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