- 5 minutes ago
Caroline Wanga and Oprah Winfrey have turned their pain into purpose
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00:00What I emphasize now is exactly what you're talking about here, is being the chief for yourself, being the chief executive of your own life, mastering your faith, because every thought, every thought is important, but more important than the thought is the intention behind the thought.
00:30Okay, I need y'all to stop talking, because we ain't got a lot of time to have this life-changing moment.
00:37As a part of my leadership at Essence, we, of course, know that black culture are story makers and story doers, but we get to be storytellers, and so one of the things we started was, you could call it a podcast, an article, whatever makes you feel good.
00:53The point is, we called it chief to chief, and what we do in those conversations is we talk to black women who are operating as chiefs in many different capacities, community, corporate, life, and the goal is to have these chiefs tell their human story, so that every single one of us can find the chief within us, to fulfill our personal purpose.
01:19Now, you can spell chief with a capital C and have everything else be lowercase, and then there's some times when you've got to spell it with all caps, because you have the opportunity to interview one of the chiefs of all chiefs.
01:35So, with no further ado, ladies, gentlemen, and others, please stand to your feet and welcome Ms. Oprah Winfrey!
01:51Woo, Essence!
01:54Hello, Essence!
01:57Hello, Essence!
01:59Hello, Essence!
02:05Chief to the Chiefs!
02:09I love it!
02:11Hello, hello, hello, hello!
02:15Woo!
02:17Woo!
02:18Woo!
02:19Do y'all understand that Oprah's the best interviewer in the world, and we interview her Oprah?
02:27I love this, I love this.
02:29We love you.
02:31We love you.
02:33So, I usually open with a really simple question, and I open with this question because I think the answer to this question changes over the course of people's lives, and it's super simple.
02:46Who is Oprah Winfrey?
02:51Who is she?
02:52Your words.
02:54It actually hasn't changed over the course of my life.
02:59Okay.
02:59It has deepened.
03:01Ooh.
03:01I am first and foremost a daughter of the Most High King.
03:09First and foremost.
03:11And I have known this since I was four years old.
03:14Really?
03:15Watching my grandmother hang clothes out on the line, and saying to me, Oprah, you will have to, Oprah Gale, you're going to have to learn how to do this for yourself.
03:25And the voice inside myself, the chief that I have followed my whole life, said, no, grandmama, that ain't going to be my life.
03:35But I had sense enough not to say it out loud.
03:37And so, I would say that every powerful, good, formative decision I have made in my life has been because I have been connected to the Most High, the source of the divine.
03:56And when I am listening to that, and when I am paying attention, and I am obedient to that call, life flows for me.
04:08And when I am not, when I'm off course, when I haven't done the work of staying centered and staying spiritually connected, that is when I have made the most mistakes in my life.
04:20But that thing that I call God inside myself and inside all of us, that is above, around, and through, that we can't even define, has led me to this space all my life.
04:36And first and foremost, I'm connected to that.
04:39I'm going to ask you to dig into one part of what you said, if you wouldn't mind.
04:44Yeah.
04:44The parts where you got off course.
04:46Yeah.
04:47And it brought you back.
04:48You know, I believe that a lot of times we sit as inspirational women and we tell our stories, but we tell it as if it happened perfectly.
04:55And then little girls like Caroline are out in the audience and they know they're flawed, so they remove themselves from believing that success can happen because everybody that told their stories had never made a mistake.
05:05What does coming back from being off path look like for you so that those who need it can hear it?
05:11It looks like, and you know this, Caroline, it looks like giving your power over to somebody else.
05:18It looks like believing that you are not who God created you to be.
05:24It looks like following somebody else's lead and listening to what other people are saying your life should be.
05:31Instead of paying attention to that still small voice that is within every one of us that is undeniable if you are still enough to listen.
05:42You know, what I've learned is anytime you're asking anybody for anything like, do you like this dress?
05:48What do you think of this?
05:49And should I marry him or should I go there?
05:52Anytime you have to stop and ask other people what you should do, that is the number one signal to yourself that you need to get still and hear what the true voice is saying to you.
06:05So I have been off course.
06:08I mean, in my 20s, in my 20s, that's why I have all my daughter girls from South Africa.
06:15And I just say the 20s are about figuring it out.
06:18I mean.
06:18I mean.
06:20Figure it out.
06:20Figure it out.
06:22Finding for yourself what is the truth for you, what is going to hold you and make you whole.
06:26But listen, I went down the path of believing I was nothing unless some man said I was.
06:32Oh, we going to do that today?
06:33We going to do that today.
06:35Because I have a similar story, but it's your interview.
06:37Yes, and I remember.
06:40No shade, shape.
06:41I remember watching my cousin get, you know, beaten by her boyfriend who was my abuser, one of my abusers.
06:51Oh, wow.
06:52And I remember many times allowing him to abuse me, sexually abuse me, so that he wouldn't beat up my cousin Alice.
06:59And I grew up thinking I'm never, ever, ever going to have a man that hits me, never going to have a man who hits me.
07:06And I think I was 24, 25, 27, something in that range.
07:13And I was in a relationship that I shouldn't have been in.
07:16And he went out the door and he slammed the door and my hand got caught in the door.
07:22And I fell to the floor and there was a mirror in the hallway.
07:26And I saw myself on the floor and I said, oh, Lord, I have become my cousin Alice.
07:33I have become what I said I would not become.
07:36Your story.
07:38I became a mom at the age of 17.
07:42People started to renegotiate my potential without my permission.
07:46The person I got pregnant by was not somebody I intended to have a relationship with, but wanted to have a relationship with for the sake of my daughter, who's actually in the audience.
07:58He had a lot to work through in his life.
08:00Wasn't in the healthiest place.
08:02Got in trouble.
08:04One evening he wakes me up with a punch to the face.
08:07Whoa.
08:09Was that the first one?
08:10And the only.
08:16However, however, being hit once doesn't mean it healed fast.
08:26Yeah.
08:27And so while it was once, 20 years of believing that I deserved that punch stagnated my purpose.
08:38And so I can relate to the moment at which you decide to pursue purpose.
08:44Yes.
08:45Despite the pain.
08:46Yes.
08:47Yes.
08:47And I thank you for telling that story.
08:50Yes.
08:51And you know, I said this to women over the years because I witnessed it in my own family.
08:57The once will always be followed by another time.
09:00Yeah.
09:01So if you don't stop it the first time, it will show up again.
09:05Say that again, please.
09:05Yeah.
09:06The once will always be followed by another time.
09:09And if you don't stop it the first time, it will continue to show up because it is God waiting on you.
09:17You think you're waiting on God, but God's waiting on you to see your true value and your true worth to know that you don't deserve to be hit and love doesn't hurt.
09:29So this statement around if it happens once, it'll happen again.
09:37Yes.
09:37Yes.
09:37What's the positive side of that statement where you have this really great moment?
09:42And if you're like me as a black girl, you start to believe that it's luck.
09:47I'm not really this good.
09:49That was luck.
09:50And so I'm not going to choose to believe in my greatness.
09:53Those one times where we should believe it can happen again.
09:56The positive side, the pursuit of purpose.
09:58What does that look like?
09:59This is what I know.
10:00I know that I belong to the king.
10:05I know this.
10:07And so I would have to say, and it is because I remember I was in Essence, I think, either the first or second year.
10:16Yes.
10:16That you all, that there was an Essence magazine.
10:19And being able to see and identify yourself in the faces of others who look like you is so important.
10:26But because I grew up actually really believing, sitting in the second pew on the right-hand side every Sunday,
10:33believing that I was indeed God's child to the point that when I went to school and people would ask me who's my daddy,
10:41I'd say, Jesus is my daddy.
10:44I did too.
10:45People would be like, are you married?
10:46I'm like, Jesus is my bridegroom.
10:49Absolutely.
10:49So because I believe that, I will have to say, and I started at a time in 1975, was my first job on television and I was the only black woman.
11:02I have never, because I belong to, I think, I know that I belong as God's daughter,
11:10I never have been in a place where I didn't think I deserved to be.
11:13I have never, ever sat in a boardroom or been in a space where I felt like I don't deserve to be here.
11:23I had the benefit of having Maya Angelou, which I teared up when I first heard your voice backstage because I said,
11:30you remind me of Maya.
11:32You speak with such authority and the depth of your residence reminds me so much of Maya.
11:38But one of the things that Maya taught me to understand as my mother-sister friend was that you, she used to say,
11:54you alone are enough.
11:58You alone are enough in that voice of yours.
12:02And she would say, those people who are talking about you out there cannot hold a candle to the light God already has shining on your face.
12:14Can you see the light?
12:16Can you feel the light?
12:17So I tried, I could see that my life was rising, Carolyn, and I wanted to meet that rising.
12:28And I believe all of us have a calling on ourselves to meet the rising of your life.
12:36And that is what the creator wants for all of us.
12:40Everybody has a rising.
12:42Some people wallowing and swallowing and not rising to what God has created and intended for you.
12:51And so I feel that I have been obedient to that call.
12:54I respect and have reverent fear for what I'm supposed to do with my rising.
13:01So I've said that chief to chief is about helping people find the chiefs within themselves.
13:08Yes.
13:09For those that are here wayfinding their chiefdom, what would you advise them to do?
13:17It doesn't ever come out there.
13:23It's not out there.
13:25It's always in here.
13:28And as I was saying, I have journals.
13:31I've kept a journal since I was 15, Carolyn.
13:34Do you still have all of them?
13:35I still have all of them.
13:36Wow.
13:37Yes.
13:37And around the 90s, I just started doing gratitude journals.
13:42But before that, I have all this, woe is me, Lord help me, Jesus journals.
13:49And one of the things I've learned through, I love journaling because you get to see your own growth.
13:57Yes.
13:57It's a powerful thing.
13:59And one of the things that I know for sure is that any question that you have about your life, the answer is already there waiting inside you.
14:12And you cannot get to the answer by asking everybody.
14:16You can only get to the answer by getting still.
14:20And when you don't know what to do, you do nothing until the answer rises up inside you and you get the answer.
14:30So my advice is to work on making yourself the master of your faith and the captain of your soul, being the chief of your own life.
14:43I built a leadership academy in South Africa.
14:45And in the beginning, all the girls were like, oh, what are we going to do?
14:50What are we going to do with your lives?
14:51And what I emphasize now is exactly what you're talking about here, is being the chief for yourself, being the chief executive of your own life, mastering your faith.
15:05Because every thought, every thought is important, but more important than the thought is the intention behind the thought.
15:15So let me just share this with you all.
15:18Our show, the Oprah Winfrey Show, was number one for 25 years.
15:22And everybody came after me.
15:25But we maintain being number one because first and foremost in my principles is not just, I know that every action, there's an equal and opposite reaction.
15:37What you're putting out is coming back to you all the time, whether you recognize it or not.
15:42But before you even put it out, there is an intention you have for putting it out.
15:49And this is the way life works.
15:51It's physics.
15:53The intention is going to determine the outcome.
15:57So it's not just what you're doing.
15:58It's just not the action.
16:00It is the motivation behind the action that determines what the outcome is going to be.
16:06And so the reason why my show was number one for 25 years, around 1989, I got this principle.
16:14I read it in a book called Seat of the Soul by Gary Zukov.
16:18And he described this whole idea of intention.
16:22So I sat the producers down and I said, we are not going to produce a show again unless everyone is clear about what the intention is.
16:33So do not bring me your ideas unless you are clear about why you're bringing the idea.
16:39And whatever idea you bring to me, I have to find a level of truth in it.
16:45Because I cannot sit in the chair and fake nothing.
16:49I can't fake cooking.
16:51I can't fake baking.
16:52I can't fake it.
16:53So if you bring me the idea and I can find a thread of truth in the idea that I can align myself with, I can sit in a chair for an hour and talk about whatever.
17:05As long as I can find one thing that I can be sincerely honest and truthful about.
17:10Then I can be curious about all the rest.
17:12That motivation to only lead with intention changed the trajectory of that show.
17:23And so before every important interview, I remember the last time I interviewed Whitney Houston, we did the, oh, hey girl, how you doing, how bad?
17:33And I stopped the cameras and said, we're going to go in the back here.
17:37And I said, tell me, what is your intention?
17:40What do you want to happen so that when you leave this interview, you won't come out saying, well, you should have asked me and I wish you'd have said.
17:48And so I have done that for every important event, circumstance, experience in my life.
17:55Tell me what is your intention so that my intention can align with your intention.
18:00And that is how I am not just the chief executive of my own life, but my companies are all aligned based on intention.
18:10What is it we really want to do?
18:13And for me, it is understanding that what you want and what I want are the same thing.
18:19We want to be the highest expression, the purest expression.
18:24Yes.
18:25The most truthful expression of ourselves as human beings.
18:29And you want to meet the rising of your life.
18:33Is there anything else you want to say as these chiefs, these chiefs go about being chiefs?
18:46What I want to say is, it's yours for the asking.
18:54It's yours for the asking.
18:57Get clear on what it is you're asking for.
19:03The answer will be revealed to you if you get clarity about what it is you really want.
19:10I spent many years talking to my audiences after the show, and I would always say, tell me what you want.
19:17Tell me what you want.
19:18People would always just say, I just want to be happy.
19:21But what does that look like for you?
19:24Most people haven't actually given it real thought.
19:29Your happiness has been designed by what your mama wanted, what you thought you wanted when you were 17 or 25.
19:36It continually evolves, as you said, in the beginning of this experience we're sharing together.
19:44Who are you now versus who you thought you wanted to be however many years ago?
19:50And it's yours to design.
19:54Your life is yours to design with the creator.
19:59So you are the co-creator and designer of your life, and it's yours for the asking.
20:06Ladies and gentlemen, Oprah Winfrey!
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