The Path Made Clear: Discovering Your Life's Direction and Purpose

by Oprah Winfrey

If you’re rested, if your mind is in peace, and if you’re full of love and compassion, if you come from being and then feeling, and then self-reflection, then things will synchronistically fall into place. That’s how nature functions. Like the seed. In every seed is the promise of thousands of forests.

Whatever your calling, it’s already rooted within you, and those roots can be trampled or tugged at but never removed. They grow stronger only when tended, nurtured—and, most important, shared with others.

illusion? OPRAH: Do you remember the first time

I think you can talk yourself into your dreams, or you can talk yourself out of your dreams. I think not running your own race is probably another one of the biggest things that keeps people from their destiny. Because you can’t run somebody else’s race.

You’re never on the wrong path. You’re just not managing it well. You’re making choices that are harming you. And that’s why it’s hurting right now. You’re making unwise choices. And your intuition is trying to tell you that.

OPRAH: What are we supposed to do when problems show up? MICHAEL SINGER: The moment it starts with that chitter-chatter, my first reaction inside is to relax and lean away. I lean away from the noise the mind is making. Because you’re going to do one of two things once it starts: You’re either going to lean into it and get involved, and let it pull you in— OPRAH: Yes, which is what most of us do. MICHAEL: Right, or relax and lean away. And once you lean away and get some space, you will learn over time that that’s the smartest thing you ever did. Why? Because you gave the noise room to pass through and it does. It passes right through.

OPRAH: The alternative is to decide not to fight with life, but for some people that can feel like just giving up. MICHAEL: But you don’t do that in any way, shape, or form. Life is a natural unfolding of reality. You’re supposed to harmonize and work with it. You don’t give up and let it take over. Like if you get on a horse and you’re scared, you’re not going to be a very good rider, right? But that doesn’t mean you let the horse go wherever it wants. You learn how to interface and interact with life in a wholesome, participatory way. Letting go of fear is not letting go of life.