The three things that I want to leave with you just these three I could do ten, I could do a whole life class
But just these three things will carry you if you let them first and foremost
Knowing who you are
Knowing who you are being able to answer this question Who am I and what do I want?
You know many times when I go out of the country I am baffled by that question
To explain what is your occupation? I've stood there for 10 minutes. Well am i a talk show host
well, I'm more than a talk show host. Am I a businesswoman? I'm a businesswoman. I'm more than a businesswoman
Am i an entrepreneur?
I'm more than an entrepreneur.So I just leave it blank or self-employed
So I'm not asking for the roles that you play as daughters i'm not asking
that question
What are the roles that you play as a daughter as a friend as a sister you're gonna be a lawyer you're gonna teach
You're gonna be a pharmacist. I'm asking the bigger question
Of Who am I?
Who am I really?
My answer is I am God's child.
I am.
I am that which is born of all that is I am as. PA de Chardin said a
spiritual being having a human experience
Come trailing the breath of the ancestors yet, but trailing the breath of the angels and
understanding that because I am connected to the source of all that is
All that is possible is possible for me
That's who I am and
What do I want I don't want to just be?
successful in the world
I don't want to just make a mark, or have a legacy
The answer to that question for me is
I want to fulfill the highest?
truest expression
of
myself as a human being I
I want to fulfill the promise that the Creator?
Dreamed when he dreamed the cells that made up me what do I want
you must have
Some kind of vision for your life
even if you don't know the plan you have to have a direction in which you choose to go
I never was the kind of woman who liked to get in a car and just go for a ride
I had a boyfriend would say let's just go for a ride.
I want to know where are we going?
Do we have a destination is there a plan or we just ride
What I've learned is that's a great metaphor for life
You want to be in the driver's seat of your own life because if you're not life will drive you
So
Knowing who you really are in this space and time that we embody
That's number one what do you want? Who are you number two?
You must find a way to serve
Martin Luther King
Said that not everybody can be famous, but everybody can be great because greatness is determined by service
now we live in a world where everybody wants to be famous and
Where we admire people for just being famous?
We think being known brings us value
The truth is all of that will fade in time in three years. You won't be able to name the Housewives a banana
The real truth is that
Service and
significance
Service and the significance that you bring to your service is that which is lasting?
so to be able to whatever your
occupation or job or talent or gift is
our honorees today
getting doctor degrees to
apparently opposite fields HIV and AIDS and the spoken word
But what they have in common is?
service
Using the spoken word in service to community in the world
Using your knowledge and information about HIV and AIDS and medicine in service to the world
And if you look at all the most successful people in the world
Whether they know it or not they have that paradigm of service
Everybody's talking about Mark Zuckerberg, and I appeal
Service
JZ rapid service through the word to people through song
For many years I was really just happy to be on TV and people would stop and say oh you on TV
Yeah, I'm on TV. I like being on TV
It's a nice job
and it was about the time that I received my
Honorary Doctorate from Spelman around 1993, so I don't know if that had something to do with it. I thought of myself as dr. Winfrey
Then I went back and I took the long look at what it was I was doing on on
TV and made a decision that I was no longer going to just be on TV
but I was going to use TV as a platform as a force for good and
Not be used by TV, and I will tell you
My decision
To make that significant change in the way, I operated on
Television using television as a service
changed my career
exponentially
Service through medicine service through art
Using whatever it is you produce your product as a way of giving back to the world
When you shift the paradigm of whatever it is you choose to do to service, and you bring significance to that?
Success will I promise you follow you
service and
significance equals success
That's number two number three. It's so simple, but so hard to do always
Do the right thing?
Always
Be excellent people notice
Think of how you notice you go to Taco Bell somebody gives you extra napkin and some sauce you notice you
Want to go back to that person because even at Taco Bell
Excellence shows itself be excellent let excellence be your brand
Everybody talks about building a brand I never even knew what that was
When people say you're a brand, I would say no. I'm just Oprah what I recognize now. Is that my choice
to it every way in
Every example and every experience
To do the right thing and the excellent thing is what has created the brand
Years ago I did an ad for Revlon for
for an ad they were doing called
unforgettable women and what I know is that when you are
excellent you become
unforgettable
People remember you you stand out we got us of what it is you become an unforgettable woman and
That is what we all want we want to be unforgettable and not forgettable
So doing the right thing?
even
When nobody knows you're doing the right thing
We'll always bring the right thing to you. I promise you that why?
Because the third law of motion is always at work for every action. There's an equal and opposite reaction
That is so true in all of our lives
That's what Newton said
Sealian the color purple said it
Everything you even try to do to me
Already done to you
Everything you even try to do to me
Already done to you
so you don't have to worry about revenge or
Getting back at somebody
making sure they pay
you just have to do the right thing and the right thing will follow you even when people don't support it I
remember many times on my show there are many shows y'all never saw and
the reason you didn't see them is because I
Got the last vote and
I remember
2010
My team hardest working team in television had done this
Interview with a woman who turns out she was a Sunday school teacher by day and a sex addict at night whoo
They were like you won't believe it
We got her going out we got her with the men and we get to show her and she was willing to show us everything
I
Sat down with a woman
for an interview that was taped and
During the process of the interview I said why are you doing this and she said oh?
I want to help the people I want to tell my story
And I want to help people I said do you have children? She says yes, I have a ten-year-old son I
Knew right then this is never gonna see the light of day, so
We got off the air, and I said to the lady. We are not going to air that show and
She said why?
My producer said why?
She knew she was being filmed
She knew what she was saying. She knows what you I said because her son will never get over it
Her son will never get over it and it's not worth a rating point to me
Not worth the rating point to me to know that there's a ten-year-old boy
Who's destroyed because his mother went on The Oprah Winfrey Show and told all her business?
You do the right thing even
When other people think it may not be and oftentimes when you make a decision to do the right thing
Immediately you're faced with doubt was that the right thing was that the right decision
I don't know was that the right thing you always know. It's the right thing when in the end
There is peace
You are rewarded by peace and knowing that you did the right thing
The most important thing I have come to know in doing the right thing and making the right choices is
Understanding
What we talked about yesterday
All of you leaving here have the potential for enormous success
There's a price that comes with that
People don't always like you
and they're not always happy for you and
if you surround yourself with people
Who are not accustom to your success?
They become fearful they become scared
Because you are reflecting back something to them, but they don't recognize now. They're not going to say
You know I'm very fearful
Because you're reflecting back to me
Something I don't recognize
They're going to say you know what they're gonna say they're gonna say who she thinks she is
Who's she thinks she is
that only happens when you are around people who do not mean and
Want and aspire to the best for you?
People who want the best for you want you to be your best
So my greatest advice to you is to surround yourself with
People who are going to fill your cup until your cup runneth over
So when people say you're so full of yourself you can say yeah
Yes, I'm full
I'm so full my cup runneth over and
To know that once your cup runneth over you cannot spend your life
with your
Gallon-sized offerings
Offering them to pint-sized people
You have got to surround
yourself with
gallon-sized people
Who can hang in the same company with you?
So that you're not offering your Gallants to those little pipes out there
Who can't hold it anyway?
Choice to change the world I love that song I
Love hearing you all sing that song and what I know for sure is that the biggest choices?
Begin and end with you your internal big questions
Who do I want to be in the world my relationship to Source Energy?
To all that is God. I'm not talking about what you believe in God. I'm talking about your
Experience of that which is all life, which is divine and universal. I'm talking about the big deal
Being connected and aligned with that when you are
Tuned in and charged into that whenever you feel empty you go inside yourself
And you connect to the source and you know that all things are possible
To know that and
to choose to do the right thing in service and
significance I
promise you
You will create a vessel of service
For yourself first because you have to honor yourself first you have to give to yourself first, otherwise you have nothing to give away
You will create a vessel for yourself for your family
Your community and the world and those three things
Will not only lead you to a blessed life I
Stand as a witness my life is so blessed. I can't even take it in sometimes
It will lead you not just to a gifted life and a rewarding life that fills you up
But a sweet life
That's what you want
You want the sweetness you?
Want it to be so sweet?
so that even when the storms come and they will
You'll know this too shall pass
This too shall pass
the storm is passing over and
You shall not be moved
Because you know who you are
When you can do that
Grace will follow you grace and glory and when they see you coming it ought to make them proud
They say it's the click of your heels. It's the bend of your hair
It's the palm of your hand. It's a need for your care. Coz' you a woman you a Spelman woman
Phenomenally phenomenal class of 2012, Thank you.