What I Know For Sure

by Oprah Winfrey

If you’re holding anyone else accountable for your happiness, you’re wasting your time. You must be fearless enough to give yourself the love you didn’t receive.

If I had known this at 21, I could have saved myself a lot of heartache and self-doubt. It would have been a revelation to understand that we are all the artists of our own lives—and that we can use as many colors and brushstrokes as we like.

I’ve always known that life is better when you share it. But I now realize it gets even sweeter when you expand the circle.

“So long as you’re still worried about what others think of you, you are owned by them. Only when you require no approval from outside yourself can you own yourself.”

My intention of always trying to please other people, for example, produced an unwanted consequence: I often felt taken advantage of and used, and people came to expect more, more, more from me. But the principle of intention helped me realize that other people weren’t the problem—I was. I decided to do only those things that came from the truth of who I am—and doing only that which pleased me to do for others.

“We are not human beings having a spiritual experience. We are spiritual beings having a human experience.”

As women we’ve been programmed to sacrifice everything in the name of what is good and right for everyone else. Then if there’s an inch left over, maybe we can have a piece of that. We need to deprogram ourselves. I know for sure that you can’t give what you don’t have.

Aha moment: Just because the phone is ringing doesn’t mean I have to respond. I control what I do with my time. We all do, even when it seems out of control. Protect your time. It is your life.

Ask yourself if the people in your life give you energy and encourage your personal growth, or block that growth with dysfunctional dynamics and outdated scripts. If they don’t support you as a loving, open, free, and spontaneous being, good-bye!