Phillip McGraw - Life Strategies: The No-Nonsense Approach to Turning Your Life Around

Doing What Works,
Doing What
Matters

P HILLIP C M C G RAW

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This book is dedicated with love and affection to my wife, Robin, and her gentle and caring spirit, and to my sons, Jay and Jordan, who inspire me with their vibrancy and energy.

I THANK OPRAH for awakening in me the desire and inspiring in me the commitment to reach out and share with others that which I believe with such clarity and passion. Without Oprah, there would be no Life Strategies, which for me would be a personal tragedy, for I would have missed the enrichment of having completed this task. I thank Oprah for caring, for doing it right, and for sharing her platform with me. She is truly the brightest light and the clearest voice in America today. I thank her for being my true friend.

I thank my wife, Robin, for her undying support throughout our twenty-two years of marriage, and for her love and encouragement during this project in particular. I thank her for the courage to live with three boys, and yet remain a lady. I thank her for being my soft place to fall. She is what succeeding in life is all about.

I thank my sons, Jay and Jordan, for loving and believing in their dad and putting up with the late nights and the long hours of absence and preoccupation required by this project. Their patience and genuine encouragement showed a maturity well beyond their years. I thank them for their warped senses of humor, and for never letting their dad forget how to laugh or what really counts.

I extend my most sincere and heartfelt thanks to my friend and colleague Jonathan Leach, a man of great passion and commitment. He has over the years shown passion for my children and their education, and now for this project. Jonathan poured more work, love, and wisdom into this project than could ever be described. Beyond undangling my participles and organizing my stream of consciousness, Jon cared about and contributed to the content of this book from his heart and mind. I thank him for his sacrifice and late, late-night hours in helping to turn this concept into a book. I could not have done it without him.

I thank Gary Dobbs, my partner, dearest friend in life, and godfather to my children for his never-ending support and encouragement for all that I do. His honesty and candor throughout the last two decades have had tremendous impact on the better parts of who I am. No matter what I do, he is always in my balcony.

I thank my assistant, Tami Galloway, for heading up the logistics of this project and for her tireless commitment to get it right. I thank her for never being too tired and never saying no. Thanks also to Melodi Gregg and Kimberly Rinehart for their assistance in transcribing and arranging the manuscript.

I thank my mother and three sisters for conspiring throughout my life to convince me that besides being the only boy in the family, I truly was something special. I thank my deceased father for being a man of passion and vision, and for teaching me to reach. I thank Scott Madsen for always being there.

Thanks to Bill Dawson, Chip Babcock, Jan and Steve Davidson, and Paul Vishnesky for their friendship, loyalty, and commitment in reading and giving honest feedback on early drafts; and to Hal Zina Bennett, for his editorial input on initial drafts of early chapters.

I thank the thousands and thousands of seminar participants who trusted me enough to allow me to impact their minds, hearts, and lives. I thank them for teaching me about life and about living from the heart.

I thank Jeff Jacobs for his wisdom, experience, and insight in counseling this neophyte author through the maze. I thank him for his interest and caring when it would have been a whole lot easier not to.

I thank Bob Miller at Hyperion for believing in and being excited about this project. I thank him for his cutting-edge expertise in the world of publishing and his ability to bring it to bear in unbelievably record time. I also thank Hyperions Leslie Wells for her patience and acumen in editing and counseling me on this project. Leslies spirit and enthusiasm were uplifting each and every day. A true breath of fresh air.

TARGET: AMERICAS SWEETHEART

As Oprah moved silently down the long, winding staircase in the pitch black of night, she was totally alone, a rare circumstance given the intense schedule we were following in Amarillo. Since a conventional hotel would have been a security nightmare, we were living in a rambling, three-story house on the outskirts of this West Texas town. The armed guards who kept twenty-four-hour watch around the perimeter of Camp Oprah now sat in the dark, huddled against the cold. They had no idea she was on the move; every floor appeared dark and asleep. Except for the familiar low moan and creak of the frigid wind from the north, everything was silent. Descending a second flight of stairs, she tapped lightly on my door with a single fingernail. I knew it was she, and she knew I would know, so she spoke not a word. It was well after midnight. She had gone to bed two hours earlier, but I knew she would sleep fitfully, if at all. It was like that for all of us, but especially for her. Behind enemy lines in cattle country, we all slept light and kept our guard up, alert to the reality of hostile feelings from certain factions in Amarillo.