Listen To This and Change Yourself | Oprah Winfrey (Eye Opening Speech)

[Music] your real job in life is to figure out what it is you are called to do and you use a job until you can figure out what the calling is because a job is necessary to survive and you live in a world where so in my early days i had a job i had a job until i could figure out what it was really what that gave my life its purpose and meaning and um i i'd gotten demoted in my job in baltimore as an anchor woman because as they hired me and then they decided i was the wrong color and i was the wrong size and i was the wrong you know i had lots of problems and they were trying to take me off the air and they they put me on a talk show one morning because um they didn't know what to do with me but i felt like this is what i'm supposed to do all these years have been misplaced in news so but the moment i did that talk show i felt like oh i can be myself and that was august 14th 1978 and that was the beginning of fulfilling the calling if you can find what is your passion if you find what you love you never get tired or if you do get tired you're fueled by the energy of your work so i know that i'm doing exactly what i'm supposed to be doing at this time i also know that what the show can do in terms of being a voice and changing the world it's just the beginning of what this show can do it's fun to do things like this but uh and it's necessary to do things like this in order to be able to do the bigger grander things to change what happens to to the face of children in africa for example what happens to education with kids in this country so i believe that um that what has happened to me is really the beginning of the greater passion to come but if you find out what you're supposed to do and you know what you're supposed to do by how it feels and so you know what if you're doing the right thing if it feels like it's right to you and when you hit the thing that feels right when you know it's the right thing you would you know it's right because it gives you your juice and you know it's right because you would do it for nothing you would do it for nothing and find a way to be able just to do it in order to be able to continue that's how you know you're doing what you're supposed to be doing there were many days that i sat in my chair across from one or two or five or six or seven people and i would be so frustrated because i just wanted to shake people sometimes and say why didn't you pay attention to your life i said on the show probably the producers tell me that they counted 33 times but i know i thought it at least a thousand times i would say listening to your life as it whispers to you first so that it does not have to knock you upside the head with a brick or come crashing down on you as a brick wall is one of the greatest principles of life because there are many things that happen in life that are beyond our control natural disasters death unexplained events but there are also many many many things in life which we can control and become out of control because you're just not paying attention you are sleepwalking through your life and i have seen this so many times on the show i wanted to take the guests and go would you just pay attention so this is what i've learned and how i've explained it to myself life whispers to you all the time your life is speaking to you all around from the time you wake up in the morning and every single experience that's coming into your personal space into your physical space all of those experiences are speaking to you they're telling you something about your life and about your circumstances it whispers and if you don't get the whisper the whisper gets louder if you don't get the whisper when it gets louder it gets i call it like a little pebble like a little thump upside your head when i was a kid if i was doing something my grandmother didn't like she'd just turn around and thump me she wouldn't even look at me she'd just give me a thump and i know that's that's my cue to stop it or you we're gonna get worse the whisper is the message the pebble or the thump upside the head usually it's gone into a problem you don't pay attention to the problem the problem becomes a brick upside your head the brick upside your head is a crisis you don't pay attention to the brick upside your head the crisis turns into a disaster and the whole house brick wall comes falling down many of you as i have been as i am are where you are in your life based upon what you believe and it's not just what you think you believe on the surface it's also your shadow beliefs that are holding you back from moving into the life that you believe you deserve what i know is if you're not looking at the shadows if you're not looking at what is subconsciously running through the tape in your mind telling yourself you're not good enough you're not worthy enough you're not smart enough you're not enough which is a tape that's playing for a lot of people if you're not conscious of that then you end up acting out of that belief system and not out of what you know to be the truest or want to be the truest for yourself you don't become what you want because so much of wanting is about living in the space of what you don't have so if you start to think about that really why are you where you are in your life the choices that you have made have been because of what you believe to be true for yourself but i have always had the deep understanding for myself that if anything was going to move forward in my life that i was going to have to be responsible for making that happen and i know that to be true now and can articulate it as you are responsible for your life and if you're sitting around waiting on somebody to save you to fix you to even help you you are wasting your time because only you have the power to take responsibility to move your life forward and the sooner you get that the sooner your life gets into gear this is what i know from doing 25 years and thousands and thousands of interviews on the oprah show it does not matter where you come from i have seen people come out of the desert walk across the desert being born in the most dire circumstances doesn't matter what your mama did whether she did or had a phd or no d what matters is now this moment and your willingness to see this moment for what it is accept it forgive the past take responsibility and move forward you