What It Takes: Oprah Winfrey, Part 1

01Adam A, this child is gifted.

02And I heard that enough that I started to believe it.

03If you have the opportunity, not a perfect opportunity, and you don't take it, you may never have another chance.

04It all was so clear.

05It was just like the picture started to form itself.

06There was no way in which a lie could prevail over the truth, darkness over light, death over life.

07Every day I wake up and decide, today I'm going to love my life.

08Decide.

09My advice is, if they're going to break your leg once when you go in that place, stay out of there.

10And then along come these differential experiences that you don't look for, you don't plan for, but boy, you better not miss them.

11Welcome to another episode of What It Takes, a podcast about passion, vision, and perseverance from the Academy of Achievement's recorded collection.

12I'm Alice Winkler.

13On every episode of What It Takes, we play you a revealing conversation with someone who has literally changed the world.

14And mind you, a lot of people say literally these days when they mean figuratively, but I mean literally, literally.

15The Academy of Achievement has been recording these conversations for decades to document the extraordinary lives of people like Bill Gates, Alan Shepard, and Hank Aaron, but mostly to show that all of us can learn what it takes to do a little better, aim a little higher.

16There is arguably no one alive who has built a bigger empire of inspiration than Oprah Winfrey, or since America's on a first-name basis with her, Oprah.

17Billy is grieving, and we, you know, feel compassion for him, and that's okay that he's grieving.

18Yeah, I think it's important for his mom, Sherry, to know that it's okay for him to be sad.

19I mean, something tremendous has happened in his life, and he deserves that.

20Gail Eikenthal sat down with Oprah for the Academy of Achievement in 1991.

21It was five years into her groundbreaking talk show, and many years before the production company, the magazine, or the television network.

22Gail started by asking Oprah if she'd had any clue she'd one day make it so big.

23As a young child, I had a vision not of what I wanted to accomplish, but I knew that my current circumstances, I was raised on a farm with my grandmother for the first six years of my life.

24I knew somehow that my life would be different, and it would be better.

25I never had a clear-cut vision of what it was I would be doing.

26I just always felt somehow.

27I remember absolutely physically feeling it at around four years old.

28I remember standing on the back porch.

29It was a screened-in porch, and my grandmother was boiling clothes, because at that time we didn't have washing machines, and so people would physically boil clothes in a great big iron pot, and she was boiling clothes and poking them down.

30And I was watching her from the back porch, and I was four years old, and I remember thinking, my life won't be like this.

31My life won't be like this.

32It will be better.

33And it wasn't from a place of arrogance.

34It was just a place of knowing that things could be different for me somehow.

35I don't know what made me think that.

36Did you ever consider any other career besides talking, broadcasting, acting?

37I always wanted to be an actress for most of my adolescent and adult life.

38My father didn't want me to be, because his idea of what an actress was, was one of these, you know, lewd women, and how are you going to take care of your life?

39So I always wanted to be an actress, and have taken, I think, a roundabout way to get there, because I still don't feel fulfilled as an actress.

40I still feel like, okay, once, I'm now, I own my own studio and all this, but I'm thinking, I did all of this just to be an actress.

41I just want to be able to act.

42For a while, I wanted to be a schoolteacher.

43In the fourth grade, Mrs.

44Duncan was my greatest inspiration.

45In the fourth grade is when I first began to believe in myself.

46I, for the first time, believed that I could do almost anything.

47I felt I was the queen bee.

48I felt I could control the world.

49I was going to be a missionary.

50I was going to Costa Rica.

51I was going to, I used to collect money on the playground to take to church on Sundays from all the other kids.

52And at the time in schools, we had devotions.

53And I would sit, and I would listen to everything the preacher said on Sunday, and go back to school on Monday morning and beg Mrs.

54Duncan to please let me do the devotion, just sort of repeat the sermon.

55So in the fourth grade, I was called preacher.

56Kids used to poke fun at me all the time.

57It didn't bother me because I was so inspired at the time.

58And a lot of it was because of Mrs.

59Duncan.

60Mrs.

61Duncan, Mrs.

62Duncan.

63And we did a show not too long ago, and I had favorite teachers on.

64I just broke down because, first of all, it was the first time I realized Mrs.

65Duncan had a name other than Mrs.

66Duncan.

67You know, your teachers never have names.

68I thought her name's Mary.

69I couldn't believe it.

70And maybe you won't believe it, but Oprah's first name was actually supposed to be Orpah.

71Well, I was born, as I said, in rural Mississippi in 1954, and I was born at home.

72And there were not a lot of educated people around.

73And my name had been chosen from the Bible.

74My Aunt Ida had chosen the name, but people didn't know how to pronounce it.

75So it went down as Orpah on my birth certificate.

76But they put the P before the R in every place else other than the birth certificate.

77So on the birth certificate, it is Orpah.

78But then it got translated to Oprah, and so here we are.

79But that's great because Oprah spells Harpo backwards.

80I don't know what Orpah spells.

81It seems appropriate somehow that Oprah ended up with a singular name, even if by mistake.

82Her singular talents started to show when she was practically still a toddler, speaking in public at an age when the rest of us are still learning to talk.

83It was her grandmother who recognized her gifts, the grandmother who raised her.

84I came to live with my grandmother because I was a child born out of wedlock, and my mother moved to the North.

85She's a part of that great migration to the North in the late 50s.

86And I was left with my grandmother, like so many other black youngsters were, left to be taken care of by their grandmothers and grandfathers and aunts and uncles.

87And I was one of those children.

88It actually probably saved my life.

89It is the reason why I am where I am today.

90Because my grandmother gave me the foundation for success that I was allowed to continue to build upon.

91My grandmother taught me to read, and that opened the door to all kinds of possibilities for me.

92And had I not been with my grandmother and been with my mother struggling in the North, you know, moving from apartment to apartment, I probably would not have had the foundation that I had.

93So I was allowed to grow up in Mississippi for the first six years of my life and allowed to feel somewhat special.

94Because I was a precocious child, I guess by any standards now.

95I was taught to read at an early age.

96And by the time I was three, I was reciting speeches in the church.

97And they'd put me up on the program, and they'd say, And little Mistress Winfrey will render a recitation.

98And I would do, Jesus rose on Easter day.

99Hallelujah, hallelujah, all the angels did proclaim.

100And all the sisters sitting in the front row would fan themselves and turn to my grandmother and say, Hadamay, this child is gifted.

101And I heard that enough that I started to believe it.

102Maybe I am.

103I didn't even know what gifted meant, but I just thought it meant that I was special.

104And so anytime people came over, I'd recite.

105I'd recite Bible verses and poetry.

106I did all of James Weldon Johnson's sermons.

107He has a series of seven sermons, beginning with the creation and ending with judgment.

108I used to do them for churches all over the city of Nashville.

109I've spoken at every church in Nashville at some point in my life, I think.

110And you sort of get known for that.

111Other people were known for singing.

112I was known for talking.

113By the time I was seven, I was doing Invictus by William Ernest Henley.

114Out of the night that covers me, black as a pit from pole to pole.

115I thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul.

116And at the time, I was saying, I don't know what I was talking about, but I'd do all the motions out of the night that covers me.

117And people would say, Ooh, that child can speak.

118And so that's, you know, you, whatever you do a lot of, you get good at doing it.

119And that's just about how this whole broadcasting career started for me.

120It was all going pretty well for young Oprah, considering she was being raised without her parents in Mississippi.

121But then she moved north to be reunited with her mother in Chicago, and things took a turn.

122And if you'd asked me at the time, if we were poor, I probably would have said no, because when you are living it and you don't know anything else, you think that's the way life is.

123And I was raped when I was nine by a cousin and never told anybody until I was in my late twenties.

124Not only was I raped by a cousin, I was raped by a cousin and then later sexually molested by a friend of the family and then by an uncle.

125It was just an ongoing, continuous thing.

126So much so that I started to think, you know, this is the way life is.

127And not until, I'd say, a year ago did I release the shame for myself.

128Because I was in the middle of an interview with a woman named Trudy Chase, who has multiple personalities and was severely abused as a child.

129Each one of us went through some pretty deep garbage.

130And this is our opportunity, has been our opportunity for a while, to explore each other.

131Do you know...

132Do you feel like you lost whoever you would have been that day you were raped at two years old?

133Well, she is no more.

134No more.

135I think it was on that day that I, I mean, for the first time I recognized that I was not to blame because I was a, I became a sexually promiscuous teenager, promiscuous and rebellious and did everything I could get away with, including faking a robbery at my house one time.

136I remember, you know, stomping the glasses on the floor and putting myself in the hospital and acting out the whole scene.

137And I used to pull all kinds of pranks, ran away from home.

138And as a result of that, got myself into a lot of trouble and believed that I was responsible for it.

139It wasn't until I was 36 years old, 36, that I connected the fact, oh, that's why I was that way.

140I always blamed myself.

141Even though intellectually I would say to other kids, I would speak to people and say, oh, the child is never to blame.

142You're never responsible for molestation in your life.

143I still believed I was responsible somehow, that I was a bad girl and just released it in the middle.

144And so it happened on the air.

145So many things happened for me.

146Happened on the air in the middle of somebody else's experience.

147And so I thought I was going to have a breakdown on television.

148And I said, you know, stop, stop, we've got to stop rolling cameras.

149And they didn't.

150And so I sort of got myself through it.

151But it was really quite traumatic for me.

152The real Trudy Chase underwent years of therapy.

153And most of that therapy was videotaped because Trudy says that she wanted others to someday be able to understand that they are not alone in their abuse.

154My openness is the reason why I did not do so well as a news reporter.

155Because I used to go on assignments and be so open that I would say to people at fires and they'd lost their children, that's OK, you don't have to talk to me.

156Well, then you go back to the newsroom and the news director, what do you mean they didn't have to talk to you?

157I'd say, but she just lost her child.

158And, you know, I just felt so bad.

159So I didn't do very well.

160I was too, absolutely too involved, too involved.

161I'd go to funerals of people and not go in.

162I wouldn't want to talk to them, disturb them, cry on the air.

163But of course, it was her overwhelming empathy that allowed Oprah Winfrey to become Oprah.

164She just needed to find the format that fit.

165On her talk show, she perfected a new kind of confessional, therapeutic television.

166And television hasn't been the same since.

167When I was growing up, especially in the third and fourth grade, I always wanted to be a minister and preach and be a missionary.

168And then for a while, after Ms.

169Duncan's fourth grade class, I wanted to be a fourth grade teacher.

170And I think in many ways that I have been able to fulfill all of that.

171I feel that my show is a ministry.

172We just don't take up a collection.

173And I feel that it is a teaching tool without preaching to people about it.

174I really do.

175That is my intent.

176That is my intent.

177And the greatest thing about what I do, for me, is that I'm in a position to change people's lives.

178It is the most incredible platform for influence that you could imagine.

179And it's something that I hold in great esteem and take full responsibility for.

180I mean, I do every show in prayer, not down on my knees praying.

181But I do it in sort of before every show, a mental meditation in order to get the correct message across.

182Because you're dealing with millions of people every day.

183And it's very easy for something to be misinterpreted.

184And so my intention is always, regardless of what the show is, whether it's about sibling rivalry or wife battering or children of divorce, for people to see within each show that you are responsible for your life.

185That although there may be tragedy in your life, there's always a possibility to triumph.

186It doesn't matter who you are, where you come from.

187And that the ability to triumph begins with you.

188Always.

189Always.

190Always.

191When interviewer Gail Eikenthal asked Oprah in this conversation in 1991 how aware she was of her own triumph, her own courage, this is what she said.

192The interesting thing about it is, if you were telling me my life story and it was about somebody else, I'd say, oh, how courageous.

193It's very difficult for me to give myself that credit.

194I mean, it's very difficult for me to even see myself as successful because I still see myself as in the process of becoming successful.

195To me, successful is getting to the point where you are absolutely comfortable with yourself and it does not matter how many things you have acquired.

196The ability to learn to say no and not to feel guilty about it, to me, is about the greatest success I have achieved.

197The fact that I have, you know, in the public side done whatever is fine.

198It's all a part of a process for growing for me.

199But to me, to have the kind of internal strength and internal courage it takes to say, no, I will not let you treat me this way, is what success is all about.

200I will not be treated this way.

201I demand only the best for myself.

202One of Oprah's greatest wishes, she said, was that through her work she could teach young people how to learn this life lesson a little faster than she learned it.

203Because it's painful because you keep repeating it over and over and over until you get it right.

204And what I found is that every time you have to repeat the lesson, it gets worse because it's, you know, it's, I call it God trying to get your attention, the universe trying to get your attention.

205So we didn't get your attention the first time.

206So we're going to have to hit you a little harder this time.

207Any major problem you encounter, it always started out as a whisper.

208By the time it gets to be a storm, you have been, you've had a pebble knock you upside the head.

209You've had a brick.

210You've had a brick wall.

211You've had the house to fall down.

212And before you know it, you're in the eye of the storm.

213But long before you're in the eye of the storm, you've had many warnings, like little clues.

214So now my goal in life is to not to have to hit the eye of the storm, is to catch it in a whisper, to get it the first time.

215And getting it comes from understanding your, I think the thing, the one thing that has allowed me to certainly achieve both material success and spiritual success is the ability to listen to my instinct.

216I call it my inner voice.

217It doesn't matter what you call it, nature, instinct, higher power.

218But the ability to understand the difference between what your heart is saying and what your head is saying.

219I now always go with the heart.

220Even when my head is saying, oh, but this is the rational thing.

221This is really what you should do.

222I always go with that little feeling, the feeling.

223I am where I am today because I have allowed myself to listen to my feelings and to validate them.

224Oprah Winfrey told so many fantastic stories in this 1991 interview about how more precisely she got where she did, including how she won the Miss Fire Prevention Contest when she was a teenager, even though the deck was clearly stacked against her.

225That win led to her first job in broadcasting.

226But digest all the Oprah wisdom you've heard so far because the rest is coming in our next podcast.

227There was just too much good stuff with the queen of talk to fit into a single episode.

228This is What It Takes from the Academy of Achievement.

229I'm Alice Winkler.

230Funding for What It Takes comes from the Catherine B.

231Reynolds Foundation.

232What It Takes What It Takes What It Takes What It Takes What It Takes What It Takes What It Takes What It Takes What It Takes What It Takes