Winfrey - The path made clear: discovering your lifes direction and purpose

Your life isnt about a big break. Its about taking one significant life-transforming step at a time.

Oprah

August 14, 1978.

It was a Monday, my first day working on a Baltimore talk show called People Are Talking. It was also the last day I had a job.

Up until then, Id been a news anchor and reporter. I knew I was not my authentic self. And my bosses certainly made no secret of their feelings. They told me I was the wrong color, the wrong size, and that I showed too much emotion. Ive always said that the best part about that experience was meeting my best friend, Gayle, who was a production assistant at the same station.

I could feel I was misplaced. Even though the six oclock news was a time slot most young journalists covet, I was never fully comfortable in that seat. And, when I look back at the tapes, I can still hear the pretend anchor voice I used on air.

It wasnt until I was unceremoniously demoted to cohost of People Are Talking that I experienced the first spark of what it means to become fully alive.

During the show, I interviewed Tom Carvel, the Carvel ice-cream man, and the actor who played Benny on All My Children. Not exactly glamorous, but as we talked, I felt lit up from the inside, like I had come home to myself. When the hour ended, there was a sense of knowing resonating within my heart and radiating to the hairs on the back of my neck. My entire body told me this was what I was supposed to do. As a reporter, Id been exhausted all the time. I really had to drag myself in to work. But after one day on this local talk show, I was energized in a way that fueled every cell of my being.

There was no doubt that the seeds of what was to give my life meaning and purpose had been planted. That day, my job ended and my calling began.

Years later, The Oprah Winfrey Show would achieve a level of success no one could have predicted. It was an exhilarating experience. And yet, another little kernel of knowing was revealing itself to me. Even at the shows peak, I had a deep awareness that a supreme moment of destiny still awaited me. Thats why, after twenty-five years, I trusted my instinct when it told me, This isnt it. Theres something else. The show was my home, the audience was one of the great loves of my life, but I couldnt ignore the flicker of certainty telling me it was time to move on.

The years following the end of the show brought many unexpected possibilities, and I had some daunting moments when creating a new cable network, OWN. Stopping to consider my own advice of turning challenges into opportunities is what allowed me to move forward.

This is the lesson I hope you take away from this chapter: Your life is not static. Every decision, setback, or triumph is an opportunity to identify the seeds of truth that make you the wondrous human being that you are. Im not talking just about what you do for a living. When you pay attention to what feeds your energy, you move in the direction of the life for which you were intended. Trust that the Universe has a bigger, wider, deeper dream for you than you could ever imagine for yourself.

Growing up in the church, one of my favorite Bible parables was about the mustard seed: If you have faith, even if its as little as a mustard seed, you can move mountains. Anything is possible. As a child, listening from my seat in church, this brought me so much comfortjust as it did when I was struggling as a reporter in Baltimore and as it still does today. The mustard seed is such a tiny speck of a thing. I am emboldened by the belief that all I need is a mustard seed of faith and no matter what, I am going to be all right.