Oprah Winfrey’s Life Advice Will Leave You SPEECHLESS (MUST WATCH)

having compassion for other people is at the top of that list i would say commitment is at the top of that list and also a spirit of constructive engagement and by compassion i don't just mean sympathy it certainly isn't pity it's being present and it's also feeling with other beings you know during the years of the oprah show i interviewed over 37 000 people one-on-one but during all those years of talking to over 37 000 people one on one i could feel what they were feeling so strongly sometimes it made me sick literally so i had to learn how to feel how others were feeling feel with others which is which is what it means to be compassionate to feel with others without taking in all of their stuff being compassionate means i feel with you it is one of the greatest qualities in the world to have if you're going to be majoring in what it takes to be a great human being i feel with you means i not only am willing to walk in your shoes it means my heart beats with yours it means i see myself in you it means i may not have shared that circumstance but i know what heartbreak feels like i know what pain feels like and all pain is the same it means i can feel your will to want to do better and be better and i feel and i am with you in spite of everything that's happened to you i feel your need to rise i want to help you rise i want to rise with you 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 had 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 um i was making 22 000 a year i thought i was in heaven because i was making my age that was as big as my dream was just to make my age and then i did this they they put me on a talk show one morning because they didn't know what to do with me and and i was interviewing the carvel ice cream man it was a local talk show and benny who was mrs chancellor's butler or something on all my children anyway my soap our opera star who wasn't the lead star remember benny benny and the caraval ice cream men that's how i cut my teeth and i finished that show so it's not about the the stars themselves or whoever the guests were but i felt like this is what i'm supposed to do all these years have been misplaced in news because i couldn't relate to news i was a news reporter and i'd be out on the stories and i'd be crying with the people and i felt that i was exploiting the people with news i couldn't you know put a microphone in people's face when they were going through tragedies and stuff i just was so emotional i was always getting little notes from my boss about cut that out you need to stop 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 and so since that time since that time august 14th 1978 i've never had a problem with energy now when i was working in news i used to be exhausted all the time because i just exhausted all the time because i hated it and the reason i didn't quit is because i'm not a quitter number one and because my father was like did not quit that job you're making 22 dollars a year who's gonna play a black one between two thousand dollars a year you're never gonna make make that kind of money again you better save half of it so i i was reluctant to quit and think about doing something else because i thought okay everybody wants to be an anchor woman at the time that was like supposedly a big deal being an anchor woman so i thought okay i won't i'll just stay with this until i can figure out what is the best thing to do and interestingly enough i was applying for what i wanted to do i felt like i needed to be able to talk and at the time the only thing was available was um like good morning america orthodoxia so i called up this agent and i asked if he would accept my tape because i wanted to be like a substitute for brian gumbel and he said to me there was only going to be one brian gumbel and so there wasn't going to be another one that they weren't going to let another black person on that show he said that to me and um interestingly enough he called me last week because somebody else mentions it to say he never said it but he did say it and i said to him you know what if you're ever told that you never forget it if somebody ever says to you if you're ever rejected in that way you never ever ever forget it i said but it's okay i did okay you did okay it's all right but the answer to your question is if you can find what is your passion if you find what you love you never get tired or if you do get tired if you 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 this this 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 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 you know people wait on the voice of god to be some the moses in burning bush i think that was only bible talk you know because he doesn't come to burning bushes for people he comes through your heart he speaks through your heart through your feelings 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 so how do i define success let me tell you money's pretty nice i'm not going to stand up here and tell you that it's not about money because money is very nice i like money it's good for buying things but having a lot of money does not automatically make you a successful person what you want is money and meaning you want your work to be meaningful because meaning is what brings the real richness to your life what you really want is to be surrounded by people you trust and treasure and by people who cherish you that's when you're really rich for me colored girl negro child growing up in mississippi that one of the greatest gifts i was ever afforded was not to have been put in a segregated school system had i been put in a segregated school and taught