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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.
When was the last time you wholeheartedly said yes to life?
Face your fears, ignored that no voice inside your head, and just said yes.
I'm all in. Well, that's what Chanda Rhymes did.
Chanda described herself as extremely shy and introverted and felt it was time for a radical shift.
So the mega talented mastermind behind some of TV's hottest shows like Scandal, Grey's Anatomy, and how to get away with murder gave herself a challenge.
For one full year, she erased the word no from her vocabulary.
Chanda's year of yes was in epiphany that impacted her life in unexpected ways.
So welcome to Super Soul Sunday.
Thank you for having me.
Thank you for saying yes.
Absolutely. Thank you for saying yes in this year of yes.
And you know, the whole point of the show is to open people's heart space a little bit.
Yeah. Get them to have different ways of thinking about things.
But I just wanted to share that I knew something was going on with you because I don't say yes to a lot of things.
I like being at home. But at least three times this year I said yes to things and it every single one of those things you were there.
We saw each other out. We saw each other.
And so the first time I was like, hmm, Chanda's out.
The second time we were at a summer party.
Right. And then I invited you to the legends and then oh and I came, yeah.
Chanda said yes. I said, what is going on?
It was completely new for me.
I thought Oprah goes everywhere.
No, no, those are the only places I've been this year.
And you were out and about in a way that I had not seen.
And then I heard that you'd written the book, Year of Yes.
Yeah. And that it was a conscious decision.
It was. It was a real effort to decide, to spend that certain amount of time just sort of saying yes to everything that scared me.
Wow. Yeah. Well, you know, one of the whole purposes of this platform, Super Soul Sunday, is to get people to open up and say yes to life.
And, you know, one of the reasons I really appreciate the idea of the Year of Yes is that to say yes to life, you got to start saying yes to life experiences, to things that ordinarily would scare you or intimidate you or you think would bore you.
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So this all started with your sister Dolores, tell me.
It did. It was Thanksgiving of 2013.
And we were standing in my kitchen.
She's chopping things, making things for Thanksgiving dinner.
And I was sort of doing that what I always do.
Which is giving her this long, fancy list of all the invitations I'd received.
People wanted me to speak here and I invited this party in that party.
And finally, she just sort of cut me off and she said, are you going to do any of these things?
And I said, well, no. And I was very surprised that she asked me that because I'll obviously know.
And she sort of shook her head and said, why not?
And I thought, what does she mean?
Why not? And I said, well, I have the babies, I have two small children.
I have an 11-year-old. I have two shows.
I can't possibly do any of these things.
And she looked at me and she said, you know, you have two sisters to live four blocks away.
Your parents are 45 minutes away.
They'd come and stay in a heartbeat.
You have a wonderful nanny.
You have fantastic friends really close.
You've supported all over the place.
All you do is work. You've never had any fun.
You've never go anywhere.
You've never do anything.
And I thought, she doesn't know what she's talking about.
I mean, I really got an attitude about it.
I was leaving this kitchen.
And she said, you never say yes to anything.
And that really stuck with me.
And you had already accepted to be on the board of the Kennedy Center.
Because that was a similar moment, right?
Well, I don't even know if you accept being on the board of the Kennedy Center.
I feel like when the president of the United States asked you to serve, you've served.
Right. So I had to go to the Kennedy Center, honors, because I had just been nominated to the board of trustees.
And when I got there, I was informed that I was sitting in the presidential box, the president and the first lady and the secretary of state and his wife.
Now, generally, I think for other people, this would have been the most exciting thing in the world.
Yes. Like, woohoo. I was horrified.
Like so stressed out and so nervous about the entire thing.
But nobody asked me. They said, this is where you're sitting.
And so that is where I sat.
And I was really nervous.
But I ended up having an amazingly fun time.
It was an incredible evening.
And where I started out, sort of almost being unable to speak, by the end of the evening, I was really comfortable in having a delightful time.
And when I got home from D.C., I literally was crawling into bed.
And I had a thought, which was, if they had asked you, you would have said no.
If they had asked you to sit with the president and the first lady, you would have said no.
Which is so sad. I would have missed this experience that I wouldn't trade for anything.
And you would have said no out of humility and no let somebody else and no or just...
I would have said no out of fear.
Really? And what I really realized was that I would have said no because I felt like, why would they want to sit with me?
What am I going to say? What do I have to add to the conversation?
But there's a part of me that feels like that's those the characters.
And the stories that I tell are very exciting, but somehow I am not a part of that story.
So that was over a year ago?
That was over a year ago.
And now you can say that in a year's time of saying yes, a year of saying yes, would you say you're completely different person?
I am a completely different person.
I mean, everybody who knows me thinks I'm a completely different person.
I feel like a completely different person.
There's a transformation that happened that I wasn't expecting.
Well, first of all, you lost a lot of weight.
I lost 110 pounds, which was a complete byproduct of the entire thing.
It wasn't the goal. It wasn't a thing that was part of it.
One of the yeses, though, was one day I thought, well, you can't say yes to everything and not say yes to taking care of yourself.
You're not saying yes to health.
And that came from sort of having an epiphany of I work hard to succeed at every single thing I do.
I work my butt off at work.
I work really hard to be a mother.
I work really hard at everything.
Why do I think that losing weight is supposed to be easy?
Why do I think that it's going to be fun to put down the fried chicken?
It's never going to be fun to put down the fried chicken.
I'm always going to hate losing weight.
So if I can accept that I'm always going to hate losing weight, then either I'm going to do it or I'm not going to do it.
So you made a decision? Yeah, I made, I gave myself some rules.
I mean, some really clear rules.
Like I said, I was never going to tell myself I couldn't have something, which was a new thing for me because I always made a bunch of like really crazy restrictive rules.
No carbs, no. Yeah. And then last chicken with no skin, though, the law.
It lasts like three days.
Yes. And then I'd be eating an entire cake or something.
Yes. Yes. So now I sort of just made it.
I could have whatever I wanted.
And I made a really crazy rule for me, which was amazing, which was I only eat what I crave.
Wow. I'd never even thought of it before.
You just eat automatically.
But the idea of just eating what you crave became kind of exciting because then I'd be like, I really want this kind of brownie.
And then I'd have it and I didn't even have to eat the whole thing.
And I'd be perfectly satisfied.
Versus you'd say, you know, I want some chocolate at one brownie, I want something.
And then you'd eat all these substitutes.
You're still not satisfied.
I mean for health bars trying not to get to one brownie.
It was life changing. And it's no coincidence and it all happened at the same time.
It absolutely no coincidence.
Yeah. I also think, you know, one of the things that happened during the year was I started saying yes to telling people what I think, you know, there's sort of a yes to no bull going on there.
And I stopped, I would say like, I stopped eating all my feelings and just started telling people them.
Uh-huh. Which meant I got a lot more frank and a lot more upfront with people, which was really good for me as well.
Yeah. Well, you one of those people too, who never said yes to what you really wanted, but you said yes to a lot of things you didn't.
Yeah. Yeah. I was absolutely the person who did anything you asked me to that I didn't want to do.
Yeah. And then sort of grumbled about it quietly to myself.
Which builds a level of resentment.
Yes. And then I'd feel resentful towards people.
Yes. Yes. So when you left the Kennedy Center, you're flying back and you say to yourself, oh, that was, I actually had fun.
And maybe I need to take a look at my life.
Uh-huh. I really sat down and thought, I need to start saying yes to the things that scare me.
If I never say yes to anything, I need to start saying yes to things that I would always say no to automatically.
Yes. And I promised myself that I would do it for just a year because I thought that I wasn't going to survive.
I really thought I'm going to die of shame and shock and fear.
Uh-huh. And so I sort of threw it out there.
Well, I heard that you had a major epiphany about marriage.
I did. I did. And that was really freeing as well.
I just, I mean, I sort of discovered, I mean, I knew, but I sort of was able to finally sort of stand up and say, I don't want to get married at all.
And I feel like like you said that out loud.
I said that out loud. I said it to everybody.
I said it to my family. I said it to my friends.
I said it to anybody who asked, which feels obvious and, you know, maybe silly or something to people who are married or people who are older or people who've been through it.
But if you're a woman in your 30s or 40s, that's a big deal.
Everybody's asking you all the time if it's going to happen when it's going to happen.
Um-hmm. If you're dating anybody, they're definitely asking you about it.
It's a big- Of course they ask, are you dating?
Yes. Then the most, particularly for your famous person, if first are you dating or you're dating or you're dating and then the moment you're dating more than a month, it's when are you getting married, how close is a relationship, there's a lot of pressure on that.
There's a huge amount of pressure and the desire to want to get married, it's a lot like the desire to want to have children in our society.
Yeah. Like, you're supposed to want it.
And if you don't want it, what's wrong with you?
Yeah. It's fascinating to me.
And I always knew, I'm one of those people.
Since I was five, I could tell you I was going to have kids, I could tell you I was going to have three, I could tell you there were going to be girls.
But I have never wanted to get married.
I never played bride, I was never interested.
I don't know what it is. I never wanted to get married.
I love having boyfriends.
I love dating. I do not want a husband in my house.
And I don't know what it is.
I just don't. Well, I don't know what five ever said this publicly.
But I really wanted to be wanted to be married to.
I wanted Stedman to want to marry me.
Right. The moment he asked me to marry him, I was like, oh, good.
Now I actually have to get married.
And we ended up not getting married because I was supposed to do a book at the same time.
This was in 1993. And the wedding and the book were happening around the same time.
And we were on our way from the book party.
And Stedman said, he did not want to have his wedding disturbed by all these people asking me about the book, which I ended up not doing.
And I said, okay. All right.
So he said, we should just postpone this wedding.
And I said, okay. And that was it.
And we have never discussed it again.
Wow. But what I realized is I don't want to be married.
There's a freedom to be married.
Because I could not have the life that I created for myself.
I couldn't do it. I couldn't do it.
And all the people would say, say to me, well, you could do because you could have your baby and you could have the baby and you could have your own nursery here and you could do that and you could be married in that.
I knew that I could not do that.
I knew that I couldn't do it.
I have so much going on inside my head in terms of writing.
There's such a large space in my life taken up by that.
Yeah. I can't imagine it being taken up by a husband and children and writing and everything getting it to do.
Because don't people always say, oh, you can either be a writer or you can have kids.
You can be a writer or you can be married.
You can be a writer. There's this.
There's not room for all of it.
There's not. And I don't believe there is room for all of it.
I really don't. Particularly for you.
Maybe there's some people who are doing it.
There may be some people who are doing it and who are very happy and who love it.
And I'm not not going any of you.
Yeah. It's not that. It's just I've never.
It's never been like a dream of mine to be married.
Yeah. It's just not. It's not.
So this year of yes, got that clarified.
And it was really freeing to sort of say it out loud and to not feel.
I always felt like it was a dirty little secret because you're not supposed to not want that.
Oh, man. You see, you just liberated a lot of people.
Yeah. Yeah. But I've lived with this for years, the pressure, the tabloids every week making a story.
Why you're not married.
It's my fault. It's his fault.
I want to be married. But I never, I never wanted it.
Yeah. Reese's peanut butter cups are the greatest.
But let me play devil's advocate here.
Let's see. So, no, that's a good thing.
That's definitely not a problem.
Reese's you did it. You stumped this charming devil.
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And so, does it mean you still date?
You're open to dating? I am absolutely still dating.
I'm very open to dating.
And part of the year of yes is that I feel like I'm more aware of the attentions of men.
Whereas before, I feel like I was a little bit more shut down and some of them have to say that guy was kind of flirting with you.
And I'd bet one. I didn't even know.
Now, at least, I feel like I'm looking.
I might actively be looking, so I actually my antennas are up.
And so, I also heard that you learned in the process to say no in a way, to be able to say, no, I'm not able to do that, which I'm going to take that line from you.
No, I'm really not able to do that.
That is my, that is my know as a complete sentence sentence, which is I'm sorry, no, I'm not able to do that.
And that's all I say. And it was, it's really hard to say that to people.
It's very interesting how, I don't know, wired we are to tell somebody a thousand reasons why we can't do something for them.
You know, you say, I can't do it because of this and this.
And as if you're required to defend your nice, nice, nice, nice, yes, your nice hood.
Right. Yeah. I'm a good person.
I'm not. I want you to think I'm nice.
And so I'm going to tell you why all the reasons why.
So you got that. You figured that out.
That was, that was a hard one, though.
I mean, that one was one that I've struggled with over the course of the year to really get right.
Because you lose some so-called friends.
I lost some friends this over the course of the year.
I really did. I, I shed some pounds.
I shed some friends, as I like to say.
Yeah. And it was, it was painful, but it was also really freeing.
Like I've been happier over the course of the year than I ever have partially because I found that I am not doing things that I didn't want to do.
Yeah. Yeah. It's really amazing.
I think probably a surprise to a lot of people that you, the founder, creator of the Empire, Shondaland, TGIT, ABC, Thursday night, creating all of these characters that now become a part of our lives that you really were a painfully shy up until last year.
Yeah. I think it would be.
I mean, it's interesting because I feel like perhaps they're mistaking me for my characters.
Yeah. And there is the beauty of getting to hide behind my characters.
Yeah. You know, my characters were living a much more exciting life than I was.
They were saying all the things perhaps I would want to say or do were having the courage that I was not having at the time.
Yeah. And the character closest to who you really are would be.
There's a little bit of me in everybody.
There's a lot of Christina Yang in me.
And there's a lot of Olivia Pope in me now.
Now that I've become sort of more, much more of a professional woman, starting out, I think I was a lot more Christina Yang.
And now I feel like I'm much more Olivia Pope.
Really. Yeah. Good. Yeah.
Yeah. And good combination.
Good combination. But not as, you know, not as outgoing before.
So one of the first things that came along to say yes to was the invitation to speak at your alma mater.
That was the very first thing that happened was I feel like you throw something out like that out into the universe and suddenly it hails opportunities.
The President of Dartmouth called and said, well, you do the commencement speech.
No one's ever asked me to get a speech anywhere before for any reason.
So it was crazy that suddenly that was what was happening.
And that it was Dartmouth.
It was Dartmouth. It's in front of, you know, thousands and thousands of people.
It's a 20 to 25, 30 minute speech.
It's not, you know, talk for five minutes.
It was a huge deal. Yeah.
And it's graduation. And it's graduation.
Where you supposed to come up with some kind of wisdom, something where they talk about it.
You know, they put it on the internet.
But you said at the speech, yeah, I was very worried about it.
But you said yes. I said yes, which was terrifying.
But was nice because you would get it when you say terrified.
I read somewhere where you said, because this isn't the first time I've interviewed you.
But you were saying you couldn't you remember what happened.
You get that kind of terror where it's like a white hot terror comes over you and you can, yes.
I think I've told you that every single time you've interviewed me, I always say like what I remember is Oprah's coming towards me and then a white hot light and then nothing.
You know, people always say how was it?
And I'm, I'm no idea. Did I say anything?
Literally because I would be so fearful that I feel like my body would go into shock.
I don't know what it was, but I would, the stage fright would overtake me.
There would be such a sense of panic of what's happening.
I remember standing there and going, there's Oprah.
And then literally that's the last real thing I remember of the entire thing.
And then it being over and me going, I hope I didn't say anything crazy.
I understand that. I understand it.
I mean, I don't think I had it that bad, but that happened to me the very first time I interviewed Sydney Poitier because he had, you know, he's the love of my yeah, aspirational dream.
I'd watched him sit slilies in the field when he won the Academy Award.
And the first time he sat down in the Oprah Winfrey show, I swear, I can't remember anything other than him sitting.
And then in the end, I remember there's a photo of him hugging me.
And after he left, I just went in the control room, put my head down and bald because I'm like, I don't know what I said.
I was an idiot. I didn't make any sense yet that feeling, that feeling.
And I had that so many times, this crazy haze of fear that it, it was paralyzing.
And so they would have to push me out to do these interviews.
Wow. And really try to convince me.
So when you made the decision that you were going to say yes, and Dartmouth called, how did that work for you?
Were you? Oh, I had a speech written.
And I was on the plane going there.
And I read the speech over and I thought there is nothing in this speech that is true or me that isn't like a platitude that doesn't feel like what you'd hear in every graduation speech you've ever heard.
I love your dreams. Right.
It was all of the stuff that they believe in yourself.
Yeah, it was all of that stuff.
And it was sort of designed to keep me hidden.
Like you would hear the speech, you'd go, that's a speech.
Yeah. But you never know anything about me.
You've never feel like, oh, that's Shonda in there.
And I hit the lead and I started over on the plane.
I wrote that speech on the plane on the way there.
And it was, and you started with your true.
Right. It was like just tell you the truth.
Be yourself. Be who you are.
Yeah. And there's nothing better than that, honestly.
Yeah. Yeah. And I was so much more comfortable standing up there, saying the truth.
You can see it on the video.
There is a moment on that video of me giving the speech where I stand up at the podium and I look at out the audience before I start speaking and I exhale.
And that exhalation is the moment of me releasing any sign of fear, any moment of stage fright.
It is the last time when standing in front of an audience I have been afraid.
You know what I think really works so beautifully with that speech?
Is you standing up saying, I feel like I'm going to poop in my pants.
Yeah. I feel like I feel like, and once you say it, well, you know, you're not going to.
Yeah. Now that you've said it, it's sort of kind of released in a way, right?
It was like coming out of like I'm coming out as a person with stage fright.
Yes. It was really nice.
Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
And it really did frame me.
Is it amazing how the truth does that?
It really does. There's something about it because I feel like we spend so much time hiding ourselves and trying to be something that we're not.
Yes. Or trying to make sure that nobody knows that we're this person.
And the minute you say like, this is who I am, it's so much better.
Yeah. And that's if you're a shonda rhymes or if you're anybody in everyday situations.
Yes. And what's interesting for me is it's always applied in my writing.
Yes. That's what's so odd to me is that I've known this in my writing my entire life.
The more truthful and the more the deeper you go inside yourself for your writing, the better it always is.
And yet I've never applied it to any other part of my life.
During your dark myth address, we're so honest about the idea of being a, which I love the truth in all that speech, the idea of being a powerful woman and working woman and being a powerful mother at the same time, that if you're doing one thing really well, that something is always lacking.
Do you still feel that or do you feel like you found a way to balance it?
Or is there such a thing?
I think, you know, part of it is giving yourself permission to be okay with the idea that something is always lacking.
You know, it's the guilt that gets you.
It's the guilt that eats you alive.
I wrote that because on the plane, you know, right when I before I got on the plane, I had rushed to my daughter's school to watch her get her school achievement certificate at the end of the year and had stayed long enough to watch her get her certificate.
Took a couple of pictures of her, said I love you.
She was like, are you coming to my party afterwards?
I said, I can't. I got on a plane and went flying to Dartmouth.
And I felt really awful about that.
I mean, I was missing something.
So I was feeling that feeling of guilt in that moment.
But I also felt like we should get to give ourselves permission to not feel guilty about it.
It really is part of the tradeoff of what we're dealing with.
I mean, what's the alternative?
I'm a miserable unhappy woman who doesn't work.
I don't write for a living.
You know, it's not fair to her.
That would be less fair to my child, actually.
Because one of the things I thought was so important is that what we really want to bring to your daughters, to your family, is a happy life.
You want to present to them as a woman who is in control of herself, who knows how to make decisions for herself.
This is what I think all mothers really want.
And ultimately, that's why staying in a bad marriage or being burdened by a relationship that isn't really working and you're doing it for the children doesn't work for the children.
Because what they want is a happy mother.
Yes. I'm amazed by the greeting cards right now.
All the greeting cards are about sacrifice.
Have you noticed that? Mother, you gave up so much for me.
You worked so hard for me.
You sacrificed so much.
You were so wonderful and giving and selfless.
Where is the greeting card that says, Mother, you taught me how to be a powerful woman.
Mother, you taught me how to earn a living.
Mother, you taught me how to speak up for myself and not back down.
Those are the greeting cards that should be out there.
Those are the qualities that we would want for our daughters to have.
I don't want my daughter to grow up and think I should shrink and be in the background.
I should be selfless. I should be sacrificing.
I should be silent. That's not what I think a mother is.
And I don't think that that's what I want my daughters to see a mother be.
So how has the year of yes affected the way you raise your daughters?
I have been more encouraging of their ideas and interests, which has been hard for me.
Less timid. Less timid.
But also more embracing of who they are.
My daughter Harper is 13.
She's very different from me.
She is an extroverted, tall, and beautiful, want to be actress kind of child.
If you put me in a corner with the book for the rest of my life, I'm happy.
We are polar opposites.
I have really thought, how do I embrace, spend my time thinking this year?
How do I embrace her personality and make her shine for who she is?
That has been really wonderful for her and for me, as opposed to me thinking, how do I help her fit into the box of what I think a kid is supposed to be?
And so I said yes to my kids in a way that I had never done before.
I decided to myself that every single time they asked me, my daughter says to me all the time, what a play, what a play.
And there's so many times that I've said, well, I can't write now, honey, I'm doing this, I can't write now.
I decided that every single time she said to me what a 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 have my bags on my shoulder and I'm heading out to work, I drop everything I'm doing, I get out on my hands and knees and we play.
And you know, she's three, 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, with my, it's changed my relationship with my kids, I don't have any guilt.
So there are big yeses and little yeses but that little yes turns out to be a really big yes.
It's turned out to be the biggest yes.
So yes is affected every area of your life really.
I absolutely think so. Wow.
How has it affected you writing?
I oddly enough, I don't think so.
I was gonna say because is that like, that's a separate, yeah, it's a separate space.
Yeah. It's a very separate space for me.
It doesn't exist on this plane.
Did you ever imagine that when you kill Mick Dreamy, it would make the news?
I did not. I did not, not in season 11, did it ever occur to me that there would be an article in Time Magazine about how to mourn a fictional character.
Yeah. That just never even crossed my mind.
I have to ask you why you do it.
I did it because I honestly spent a lot of time thinking story-wise, how do you exit that kind of character?
You can't let Mick Dreamy leave her like walk away.
He has to remain dreaming that love has to stay alive.
You know, you have to believe that those two people were really in love forever.
Yeah. And in order for that to be true, how is Elsa's he gonna go, right?
Either you end the show when Ellen was not ready or he has to die so that their love remains true.
And that was really hard for us to do.
It was hard for me, it was hard for Patrick, it was hard for Ellen, it was hard for us.
That makes sense. Yeah.
Do you think that this year of saying yes has allowed you to live a more awakened life?
Absolutely. And sort of ended the year by doing this magazine photo shoot presence.
And I'm standing on the rooftop of a hotel in New York with the Chrysler Building behind me.
And I'm posing and I'm suddenly feeling like a supermodel.
And I thought, if I had said no to this, I would never have had this experience.
But I also realized I can't say no anymore.
Saying no really was a way of sort of stepping back from life.
It was like a slow form of suicide.
It was saying I don't want to be a part of the world anymore.
So what I've learned from this year is that every single time you say yes, you're sort of stepping forward into the world.
Again, you're rejoining the world.
During those years when you were saying no to everything, were you lonely, were you sad, were you?
I think that I was spending most of my time and most of my energy living inside my imagination as opposed to living in the real world.
You know, I used to sort of joke like my body is a container that I carry my brain around in.
And that sounds really feminist and awesome.
But it's also sad because it means that the real world that's happening outside is not something that I was conscious of or part of.
Writing is your truth, would you say?
Absolutely. Yeah. Absolutely.
Although I always say that like I make stuff up for a living.
And yet that's my truth.
That's your truth. That's your truth.
So tell me what happens.
You know, we've all heard about, you know, athletes having a zone.
Is it a zone for you too? I call it the hum.
The hum. It's like I get this hum in my head where I feel like I could write forever.
Like hum. Yeah. Almost.
Yeah. Like a frequency basically.
Wow. Where I don't know, it's almost your where you go from sort of exertion to I don't know, exultation where it feels there's just an endless joy for me where I feel like I could write for the rest of my life.
And I lose time and my assistant has to come in and say it's been five hours.
You have to stop now because of this or that.
It's it's really lovely.
It's that it's a real true happiness.
It's very pure for me. Wow.
It's a spiritual practice.
Yeah. It is. I don't need to be in any place in particular.
I need a few things. I need my headphones, which for some reason for me sort of signal it.
It's almost like a hypnosis thing.
You put your headphones on.
I think, okay, now I'm in my space.
So it is like a meditative state.
Yeah. It's where you're in that zone where you because I think all artists, I remember Rain Wilson here saying that there's no difference between arts and prayer.
Yeah. There's no need to be art and prayer.
So does it feel like that?
Yes, I do. I think that's very true.
That you're in communication with with some higher power.
Yeah, with something higher than yourself because I it certainly isn't just coming from me.
We can tell that from the very beginning, you always had it as a calling.
Do you think everybody has a calling?
I do. I really do. I think it's harder for some people to find out what they're calling is than for others.
But I think that everybody has one.
I think I was very lucky to know what mine is so early.
Yeah. So what wisdom would you say ultimately that you've uncovered in this year of yes?
We're all going to read the book.
But what is the one thing that you come away with that you really want to pass pass on?
I want to pass on that it can start small.
Like no matter how bad it seems or how or even how great your life seems.
Whatever is going on if you feel like you need to make a change, the yes can be a very small thing.
You know, it can be yes to making a phone call to someone you haven't spoken to in a while.
It can be a yes to your spouse.
Yes, we will have this conversation.
Yes, to playing with your children.
It can be yes to playing with your children.
It can be yes to walking around the block.
It can be yes to holding someone's hand.
Yes can be a very small thing and it can be life changing.
Can you finish this sentence?
I believe. I believe we all have the power to change.
Creativity is. Creativity is who we are.
An imagination is. Imagination is our soul.
And saying yes is? Yes, it is transformative.
I love that. What is the moment that most impacted or changed your life?
Possibly 9-11. But in a positive strange way and that it is the thing that made me once again wake up and say if the world is going to end tomorrow there are things that I need to do.
And that is what drove me to adopt my first daughter.
Wow. Yeah. And you named her Harper Lee.
And I did. I did. Okay, so what do you believe is the world's greatest wound?
Oh, our inability to realize that we're all the same.
Which is my next question.
Where does prejudice and racism come from?
I mean that's that's the same thing.
Yeah. Our inability to realize we're all the same fear.
Yeah, it's just fear. Yeah, racism is just fear.
Yeah. And how can we begin to have the conversation that doesn't scare everybody?
I know everyone is so afraid to have the conversation.
I think everyone is so afraid that if they have the conversation they're either calling someone a racist or they're being called racist or they're going to say the wrong thing.
I feel like if you can't have the conversation you can't make anything change.
We can never heal. Yeah.
And it's a conversation we all need to have because we don't have it.
I don't care who you are or what color you are.
You're not living in an equal society.
And I don't know how that can be comfortable for any of us.
Yeah. And it keeps showing up.
And in this year for us it shows up with black men being shot.
Yes. And if there wasn't a camera nobody would believe it.
Exactly. Or at least a lot of people wouldn't believe it.
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's heartbreaking.
Yeah. And I don't know how you want your children to grow up in a world like this.
How you want the next generation to inherit a world where this is okay.
Hmm. So what is the truth?
Final question. What is the truth that you hold as your as your way of life that that you embrace on a on a regular basis?
When I was a kid my father used to say to me all the time the limits 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'm so proud of you.
Oh thank you. I'm excited.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thank you. Thank you. 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.
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That's definitely not a problem.
Reese's you did it. You stumped this charming devil.
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