Super Soul Special: Oprah's Book: "The Wisdom of Sundays"
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I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul 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. I'm excited to share a project I spent a year creating. Our

Our first ever book, titled The Wisdom of Sundays, celebrating some of the most powerful life lessons and aha moments from over 200 hours of super soul conversations, featuring the many world-renowned spiritual teachers and thought leaders whose infinite wisdom continues to resonate with me and I know also with you.

My deepest wish is that the wisdom of Sundays will be a companion for you, offering clarity and inspiration exactly when you need it most. Let's start right now with the first chapter in the book, awakening, and then my number one universal law, intention. We're talking about the God who is life.

who is all of energy, who is the seed of everything that ever existed, who burst into the universe with everything that we'll ever see and ever be able to be. Now, if that God is the ultimate and primary seed of all life, that's my seed,

as well as his seed over there. And you cannot have a consciousness of God unless you have a consciousness then of life in all of its forms. The way to understand your spirit is that it's the part of you that is seeking meaning and purpose. That's one way someone can relate to that. Another way to understand spirit is that it's the part of you

that feels, that is drawn to hope. That's one way to understand spirit. The part of you that is drawn to hope. Everyone can relate to that. To live an awakened life.

is to be here in the reality of the present, in the now, which is all we have. Yes. And to recognize that thoughts about the future are thoughts. You can use them, but you don't have to believe them because half the time they don't come true. Yeah. And thoughts about the past are gone. The past you can learn from, but

but to be awake is to live here so that when you are with the person you love, you're really present, or with your dog, or with the work that you're devoting yourself to, or your creative life, or whether you listen to your heart and realize that you can be caught in fear and confusion. The poet Hafiz says, fear is the cheapest room in the house. I'd like to see you in better living conditions. Oh, I love that. And so to live awake,

is to sense that the fear or contraction or confusion that we have is not the end of the story, that we have a capacity for freedom and dignity no matter what. I used to feel God in thunderstorms. Really? Oh, absolutely. I would run to the front porch and I'd sit out there because just feeling the rain on my feet made me feel like God was talking to me when I would hear the thunder and lightning. Wow. That's how He speaks to me.

Some reason storms give me peace because I know he's in charge of it So in the same way he's in charge of the natural storms He's in charge of my spiritual storms my emotional storms the human condition when I'm broken when I want to give up I know he's there the real truth of life is

are never entirely new to you or to anybody because there is a level deep down within you where you already know all the things, all those spiritual truths that you read or hear and then recognize them. I say recognize because it's not new, ultimately, it's not new information. You're very so... It's a resonation. Yes. It's a resonation. It's a resonating with what is...

-somehow buried or suppressed. -Yes. -That's what an aha is. -That's right, yes. Your consciousness recognizing the consciousness of whatever that message is. -Yes. -That's great. -And that's an awakening. -That's an awakening. There's something we listen to on a regular basis. The problem is we think it's us. So, for example, you look at a vase and it says, "God, look, that's a very interesting shape, but I don't really like the color that much. It reminds me of my grandmother's vase."

And all of a sudden we have somebody narrating and talking inside our head. That's not you, right? Those are all your thoughts about the vase. And more and more as I watch that, I realize it never shuts up. That it talks about everything. It judges everything. It thinks about everything. I know Eckhart Tolle has said that that is the awareness of the thoughts or the awareness of the voice inside your head is where consciousness resides.

and that is who we really are. Yes. So that's what you came to. Yes. That was your open door to the path to understanding yourself as a spiritual being inside a physical human body. With a mind. And isn't this the most important thing ever? Period. Period. Bar none.

Now you know the most exciting chapter to me in the Seat of the Soul? What's that? It is the principle by which I rule my company and the principle by which I rule every action in my life. And that is intention! Yes, yes. Intention. That's at the heart of it. That's at the heart of creating authentic power. Yes. Intention. An intention is a quality of consciousness that you bring to

a deed or words. It's an energy. It's an energy. It's an energy. It's an energy. So it's a quality of consciousness. Got it. It's your reason for speaking. It's your reason. It's your motivation. Motivation, yes. So the real motivation is the one that creates consequences. For example, when someone says, "I want a bigger home," it could be because I want to impress the neighbors, or it could be because we've adopted four children.

and I want to give them more space. So it's the why beneath the why. The why beneath the why. I asked myself, if my life was a book and I was the author, how would I want this story to go? And I thought, well, I don't want to see myself as this sad disabled girl. I know that. I don't want other people to see me as that either. I thought, what do I want to see? I want to see myself...

walking again gracefully. And I wanted to see myself somehow sharing, somehow helping other people through this journey. And I saw myself snowboarding again. And I visualized it so strongly in that moment that I didn't just...

see myself carving down this mountain of powder, I could feel it. I could feel the wind against my face. I could feel the beat of my racing heart. I could feel my muscles twitching as if it was happening in that very moment. And I didn't know how I was going to do it, but I knew that I was going to do it. That's incredible. That's incredible. And now I try to live my life

with that knowingness that if you can see it and you can feel it and you believe it, then it is completely possible. You can't write a movie unless you know what the movie's supposed to be about. That's what development is. Sometimes we get so frustrated in our lives, but we have to go back and say, wait a minute, do I understand what the big idea of my life is supposed to be? If my life is a story, because sometimes, you know, you're going from scene to scene to scene with no idea of what your intention is.

In development, not only do you co-write the script with God, but you are the star of your story.

And there's nothing worse than when you are on set and you see an actor in a scene who doesn't know the intention. Yes! Because then the scene goes all over the place. It's like, wait a minute, in our lives-- That's why actors will often say, tell me what's my motivation. Exactly. What's my motivation? Exactly. So if you could just get people to awaken, if in a moment, to have a little bit of perspective, in those moments of inspiration is when change can happen.

Today, I'm sharing some of the conversations and sparks of insight that helped inspire my new book, The Wisdom of Sundays. Now, I believe that the entry point for living a more conscious life is mindfulness or put another way, staying present in this moment.

For me, something as simple as taking a deep breath can bring a renewed sense of connecting to this moment. So as you listen to these conversations, think about what brings you back to a state of calm. Facebook or tweet me the simple pleasures that bring you some of your most joy.

So is mindfulness science? Is it art? Is it spiritual? It's a gateway into the full dimensionality of being human. Oh, I love that. It's a gateway into the full dimensionality of being human. And without it, you're just missing out.

Well, you're missing a lot. You know, if you miss the look in your child's eye one day, you've missed it. If you've missed the look in your lover's eyes the next day, you've missed that. If you miss the beauty of sitting under trees, well, you've missed that. If you sum that over many moments, many years, you may wind up missing the most beautiful aspects of your own life. Who are you going to blame for that?

I was too busy? Well, who is too busy? Comes back to that same question. Who tells oneself, "I don't have any time"? When all you've got is time, all you've got is this moment. And we might as well take it while we're alive, because sooner or later we're going to be dead. So it's the perfect moment is this one.

My daughter says to me all the time, "Want to play? Want to play?" And there's so many times that I've said, "Well, I can't right now, honey. I'm doing this. I can't right now." I decided that every single time she said to me, "Want to play?" I would say yes. Wow. So it doesn't matter if I'm wearing an evening gown and heading out to the DGA Awards or I am -- have my bags on my shoulder and I'm heading out to work. I drop everything I'm doing, I get down on my hands and knees, and we play. And, you know, she's 3. It's 10 minutes. And she loves it.

And it's changed my sense of being a mother and my sense of pride in being a mother. And it's changed our relationship, I think. Here's the lesson. When you find yourself in a new situation, a new circumstance, a new life experience, everything that requires healing is gonna rush to the surface. And if you don't take a minute to breathe, to gather yourself to pray,

You will do what you've always done. So you've got to be clear enough, grounded enough, centered enough to say, "How am I going to handle it this time?" That's right. So the lesson is pause. Okay? We go from being 20 to 30 without a pause, 30 to 40 without a pause. We go from one job to the next, from one bed to the next, from one everything. Pause, boo.

How many times have you needed to press pause like Iyanla suggests? Mindfulness also means turning down the volume of noise and chatter and tuning in to our inner voice. Now, some people know that inner voice as instinct or you call it intuition. I now call it our spiritual GPS.

Every right decision I've ever made has come from listening to my gut or my spiritual GPS. Every wrong decision was a result of me dismissing that thing, that still small voice within me. So staying present actually helps you begin to hear your own GPS.

The soul often speaks through, at least for me, through longing. Yeah. And when the soul longs, you know, it's trying to tell you something. But I think the soul speaks through what pulls us, that allure, the longing, the restlessness. Yes, and often I remember, too, I think there are so many people who relate to this. I remember when I was a young reporter in Nashville, and every day I would get up and I'd go out and cover the stories. And I was on the news, and...

it felt so out of alignment for me. So I'm wondering if when you were a nurse, which is such an honorable calling, and for people who are supposed to be doing that, nobody can do it better. Did you feel out of alignment being a nurse as I felt being a reporter? I did. I felt that I wasn't

I was not in my place of belonging. Yeah. And that is a big thing for me, to be in my place of belonging. In fact, all of my characters are always looking for their place of belonging. I think this is the big journey. And I was looking for that. That's so good. Yeah. We all are looking for where do I belong. What do I belong to? I mean, what is faith if not paying attention to what we belong to?

Let's talk about vibration. You use it a lot in your teaching. And I don't know when it was I first got it that there is an energy and a frequency to everything. Yes. And that your whole role and goal in life is to line up with whatever is the frequency that is going to allow you to move in the flow of your own life. How did you discover this?

It's back in the 80s I started using that terminology because I became aware that we are vibrational beings. We're not just flesh and blood. If you put anything under a microscope, an intense microscope, you can ultimately see that everything is vibration. So we're vibrational beings. So as you were just saying, when we lift our vibration to what we want to experience, it happens first on a vibratory level, and then it shows up and manifests in our life.

So people who are holding on to rancor, animosity, they're slowing down their vibration. Okay, so this is it. This is the thing. You're actually--just had an "aha" there-- you're actually, when you recognize your vibrational frequency, you're drawing into yourself all the time, literally, the vibration that is most like what you're putting out. Right. Correct? Another way of saying it is you cannot have what you're not willing to become vibrationally.

If you do get it, you'll lose it. Ah. You see? This is why people, they'll win the lottery and they lose everything. Yeah. Or they'll finally get the person they think they want to be with. Absolutely. They can't keep the relationship or they'll get a modicum of success but can't hold on to it because inside they weren't vibrationally aligned. They really hadn't become it. So you can temporarily manipulate and get things.

But to have it completely, you have to lift your vibration and become that in vibration. Oh, that's so good. You need to repeat it. That is so good. Isn't that a... Look. Hallelujah! Hallelujah. That is so good. You're not really attracting things to you. You're really radiating. It's really a radiation. I could cry right now. I felt that so strongly. That's going to resonate with a lot of people.

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You know, the ego is one of my favorite things to talk about on Super Soul Sunday. I dedicate an entire chapter to it in the wisdom of Sundays. Whenever you're experiencing difficulty, ask yourself, what role is my ego playing in this situation? The answer will always reveal itself if you ask from the place of truth.

The first nine months of your life, we go back to your conception. You trusted God for everything. Everything. You didn't say, oh my God, I hope I get a nose and I hope it shows up in the right place. You just, you were total, completely into surrender. Then you come out, okay, at the ninth month or that you pop out and you get surrounded by people who say that's really good work, God, really good work. We'll take over from here. And the minute you start taking over from here, what happens is you develop an ego.

Which is where you edge God out. E-G-O, you edge God out. Okay? And so now... I never heard it that way before. That is so good. So you edge God out and you just push that to the side. And what is this ego? What is it? It says, I am what I have. I am what I do. I am what other people think of me. I'm separate from everybody else. I'm separate from what's missing in my life. And I'm separate from God.

This is one of my favorite quotes. You do not become good by trying to be good, but by finding the goodness that is already within you and allowing that goodness to emerge. Again, we're talking about going to presence, the divine within you, and bringing that forth to whatever it is you do. Yes. Because trying to be good is often to...

to improve one's self-image. Right. That's ego-driven. Ultimately, it's ego. So you try, and some people, for example, have been trying for centuries to love their neighbor as themselves. Right. But have been finding it, most of them have been finding it very difficult. Because love your neighbor as yourself really means, first of all, you need to

be in touch with yourself, the self that you are beyond the form, the consciousness that you are. And then you can love your neighbour

as yourself because you recognize your oneness with your neighbor. Yeah. And so what you're saying is, that's so beautiful, I get it. Lots of bing-bing ahas here. You're not, what love your neighbor as yourself, as you're interpreting it, is not as yourself, the personality. No. It means the deeper always. Yes. Inner self. Yes. Higher self. Yes.

Have you lost your ego? Yes. You have completely. Well, let's see. Who knows? Tomorrow it may suddenly appear again. Let me know if it does because I wouldn't know it if it's really the ego. The way the parenting paradigm has been set up

is just designed for even a greater boost of ego than I've ever seen in any other relationship. Yes. And how does the ego sound? It's my, I, correct? We start talking like this. I as a parent, my child, right? The possession, the ownership, it's inherent. That's why I love this relationship because it's such a

trick from the universe, you know. The universe gives you children. It says they're yours. So it seduces you to thinking it's mine. Like, you have to call them mine, right? I'm not wrong in saying mine. But yet the child comes out and says, "I'm not you. I'm not you. I'm not you. Now deal with me. Attune to me. Do you recognize my spirit?" So this is where the greatest spiritual learning happens. That, yeah, I am connected to you. We are a we.

but you are separate from me. And dancing this moment after moment, the leaning in and the surrender, how much do I control, yet I have no control. Dancing this dance is the spiritual awakening that children allow us. Yes. On my dad's deathbed, I told him, "I forgive you for not being there, and I'm gonna make your name good, because I'm John W. Gray III, and I believe that I'm a continuation of his legacy."

And I was the last person to see him alive. I sang hymns over his bed, prayed with him, told him I was gonna make him proud. And so even now at 42, sometimes I look out the window hoping he's coming down the street. Wow. And I've only seen him four times. That is amazing. I just -- I love him, and I didn't know him. How were you able to forgive him for not being there?

My connection to God helped me to literally deconstruct his life backwards. I had to look at his life through his death. My relationship to his mother, my grandmother, who was a very stern, very closed off, unemotional... So you got to see who he was... Absolutely. ...by deconstructing his life. And so I had grace for him.

Ah, praise. I was able to not be angry because I understood what it must have been like to live in that atmosphere every single day with a woman who you could never please. And if you failed, then of course you were shunned. And so, to a large extent, I began to have more grace for my dad.

Bless the energy that you left behind. Because everything is there to teach you something about yourself. Everything you blame, you're stuck with. Bless it, wish it well, wish it its own freedom, and it will be a very powerful way that it will not come back to you. If you don't forgive it, if you don't bless it, if you don't wish it well, that energy will just be magnetically drawn back to you because it's looking for resolution. All negative energy that we've inherited, it's there because it's looking for resolution.

How would you define mercy? Mercy is? Mercy is like a mirror. I think mercy is what you give to others with the hope that it'll come back to you. It's what you give to people who don't deserve it. It's what you give to people who haven't asked for it. It's what you give in hopes it will come back. Ah, that's an aha. You give it to people who don't deserve it. That's why it's mercy. Yes, yes, yes. That's why we say, Lord, have mercy on me. That's right. Yeah. Absolutely.

redemption is. Being given a second chance to prove who you are authentically, being given a chance to show that as humans we're all capable of making a poor decision, but we're fully capable of moving beyond those decisions and doing something meaningful with our lives despite that and not being held hostage by it. And I think about that word often,

when I encountered obstacles. And all I ever wanted was a fair chance to just be a human. And to me, that's what redemption represents. It's like, just give me a fair chance to be a human.

On Super Soul Sunday, so many spiritual teachers shared how our greatest epiphanies reveal themselves in times of deep turmoil and despair. In Chapter 7 in the Wisdom of Sundays, we learned that breaking open can also mean breaking through. When people are in tough situations, they ask disempowering questions. They say, "What's wrong? Who's to blame? Why me?" Those are the disempowering questions. So the universe will answer those too.

It'll pull on the database of human experience and say, "You were born on the wrong side of the tracks," or, "You were born on the right side of the tracks," or, "This happened," or, "That happened." It'll give you a bevy of excuses. But if you ask an empowering question, you'll get an answer to rise above the muck. So it's all about the question, the sincerity of the question, and then the ability and the willingness to really listen, to really be available.

That's where the juice is. And that is available to every human being. Once you ask with sincerity, the universe will answer. That's the way it operates. I mean, I felt split into my entire life. There is the part of me on the outside that's saying the things that I'm supposed to say. Like, I'm fine. I'm fine. Marriage. It's like, guaranteeing.

fulfilled. Yeah. And then there's the part on the inside of me that's like,

scared and lonely and confused a lot. And what I think that happened is I really think that we are all truth tellers. I think we were just made to tell the truth. And so I think that people who-- it is very hard for the world to hear the truth from a woman. It's easier for the world to hear the truth from a man. Yes. But since negative emotions are less acceptable from a woman, we end up sometimes telling our truth in different ways than words, dangerous ways.

this was the food for me, the booze for me. I think we tell the truth with something. Everybody tells the truth with something, whether it's they say I'm not fine with a credit card, or they say I'm not fine with overeating, or they say I'm not fine with booze or sex or unkindness or whatever it is, which is why it's so powerful when you can integrate those two selves and tell the story of what's going on on your inside with your words.

Well, we're not taught that difficulty can have a profound and meaningful transformative effect on us. You know, we might be taught that in a way, someone might say that, but what do I do? What do I do when I'm suffering? What do I do when I really feel overwhelmed? How do I work with the minutia of my experience so that it's transformative and not just

another episode of suffering in a lifetime of suffering. Yeah. What is the answer to that question? What do I do with it? Oh, I think the first thing is you have to be really unconditionally open to it and

take responsibility. Am I willing to see how I got myself... That I got here, choice by choice by choice by choice. Oh, that's a hard one, isn't it? It's really hard and it also has that other side, doesn't it? Because if you want to blame other people, you want to say, well, if they hadn't have done that or if they should have done that or I was so busy and I could... But if we look at it this way, if somebody else was...

fully to blame for my current state, whatever that is, then that's it. I'm done. I'm stuck. That's hopeless. But when we realize that may have certainly affected how I experience this moment, there's a link, and there's usually things about it that we don't want to own up to. And it's both difficult

And it's also, once you start, you start to realize it's very liberating because the keys to your happiness are no longer in somebody else's pocket from the past. They're in yours. And that's empowering. Well, I was gonna say,

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The great blessing of being broken open is understanding that no experience, nothing that's happened to you is wasted. Challenges are just life's way of moving you forward in another direction sometimes. Learning to live from this place of gratitude helps you see past the pain until you reach a state of grace you never even imagined. I love this Latin term amor fati, love of fate.

instead of bemoaning your fate. And sometimes our fates are terrible. But we love our fate, amor fati. It's a way of being grateful. I'm going to love what happened to me because I trust that it's here to remove a veil. I'm going to search for what's happening to me in this time so I can take away yet another misconception.

Do you ever have that in an argument with someone where you got so fired up and you thought, "Ooh, I could just say this." Yeah. And all of a sudden the voice says, "You sure you want to do that?" Yeah. "You sure you want to say that?" Yeah. Because it's a game changer if you say that. Right. Yeah, that's right. That's grace. That's grace. The grace that comes in and says... Yeah. "Don't say that because you can never take it back." "You can never take it back." Yeah. There's some places in an argument, everybody who's married knows this. The voice that comes in and says,

I'm gonna prevent you from doing something really ruinous right now. That's grace. Grace is a power that comes in and transforms a moment to something better. Ooh, love that. It takes high energy to make change. So when you're not suffering, when you're in a high state of love or creativity or gratitude or passion, in those states, you can get the solution. I made this decision that said...

And this is just in the last year, Oprah, it's changed my life so much. I've always had such a beautiful life, I've always been so grateful, even the tough times I'm grateful. But I decided if I can't find ecstasy in this moment,

Whatever this moment is having lunch talking with you walking through the forest Whatever it is if I can't find us in this moment then more helping more people changing more lives Building more businesses. None of that is gonna make me happier So my goal is crying that XE when you're suffering it's hard to jump the XC saw first step I go to his appreciation

Almost all this moment right here now. So anything okay the wind the look in your eye Yeah, the laughter we just had yeah something that I can appreciate because the minute you appreciate you get out of your own self You stop obsessing. It's like I always tell people most of your suffering comes from expectation, right? Trade your expectation for appreciation your whole life changes in that moment suffering ends in that moment but see most people have

a blueprint of how they think life's supposed to be. When life matches your blueprint, you're happy. Yes. When life doesn't match your blueprint, you have some pain. Yeah.

When life doesn't match your blueprint, but you feel helpless to change it, that's when you suffer. That's when it's the long night of the soul. That's the dark night of the soul. That's when people feel like things can't happen. And the delusion is it's just the mind taking you over. When that happens, you either have to blame someone, which is what most people do. They blame the environment or they blame someone else or they blame themselves. Blame doesn't change anything. Or your other two choices are change your frickin' life, do something to lose the light. It's like you said to the young man. Or change your blueprint. Or change your blueprint. Yeah.

You know, I believe that the common thread that flows between and through and around every person is that we all have this deep desire within us to create a meaningful life. It's like a yearning that we all have to be more alive and to express ourselves. And as you think of what lasting fulfillment looks like for you, remember that

This force, whatever name you may call it, is at work within you and all of us. And it has a bigger dream for you than you could ever imagine for yourself. When I was a kid, my father used to say to me all the time, "The only limit to your success is your own imagination." And I took that as not just being, you know, financial success or work success. I took that as being every kind of success.

love and family and emotional and everything. The only limit to your success is your own imagination. I really do think that that is true. Whatever you can imagine is possible. That is true. I think it's so interesting that it took you the time that it took you to become comfortable with telling your story. And when you finally did write your story, very few people knew at the time that you were trans.

And you kept it quiet because you said you didn't want to become othered. Othered. Do you feel that you've now been othered? Or have you transcended that? I don't know if I've transcended it yet. But I think that there's a lot of power in saying that I will...

proudly and unapologetically embrace that part of my identity for once. The one part of my identity that I was taught growing up to be silent and shamed about, right? I think that we're all searching for truth. I think that for me, realness is about authenticity. It's about searching and seeking truth. It's about being okay in the nuance of the messiness of figuring out who you are when you may not have the answers yet.

One of the things that impressed me the most, it really just, I think, stayed with me forever, is on page 31 when you say, "When the personality comes fully to serve the energy of the soul." That is authentic power. And that was one of the first things I highlighted in that book 13 years ago. And that awakened a spark

of knowing in me that I never knew existed. I mean, I now call them "aha moments," but I realize, oh, when my personality comes to fully align with the energy of my soul and I allow my soul to be the guide, that is when I am the most powerful. That is when I am in what I call now my sweet spot. My sweet spot.

You were born to live in the sweet spot. That is the creation of authentic power. Yes. And that's how we're all evolving now. That everybody was born to live in the sweet spot. Yes, yes. I want to thank you for joining me for this special edition of Super Soul. My hope in creating this Wisdom of Sundays book is that it will help you find clarity for yourself and what I've discovered, my new favorite word, contentment.

So I'm hoping for you, you enjoy your journey. My favorite definition that you give of love, you have it? Yes. Love is when you choose to be at your best when the other person is not at their best. And the second one is a lot more difficult. Love is when what you want is never important, but what the other person needs and wants is always paramount.

And that's a hard one to do. But that's what true love is. Doesn't vulnerability open the door to having greater intimacy? I think it's the only door. Yeah, I would agree with you on that. I think it's the only door. There is no intimacy where there isn't vulnerability. No. Think about this. We wake up in the morning. We armor up. We go out into the world with this, hey, take no prisoners. You're not going to see me. You're not going to hurt me. We come home, and we don't take that armor off. Mm-hmm.

And so then all of a sudden, you know, when you talk about sex or intimacy, you get in bed and all of a sudden, you know, it's like two people in big honking armor outfits. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, and it's,

It doesn't work. I think that that being open is what allows you the confidence to know that everybody else has also felt the same thing. That there's no emotion that you can have that somebody else hasn't had. Ever. Yeah. Isn't that amazing? Yeah. And that is what carried me through, you know, thousands of interviews. I know that whatever I'm feeling, there's at least ten other people who are feeling the same thing. Which is vulnerability and courage. Yes. Mm-hmm. Ride and shotgun. Ride and shotgun. The secret to long marriage is

She was the right person. That's the first thing. And then we decided fairly early in our life to give each other plenty of space. Rosalyn has her own ideas, her own ambitions, her own goals in life, which in some ways are different from mine. I let her do her thing. She lets me do my thing. And we try to resolve our inevitable and fairly frequent differences before we go to bed at night. And I think reading the Bible helps with that.

I know so many comedians who feel like they've got to be funny to be valued, that it's all about the joke and it's all about how funny can you be and you're always thinking about the next joke. So was this a revelation to realize that you could be so loved? I feel like I tapped into something. I feel like I tapped into humanity and love. I really feel like I tapped into it.

It's like you tapped into it. And now people just love you. I mean, when I first came out the hospital, the first time I ever left my house, it was just people crying, hugging me, and it was weird to me. But it felt good. - Felt good. - People really care. People care. And it just made me have this new belief in people again. - Malala, finish this sentence. "I believe." - I believe, and I know for sure that

If you have strong commitment within your heart, if you have love in your heart, that you want to do something better, the whole world and the whole universe supports you in your cause. Whatever you do in life, remember, think higher and feel deeper. It cannot be bad if you do that. Think higher. Always think higher and feel deeper. And feel deeper. Life is not a feast. Life is an open hand waiting for some other hand.

- Yes. - Yes. - So simple. - Mm-hmm. That will be with me for the rest of my life. Think higher, feel deeper. That will be with me for the rest of my life. And I know so many of you two really got that on the level that you offered it.

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.

Brought to you by Hoolarius. Stand-up comedy, now on Hulu. Hey everybody, Hulu has a bunch of new stand-up specials that are not just funny, they're Hoolarius. Very funny, Hulu. Anyway, they're launching new exclusive stand-up specials from awesome comedians like Jim Gaffigan, Ilana Glazer, Roy Wood Jr., Bill Burr, and tons more. A new special drops every month and they've got a huge library of stand-up specials to check out. Go to Hulu and get your stand-up fix now.

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