Courtesy of WW / George Burns
Oprah Winfrey and Tina Fey
Did you hear that Oprah Winfrey was in town this weekend?
I didn’t know what to expect when I signed up to attend the St. Paul stop of her tour, the second in the series dubbed Oprah’s 2020 Vision: Your Life in Focus (Winfrey was clear she did not intend on any presidential prospects by putting her name next to an election year when conceptualizing the title).
Spanning nine dates in different cities over the course of three months, the day-long event was part self-improvement workshop, part dance party, and part lecture series. The week prior saw Oprah interviewing Lady Gaga, where they touched on the importance of checking in on your mental health, and this week saw her interviewing the comedian Tina Fey.
"I love the poster for the tour,” Fey said at the event. “I would like this to be how we repopulate the world. We go to an island, these women and The Rock, we start society over.”
Before she made her way to the Xcel Energy Center for a day of vision-setting goals, Winfrey and Tina Fey tossed their hats in the air by the Mary Tyler Moore statue on Nicollet Mall to salute their idol. Winfrey also took a stroll on the Stone Arch Bridge with the Kwe Pack, a group of Native American runners based on the Fond du Lac Reservation.
“I have learned to live from my spiritual core, and I’ve learned to set the vision, and live with intention, and allow everything I do to move me in the direction of that, and that is what I want from you,” Winfrey said. “I’m at the stage of my life where I don’t need any more money or any more shoes. I really don’t. I just want to take what I know and offer it in kindness, in grace, and in blessings, so that it can help others.”
Throughout her motivational speeches, we learned about Winfrey’s rise from Chicago news anchor to media mogul. She helped us fill out a self-improvement workbook, The Big Quiet’s Jesse Israel led the stadium in silent meditation, Angela Manuel Davis gave a transformation talk, and Julianne Hough brought the Xcel to their feet with her KINRGY exercise, turning the classical elements into uplifting dance moves reminiscent of Avatar: The Last Airbender that literally had more people moving than my last sojourn to the Xcel to see Ariana Grande. There was also an appearance from Mindy Grossman, the CEO of WW (formerly known as Weight Watchers, the company Oprah partially owns that is attempting a rebrand), which sponsored the event. Among Oprah's celeb-pals in the audience were Tamron Hall and Suze Orman.
“I want you to live a life that you deserve,” Winfrey said.
We were in the church of Oprah, and she was preaching the gospel. So what did we learn to change our lives?
Start Looking Inward
As Oprah told us to open our workbooks, she led us through an exercise in finding our wellness focus. She also shared an excerpt from one of her old journals.
“Sometimes I can feel the connection between my own fears and the weight," Winfrey once wrote about her struggle with her body-image. "So what am I afraid of? That’s the question. The answer can set me free.” To Winfrey, her weight was a manifestation of the fear of being worried about what other people think.
“I was living to live up to what other people thought I should be,” Winfrey said. “It took me a long time to come into the fullness of myself.”
The workbook's "wellness quotient" posited a series of statements on a scale of 1-4 to determine how strongly each statement applied to you in seven categories: Emotions, Learning, Work, Nutrition, Movement, Purpose, and Relationships. (For example: "I recognize what's in my control and what isn't," or "I'm not ruled by my need to please.")
According to Oprah, you want to be so full of yourself that "your cup runneth over," that you have enough to offer to others. So what’s holding you back from being that highest, purest, truest vision of yourself?
Living With Clear Intention
Envisioning a new path starts with clarifying your why. Winfrey believes that intention is the why behind the why.
“You don’t get what you want in life. You get what you intend,” Winfrey said. “What you clearly, with clarity, define and intend. And that’s why some people succeed and other people fail, because of clarity of intention.”
The principle that Oprah said rules her life is Newton’s third law of motion: For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. The energy you constantly give off returns to you at all times. What you put out in all areas of your life is returned to you in direct proportion to how you put it out.
“Intention rules your life whether you know it or not," Winfrey said.
Want to live a healthier life? Start by treating yourself in a healthier way. If you need more love in your life, set the intention to be more loving in the world, and it will come to you.
The Power of Being Present
“For me, the center of wellness is actually being able to be fully present in any given moment, and realize all is well, in any moment in spite of the swirl in life,” Winfrey said.
Stress and worry is wanting something to be the way it isn’t. Accept the stress in your life, accept the moment for what it is, and then make a decision about what you can do to move forward.
“If you want to stay in the present moment, it’s about always allowing yourself to be connected to spirit,” Winfrey said.
Avoid distractions from the present, as in experiencing experiences through Instagram. How many times have you been to some place, but you were distracted through your phone, or taking a video at a concert?
“Wellness begins with creating boundaries around how we communicate,” Winfrey said.
And the power of living in the moment extends to aging.
"I'll tell you, the only number that actually gave me pause was 60," Oprah, now 65, said. "But when I turned 50, my dear friend Maya Angelou was still alive, and Maya said to me, 'Babe, the fifties are everything you've been meaning to be. It's everything you thought you might do. This is it. It's coming in. You're not even there yet.'"
Mindfulness Is Key
“Only you are in control of your wellness,” Winfrey said. “Only you can bring yourself back to balance.”
But it takes practice, which is what Oprah credits as being the reason her show was #1 for 25 years on the air. Everybody worked hard, but the show had flow because of her team's shared principle of intention.
The common denominator that Oprah has found about the human experience after doing over 4,000 shows, between Obama, Beyoncé, or even the man who murdered his children? Everybody is trying to be heard.
'"If you're in the struggle, it's because somewhere you betrayed yourself, because your life is supposed to flow. Life is not set up to punish you. You are punished by your lack of clarity. You are punished, and feel sadness, feel rejection, feel the pain in direct proportion from how far you are from the center of yourself," Winfrey said. "So I am wise enough now that when trouble comes, I don't blame the trouble. I look directly to myself. What was I not clear about? Why am I here? Not because a greater source is trying to punish me. I'm here because of the lack of clarity of my intentions."
“We are spiritual beings having a human experience,” words by Pierre Teilhard de Chardinare, are what Oprah lives by.
To Winfrey, when most people say, “Why is this happening to me?” the question should be, “What is this here to teach me, that I was so dense I could not receive it in any other way?” When you start to live your life through the lens of intention, it’s filled with greater possibility.
Just Say No
Winfrey says that before you make an action, there’s a thought behind that action. And before the thought, there’s the why–the motivational intention behind the action. Once she understood this, she stopped saying yes when she meant no, which builds resentment, because you didn't want to do it in the first place. Before agreeing to something, ask yourself, “Do you really want to do that?” Instead, ask what you intend to do.
One example Winfrey brought up was being asked to interview Brad Pitt on The Oprah Winfrey Show. When she asked the producers what the intention behind doing the interview was, they just said, because he's Brad Pitt.
She told her producers: “Do not bring me an idea that you don’t have a clarity of intention about.” She held ultimate veto power over the ideas on her show. Then, once her producers pitched her ideas, in order for her to run with it she to find her clarity of intention in their idea, so both are aligned.
“I am not going to put myself in a situation where I have to fake anything, where I have to pretend anything, where I have to at any moment be somebody I’m not. I’m going to tell the truth–not just tell it, but live the truth–through this show,” she said.
To achieve your goal, avoid doing what's not aligned with your intention, that's driven by other's perceptions.
“Whenever you do something with the intention of making people think you’re nice, they actually think that, and that’s why they come back, and they ask you again, and that's why you get treated like a doormat," Winfrey said, "because you don't know how to set boundaries for yourself, because you just want people to think I’m nice and you can ask me anytime.”
She also shared the issues of the rushed launch of OWN, her cable channel, without a clarity of intention being set.
"Everybody else around me said you gotta make a move now, and what I should have done was wait, but I was afraid to wait. I thought oh, I have this offer here, now. I know what my spirit is telling me, but this is a business decision, so I betrayed myself. It eventually worked out, and OWN is doing great, but it didn't have to be the struggle," she said.
If you’re not doing something with intention, why are you doing it?
