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

by Oprah Winfrey

I believe every one of us is born with a purpose. No matter who you are, what you do, or how far you think you have to go, you have been tapped by a force greater than yourself to step into your God-given calling. This goes far beyond what you do to earn your living.

Each one of us has an essential role in the whole of humanity. All you have to do is follow your path to answer the call.

They have discovered that in this world, there is no real doing without first being.

Committing to a life of purpose takes courage. There was a time in my own life when I felt torn between who the world was telling me I should be and what I felt to be the truth of myself.

the journey to lasting change begins with defining what matters most to you. All of us have a limited number of years here on earth. What do you want to do with yours?

There’s no need to waste another day wondering if there’s more to life. There is. And it’s yours for the finding. When you’re ready.

Your life isn’t about a big break. It’s about taking one significant life-transforming step at a time. —Oprah

Your life is not static. Every decision, setback, or triumph is an opportunity to identify the seeds of truth that make you the wondrous human being that you are. I’m not talking just about what you do for a living. When you pay attention to what feeds your energy, you move in the direction of the life for which you were intended. Trust that the Universe has a bigger, wider, deeper dream for you than you could ever imagine for yourself.

As you begin to identify the seeds of knowing along your own path, the first question to ask yourself is, What do I believe? Do you believe that you are worthy of happiness, success, abundance, fulfillment, peace, joy, and love? What I know for sure is you become what you believe.

I think life is a process. You wake up. Then you wake up some more. One self dies. Another is born. It’s an evolution of consciousness.

We’re on a journey of greater and greater consciousness, becoming more compassionate, more loving, and that is a lifelong spiraling process.

You are a miracle in motion. Motion is movement. We’re not there yet. But we’re in motion. At all times, we are all going through recovery and discovery.

Life gives us opportunity after opportunity to ask, Is this my truest self? Or am I living the inauthentic self? Becoming conscious means to recognize when that moment arrives. And it’s coming and it’s coming and it’s coming.

First we have to believe that we do have a purpose. Every individual has a purpose. And when we begin to think that way, we will appreciate the sacredness of life.

Purpose is dynamic. Purpose continues to be applied throughout your life. Because your gifts, your talents, and your abilities that are given to you by God remain consistent throughout your life. But how you apply that changes as you live life from one level to another and you go through stages of life.

There are still huge swaths of women who never got the memo that their lives belong to them. There’s this instinct that they need a permission slip from the principal’s office for anything. You are allowed to ask yourself some really important questions about your life. You are allowed to take accountability and ownership for your own journey. You’re allowed to ask what serves you. I know you’ve been trained up to serve everyone. But you’re allowed to turn that on yourself and honor your own life that you were given.

What have I come here to do with my life? That’s the question that begins every single quest. What have I come here to do with my life?

Now, you can choose to ignore that question or you can pursue it. And the pursuit is the beginning of the journey.

If we can get the clutter out of our mind, if we can get the guilt out of our mind, if we can get the shame out of our mind, if we can get the worry out of our mind, if we can get the busyness out of our mind, then all of a sudden we’re going to have ideas which are seeds. And the seed of an idea gets planted firmly in your mind when you believe in yourself and you believe in your potential.

you have unique gifts. Focus on the gifts. Don’t focus on the weaknesses, because there are other people who will complement your weaknesses, and you will complement theirs. You recognize the gift when you’re expressing yourself in that unique way, giving out your gifts, and you lose track of time.

I don’t believe in coincidence. I know there is a divine order to the magnificent mystery of our lives. —Oprah

My hope at the start of every conversation is to expand hearts and to create an open space for learning. This is because I have always known that teaching is my true calling. It is the taproot from which all of my other skills and talents grow.

I don’t believe in luck. For me, luck really means preparation meeting the moment of opportunity.

My deepest desire is for people to get still enough to identify what makes them unique and connect to hope, possibility, and fulfillment in all areas of their life.

when you align your personality with your purpose, no one can touch you.

Passion whispers to you through your feelings, beckoning you toward your highest good. —Oprah

Your life is always speaking to you. It speaks in whispers, guiding you to your next right step. And in many situations, the whisper is also the first warning. It’s a quiet nudge from deep within saying, Hmm, something feels off. A small voice that tells you, This is no longer your place of belonging. It’s the pit in your stomach, or the pause before you speak. It’s the shiver, the goose-bumps that raise the hairs on the back of your neck.

Life is about growth and change, and when you are no longer doing either, you’ve received your first whisper. Pay attention to what makes you feel energized, connected, and stimulated. Follow your intuition, do what you love, and you will do more than succeed. You will soar.

We’re always living a life where we’re chasing a sense of self which feels, underneath it, inauthentic.

And then we’re trying to fill it with love or approval or success or the million ways that we seek fulfillment from outside of ourselves.

everybody has patterns. And it’s your job to figure out what your pattern is.

I’ve had all these little whispers in my life guiding me; the whispers have quieted down over the years because I believe I am now where I am meant to be.

It’s not that God’s not talking to me. It’s that for so long, I just haven’t been listening. I’ve been allowing so much of the noise to cloud this conversation I’m supposed to be having. I’ve been so distracted while He’s been sending messages this whole time.

The ultimate care of the soul is being identified with the life that wants to live through you.

Your individuality comes from your soul. Not from your head. It comes from allowing life to live through you.

Usually in times of uncertainty, my mantra is, When you don’t know what to do, do nothing and the answer will come.

I have also followed the guiding principle Doubt means don’t,

And this fear manifested as procrastination. Which resulted in guilt.

“The more important an activity is to your soul’s evolution, the more resistance you will feel to it.” He explained that no matter the dream, the shadow of resistance is inevitable. It’s like the yin and yang—you can’t have the dream without the shadow.

The worries running around in my head were nothing more than the natural force of negativity at work, the shadow that lives in all of us trying to convince us of our unworthiness: You’re not good enough.

Steven’s theory was a totally new way of looking at fear: For every dream, there is automatically going to be resistance. But your sheer will and desire can be stronger than the shadow. You get to decide. You get to declare, I want this, and confront the fear head-on.

although often well-intentioned, even your closest allies are usually operating with their own agenda, whether they’re aware of it or not.

Fear is real. We have all experienced it. And it can be a powerful roadblock. The true meaning of courage is to be afraid—and then, with your knees knocking and your heart racing, take the leap anyway. Ready. Set. Go.

The real issue is trusting yourself. Trusting yourself that you’re going to make the right choices. Trusting yourself that you can hear that voice and follow it. Trusting yourself. When people betray you, abandon you, don’t acknowledge you, whatever, you will be okay.

“When you live in trust and faith, truly live it; what everyone else says and does becomes irrelevant.”

that means that you’ve got to be willing sometimes to stand alone. You’ve got to be willing to piss some people off. You’ve got to be willing to look different. Sound different. Be different. And those are risks that many of us are not willing to take. Because we don’t understand God. You trust yourself by knowing who you are. You trust God by understanding God’s nature.

“David fulfilled his purpose for his generation.” I felt like I heard something there. I thought, Joel, your dad fulfilled his purpose. Go be you.

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.

We only have twenty-four hours in a day. So you have a choice to walk with wise people and stack up more wisdom. Or you can become a companion of fools and your life will unravel.

I would tell them, you had your life focused on something that didn’t belong to you, and a path that didn’t belong to you.