most important decisions begin and end. with you your great internal questions who do I want to be in the world my relationship as a source of energy with everything that is God I am not talking about what you believe in God I am talking about your experience of that which is all of life that is divine and universal.

I'm talking about how important it is to be connected and aligned with that when you are attuned and charged with that, whenever you feel empty, you go within yourself and connect with the source and know that anything is possible. Know that and choose to do what is right in service and meaning. I promise you that you will first create a vessel of service for yourself because you must first honor yourself. He must first give himself; Otherwise, you will have nothing to give away. create a vessel for yourself for your family, your community, and the world, and those three things will not only lead you to a blessed life.

I am a witness that my life is so blessed that I can't even take it in, sometimes it won't lead you. just to a talented and rewarding life that fulfills you, but a sweet life, that's what you want, you want the sweetness, you want it to be so sweet that even when the storms come, you know that this too shall pass. the storm is passing and you will not be moved because you know who you are, when you can do that, grace will follow you, grace and glory, and when they see you coming, it should make them proud.

I have spent hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and thousands of hours talking to spiritual leaders and teachers and not just spiritual leaders and teachers who have been considered that, but thousands of people who came from levels of dysfunction, who came from levels of pain, who suffered, who were challenged in their progression of trying to be the best. Human beings who could be and allowed themselves the opportunity to come on our show, the Oprah Winfrey show, and share their stories. I am someone who believes in sharing stories. I believe in the process of sharing, period because I know that every life improves. when you share it and those thousands of people who have been invited to the show and many of them who are also audience members have been my greatest teachers and I would say one of my gifts, one of my gifts that I have had since I was a little girl growing up in mississippi and raised on a small one acre farm with my grandmother is that I knew how to pay attention, I was a great observer of life and I grew up believing that I was in fact a daughter of god, it's because every Sunday I I sat in our little church near a dirt road where my grandmother lived, there was no running water or electricity, but the church is close to us and we could hear the singing while I was dressing for Sunday school and I always sit on the left side from the left pew in the second row and I listened to the preacher preach about the lord your god is a loving god and sometimes he said the lord your god is a jealous god but the most important thing is that I heard him.

Say that you are a child of God and that through God all things are possible and I literally took him at his word so when I left I had to leave my grandmother because she got sick and they sent me to live in Milwaukee with my mother who had A Two other kids hit me on the playground because when people asked me who is your dad, I said Jesus is my dad, sometimes he is my brother and God is my father, but what I now know and have learned is that my vision of God, although I call that god in a box and all that, although that has ex, my vision of god has expanded to include all things, all god is all god is law, god is all in all things, not just the type that is standing or sitting. with the beard and now that that vision of god has expanded I still understand how important it was to a colored girl that we weren't even black yet not to mention African American, you know what I mean, harry, a colored girl in mississippi for who there was no vision of hope or possibility my grandmother's greatest wish for me as she had been a servant and her mother before her had been a servant her greatest wish was that I would grow up one day and be able to do the same and she wished for me.

I couldn't do it, she used to say: I hope you have good whites when you grow up. I hope you have good white people who treat you well so that my grandmother has no idea about the life I lead now. with good white people who work for me she just wouldn't understand it wouldn't understand it wouldn't understand it but somehow I think she must know and she's in the spirit realm saying lord have mercy I don't I don't see it but now I know that having that belief system that something bigger than me was in charge of my destiny, that it wasn't just me that had to survive on my own, that courage is the rock that has sustained me like this. that my vision my perception my understanding of what it means to be a universal citizen has grown as I have come to understandfacts 17 28 my favorite bible verse that says in god i move and breathe and have my being in every attempt in life it has been since i was a child to be in that space i call god literally live in the breath which is god live in the breath and allow the breath to breathe in me like god and that is the reason why I see that I have been able to handle fame handle success grow in grace grow in the wisdom and glory offered by that space that I know is god because in God I live and I breathe I move and I breathe and I have my being in everything I do and everything I am arises and leaves the center of that space even when I didn't know what to call it so I have paid attention to my life because I understand that my life is like you life is 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 life God is speaking to you now it took me a while to really understand this and understand it, but once Once I did I started paying attention to everything and one of the reasons I can now accept the fact that I can offer my knowledge and wisdom and call myself a spiritual teacher is that every person, whoever they are, came to my program and heard that There were like 37,000 guests that I talked to, many of them came from dysfunctional backgrounds and many of them didn't seem to be teachers, but each one had something to say that was meaningful and valuable. and that I could use to become my best self, which is what all of our jobs are.

Your number one job is to be more of yourself and become your best self. One of my best teachers was a man named John. diaz we were doing a program called will you survive and on tuesday october 31 on um 2000 double flight 06 of singapore airlines. A Boeing 747 from Taipei to Los Angeles took off with 179 souls on board four crew members and 79 passengers perished on that flight in total Of 83 deaths, there was a typhoon at the time and the plane went down the wrong runway. Now the interesting thing is that John Díaz was on that plane and had had several indications that I will talk about later, whispers that he shouldn't.

I got on the plane, but he did it anyway, he got on the plane and he managed to be one of the survivors and on the Oprah show I was asking him if you think it was what do you think it was that you were the one on The Survivors and I asked : Do you think that was your position on the plane? Because he was in first class and was sitting on the right,

next

to an exit door. He said yes. I think it could have been the position of the plane and also mine. Quick thinking, he says, and the fact that I didn't stop moving, so I said, don't you think you're not a religious man, don't you think there was some kind of divine intervention there, he goes, no.

I'm not a religious person, I don't think there was anything, I don't think it was something divine, I don't think I saw it, he said as they threw me onto the plane that looked like Dante's Inferno with people tied up. Their seats were just on fire and it seemed a little when I turned and looked back like there was a light coming out of the top of their heads, I guess you could say that 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 now I believe somehow I don't know how but life goes on somehow through that light and I thought you know I'm not a religious man but I thought The brightness and darkness of auras were the way one lived their life, so to speak, so that's one of the biggest things that's really changed in me since then.

He says I want to live my life so my aura when he leaves is one of the brightest, that's one of those moments that happens and you know it's bigger than a show about survivors because I always knew that when I'm moved at least yeah a million other people might be too because if I can feel it and there are 20 million people watching around the world that means someone else also felt and heard the same thing, that's what connection is so I thought about that a lot and I thought about it, obviously, as I thought about uh and getting ready to talk to all of you today about how one leads a meaningful life because, ultimately, that's not what we all want, we want to lead a life so that regardless how we make the transition, people can say wow, that was a brilliant life, that was a shining light, first of all, I think it comes from a deep sense of awareness about who you are and why you are here comes from being in touch regularly. with the appreciation and holy gratitude that should fill each of our hearts on a regular basis, simply knowing what a privilege it is to be there. here and to be human, 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 join your other fingers around it and let's feel the vibration and pulse of your personal energy.

As you take three deep breaths with me, inhale and as you exhale just feel the vibration, the energy, the blood 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 in which you have been blessed. Inhaling and exhaling thousands of times this day, where many of those breaths were taken for granted, you were just waiting for the

next

one to come, but the truth is that there is no guarantee that the next one will come this day, how did you start the day, what were your thoughts. this morning, how you have behaved during this day, how you have been allowed to have encounters and experiences, some challenges, some improvements in life that prompted you to move forward for another day here on planet Earth as a human being, let's think about that .

After all you have been through alone on this day and the many days and

years

that have passed, how you came to be here at this prestigious and esteemed university, the decisions you have made that have brought you to this day, open your heart and say quietly for yourself the only prayer i ever needed thank you thank you thank you you are still here and you have another chance this day to do better and be better another chance to be more than what you were created and what you were created to fulfill thank you amen open the eyes that is how it begins, that is the basis of meaning and the purpose of your life is to breathe again.