Nancy Mehagian - The Oprah Effect: 25 Ways to Find Peace, Happiness and Personal Fulfillment in a Post–Oprah Show World

NANCY MEHAGIAN

FROM HUQUA PRESS
AND OPEN ROAD MEDIA

All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

Copyright 2011 by Nancy Mehagian and Judith A. Proffer

Cover Design: Alexandra Conn and Ken Goldstein

ISBN 978-1-4976-3858-7

Huqua Press

www.huquapress.com

This edition published in 2014 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

345 Hudson Street

New York, NY 10014

www.openroadmedia.com

For everyone of us that succeeds, its because theres somebody to show you the way out. The light doesnt always necessarily have to be in your family; for me it was teachers and school.

- Oprah Winfrey

For Jessica, David, Victoria and Brianna.

Even when life startles, there is love and there is light.

INTRODUCTION

In 1991 there was no better place in the world to be than Chicago. In the scant 120 years since Michael Ahern - the Chicago Republican reporter - admitted he made up the story about Mrs. OLearys cow knocking over a lantern and starting the fire that killed hundreds and leveled four square miles of the downtown area in 1871, the city had become a melting pot of cultures and a mecca of art, music, sports and opportunity. With its vibrant nightlife, world-renowned shopping and sophisticated lakefront, the city rightfully earned its nickname The Paris on the Prairie.

But not every district was a shining example of progress. While the Northwest side of Chicago hosted a few bright spots - like Greek Town and Maxwell Street (the home of Chicago Blues) - it was also a notorious gang ridden wasteland. You steered clear of it when exiting the Kennedy Expressway, which made it all the more baffling when in 1986 a fledging multi-media producer and TV personality decided to build a motion picture and television production facility smack dab in the middle of the borough between Drug Dealer Alley and Hooker Row. Twenty-five years later the Northwest side of Chicago is now among the most unique, important, progressive and expensive living and entertainment districts in the world due, unquestionably, to the decision Oprah Winfrey made to build her dream studio there.

She would later be quoted as saying, do the one thing you cannot do. Clearly no one but Oprah could have done what she did with that piece of real estate. She literally changed millions of peoples lives with one new thought .

Oprah is what you would call an illuminated cell. Not sure if youve been privy to the going concept about what actually happens when a caterpillar becomes a butterfly. Its being called the Illuminated Cell Theory and it goes something like this:

At some point in a caterpillars maturity a cell appears in its internal system that has a totally new way of thinking about the welfare of its host body. It sees its world from a new perspective that is totally contrary to the going belief among the rest of the cells who all gang up on it and kill it. Before dying it manages to get its message to a few more cells in other parts of the body. Those cells get killed too; but not before the original message spreads even further. Soon the caterpillar is in so much internal conflict due to cell on cell violence - that it cocoons itself to deal with the chaos. If it survives to become a butterfly it is because the new cells with the new way of thinking won. These new cells literally kill all the old cells so what emerges is a totally transcendent being.

Thats Oprah an illuminated cell.

She went into a host body (Northwest side of Chicago) that was drab, lifeless and on the verge of extinction and transformed the area into a vibrant, colorful and inspiring entity that took flight and introduced the entire world to a new way of thinking.

But that is now; in 1991 she was just settling into her cocoon at 1058 West Washington Blvd.

Back then she was not OPRAH yet; she was still Oprah Winfrey successful talk show host, producer; influencer. And that was the year I found myself in in her employ as the assistant to the feature film production coordinator at Harpo Studios.