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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.
In 2012, I had the honor of interviewing Valerie Simpson just after she'd lost her husband of 38 years Nick Ashford.
Better known as a legendary songwriting duo Ashford and Simpson, they had a four decade musical partnership that produced some of the most memorable hits ever to come out of Motown.
Having our emotional conversation, Valerie shared the real story behind one of their greatest songs Ain't No Mountain High enough.
Sing along if you'd like.
We all know the words. Ain't no mountain high enough Ain't no valley low enough.
Ain't no river wide enough To keep me from getting to you, babe.
Well, most people think of these as enduring words of love, expressing the deepest form of devotion.
But as we talked, Valerie told me that when Nick originally wrote the lyrics, he was referring to his goal to one day write songs professionally.
At the time, Nick was an unknown musician living in New York City hoping to be discovered.
While looking up at the skyscrapers towering above him, he came up with the phrase Ain't No Mountain High enough to convey just how determined he was that nothing was going to keep him from his dream.
No wind, no rain, or winter's coal can stop me, baby, because you are my goal.
And he was right. Ain't no mountain high enough now holds a place in the Grammy Hall of Fame.
I've always thought a mountain is a magnificent metaphor for life.
From a distance, the accent looks clear and smooth, but once you actually set out for the summit, you discover unexpected valleys and precarious ridges along the way.
If your internal compass isn't set to keep climbing, every stumble will give you an excuse to turn back.
Over the years, there have absolutely been times when I've found myself climbing a steep, rocky road.
Earlier I shared the fear as I struggled with when I was invited to give the commencement address at Harvard in 2013.
I know my trepidation might seem surprising given the general perception of my career, after 25 years on a number one show, I had by most standards to reach the summit.
However, it just so happened that when Harvard's then president Drew Fowles, called with her once in a lifetime offer, I was in the midst of one of the biggest climbs of my life.
I'd even started calling this new endeavor by Killam and Jarrow.
In this particular instance, it seemed the higher I hiked, the trickier the terrain.
At the time I said I was getting my butt kicked in the news over the way I owned the Oprah Winfrey network was, quote, struggling as it was often reported.
It felt like everywhere I looked, critics were taking me to task for I own's performance.
One of the toughest headlines announced, Oprah Winfrey isn't quite holding her own.
That one I gotta tell you is stung.
I'd enjoyed a long stretch at the top and was proud to be known as a powerful business woman.
And now it felt like every decision I made ended up on the nightly news crawl.
And so when Harvard reached out, all I could think was, what can I teach about success when I stopped succeeding?
It was a frustrating time.
And to be frank, I was embarrassed.
At one point, while I was in the shower, I was deliberating what to do.
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Thomas presents Technique with Tom.
Slicing in English muffin with a butter blade, bowl the dash.
Just pull apart with your hands and marvel in a nooks and crannies splendor.
For each one is unique, like a snowflake.
Thomas's a zah, a toast to breakfast.
It's not a myth that some people make their best decisions in the shower.
There really is something about the warm spray and lack of distraction that helps crystallize your thoughts.
And indeed, as the water cascaded down and I thought about that mountain metaphor, I decided I would immediately stop calling the experience of building my own network anything but a privilege.
I mean, really. I told myself, who gets to do this?
It's the honor of a lifetime.
If you think about it, people all over the world dream of climbing Kilimanjaro.
The words to an old hymn started playing in my head, troubled on last always.
I got out of the shower and thought, this too shall pass and I will be the better for it.
One of my favorite lessons from Joel Osteen is what follows I am is what we're inviting into our life, meaning when you use phrases like I am exhausted or I am overwhelmed.
You are inviting exactly that kind of energy into your life.
The moment I shifted my perspective from I am struggling to I am honored.
My climb was transformed from an arduous trek into a still challenging but now stimulating adventure and my entire outlook changed.
Ever since that time, whenever I've encountered a disruption rather than allowing it to rattle me, I ask myself one of the most meaningful and productive questions there is.
What is this here to teach me?
Today, own continues to evolve.
Every day brings a new teachable moment and I look back on each step of the journey with gratitude.
The insights I hope you will embrace in this chapter reflect the knowledge I try to impart to my girls in South Africa as they consider any worthwhile pursuit.
There will always be setbacks, I say.
What you're experiencing is a detour.
It's not the end of the road.
You've got to be prepared to fail up.
Most important, I teach the girls that everything that's happening to them is a means to help them evolve into who they are meant to become.
Nothing is ever wasted or out of order.
So when their will is being tested and all seems lost, I advise them to stop, get still, and listen.
Their heart will tell them the next right step and once they figure it out, it's time to look around and ask themselves who is standing with me in the gap.
Because what I discovered long ago is that when life is treating you well and it seems you can't go wrong, there will always be people who want to ride with you in the limo.
But what you really want are the people who will take the bus with you when the limo breaks down.
As you make your way up your mountains, no matter how steep the climb, remember the words of Nick Ashford.
If you need me, call me, no matter where you are, no matter how far.
Don't worry baby, just call my name.
I'll be there in a hurry.
You don't have to worry because baby, they're inked, no mountain, high enough.
You're a Kilimanjaro awaits.
First up, a cartolli. From a higher perspective, being challenged is a good thing.
Just look at the nature of challenges.
If you look at your own life or anybody's life, you may find that one way or another, what looks like obstacles to where you want to go, where you want to be, what you want to achieve, obstacles seem to arise almost continuously in the form of difficult people, difficult situations.
Some people have the perception that they're being sabotaged by life all the time.
People resent being challenged by life.
I think challenges should not exist.
But as I sometimes put it, you may find, if you've lived long enough, that at some point you realize that the world isn't here to make you happy, it can't do that.
It's sort of like human evolution, where you say it's not linear, you take two steps forward in your own life and a step backwards.
And then, the further back you go, the more of a bounce you have to move forward.
We definitely have evolved in consciousness, but it does not go in a straight line upward.
The evolution of consciousness happens, you regress, and then you go forward a bit more.
It goes in cycles. So we need the crisis.
Humans don't grow except through facing the challenges and crises.
So there are two levels of truth.
One is to see the craziness of what's happening now.
And another is to see, over a higher perspective, what's happening now is part of the evolution.
It's the ego is coming up.
It's manifested. It needs to break down.
Yes. So that something else can break through.
Yes. Yes, that's right.
And now, Stephen Colbert.
My mother used to say that in hardships in your life, try to look at this moment in the light of eternity.
Try to see this how God might see it.
Which is, we can't see it as fully as God might see this moment, this now, as opposed to the past of the future, which we can't affect in any way.
But you can try to see this present moment, if it's good or bad, any hardship or victory with humility, with acceptance, and with love.
So you can't love something until you can accept it.
That is correct. That is correct.
Yeah. That was great. Now, let's hear from President Joe Biden.
My mother used to say, and I thought it was so cruel at one point, especially when I lost my wife and daughter, and we walked out of the hospital and a tractor trailer brought side and we killed them and my two sons were badly injured.
And she said, Joey, grab a hand.
She said, I heard anything horrible, something good will come if you look hard enough for it.
But that was my mother's notion.
We were taught just to get up when you get knocked on, just get up and move forward and talk about how so many people without the kind of help that I had do it every day, right today, that somebody has gone through something that's typically worse than me and they have nobody behind them and they're getting up and they're moving.
It gives me such overwhelming confidence in people, the ability to absorb pain and the spiritual reassurance that comes from knowing they're still a part of you.
Would you say that that is one of the most important spiritual characteristics to have that is to keep getting up?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
But I'm not saying it's easy.
I have to admit to you, there have been a couple of times in my, well, one in particular, my life where I've actually lost my faith, where I went through a period of thinking, how could this be?
I mean, why, you know, like with a Y-me piece?
My dad who is a wonderful, well-read, graceful, high school educated guy said, champ, where where is it written that life owes you a living, man?
I know, but it doesn't make you feel any better in the most.
Well, it makes you, at least in my family, my mother thought the greatest virtue of all was courage and because it allowed all the other virtues to exist.
From the time I was a kid, not a joke, my mother go, look at me, Joey.
Look at me. Remember, you're defined by your courage, you're redeemed by your loyalty.
Look at me, Joey. It was this notion that you could do anything because there's this notion in my faith, my family that those you lose remain a part of you.
Now let's listen to Father Richard Rohr.
I think it's interesting how you describe love or falling in love, being in love, true love as a death of the false self.
It actually is. Because we all love to fall in love.
Yeah. But falling in love, you have to take the risk of changing yourself for this person.
And you have to let go. You have to.
You have to. And that's why a lot of relationships don't last because you have to let go of who you thought you were before you loved that person.
You're giving them power to change you.
If you don't give your friend, your partner, power to change you, I don't think you love them.
And your unconscious knows that.
Your soul knows that. Yeah.
Once you've been able to give yourself over to that other person, does that mean you actually get to become more of your true self who you remain to be?
If that other person is growing up too, the other person, if it's mutual.
If it's mutual. You got to have somebody who wants you to grow to your fullest self, to your fullest of who you really are.
And if you don't have that, I have seen people become smaller after marriage.
But love has to expand. It always has to expand.
We each create our private salvation project.
What will make me wonderful.
What will make me look beautiful and be admired.
Every time you have to let go of that in its present form and reshape it, it's dying.
It's darn, I based my life on that.
I based my life on looking good or being a priest or whatever.
Or being married. Now that's falling apart.
That's what friends are going through.
And I said, you have to relearn a new normal.
It doesn't mean it's relearning a new normal.
But the old normal has to fall apart.
That's done. That's right.
And you never go there voluntarily.
You fall. This is a psychological dying.
We're talking about it.
Yes, it will be experienced psychological.
That's right. So this happens to people.
When you go through a divorce and at first you are fighting, fighting it and you think it's the worst thing that could ever happen to you.
And then you come out the other side of it and you feel a greater sense of freedom and closer to your true self.
It might take you five years to get there.
It might take you five years.
But you wake up one day and say, my God, this is much better.
Or you lose your job. Yeah, I lose your job.
Or you get sick. Or you get your reputation or your money.
Or your child dies. All of those immense tragedies.
Yeah. That's the way the self expands.
I'm sorry to say it's true, but it's true.
It's all what you do with suffering.
If you don't transform your suffering, Oprah, I always say you will transmit it with 100% certitude.
You will transmit your suffering to your family, your neighbors, your country.
Yeah. If you don't transform it.
If you don't transform it.
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Rob and Christian Bell.
So what's the secret to a great marriage?
I think it's having that intention, that intention that is your foundation, that I am for you and you are for me, and we're in this together.
We're creating this thing together.
We get to go on this adventure called life together.
Yeah, we always talk about marriages, a creative act.
You're creating something new in the world.
And for many people, it becomes heavy.
It becomes, let's just try to stay together, duty, obligation, as opposed to, we get to make something with this life.
And the two of us get to go on an adventure and create something new.
So every problem becomes not, oh my word, are we going to make it?
But well, look what came down the road today.
I wonder what this will produce.
I wonder what we'll learn through this.
It's like a shift in how you view life and life together.
Is it an adventure in which you actually get to create and co-create a life?
Alanis Morissette. I thought that all would be helped and healed and sued by fame.
Because when I get famous, I will be less lonely.
Yes. And I will be understood and I will be loved and that love will go in and heal any of the broken parts.
And the truth is, there's no difference between fame or when I get thin or when I get rich or when I meet the right guy, when I get the job, when I get that car, when I get babies, then I will be, when I retire, then I will be happy, I will be healed.
Everything will be okay.
Everything will be okay.
And those somehow, we as humans could be exempt from pain.
One of the big lessons I've learned over the last little while has been that if I can become comfortable with pain, which is different than suffering.
Yes. If I can become comfortable with pain as just an indication and it's potentially a daily thing, in my case, it often is, then there won't be my living in the future all the time.
That one day if and when I'll be happy.
Or as one of our guests said, learning to walk in the dark, being comfortable, embracing when the dark shows up.
Yes. And even if I'm not comfortable doing that, I'm very uncomfortable in pain.
I hate it. We don't do it.
We don't do it with all kinds of addictive fun things, temporarily fun things.
But at least knowing that it's a portal and that on the other side, there is this great sense of peace that goes beyond this ego development.
Cheryl Strayed. I love this one too.
This is so, oh my goodness.
Hello. I'm the renderer, all your joy for an idea you used to have about yourself that isn't true anymore.
Where did that one come from?
Well, how long do we hold on?
How long do we hold on? Hold on.
To this old idea. I was going to do this job or I was going to go to this school or I was going to be married to this person.
And it doesn't service anymore.
But you know where that came from is I was asked to write a letter to my 20 something self in my book, Tiny Beautiful Things.
And that's one of the things I told my younger self is that it was okay to rewrite my story from time to time and not only okay but necessary.
Sometimes you do have to see things through even though they don't cause you joy.
But sometimes you need to say, you know what?
I'm not going to surrender my joy.
I'm not going to be this thing anymore.
I'm going to be this other thing.
That's other way. And I'm going to be more eloquent, beautiful poetic way of saying stop holding on to the past.
That's right. Yes. Tracy Jackson and Paul Williams.
One of the things that Paul talks about too is that many times when you try to change there are a whole circle of people who actually like you better the old way.
Exactly. Yeah. And a lot of people are torn between that life and the life that's calling for them.
You know, you develop languages with people and you develop patterns of behavior which is I'm the dysfunctional one, you're the functional one, I'm the one in control, you're the one who's a little bit crazy, I'm always depressed, whatever it may be.
And when you change that all of a sudden their role in your life is put into question.
And they start having to question their own behavior, which a lot of people don't like to do when it's forced on them.
Lenin Doyle. You also say that every little girl is told at some point that the world does not want to see the ugly afraid secret version of who they really are.
Oh, that's absolutely true.
They just want to hear, I'm fine.
Yeah, but the other truth is that some people are desperate for it like they need air.
That it's worth all the rejection you get when you're real.
Because every time you tell the truth it just clears the field for other people to tell their truth.
And then the truth gets bigger and bigger.
And is that was the breakthrough the first time you went to a recovery meeting where you just went, oh wow, these are my people.
Because I thought, oh, this is the way you can do life.
You actually don't have to do the shiny, perfect thing.
You can get through life by showing up and saying, okay, it actually is this hard and I need help.
I need a higher power. I need you.
And that's how we're going to get through this thing together.
I mean, I wanted to cry at the end of the first recovery meeting when I figured out that you have to leave.
That you're going to send me back in there.
And so I just wanted to make my whole life into just a recovery meeting.
Tracey McMillan. What's the lesson that's taking you the longest to learn?
I'd say the lesson that took me the longest to learn is compassion, right?
For myself. Because I think what I used to be very kind of hard on myself, I thought I was supposed to know things before it was possible to know them.
The truth is, is that everything we're doing, that's our life's work.
My life's work is to learn how to love better.
My life's work is to learn how to put light in places where it's dark.
Cindy Crawford. The idea of getting older is daunting and intimidating and not that fun, really.
But recently I shifted to, I have the privilege of getting older.
And I really like that because it's really easy to spin off into the negative as opposed to aren't we lucky that we're here, that we get to get older.
And every time a negative thought comes up in my mind about like, oh my god, that wrinkle or, oh, my stomach doesn't look, you know, here I am like sucking it in for a photo shoot.
I think it's a lot easier to see yourself getting older if you're happy in your life.
And if you're doing meaningful work and you are contributing to life in a way that makes you feel good about yourself.
John Bon Jovi. Anytime that you think you've hit the top of the mountain, the truth of the matter is as you just reached another mountain and it's there to climb over again.
Each step along the way is just a life's lesson and humility.
And it gives you the ammunition to go on and be excited about the next day.
Joel Osteen. What follows that I am, we're inviting into our life.
You say I am, you know, tired, I am frustrated, I am lonely.
I think you're inviting more of that in that.
So the principle is to turn it around and invite what you want into your life.
Okay, so this is it. Whatever follows I am will eventually find you.
Those are your exact words in the sermon.
It's so important, it's just what you said.
Even from the scripture it says, let the weak say I am strong.
I think a lot of times we want to say how I feel, you know what I am lonely, I am tired and I think there's a balance to it.
And I don't think you're denying the fact that otherwise, hey, well, I'm just hiding my head in the sand, it's not so much that, it's just not magnifying the negative.
And like I talk about in the book that I am a masterpiece.
I am fearfully and wonderfully made.
I am strong. I am talented.
I think that is speaking to the core of what God's put in each one of us, that He has equipped us, He's empowered us.
We have what we need to fulfill our destiny.
But I do think that we have to bring it out.
And you can't bring it out being against yourself.
I'm overwind free 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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