Oprah Winfrey’s Life Advice Will Change Your Future | One of The Most Eye Opening Speeches Ever

[Music] our connection with others can only be as deep as our connection with ourselves and there perhaps is no time in recent memory when it's more necessary to actually cultivate empathy and connection in order to make sense of the profound changes that we're all undergoing we just everywhere we turn we can't grapple with the many urgent issues facing us and facing our planet without understanding ourselves first and in atlas of the heart brene and her team of researchers and therapists and educators and others have so richly explored how to cultivate an emotional vocabulary like we need the words the language the expressions that help us process and identify what it is we're feeling and what is happening to us and to be able to communicate that to other people and what they've discovered is that without that we won't find the solid ground within us that gives us the courage and the confidence to embrace love to embrace happiness and our own vulnerability to face and transcend our pains or to navigate the great uncertainty that is the human condition so in grenade's word she says with an adventurous heart and the right maps we can travel anywhere and never fear losing ourselves even when we don't know where we are i just love that the solid ground the anchor we're searching for is connection and it is within each of us but to forge meaningful connections with others again we have to first connect with ourselves and i know we're doing a lot of connecting this week with family and friends we have to establish a common understanding of the language of emotions and human experience in order to do that 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 a hundred 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 do this i should have 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 when you have to ask everybody else it means you don't really know the answer fully yourself so you get still be still and know the answer will come here are variations on a few grand themes beginning with this pick a problem any problem the list is long here are just a few that are at the top of my list there's gun violence and there's climate change and systemic racism economic inequality media bias the homeless need opportunity the addicted need treatment the dreamers need protection the prison system needs reforming the lgbt community the lgbtq community needs acceptance the social safety net needs saving and the misogyny needs to stop but you can't fix everything but what can you do here and now i believe you have to declare war on one of our most dangerous enemies and that is cynicism because when that little creature sinks in its hooks into you it'll cloud your clarity it'll compromise your integrity it'll lower your standards it'll choke your empathy and sooner or later cynicism shatters your faith when you hear yourself saying oh it doesn't matter what one person says oh well so what it's not going to make any difference what i do who cares when you hear yourself saying that know that you're on a collision course for our culture and i understand how it's so easy to become disillusioned so tempting to allow apathy to set in because anxiety is being broadcast on 157 channels 24 hours a day all night long and everybody i know is feeling it but these times these times are here to let us know that we need to take a stand for our right to have hope and we need to take a stand with every ounce of wit and courage we can muster the question is what are you willing to stand for that question is going to follow you throughout your life [Applause] [Music] and here's how you answer it you put your honor where your mouth is [Music] put your honor where your mouth is when you give your word keep it show up do the work get your hands dirty and then you'll begin to draw strength from the understanding the true knowing that history is still being written you're writing it every day the will's still in spin and what you do or what you don't do will be a part of it [Music] more than ever i would have to say i miss the oprah winfrey show i chose to let it go i felt that i'd said everything i needed to say after 25 years and i wanted it to be my decision when i let it go but i will say this past year and now more than ever i miss it because i miss the opportunity for the spirit of constructive engagement that that platform offered so two weeks after the election last year i went to a diner in queens for oprah magazine with a group of women half of them were trump supporters half of them were hillary supporters nobody wanted to come to breakfast i was like it's gonna be some great great great croissants we're gonna have some nice jams ladies nobody wanted to sit down and have the croissants so everybody came in the room all tight and hardened and so we were able to i was able to they were like well i've never been this close to these uh hillary elitists i've never been this close and there are other people are saying well i never said this close to trump supporter before but we're gonna do it i will tell you after two and a half hours i had those women not only eating croissants sitting around the table listening to each other's stories hearing both sides and by the end they were holding hands exchanging emails and phone numbers and singing reach out and touch we're all pretending to be diana ross which means it's possible it can happen so i want you to work in your own way to change the world in respectful conversations with others at a rate and a rhythm that's in tune with the source from which you have come your truth and i want you to enter every situation aware of its context open to hear the truths of others and most important open to letting the process of changing the world change you that is the spirit of constructive engagement so that's the goal to be a compassionate woman of substance to be committed to have constructive engagement to live this life of substance substance what i know for sure is if you focus on the substance the success will come these past few weeks i've been thinking a lot about adele and our one night only conversation that we had for cbs such a beautiful conversation and concert and beautiful album you can feel her heart and soul in every lyric on 30. her emotional pain she seems to have used as a muse i said that to her during our conversation and you know by now that she wrote that album while going through a divorce and she told me that she left her marriage in pursuit of her own happiness and she has so many meaningful things to say about choosing you and not being guilty about it the pursuit of your own happiness is enough of a reason to make a major change like adele did let that sink in fo