Super Soul Special: Elizabeth Gilbert, Part 2: What Is a Soul Mate?
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I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to SuperSoul Conversations, the podcast.

I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time. Taking time to be more fully present. Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right now.

Like many super-soulers, Elizabeth Gilbert shares a fascination with American author and mythologist Joseph Campbell. While deeply inspired by Campbell's work, Elizabeth points out women are rarely at the center of the story. Elizabeth says, we all have a calling, and it's up to us to take the lead in our own story.

OK, so let's review. Everybody is on their own hero's journey, whether they know it or not. They're invited. They're certainly invited. Yeah. You're invited. So it begins with a call. Yeah.

then you can accept the call or deny the call. Right. The story ends when you refuse the call. Yeah, it's over. That's like, choose your own ending. You just chose it. Your book is one page long. Yes, when you deny the call, though, is it the same as denying destiny? I think so. Well, I mean, no, because then you chose your destiny. Yeah, then there's another destiny. Everybody gets a destiny. Right. It's just that you got a really kind of aborted one. It's like...

Yeah, you deny the call, so you deny the call, and then whatever you're on, that then becomes your destiny. Yeah, yeah. And it's probably just going to not be a very interesting story. Yes. You know? But in order to fulfill the highest expression of yourself as a human being, I think you have to say yes to the call. If you want to be the hero of the story, you kind of got to answer the call. Yes. You have to.

Yeah. And then comes the refusal. Refusal. Then comes the road of trials. Yes. Which I don't need to explain because we all know what it is. The road of trials. And then come the characters who show up that you have to figure out how to navigate. The friends who look like enemies, enemies who look like friends, a wise older woman who gives advice, a trickster. You know, these are the pat characters who show up and you take what you need from them. Then comes the dark night of the soul, also known as the belly of the whale, the lowest moment where you lose all faith.

and you consider quitting or maybe even dying. And there is when you have to call upon divine assistance. You're humbled, you're broken. And whatever the supernatural power is that you need, you call upon it. And then the power comes, and with that recovery from the rock bottom, you learn your own talents and your own strengths. And then you have everything you need for the battle. And in the battle, what's critically important is that you lose your fear. Actually, Joseph Campbell was more specific. In the battle, the hero loses his fear of death.

which is really what all fear is, loses his fear of death. And then you can face anything. And then you become victorious. For Elizabeth, her own hero's journey began in Waterbury, Connecticut, where she grew up on a Christmas tree farm. The youngest of two daughters, Elizabeth adored her mother, who became a powerful force in her life. Elizabeth says she followed in her mom's footsteps, married in her 20s, moving to a big house in the suburbs.

But after several years of marriage, Elizabeth says she felt trapped, ultimately understanding that she was living everyone else's dream for her, not her own. Elizabeth's breaking point came when she realized she didn't want to have children and no longer wanted to be married to her husband.

She rejected the path established by her mother and her mother's mother before her, knowing that the monumental decision to have children was not right for her.

I'm not a mother. I don't have children. That was your choice. That was my choice. And it's a choice, and people ask me about it all the time, and they're always a little hesitant to ask me because they feel like it's invasive. And I'm like, let's talk about this. Yeah. Because I think we all should talk about this. And the determination that I've come to is that there are three kinds of women in the world. There are women who are born to be mothers. There are women who are born to be aunties. And there are women who should not be allowed within 10 feet of a child.

And it is very important that you figure out which one of those camps you belong in because tragedy and sorrow results from ending up in the wrong category. And it is, of course, a terrible tragedy. Wow, what a powerful thing to say. And I'm in the anti-camp. Me too. I call it the anti-brigade. I wrote a whole chapter about this in my book, Committed, because the assumption is that if you don't have children, you hate children.

You know, the anti-camp loves children. Is that the assumption? I think it kind of is. People think you're sort of an ogre. Or they feel sorry for you. Sometimes people say to me, how do you feel...

Now that you're older and you never had children, you're going to die alone. I feel all right, people. I really do. Yes. And you know what else I think? I think women people have to stop judging other women people based on whatever camp they're in. Oh, yeah. If you're a mother, if you're in the anti-camp, or if you're the you should stay 10 feet away from children camp and just deal with cats and dogs. Yeah. Yeah, camp. No judgment. That we live in a world...

fortunately, where you get to choose. - Yes. - Yeah. - You should get to choose that. And you should think about it carefully, 'cause it's an important decision. And it was confusing. I think the anti-camp, those of us who are in that, it can be confusing because that love that we have for kids can be like, "Yeah, but I love kids." Like, I always loved kids. If there was a kid here, I'd be hanging out with a kid. You know, I love them. - Love kids. I'm Annie-O and Mom-O. I'm an Annie-O and Mom-O, yeah. - I know what it feels like to want

Like, I have no stranger to desire. I know what yearning feels like. I know what desire feels like. I never had that thing where somebody puts a baby in my arms and, like, my ovaries start to... You know, I never had that. I never did either. I never had that longing. And I thought, you've got to obey the longing. I have that... You know what makes me feel that way? Walking into a used bookstore. I'm like, oh...

- Me too. - Makes me ache with love and longing. - You're just saying it now, I can smell them. - Oh, I know what it feels like to want and to love, and I never had that. And I feel like if you don't have that, and I had one of the best things that ever happened was a friend of mine when I was making that decision, who's one of the best mothers I know, who seems to truly enjoy it, loves to be a mom. I said, "What do you think, Margaret?" And she said, "Liz, it's a hard enough job when you love it,

Don't do it when you're ambivalent about it or you don't want to do it. It's hard enough for me. Or think you should. Or we've been married this long. Yeah, that in itself is what I mean by honoring your calling. At first, though, when you were daring to go on your own hero's journey and the rest of the world, particularly your mother who's done the same thing and did the same thing as her mother did and her mother did, were you...

Were you anxious about what all those other people would say? Sure. Um, yeah, of course. And ashamed.

You know? A shame that you're not now willing to do. Well, they had all come to my wedding. Yeah. It's a little embarrassing. Oh, yeah. You know, like, hey, guys. Thanks for the china. I know. I was going to say, do you want to say, I'll return it? I'll return your gifts? Remember, it's embarrassing. I mean, embarrassing is a light word for it. Shame is the real word. Yeah. I made a vow. You know, like, I brought families together. Like, we had...

You know, and I think that... But Liz, did you know when you were doing it? Was there a part of you when you were doing it? Had you examined it? You know, I'm not one of those people who can say, I woke up on my wedding day and knew it was wrong. I didn't. You didn't? I didn't, no. I was in love, and I was excited, and I was like, cool, this is... And the feeling I actually had was...

That's checked off the list. You know, like, okay, married, now that's done, so... I guess I'll get on with the kids. You know, I guess I didn't realize that marriage isn't just the wedding. It's, like, all the stuff that comes after it. It's like, no, it's not done.

You're just getting started. It begins the day that you get married. Which, Liz, I must say, I think a lot of women, I've done lots of shows over the years where, oh my goodness. And we are a culture that's created it with The Bachelor and The Bachelorette. The wedding, the wedding, the wedding, the wedding, the wedding is the ideal. And so many people don't think beyond it.

They just don't think beyond it. Or they get trapped in the tyranny of that story. You know, that if you don't go through that rite of passage, for some reason, you're not a woman. And I have a friend who I love and admire so much. She's an artist, and she was so successful and so happy and life full of grace.

She was turning 40 and she realized she was still trapped in this sense that because she had never had the white dress, the ring, the party. I mean, the white dress too, honey. Yeah, right? That she'd never passed through that. That somehow she was still an adolescent. She had not yet become a woman. So she created a ceremony of her own. She said, I'm going to take ownership of this somehow. I obviously need a ceremony because something in me is feeling like I didn't ascend to something.

So she went down, she lives in Seattle. She went down to the Puget Sound on the morning of her 40th birthday, dead winter, ice cold. And she built this little boat and she made white silk sails, like out of an old wedding dress that she'd gotten. And she filled it with rose petals and rice. And she set it on fire and she sent it out to sea. And she said, I'm letting go of the bride. I'm not doing this thing. Just went and had her own ceremony to say, and now I'm an adult.

Because I just chose my own life. And I'm not waiting for some sort of affirmation that says, until this event happens, you are not completed. I just completed it. Oh. And then she went on with her journey. I love her for doing that. I love that story. I love homemade ceremonies. You're allowed to make up all kinds of ceremonies.

So do you have any of your own? I have lots of them. What's your favorite? My favorite is New Year's Day. New Year's Day is my favorite day of the year because I feel like it's such a miracle that you get a Brit, no matter how much you screwed up. It's like they give you a brand new one every year. They're like,

Here, we're just gonna give you this brand new one. - This brand new year. - Got no dinks on it. - Yeah. - Like, it's got no miles on it. It doesn't smell like cigarette smoke. Nothing spilled on it. Brand new. And I'm always like, "I can't believe you guys are giving me another one of these. Didn't you see what I did with the last one?"

Like I made a bunch of mistakes. Who cares? I'm giving you a brand new one. So I love to get up really early at dawn on New Year's Day and I go for a walk in the woods. And the first animal that I see, the first wild animal that I see is my totem for the year, is my spirit animal for the year. And then I go home and look up what that animal means. And then I just try to keep that with me for the year. Like this is the energy that you need to bring to this year. It's my favorite homemade snack. Wow. Yeah. Yeah.

I saw a fox once. That was the best. I was like, it's my year of being foxy. You obviously live in a wood, near a wood. Yeah. Yeah. I guess you could make it up some other way too. Pigeon. Subway rat. I don't know. You've got to be careful in an urban setting. But I love, and I got this idea, my friend Darcy, and I talk about this all the time, about how if the religious ceremonies that were handed down to you aren't working for you,

You can make up your own. You can invent spiritual passage ceremonies. She did this one ceremony where she was really in this sort of hostile enmeshment with her mother her whole life, and this very tricky relationship. And one day she just lit a candle, and she just had these two candles, and she had this one candle here and one candle here. And she said, she lit them both from the center candle like this. And she said, this is my mother, and this is me. Two separate flames.

Right? Like, until then, we've been this one candle. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. This is her. This is me. And she blew out the center one. And she just put them on her mantelpiece. And she just meditated on that. Two different souls. And she said it was this huge turning point in her life. And she just made that up. You know, like, I'm going to change the way I feel about the flame that is me and my mother. And I'm going to do that on my own terms. She didn't need a

priest to organize that for her. She just did that on her own and it shifted something in her, made it better, made it real, put it in tangible forms. How do you become more connected to yourself and the world around you if you have ADHD and don't even know? Climbing the Walls is a podcast that investigates why ADHD diagnosis were missed among women and girls for so long and how this has impacted women's mental health.

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The Brazilian man Elizabeth called "Filipe" in "I Prei Love" is now her husband. His real name is José. Both vowed they would never marry again, but fate intervened in the form of U.S. immigration. The couple had to marry legally or José would not be allowed in the country again. The pair are lifelong passionate travelers. They own a shop called Two Buttons, filled with exotic treasures from around the world.

Do you feel that you are a better partner now in marriage than you were? God, yes. Obviously, you would have to be. Because you're in a marriage. I was such a lame wife. I was so bad. I was so bad at it. And I always say to people, my husband always jokes, people should only have second marriages, not first marriages. But I, you know, I say I have a happier marriage, but I'm a better spouse. I get the terms of it more than I do.

I love where you say--you say in Eat, Pray, Love that people think a soulmate is your perfect fit and that's what everyone wants, but a true soulmate is a mirror, the person who shows you everything that's holding you back, the person who brings you to your own attention--love that--so you can change your life. A true soulmate is probably the most important person you will ever meet because they tear down your walls and smack you awake. But you might not want to marry them.

And that quote is actually from my friend Richard from Texas because he told me about somebody who I had lost who I thought was my soulmate. And he said, he probably was. But you don't understand what a soulmate is. You think it's all roses and happiness. A soulmate is like somebody who changes you. And then sometimes they have to leave because the intensity of the relationship is so much that you can't actually have a stable relationship.

Like your partner is something else. You know, like a spouse, a husband, a partner. Like that's your friend. You know, like your partner. Like my husband is my best friend. And he's not the mirror that holds up my flaws. He's just the guy who's like, I think you're terrific. And I'm like, I think you're terrific. How can we be nice to each other today? You know, it is a very, it's like not a high tension, high vibration. It's just simple showing up for each other.

I like having a cup of coffee with you in the morning. Thank you for being my champion. Love. So, yeah, I think people got the soulmate thing confused. Yes. Because they get all fired up by somebody and then they're like, oh, we're supposed to be together forever. And it might not necessarily be the case. Whatever they fired up in you, you might have needed fired up and then you might need them to go.

so that you can go on your journey different than you were. So what advice would you give your younger self? There is absolutely no advice that I could have given my younger self that I would have listened to when I was younger. Really? Yep. I was surrounded by all the grace and wisdom in the world, and I was just like, "No, I got this." Which I think is maybe the definition of youth. But if I were to have listened, which is a big... Like, I would have to have been a completely different person than who I was.

I would have said avoid romantic entanglements in your youth and focus on yourself.

I spent so much time, my God, over the amount of hours of time I spent with boys and men that I could have been... Focusing on yourself. I could speak fluent Mandarin now in the amount of hours that I spent in my adolescence with boyfriends. But you wouldn't have listened. No, no, no, no, no, no. Never, ever, ever. And I would say that's the biggest regret of my life is that I didn't... And, you know, I'm not going to, like, beat myself up over it because it is what it is and I'm here and it's great. You know, it made me who I am. But I wish that I had spent...

those youthful years just feeding this mind. And when I wrote Committed and Learned All About Marriage, when people say to me, what's the secret to a happy marriage? First of all, I always say there isn't one because we're really bad at keeping secrets. And if there was one, it would have leaked already and everybody would have a happy marriage. So obviously there isn't one. But the closest thing that there is, is wait. The happiest marriages are the marriages that happen later in life. The longer you wait to choose your partner, the happier your marriage is going to be. And it makes sense. We make better decisions as we get older about everything.

Liz Gilbert, are you having the life you want right now? I totally am. I totally am. And I'm also learning to not be afraid of the fact that I'm so happy. You know, this is something that Brene Brown talks about. Yes. It's about, like, the fear reflex that you get. It's almost like... Watching your kids sleep.

Like, oh my God, I'm so happy. Is something going to happen to them? Yeah. People will warn you against saying that you're happy as though it summons the devil. You know? Like, they'll be like, don't say that out loud. You know, like, you're just tempting fate. And I'm like, you know what? No, no, no. No, I am enjoying this grace and this gratitude. And I, look, I've been around. I know things can change. But...

They're not changing right now. I know trouble can come to you at any time, but I'm not walking around calling its name. You know what I mean? Like, when trouble wants to find you, it knows where I live. It'll come and knock on my door, but I'm not going to walk around looking for it around every corner when things are so good. I'm just going to be grateful, simply grateful that it's good. And as long as I'm allowed to have it be good, then it's good. And when it gets bad again, all I can hope is that I'll cope with it with dignity, with the dignity that I've learned along my path.

I'm not going to start practicing for that now. Just when it comes, we'll face it. I say ride the wave. Ride the wave. When it changes, it changes.

And if you believe in your own dignity... And it will change. Oh my God, it will. Yeah, that is called life. You know? That's how it is. And one of my monks in India used to say, if you don't like chaos, you chose the wrong planet to be born on. Because that's the contract. Yeah. But your own dignity, your own grace, your own gratitude, you can keep that through everything if you work hard enough to. And the rest of it is just chatter.

Do you think, though, you know, we were talking earlier about the dark night of the soul. Everybody has to go through one. Do you think that we can learn as much from our joy? I like to think so, but the things that have shaped me the most so far in my life are the failures and the mistakes and the disasters. But here's what's a very important thing to recognize. Failure, disaster, shame, suffering, and pain do not necessarily make you a better person unless you participate in

in turning it into something good. - That's right. What was your quote about suffering? - "Never waste your suffering. Suffering without catharsis is nothing but wasted pain." So this I learned from a friend of mine who was a paraplegic, who had a life of terrible accidents and trauma, an incredibly brilliant, graceful man named Jim McLaren, and he told me that.

I met Jim McLaren on The Oprah Show, a former college athlete and aspiring actor. Jim suffered two devastating accidents and was paralyzed from the chest down. Jim passed away in 2010. He said people come up to him and they say, oh, you must have become so wise because of all your suffering. And he's like, there's a lot of people who suffered who are still just as stupid as ever.

I chose to take that and to use my power, my thinking, my force, my wisdom to turn my suffering into grace. Otherwise, it's just wasted pain. You're just suffering for nothing. If you don't transform from it, and that's your job, if you don't transform from your pain, then it was for nothing. You just suffered for no reason whatsoever. And so...

So I try not to waste my suffering. When bad things happen, I'm like, what can we grow from this? I try to get on that as fast as possible. I do too. What is this here to teach me? And what did I do to make this happen is the second one. So that I don't get stuck in blame, blame, blame. Yeah. Do you learn from the joys though? Sometimes it takes a while. I try to. I try to. I mean, I try to really reconstruct like a crime scene. What was my part in this? You know, because I know there was one. It didn't just happen out of nowhere. That's right.

I was there. If I was there and part of it, then I'm part of it. Yeah. You talk about how after the dark night of the soul, the hero discovers talents and powers that she never knew she had. What did you discover that you never knew you had? That I can take care of myself completely. I got my own back, you know, that...

I can take care of myself. And I don't just mean financially, I mean emotionally. That I know that I became a responsible enough adult to be allowed to be alone with the child who is inside of me.

Like, I can take care of you. I'm not going to-- And you know that no matter what, you're going to be all right. I'm going to be all right. That's what the journey is, isn't it? I'm the grown up now, you know? Like, that's really what it is. In all the myths and all the stories of "Hero's Journey," the hero returns home in the end wiser than before. And isn't that ultimately what the wisdom is, that I can conquer, can take care of myself? Yeah. And actually, that's the-- really, I neglect to mention this sometimes.

but the real final chapter of the hero's journey. The climax is the battle, right? The great battle where you lose the fear and you become the hero. But the end of the story is you come back home and you share what you learned. And if you don't do that, then you don't really get the entire journey, right?

So that's your obligation too. And this is why I always say to people, going on your hero's journey is not just something that you do for you. It's a public service. Because what you bring back from that to your community, to your family, will change and uplift them. And they need that. So they need you to go be the hero so that you can come back and show them everything that you learned. What is the lesson that you have learned? What is the lesson that you most want to offer? It comes not from me, but from...

the best articulation of this that I've ever heard, which is 4,000 years old, from the Bhagavad Gita, the great Indian epic, where the hero is told by the gods, "It is better to live your own destiny imperfectly than to live a perfect imitation of somebody else's life." And that, to me, is what empowered me finally to go and chart my own course, was that I was living a really beautifully enacted imitation of a life that was not mine,

And it was killing me, and it looked great. It was a gorgeous facsimile of somebody else's dream of a perfect life, but not mine. You started out talking about quests. I think what's important for people to know is that you don't have to be the big, you know, riding on an elephant in India quest. You talk about miniature quests. Yeah, mini quests. Fun size. Fun size. Snackable quests. Sometimes you have to shape the quest to the reality of your life.

You know, and one of the things that I talk about is when I was going through my divorce and I was stuck in this legal proceeding and I had no money and I had no freedom, I made myself have these mini quests. I wanted the big one, you know, what ultimately became Eat, Pray, Love, but I didn't have the liberty to go do that. I didn't have the money to go do that. I was stuck in the situation that I had to see through. And so I would give myself challenges, you know, like your challenge today is to go out in this world

When you're full of resentment and full of anger and full of like stuckness, you need to go out there and you need to find something beautiful. I need to experience it and feel it and wake yourself up and, and, and excite yourself. And you're not allowed to come home until you've done that. That's a quest. You know, as long as it takes you go, your quest today is to make a piece of art. You're not even, I'm not even an artist, but like go get some materials and make a piece of art that expresses your journey so far in life.

I remember going to the store and buying all these index cards and all this tissue paper of different colors and just making an index card series of what every year of my life has been about up until now so that I could lay it out on the floor and see it in primitive drawings. Like, oh, that's the year I learned this. Now you're in this year. What's it going to be next year? That's a quest. A quest for comprehension, a quest for perspective. I love the day that you had said,

that the voice had said to you to go out and find something beautiful and you come away with, you walk out and you see these, you know, elephants walking down the street. Oh my God, that was the best mini quest ever. Because I was at the post office coming home from divorce court, had to mail something full of despair, full of resentment, full of frustration. All I want to do is go home and cry. And somehow this voice in the post office came to me and said, "You need to aim a little higher than 'All I want to do is go home and cry.'"

So I created this mini quest. I didn't let myself leave the post office until I had my mini quest. And the mini quest was that very thing. You must go out in this world today and you must find something beautiful in New York City, a city you don't even want to be in right now, that you feel stuck in and trapped.

And I marched out of there like ready to, am I gonna march up these streets all day if my feet bleed? I don't care if I have to walk. There's something beautiful in this stupid city, you know? And I threw open the doors of the post office and there, walking right in front of me down 7th Avenue, were five elephants. Five elephants right there with showgirls with spangled costumes on top, waving at me. Took me two steps out of the post office before I realized that quest.

And there was a reason the elephants were there. The circus was in town across the street. But on that particular day, they were your elephants. They were my elephants because I made the challenge to myself to go find something magnificent. So do you work every day? Do you have like a spiritual practice? You know what? Not really. I gotta be very honest. Because people come to me for like meditation advice and I'm always like,

I meditated like five times last year. You know, like I just can't lie because I think it's disingenuous, right? Yes, yes. I was never good at it. I wasn't good at it when I was in India and I was in an ashram and I was doing it like with the masters. I wasn't good at it. And by good at it, I just mean... Being able to be still for long periods of time. It's hard for me, you know? And I loved being at the ashram, but I remember the day that I realized when I was there, I'm not made to be a monk.

Like, I wasn't put on this earth to be-- I'm not a minister. I'm not-- I was made to live in the world and to find my grace in the world, in the day, in the interaction with every human being that I meet. Because I remember when I was at that ashram, this one woman left. She'd been living there for 10 years in meditation every day. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She left to come home to Chicago, actually, to a family wedding.

She came back all bent and freaked and twisted. And she was like, oh, my God, I lost my center. The world's so crazy. There's so much aggression. My family's so insane. I'm so happy to be back here. And I thought, if your spiritual practice doesn't make it easier for you to be in the world, it's not serving you. Because where you need it isn't in the meditation cave. It's in the grocery line. It's in the...

Family dinner it's in the argument with you're coming up for the holidays. Yes It's in all the families or yes, you know And so I honestly feel like I used to feel guilty that I didn't have a more rigorous something recognizable as a spiritual practice But I thought no my spiritual practice is to bring the light into every encounter that I have as much as I can and to break the chain of discord wherever I can and to just just bring the light and

Always and even to me when I'm alone my job is to bring the light to me. So bring like to my husband when we're together is to bring the light to 10,000 people in the stadium when we're there. Yeah, that's what you do. That's what I feel from you. I feel that from you just sitting in the room by yourself eating a slice of watermelon. You are going to bring the light. We're going to bring the light with the pineapple. The thing that I love the most in the years that I was doing the Oprah show.

I loved doing the show, sitting here on the stage. But after every show, I would have an after show. I remember. Remember the after show. And we would sit and we would talk to people who'd come from all over the country. And it was like my own focus group with people. I was just really like vibing with people. But every day, I would ask people, what makes you happy? Or what do you really want? And they first would say, I want to be happy. I just want to be happy.

What do you want? What do you look for? Oh, I want to be happy. And then you'd say, what is that? And they say, well, if my kids are happy, all right. So then you get that. Then what is that? So how do you-- what would you say to women who-- or men too, for you cool men-- who just want to feel what you're feeling right now? Want to feel what you're feeling right now? This seems in a really weird way like a hard and tough answer.

But this is what it's come down to for me. And again, like, everybody got their own path. No happiness without self-accountability.

And my-- and self-accountability just feels like it's like a chore in a way, like something that your parents would say to you. You have to be accountable for-- you know? And may I interrupt here? The most important thing I think you say, and you're saying on the tour, is that when you were having your breakdown in the bathroom, you really wanted things to change without causing any kind of problem or messing up anything. I don't have to do anything. You don't have to do anything. I just want it all to change. You want it all to change. No disruption. Certainly no consequences.

Don't ask me to give up anything. Right. Just change all this. No. It doesn't work that way. No, it doesn't work that way. Self-accountability. Self-accountability. And I have to say that the more self-accountable I become, and I'm not fully self-accountable yet because I still, you know, like, I still do it. I still, like, get really mad and blame people and be like, carry resentments. There's still people that I have, like, I say I've forgiven, but I haven't really. Like, I'm still working on it. But I'll tell you this. That is my goal.

ultimate 100% self-accountability. Who is in charge of you? Who is in charge of you? Who are you going to blame your life on today? Is a question that I ask myself sometimes when I wake up at a bad mood, right? Who are you going to blame your life on today, Liz? Whose fault is it? Oh. You're the boss. Okay. Who's in charge of you? Because there's only weakness to be had. Only weakness to be had and waiting for somebody to change it for you.

in waiting for external circumstances to alter, in waiting to win the lottery, in waiting for the right man to come along, in waiting for times to get better, in waiting for something to change at your job. It is the weakest position you can stand in. And my strength of self-accountability brings me a higher level of joy than anything else in the world because there's such freedom in it. You know, like it's just this huge expansive sense of

I'm in charge of this person. Whatever happens out there is none of my business. I'm in charge of this soul that was given to me to take care of, and I accept 100% accountability for this soul. It's just a joy to talk to you. Thank you. Thank you, Oprah, for everything and all the light that you bring to us all. Wasn't that delightful?

I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. You can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. If you haven't yet, go to Apple Podcasts and subscribe, rate, and review this podcast. Join me next week for another Super Soul Conversation. Thank you for listening.