“I never thought my life would be like this.” – Oprah

Everybody has a story…and lessons to teach.  This week, Oprah tells her own story on her OWN Master Class.  In part one of this series with Oprah, we get to hear her story along with her divine lessons.  Each part of her story is like Oprah reaching out and teaching us what we most need to learn.  For us, her viewers – her students – we listen carefully, taking away what we most need to take away.  This is Oprah’s Master Class…

“These years with you, our viewers, have enriched my life beyond measure…” Oprah tells us.  I wonder if she knows how much she has enriched ours.  Do you Oprah?  These are notes taken carefully….on what has been learned from this Master Teacher…and from Oprah Winfrey’s Master Class.

Know Yourself…

• Embrace your own extraordinary story – “The fact that I could be born at that time and now do what I do, am who I am, and live where I live is the most extraordinary story,” Oprah says. “The chances of coming out of Mississippi in 1954…” Oprah starts.  The most racist state in the United States…no regard for your humanity…didn’t even think you were human.”  Know and embrace YOUR OWN story…and feel your extraordinary-ness.
• Listen to your voices – “Who I am was defined for me at a very early age.  At four…watching my grandmother boiling clothes…hanging clothes….we had no running water or electricity.” Oprah says she remember her grandmother talking with a mouth full of clothespins saying, “Oprah Gayle, you’d better watch me now because one day you are going to have to do this for yourself,” and a voice inside her saying, “No grandma ma…I know that this will not be my life.”  Oprah tells us, “Their dream for me was that I would be like them – my grandmother, mother and aunts were maids” and that I would find some “good white folks…” to work for.
• Imagine GREAT things for yourself…then imagine them even GREATER than that – “The life that I live,” Oprah says, “…my grandmother would not have imagined possible for me.”
• “Who I am is grounded specifically in my sense of spiritual worth and value to myself, to the planet, to the universe and to God.” 
• KNOW this …We all become exactly what we believe. –“What my grandmother gave me…she gave me Jesus…and how to read as much as she knew how to read.  I grew up believing in the bible saying, ‘I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.’  What I now know….we all become exactly what we believe. “
• Simple Understanding – “My confidence comes from knowing that there is something greater than myself that I am a part of and that is also a part of me. I call that God but I do nothing without that understanding.”
• Being Co-Creator – “How I think you master life…is to understand that you are co-creating that life with the creator…  You have to understand that your very presence here as a human being on earth came from something greater than you…Wow, how amazing is that of all the different choices that had to happen in order for you to be here now.  What a celebration that is.”
• “The fact that I am here matters; the fact that you are there matters. This is no accident.  None of us are.” 

You are worthy

• Everything Matters – “I think so much of how you are raised and how you were treated in the world has everything to do with how you then want treat other people.”
• Do not believe those who do not see your OWN worth – Oprah tells us that she lived with her grandmother until she was 6 and suddenly removed to go live with her mother in Milwaukee.  No explanation given to her and even as a young child, she knew she would never see her grandmother again.  She was sent to a home where her mother and her half-sister, Pat (who was light skinned) were living.  “At 6 years old, I knew instantly that Ms. Miller, who owned the house and was light-skinned and could pass for white…didn’t like me and that Pat was her favorite.  And so, at 6 years old, I wasn’t allowed to come in the house.  The first night away from my grandmother, Ms. Miller said I couldn’t come in the house and I had to sleep on the porch.”  I remember being afraid every night of what was out there…
• Know your worth has little to do with what happened to you and everything to do with what you do with that experience. “I was raped at 9 years old.  Molested from 10 to 14.  Became pregnant when I was 14. I hid the pregnancy because I thought people would kill me.  My mother took me to a detention home…but was turned away because they didn’t have room.”  “Try us in two weeks,” is what the home told her mother. “I cannot wait 2 weeks,” is what her mother told her and she sent her to her fathers.  At her fathers, he told her, “The worse thing that you could do is bring shame on this family. Any daughter of mine that became pregnant I would rather see dead and floating down the Cumberland River.”  In the pediatrician office, it finally came out that she was pregnant…but Oprah says she hid the pregnancy and never felt a bond or connection.  “I later heard that my mother hid me…” and from this, Oprah gained an understanding that this disconnect that she too experienced, helped Oprah understand her disconnect with her own mother.
• “Understanding what it feels like to not be wanted has created for me a great desire to make everyone feel wanted and know that they matter….because you are here, because you made it, you are worthy.”

 What to teach, what to learn 

• “I consider myself to be a teacher at heart.  In every show that I have every done…what can I teach, what can I learn. How can I use myself as a vessel for something bigger than this conversation? How can I touch a nerve, bring a piece of light, a piece of information that allows somebody that is watching to see their life in away that opens them up…that gives them an “Ah-ha”…I live for that moment for myself and for other people.”
• Understand, what you teach can be life changing – Oprah talks about a specific Oprah Show experience with Dr. Phil and the mother who was going to go home and take her life after being on the show.  “In that show, Phil said to her, “Can you at least entertain the fact that how long you grieve is not a reflection of how deeply you loved your daughter? …Why do you choose to play over and over your daughter’s death instead of celebrating her?”  “I never thought of it that way,” the mother replies.
• It’s all perspective.  You can always find a new way of looking at your life…
• About Oprah being a teacher –“If I wasn’t doing it here, I would definitely be a teacher in a classroom somewhere…I see this as a great classroom…it’s just a larger audience.” 

You are the master of your fate

• “When you do well…people notice.  When you do your best, people notice.  Where ever you are, always do your best and doing your best puts you at the next level.” 
• Opportunity happens. Are you ready? – Oprah talks about going to church at 8 years old and the pastor asking, “Do you think Oprah could do the welcome reading?” and her stepmother quickly saying, “We can do better than that…” and within 2 hours, the 8 year old little girl had learned,  learned Invictus by William Ernest Henley. 
• Impressions say a lot about you – In 3^rd grade, Oprah’s teacher assigned the class to read, “Honestly, Katie John”, to do a book report and turn it in 2 weeks later.  Oprah turned it in within 3 days.  Her teacher told another…who told another…who told another….you get the lesson. 
• Take second chances and make them greater than you could ever imagine – “You are getting a second chance….and if I were you, I’d take advantage of it,” Oprah’s dad told her.  Oprah said that this, at 14, is when she “…made a decision that I am going to be the best that I can. I became an “A” student…excelled in everything.  By 15, people were noticing…”  At 15, Oprah was chosen to go to the White House – one of two kids from Tennessee…that lead her down the path where she interviewed with a DJ about the experience…and who comes back into her path only a year later…
• BELIEVE THIS: Everything is put in front of you and happens for a reason – Oprah talks about entering a contest…like a beauty contest.  When they got to the Q&A portion of the program, she said, “…all the best answers came before my turn to answer…all the  best answers had been taken…”I want to be a nurse….I want to be a teacher…”  So, she tells us, she made up an answer.  She never really watched the Today Show, but that morning, she did and says an interview that Barbara Walters was doing was put in front of her.  In the contest when her turn came, she says “…I made up an answer…I wanted to be a journalist because “I believe giving information to the world can help the world be a better place.” 
• Divine Intervention happens – After Oprah won the contest…a watch and a clock radio…that same DJ who interviewed her asked her, “Would you like to hear your voice on tape?”  “I read as I thought Barbara Walters would…and he said “Wow”….and he called in his boss…and his boss…and I was hired that same day.”  Divine happens.
• “Nothing about my life is lucky…a lot of grace, a lot of blessing, a lot of divine order….but I don’t believe in luck.  To me, luck is preparation meeting the moment of opportunity.  There is no luck without you being prepared to handle that opportunity…. A force greater than my own…”
• Be ready – “For me and for every person, every single thing that has ever happened in your life is preparing you for the moment to come.”
• “Wouldn’t trade nothing for my journey now…”  

Don’t pretend to be what you are not…

• Find your OWN Pattern, not somebody else’s – “Everybody’s life has a pattern…that’s really how you get to determine what your purpose it.  If you don’t know your purpose, that’s your immediate goal.”  Figure out the pattern of your life and your purpose and then, “get to it. This is what I should be doing…This is where I feel most myself.  I feel at home here.”
• Find your voice and make it your own – Oprah tells us how she was hired at CBS as a 19 year old Nashville reporter. “I know how to pretend to be a newsperson…but that is not where my heart lies,” Oprah says.  “I can be a better Oprah Winfrey than a pretend Barbara Walters…” 

We are more than we appear to be

• Listen for the whispers – “The universe speaks to us always first in whispers….and if you don’t pay attention to the whisper, it gets louder and louder…”  What are the whispers happening in your own life and can you catch it when it is just a quiet whisper…before it gets loud?
• We are all an “Oprah” – Oprah remembers going into a meeting and the producers asking her to change her name. No one will know what an “oprah” is.  “It will make it much better for the promos,” they told her. “Why should I change my name?” thought 22 year old Oprah.  “So I said no.” Don’t change your name…don’t change who you are.
• “I am not my hair. I am not my skin. I am not how wide my nose is… The essence of who I am has nothing to do really with what I look like….” – Oprah tells us that one day, the assistant news director said to her, “We are having problems with your hair…It’s too thick. Your eyes are too far apart. Your nose is too wide. You need cosmetic surgery.”  After saying no, they sent her to NYC for a makeover…to a hair salon who gave her a perm that made all of her hair break off and fall out.  They had to take her off the evening news….and figure out how to use her to get their worth out of her….
• Re-tweeting – Everything happens for a reason – The same network that pulled her from the news, put her on a new local talk show they were creating, “People Are Talking.”  “The day I did that talk show, I knew my life had just changed….and that is when I knew I was home.”
• Know this…you are here for a reason.  Finding out that reason is part of the journey. 

How will you be the master of your own life?…from today’s lesson from Oprah, I have learned that I am the sum of all my experiences…and when I blog on the Oprah Winfrey Network, I feel like I am home…now, I need to be ready for divine to happen, because I know that it will.  This, I know for sure.