OPRAH WINFREY: The Life Lessons That Changed Everything

In a rare and deeply personal conversation, Jay sits down with Oprah Winfrey to reflect on the defining moments, hard-earned lessons, and extraordinary journey that shaped her life. Oprah opens up about her earliest memories in Mississippi, surviving childhood abuse, and how those experiences shaped the woman she would become. She traces her remarkable rise from a small radio job to one of the most influential voices in the world, sharing the spiritual practices that have grounded her along the way and the Maya Angelou wisdom that transformed how she thinks about legacy. Oprah also reflects on what it means to live in true alignment with your soul and gives a glimpse inside her upcoming immersive experience at The Sphere and the next chapter she’s creating. With Love and Gratitude, Jay Shetty Mazda crafts cars for people who do more than simply move. Visit Mazdausa.com to learn more. Consumer reports does not endorse products or services. PURPOSE10 for 10% ataltrarunning.com⁠/onpurpose . Free Shipping and Free 30-Day Trial. JAY’S DAILY WISDOM DELIVERED STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX Join 900,000+ readers discovering how small daily shifts create big life change with my free newsletter. Subscribe here: https://news.jayshetty.me/subscribe Check out our Apple subscription to unlock bonus content of On Purpose! https://lnk.to/JayShettyPodcast What We Discuss: 00:00 Introduction 00:53 Oprah Welcome To On Purpose 02:08 Early Childhood Memories In Mississippi 05:38 Early Experiences Of Self-Agency 10:34 Leaning Into God's Dream & Introducing "Spirit" To TV 13:57 Spiritual Evolution & The Prayer: "How Can You Use Me?" 15:36 Early Public Speaking & Church Roots 16:57 Listening To The "Still, Small Voice" 19:41 How to Trust Your Own Inner Knowing 21:23 Humble Beginnings & Dirt Roads 22:34 Unpacking Her Childhood Trauma 28:03 Teenage Pregnancy, Family Shame & Tabloid Betrayal 33:45 The Truth That Finally Set Her Free 37:23 Turning A Breakdown Into A Breakthrough 41:16 Oprah’s First Radio Job 44:40 The Career Move That Changed Everything 47:38 Announcing "Aha!": The Sphere Immersive Experience 56:10 Protecting Stillness & Operating With Intention 01:00:32 The Joy of Sharing & Launching The Book Club 01:06:09 Interviewer On Interviewer: Diana Ross & Her Most Impactful Guests 01:11:40 Living in Alignment With Your True Self 01:13:50 The Rarity And Miracle Of Human Life 01:15:50 Redefining What Legacy Means 01:18:09 Living In Dedicated Service 01:20:32 Moral Beauty & Planting Trees For The Future 01:21:40 Oprah On Final Five Episode Resources: Website | https://ahalive.com/ Instagram | https://www.instagram.com/oprah LinkedIn | https://www.linkedin.com/in/owinfrey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Jay Shetty?

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• 0:44Jay Shetty?

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• 1:30Jay Shetty?

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• 2:16Jay Shetty?

  And when everything around you is changing, it helps to have a few things you can rely on. AG1 Next Gen is one of those easy habits to keep. It's the clinically backed, comprehensive daily health drink that supports your gut health, energy production, and foundational nutrition all in one scoop. AG1's ingredients are sourced from quality partners for absorption, potency, and nutrient density to deliver the foundational nutrition your body needs. And alongside a proper diet, AG1 Next Gen meets 94% of nutrient requirements and it's clinically shown to enrich the gut microbiome. For a limited time, save 20% on your first subscription order of AG1 Next Gen or AG1 Pro

• 3:00Jay Shetty?

  at drinkag1.com/onpurpose. That's drinkag1.com/onpurpose.

• 3:10Oprah Winfrey?

  You're one of those people, I would just love to sit down at a dinner and just, you know, when people say,

• 3:18Jay Shetty?

  Are you kidding me?

• 3:19Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm not kidding you.

• 3:20Jay Shetty?

  Can we please do that?

• 3:22Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, we can actually do it. We're gonna do it. I'll give you the list too. Who else is there? You know who else should be there?

• 3:27Jay Shetty?

  Please.

• 3:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Kris Jenner should be there.

• 3:28Jay Shetty?

  I love Kris.

• 3:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Ellen should be there because we were just talking about you. This wonderful guy, Ellen Levi, who's written this wonderful book called Theo of Golden should be there. I mean, anyway, we'll talk about this. We'll talk about this, okay?

• 3:39Jay Shetty?

  Hey, it's Jay. I don't know what your day's been like, but I was just thinking about you for a minute. And I hope you're being a little patient with yourself because you deserve it. And yeah, I'll talk to you soon.

• 4:02Jay Shetty?

  Oprah Winfrey, welcome to On Purpose.

• 4:05Oprah Winfrey?

  I am so excited to be able to have this conversation with you.

• 4:11Jay Shetty?

  Oprah, I have to say to you, and I say this to you when I see you, I said this to you when we had few interactions during the pandemic digitally.

• 4:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 4:20Jay Shetty?

  This show, On Purpose, exists because of your inspiration.

• 4:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, thank you for that.

• 4:25Jay Shetty?

  So much of what I do is inspired by you, empowered by you, the incredible work that you did, the conversations that you continue to have, the eager ear that you have to continue to listen, to learn, to grow. I feel extremely humbled today that you came and trusted me and my platform, that you've given me the opportunity to have this conversation with you.

• 4:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, thank you.

• 4:47Jay Shetty?

  I am in complete awe of you, online, offline, behind the scenes, for the last few decades of my life. And so this is the greatest gift you could have ever given me. And knowing that I get to have dinner with you is just,

• 4:58Oprah Winfrey?

  We're gonna do it.

• 4:59Jay Shetty?

  blowing my mind right now.

• 4:59Oprah Winfrey?

  We're gonna do it.

• 5:00Jay Shetty?

  Everyone in the world knows Oprah Winfrey. Everyone in the world knows all the incredible things you've done. But when I think about you, I think about it before the TV show, before the production company, before the success. And there's a little girl in Mississippi. And I wanted to ask you, what's a childhood memory that you have that you feel you hold on to the most after all these years?

• 5:24Oprah Winfrey?

  That's so interesting to ask because I just was looking at a picture of myself before I came here that sits on my desk of my little eight-year-old self with the braids. And I think, wow, that girl could not have imagined this life. That my dreams were not big enough to hold what has actually happened to me. I had no idea that the world could be this vast, this big, with this many possibilities. The memory that I hold on to is one I often share when speaking to people who are interested in manifesting or not sure about manifesting for themselves. It's being four, between four and five years old,

• 6:10Oprah Winfrey?

  on the back porch with my grandmother, hanging clothes out on the line. She was a domestic worker and she had brought all of this laundry home from the white family that she was caring for. It was cold and I could see the moisture from her lips. And she was saying, Oprah Gail, you better watch me now because one day you're gonna have to learn to do this for yourself. And I was churning butter. Do you know what that is? Churning butter? Because we had no running water, no electricity. You know, we killed the chickens. We killed the hog, hog killing time. I took the cow out to pasture. I took the peat pot out to empty it every morning.

• 6:55Oprah Winfrey?

  So we were living like the pioneers. But all of that is a foundation for me being who I am today and also having such deep appreciation for where I've come from. But I remember my grandmother saying, Oprah Gail, you better watch me now because one day you're gonna have to learn how to do this for yourself. And she was taking the clothespins out of her apron, holding them in her mouth and putting them on line. And I remember this feeling, Jay. It said, uh-uh, uh-uh, that will not be my life. But I had sense enough not to say it out loud. But I could sense that this isn't, whatever you're doing, this, this isn't going to be for me.

• 7:37Oprah Winfrey?

  I have held on to that connection to that feeling my entire life. And every forward moving decision that I've made that has come to any level of success has come from going back to that feeling. What is that feeling you felt when you knew that your life was going to be bigger than the back porch in Mississippi, than the dirt road in Mississippi? And that feeling, you have it? Everybody watching us, listening to us? Everybody has it. And many people allow the noise of the world

• 8:22Oprah Winfrey?

  to drown out that feeling. But what I want to say is if you've ever felt it, you don't have to meditate for hours. You don't have to do anything but go back to what that feeling is that allowed you to know what you knew. And so that's, that's my fondest, greatest memory of Mississippi and leaving there. And I will tell you that not until probably 2020, just during the pandemic, when I was going over a book that I had written with Dr. Bruce Perry about what happened to you. And in that book, I was telling the story of growing up with my grandmother and one night her being accosted by my grandfather

• 9:06Oprah Winfrey?

  and being afraid in the bed. And then for years and years and years, having fear in my home and not realizing that that's where that fear came from. But I was looking back at the story of my grandmother. I lived with my grandmother from one to six and was supposed to start kindergarten. And two weeks before I was supposed to start kindergarten, Jay, my grandmother was in an accident and I got sent away from my grandmother as a six-year-old who's only known my grandmother, has only slept in the bed with my grandmother, and sent to Milwaukee to live. I thought for many years that that is the worst thing that had ever happened to me. But instantly going to Milwaukee,

• 9:50Oprah Winfrey?

  I knew I wasn't going to see my grandmother again. So I never was the kind of person or child even that would hang on to, I wish I had my grandmother. Because that feeling, the same thing that told me this isn't going to be your life, said you're not going to see your grandmother again. And so I knew that. I was supposed to start kindergarten in apartheid Mississippi. I would have started in a classroom, either with a black teacher or with a white teacher, whose belief about who I could be as a young black girl didn't go beyond the borders of Mississippi and what a black child could be or do at that time.

• 10:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Instead, I get sent to Milwaukee and I walk into a classroom with brown and a couple of white and black children, all playing kindergarten with their ABC blocks. I looked at those kids and I thought, I do not belong here. I gotta get myself out of here. And I, on that day, wrote my kindergarten teacher a letter

• 10:58Oprah Winfrey?

  saying I don't belong here.

• 11:01Oprah Winfrey?

  I know a lot of big words and I wrote out all the books of the Bible because my grandmother, who couldn't read, but taught me the Bible. So I knew all the books of the Bible. I was reciting all the books of the Bible in church. And so, beginning with Genesis all the way to Revelations, when I finished all those books of the Bible, handed them to my kindergarten teacher. She said, who did this? And I said, I did, Ms. New. And she marches me to the principal's office and say, this girl said she did this. The principal made me do it again. And I was put in first grade that day. So I did it again and I got put in first grade. So that's where I first learned, speaking up for yourself, taking agency for yourself, in that moment. When I walked into

• 11:45Oprah Winfrey?

  that classroom and saw kids who were not the same color as I, I felt empowered. I felt like, I can do this and I can get myself out of here and I'm not going to be playing with those ABC blocks because I know more than you. And that feeling has carried me through my whole life. It is why I have never, ever experienced a moment of imposter syndrome. So when people started talking about imposter, imposter, imposter, I was like, well, please explain to me what that means. Because I remember feeling like, well, I know I don't belong here. So I'm going to, I'm going to prove to you that I need to be someplace else.

• 12:21Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 12:22Oprah Winfrey?

  The reason I share this story is because for everybody who's had something really bad happen to you in your childhood, and you think that that was the worst thing that could possibly happen to you, that thing is the foundation and the builder for growth to come in ways that you cannot even imagine. So yeah, that's my favorite story.

• 12:44Jay Shetty?

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• 13:28Jay Shetty?

  to learn more. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. The first thing that I wanted to point out to everyone who was listening, which was just so powerful, was this idea that even Oprah did not dream as big as your life has become.

• 13:43Oprah Winfrey?

  No.

• 13:44Jay Shetty?

  And I love that for people because I think we're living at a time now where everyone's dreams may be trying to be bigger than they are, but then our actions are smaller. And what you see on your side is your dreams aren't even that big. You just know you need to get out of here.

• 13:58Oprah Winfrey?

  I didn't know. I mean, now I have to say, I am blessed to live this exalted life. I am in awe because I didn't even know. I remember on the dirt road next to my grandmother, there was this airfield on the other side and there'd be these little prop planes. I didn't know they were prop planes at the time. I used to just dream of being on a plane like that. What would it mean to be on that plane? What would it mean to be able to be able to fly? I didn't even know that there was such a thing to aspire to. So what I have done, I will say, is lean into God's dream for me. I believe that the universe, the Creator, the divine, the life force, by whatever

• 14:40Oprah Winfrey?

  name you call it, has a dream for all of us. And that's why you were born and I was born. And each one of us is here to fulfill the purpose of that dream. And so that's why I love that your podcast is called On Purpose. And I feel that what you are doing here on Netflix and throughout the world is an extension of what we started to do on The Oprah Show.

• 15:08Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 15:09Oprah Winfrey?

  And I feel that you are one of my children. Because when we started it, you couldn't even say the word spirit. I remember doing a show with Carolyn Mace, who wrote the book Anatomy of Spirit. And we were sitting there with the audience in the 90s, early 90s. And she'd written the book called Anatomy of Spirit. And we were talking about mind, body and spirit. And I could see the audience glazing over, looking at their shoes, picking their nails, doing the thing. So I stopped the show and said, hey, hey, hey, guys, what's going on? And a woman stood up and said, we don't know what she's talking about. What is she's talking about? Is she talking about Jesus? Somebody says, is she talking about Moses? What is she talking about? I said, well,

• 15:50Oprah Winfrey?

  no, she's talking, you know, you have a mind, right? And you have a body, right? And you have a spirit. Nobody in the audience in the early 90s knew what that was.

• 16:01Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 16:01Oprah Winfrey?

  So I started doing a little segment on the show called Remembering Your Spirit, trying to teach people that there is more to us than our body and our mind.

• 16:13Jay Shetty?

  Unbelievable.

• 16:15Oprah Winfrey?

  In the early 90s. Yeah. And now you're sitting up with a podcast on Netflix, talking about it every day.

• 16:22Jay Shetty?

  With you.

• 16:23Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, with me. I know, but I'm telling you, and at the time when I started talking about it, because it was so important to me. I was on my own spiritual journey. I was taking God out of the box because I grew up really strictly religious. But God was in a box. If you did this, if you wore pants on a Sunday, or you danced, or you wore earrings. And then it started to occur to me, how could you be an omnipotent power, universal, divine energy, and be upset over somebody's earrings?

• 16:56Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 16:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Whether they were, or whether they danced on Sunday or wore pants. I mean, it just started to not make sense to me. And so around the time that I started to take God out of the religious dogma box and opened it up to God is all, God is all things, and all things in us. And through God, all things are possible. I started to lean into that dream for myself. What is God's dream for me? So I am where I am and continue to be where I am. Because the prayer that I have prayed and the question that I have asked for my life is, I think, one that can be useful to

• 17:35Oprah Winfrey?

  anybody watching or listening to today, is how can you use me? Use me. Use me. Show me. Use me.

• 17:46Oprah Winfrey?

  And lift me. How do I rise to the calling that was my life? How do I do that? So I've been in search of that answer since I was a little girl.

• 17:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 17:59Oprah Winfrey?

  And first it was news, and then it was the talk show, and then it was the national talk show. And now we're sitting here with you on Netflix, talking about this thing, talking about this stuff, opening up your life to all that it could be, all that it can be.

• 18:16Jay Shetty?

  You're reminding me of a beautiful prayer that was written by my teacher's teacher, who I never met. His name was Shilpa Prabhupada. And he, he wrote a prayer that said, God, I'm simply your puppet. Make me dance, make me dance, make me dance. Use me, use me, utilize me.

• 18:31Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 18:32Jay Shetty?

  And as I was listening to you say that, I also want people to get the perspective. I mean, is it true that you, your way of playing was to interview corn cob dolls?

• 18:40Oprah Winfrey?

  That is a true story. I mean, I had corn cob dolls and I'd sit there and I'd talk to them. I mean, as a little girl, growing up in a small rural area with your grandmother and a senile grandfather, I had to invent ways of entertaining myself. And I do know for sure that it's growing up with the church as my foundation that gave me the confidence to speak in front of audiences, that gave me the ability to feel like I was valued. Because, you know, my grandmother was harsh. She, you know, I got whippings and, you know, I never really felt

• 19:19Oprah Winfrey?

  loved, but I felt valued when I would speak in public. And I'd been speaking in public since I was three, four years old, speaking, doing pieces for, for the church. Jesus rose on Easter Day. Hallelujah, hallelujah, all the angels did proclaim. I was doing Invictus by William Ernest Henley by the time I was seven, eight years old. Out of the night that covers me, black as a pit from pole to pole. I thank whatever gods there be for my unconquerable soul. And in that, you know, he talks about, I am the master of my fate. I'm the captain of my soul. I didn't know what I was saying, but I would put, put it on my mirror and I would say, I am the master of my fate. I

• 20:00Oprah Winfrey?

  am the captain of my soul, which became sort of a mantra for me as a young, young girl. So I have, I've been led by, I would say, the hand of God, by divine guidance my whole life. And I've been trying to listen to it, listen to it, listen to it, and follow the path that has been laid for me. Now, have I made a lot of mistakes? And every time I made a mistake, it's because I didn't listen. I mean, can you, and anybody listening to us right now, anytime you made, you made a mistake, it's because you overrode that feeling, that still small voice that's within every one of us that says,

• 20:43Oprah Winfrey?

  No, you shouldn't do that. You should go this way. And you're like, no, no, no, I think I should do. You shouldn't do that. You should go this way. And so for a lot of people, it takes you a lot of, lot of detours to get back to where you should have been. When you let your head overrule what you know your spirit is trying to tell you.

• 21:03Jay Shetty?

  So well said. So true.

• 21:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Don't you think? I was just talking about this with friends. How many people are walking down the aisle and listening to us right now? There's a wedding coming up and you know, you should not be going down that aisle.

• 21:13Jay Shetty?

  Wow. Yeah.

• 21:15Oprah Winfrey?

  But the invitations have gone out, the party planners, the flowers have been picked, the da, da, da, da, da. And what are people gonna say? And the bigger question is, what are you gonna say when you're in the life that you know? I mean, don't you feel this way, Jay, that everybody makes mistakes? But when you know ahead of time that it's gonna be a mistake, you just wanna slap yourself.

• 21:34Jay Shetty?

  Those are the worst.

• 21:35Oprah Winfrey?

  You wanna slap yourself. You wanna slap yourself, cuz I knew better.

• 21:40Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, you knew better. You saw the red flag.

• 21:42Oprah Winfrey?

  I saw the red flag and I kept going and I kept going. I kept going. Yes. And everybody gets the red flags.

• 21:47Jay Shetty?

  Yes. We know.

• 21:49Oprah Winfrey?

  We know.

• 21:50Jay Shetty?

  And that's when we're more upset at ourselves. We're not upset because we're surprised by what happened. We're upset because we knew.

• 21:57Oprah Winfrey?

  You always knew.

• 22:00Jay Shetty?

  You know. We know. We know.

• 22:02Oprah Winfrey?

  I always say it comes in a whisper and the whisper, it's just like a, hmm, that's odd. Hmm, I should do that. It's just a tiny, it's tiny.

• 22:11Jay Shetty?

  The truth is quiet and subtle.

• 22:13Oprah Winfrey?

  It's quiet. It's quiet. And it gets louder and louder and louder when you're not listening. And some people just have to have a tsunami. They just have to be hit over the head. Yeah.

• 22:24Jay Shetty?

  I literally was talking about that the other day with someone, that it almost feels like God and the universe has an alarm clock that we keep putting on snooze. So the first time you put on snooze, you feel something and you put it on snooze.

• 22:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 22:37Jay Shetty?

  Then it gets a bit louder and you go, no, no, I'm gonna snooze again. And then ultimately, the alarm clock, the fire alarm has to go off.

• 22:42Oprah Winfrey?

  People really do it in relationships. They do it in relationships with, uh, personal relationships and they do it in relationships with themselves. They ignore the sign. When I think about what are the great lessons that I have learned that I would wanna pass on? One of the greatest ones is that exactly what Glinda the Good Witch was trying to tell Dorothy. You've always had it. You've always had the power. That there's none of us who's been raised by, you know, decent parents with a sense of values of knowing what's right and wrong, who doesn't feel that thing inside of you. And that most people don't trust it.

• 23:25Oprah Winfrey?

  They don't trust their own voice. They don't trust that feeling, so they go out and they ask everybody else.

• 23:29Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 23:30Oprah Winfrey?

  Or they are subconsciously always asking society and the world to tell you or them who you are, or what you should do, or how I should make this move, or what should I do. And you always had it.

• 23:45Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 23:45Oprah Winfrey?

  Nobody has the answer other than you.

• 23:48Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 23:48Oprah Winfrey?

  And so you can ask all of your friends, even if you're going to buy a pair of shoes. If you love the shoe, you don't have to ask anybody. But when you're not sure, you ask everybody else. You ask the group chat. You ask everybody. You ask the woman in the store and she goes, I think it looks really good.

• 24:02Jay Shetty?

  Of course.

• 24:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, of course she does. And so my thing is come back to that still, small voice that is the knowing inside yourself.

• 24:11Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 24:11Oprah Winfrey?

  And be guided by that. And if everybody could just do that, but it's just so much noise, Jay. It's so much noise, isn't it?

• 24:18Jay Shetty?

  So much noise. That's why I'm so fascinated by you sharing your early stories and days as you are so beautifully because I think when someone's been prominent for a long time and as you have across decades, we forget that there was.

• 24:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Everybody thinks I just grew up with a, that I woke up and I had all that I had.

• 24:36Jay Shetty?

  Hundred percent.

• 24:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Dirt road, honey. I mean, not only dirt road, dirt road where people were eating the dirt on the road. Cuz there was a certain, I don't know, I think when women are pregnant or something in the South, they like to eat the dirt. And people would come on the road and they'd get the dirt and they'd eat the road. I mean, literally, I grew up with, you know, my little chores, which I was too young to have those responsibilities, but taking the cow out to pasture, milking the cow in the morning, bringing the milk in, going to the well. I shouldn't have been sent to the well. There are things called wells, people, where you go to the water and you pull up the water and you.

• 25:15Oprah Winfrey?

  So I started from zip. I remember speaking at a, um, at a third grade in the Bronx, uh, years ago and this, and I was telling that story and a little girl raised her hand and she said, did you know Abraham Lincoln?

• 25:31Oprah Winfrey?

  No, I didn't know Abraham Lincoln, but we did grow up the same.

• 25:35Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that's hilarious.

• 25:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Similar living circumstances.

• 25:38Jay Shetty?

  Funny. That's so funny.

• 25:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Did you know Abraham Lincoln?

• 25:40Jay Shetty?

  That's so cute.

• 25:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 25:42Jay Shetty?

  But I feel like for you also, you've talked about this, like the abuse you experienced. You were pregnant at 14 years old.

• 25:48Oprah Winfrey?

  I was not supposed to be here.

• 25:50Jay Shetty?

  This is really difficult, traumatic, tragic circumstances. Like genuinely, like these are, this is not an easy life.

• 25:59Oprah Winfrey?

  At the time that I became pregnant, y'all, in 1968, I'd been molested since I was nine. So by the time I came, became pregnant, and I wasn't even sure, Jay, how babies got here. But a girl had told me on the playground and explained to me that what I was doing, what I was secretly doing, being molested, that that's how babies came. So I remember at nine years old, after being raped for the first time and hearing this girl on the playground talk about where babies came from. I remember thinking then, I must be pregnant then. I must, I'm gonna have a baby. And going the whole year, being terrified.

• 26:44Oprah Winfrey?

  So I was first molested by a cousin and then molested by another relative and then molested by a friend of the family and then molested my uncle. I was just speaking to someone yesterday who is overcoming this trauma in an institution, trying to deal with all of it. And they were saying, you know, it was like, did I have a sign on my head? I go, no, it's not a sign on your head, but every molester knows the child who's lonely, knows the child who won't tell, who's afraid to tell. And I said, I was one of those kids and you obviously were one of those kids. Because I have since interviewed many molesters over the years.

• 27:26Oprah Winfrey?

  Because in an attempt to try to understand what had happened to me and help other people. They have told me with their own voices that they choose the kids and groom the kids that they think will not tell. Actually, the thing that freed me when I was 42 and did this interview on The Oprah Show. Up until that time, I still carried the guilt. Even though I was telling everybody else and I'd read all the books and I'd done all the research and interviewed many people, saying, it's not your fault. It's not your fault. There was a part of me that felt that my nine-year-old self was still responsible. And then I started looking at nine-year-old girls.

• 28:08Oprah Winfrey?

  When you look at a little nine-year-old girl, you just can't imagine that somebody would rape that girl. And then I interviewed a guy who said that he tried for six months grooming his 13-year-old stepdaughter. And that he started out by playing games. And at first it'd be games with everybody. And then the games became more like playing Twister on the ground. And then he'd say, I tried to touch her knee and then I'd touch her thigh. And then he said, one day, it took me six months to get to the point where I felt I was comfortable enough to touch her breasts.

• 28:50Oprah Winfrey?

  And he said, I just rubbed up against her breasts, but I held my arm there too long. And she said, hey, what are you doing? And he thought, oh, I went too far. And I went and told the wife, he said, I hate it when people call their wives the wife. I went and told the wife, he said, and I got to her before her daughter did because I knew that if I got to her before her daughter did, she would believe me and not her daughter. And that is what freed me. To understand, that is what freed me because I realized for the first time.

• 29:30Oprah Winfrey?

  It was planned.

• 29:33Oprah Winfrey?

  It was planned.

• 29:36Oprah Winfrey?

  I was set up. And every kid who has been molested was set up. They planned it. They thought about it.

• 29:48Oprah Winfrey?

  They strategized. And so the tickling that I had for years blamed myself because I let him tickle me. He started tickling the bottom of my feet. And then it grew to touching my body parts. And before I knew it, it was out of control. And so for years, I blamed myself for the tickling until that guy on the Oprah show explained how he had groomed his daughter. And I realized, oh, the tickling had been planned.

• 30:29Oprah Winfrey?

  And I remember when I went to tell my father after his brother had violated me.

• 30:36Oprah Winfrey?

  My father said, um, I was 42.

• 30:42Oprah Winfrey?

  And my father said, well, was it really rape?

• 30:47Oprah Winfrey?

  And I realized, oh, this is why I never told.

• 30:53Oprah Winfrey?

  And I said, Dad, I was 14. And he was 49. So it would not have mattered if I had walked into the room buck naked. He had the responsibility of an adult. This is the reason why I never shared it before. So yeah, I became pregnant at 14. I didn't even know that I was pregnant. And I'd been sent to live with my father. So I was living with my mother and I got sent away to live with my father. And when I came into the house, he hadn't seen me for years. And my father said, uh, well, I tell you one thing. You've been in Milwaukee. And you've not had the rules and regulations, but in this household, you do what I say.

• 31:39Oprah Winfrey?

  And he said, I would rather see a daughter of mine floating down the Cumberland River, which is a river in Tennessee, than to bring shame on this family.

• 31:52Jay Shetty?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 31:53Oprah Winfrey?

  With pregnancy. So you're going to have a curfew. You're going to be home by 10 o'clock. You're going to be there. I was already pregnant. And I knew that if my father found out, my father would, you know, he would want to kill me. He said, I'd rather see you floating down the Cumberland River.

• 32:08Jay Shetty?

  I can't imagine how you felt in that moment.

• 32:10Oprah Winfrey?

  And I remember being sent to the doctor at 14, after my ankle swole. And the doctor said, either this is the biggest tumor I've ever seen.

• 32:20Oprah Winfrey?

  Or your daughter is pregnant, he said to my father.

• 32:26Oprah Winfrey?

  And my father's sense of shame.

• 32:31Oprah Winfrey?

  I took that shame on.

• 32:34Oprah Winfrey?

  I left the hospital and the baby died a couple of weeks or a couple of months afterwards now. I don't even remember the timeframe. I just remember I came home. And I was in sort of a suspended reality. I'd gone back to school. Nobody at school knew. Because if anybody at school had known, I would have been kicked out of school. Those were the rules then. And my father had said that now you can no longer go to school because you have a child. So now this is going to be your responsibility. And so after the baby died, my father said to me, this is your second chance. This is your second chance.

• 33:20Oprah Winfrey?

  And if I were you, I would take advantage of it. And I did. I became a major overachiever, speaker, winning every contest, getting all the grades, doing all the things that were about performing. And I was doing that to prove that I was worthy of being a good person. And it wasn't until I was 42 and did that show with like five different molesters, that I freed myself from the shame. Because I carried the shame. No matter what you saw, I still carried the shame of it was still my fault.

• 34:03Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 34:03Oprah Winfrey?

  It was still my fault. And I realized my, my, my family, you know, now

• 34:10Oprah Winfrey?

  a girl gets pregnant, the family either embraces it, the child is adopted, they bring the child into the family. It's not the scarlet letter and you have brought shame upon this family. But in my family at the time, it was, it was scorned. It was, it was a really bad thing. And I thought of myself as, you know, I'm this person who can achieve a lot, but I have this thing behind me. It was my greatest shame. And a member of my family, my sister, my sister, half sister, who's no longer with us, became a drug addict and went to the tabloids and shared that story.

• 34:48Jay Shetty?

  Oh, my God.

• 34:49Oprah Winfrey?

  And I thought that that was going to be the end of my life. I thought, okay, that's it. It's over. And it wasn't.

• 34:57Oprah Winfrey?

  And it wasn't. So I remember getting the call from the National Enquirer saying, your sister is sitting here in our offices. And she has a story. And when that story came out, I was not able to get out of bed. I just thought, hmm, that's it. It's over. Because I had a lawyer at the time who'd said to me, what, what are any stories that you don't want to, that you wouldn't want to get out? Or you wouldn't want to? Tell me everything, you know? And I told him that story and he goes, never share that story. Never share that story. So I always thought, if you ever shared the story, everybody's going to think you're a really, really, really bad, terrible person. And they didn't.

• 35:42Jay Shetty?

  And that's the double shame you're carrying.

• 35:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 35:45Jay Shetty?

  Because it's almost like you're carrying the shame from feeling like it was your fault.

• 35:49Oprah Winfrey?

  100%.

• 35:50Jay Shetty?

  And now you're carrying the shame of what will people think of you from that?

• 35:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Because my father said, I'd rather see you floating down the Cumberland River

• 35:58Jay Shetty?

  Heartbreak.

• 35:59Oprah Winfrey?

  than to bring shame on.

• 36:03Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Indeed. I know how important every hire is for a business. If you need to make the right hire, this is a job for sponsored jobs. Indeed sponsored jobs helps find quality candidates when you need the most. You can reach who you need based on whatever criteria you're looking for, like skills, certifications, or location. In fact, people are finding quality hires on Indeed right now. In the minute I've been talking to you, companies like yours made 27 hires on Indeed, according to Indeed data worldwide. Spend less time searching and more time actually interviewing candidates who check all your boxes. Listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit at indeed.com/podcast. That's indeed.com/podcast.

• 36:48Jay Shetty?

  Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. This episode is brought to you by State Farm. We talk a lot about intentional decision making. And that extends to the practical stuff too. Like making sure your coverage actually works for your life. State Farm is there to meet you where you are. And they know how sweet it is to feel good about your decisions. Talk to a State Farm agent today to learn how you can choose to bundle and save with a personal price plan. Like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Prices are based on rating plans that vary by state. Coverage options are selected by the customer. Availability, amount of discounts and savings and eligibility vary by state. This episode is brought to you by Whole Foods Market.

• 37:32Jay Shetty?

  If you're talking about quality food, you can't forget Whole Foods Market, who've been holding themselves to the highest standards since they opened in 1980. That means you'll see thousands of organic products across their stores from the produce department to the aisles. It also means you'll never see certain ingredients. They've banned artificial sweeteners and colors, high fructose corn syrup and more, so you can shop with peace of mind. Shop Whole Foods Market in store or online. This episode is brought to you by Wayfair. Home should be a place that feels like a sanctuary, a space that truly reflects who you are. But it can be challenging to balance style, budget, and endless options. I was looking to create a dedicated calm space for my morning meditation and reading,

• 38:18Jay Shetty?

  but I was struggling to find pieces that felt grounding, but could also stand up to daily use. I went on Wayfair and found a beautiful, solid wood accent chair and a bookshelf. Now that corner is my favorite place to anchor my day. The quality is incredible. It's built to last and it completely shifted the energy of the room. Plus you can shop with Wayfair verified, where product specialists carefully vet items for quality and functionality. So you can shop with more confidence. And if putting it all together sounds like a headache, Wayfair can handle delivery, installation, and assembly. Join Wayfair Rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W A Y F A I R dot com.

• 39:03Jay Shetty?

  Wayfair, every style, every home.

• 39:06Oprah Winfrey?

  The name of this family, it actually became the most liberating thing I could have done for myself. Because after the tabloids, I was, I felt free to discuss on the show my own abuse. And me being able to talk about it in front of, you know, audiences of, of women, opened up the floodgates and you realize, wow, you are not the only one. You are not the only one. I'd heard this woman, uh, when I was doing a talk show in Baltimore in the early years, had told the story of her, of herself being

• 39:50Oprah Winfrey?

  raped, molested by an uncle. And as she's telling the story on the air, I'm just like, whoa. This has happened to somebody else. And I went into the green room afterwards and said to her, I can't believe, I can't believe that's my story. And she said, why didn't you say something? And I said, I was too ashamed.

• 40:18Oprah Winfrey?

  I couldn't. And so the next time somebody shared something on the air, I, I, I, I said it. I came out with it. Yeah. But still hadn't said, and I had a baby.

• 40:28Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 40:29Oprah Winfrey?

  And I had a child.

• 40:30Jay Shetty?

  And I'm like.

• 40:31Oprah Winfrey?

  I was molested and I had a child. Anyway, thanks for the therapy, Jay.

• 40:35Jay Shetty?

  No, I mean, thank you for

• 40:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 40:39Jay Shetty?

  taking us back there to such a painful moment, but also how incredible that you were so curious and so open to healing and growth that you were willing to sit and interview molesters.

• 40:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 40:55Jay Shetty?

  And that became the thing. And, and how poignant, the point you're making is so powerful. And I feel like anyone who's listening, who's been through anything like that would feel so liberated and freed, hearing you say that. Because we don't realize that the person who's been hurt is the one carrying the blame.

• 41:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 41:14Jay Shetty?

  The person who's been taken advantage of is the one carrying the blame, thinking they allowed that they did that to themselves.

• 41:22Oprah Winfrey?

  I still talk to people all the time. Just yesterday, the day before, I was talking to a man who's like in his 50s, saying the same thing, but why didn't I tell? And why didn't I think? I go, you didn't tell because you didn't feel safe to tell.

• 41:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Just like I didn't feel safe to tell. You didn't tell because every, every molester who is any good at it is going to pick the child who's not going to tell. And every molester wants you to believe that it was your fault. Every molester is, it's a seduction. So you're laughing because you're getting tickled, you're enjoying it, you're having a good time. And then before you know it, your pants are down or his hands are in your panties and you don't know, how did I get here? So I, I just feel like there's still so many people who are carrying the shame that I

• 42:21Oprah Winfrey?

  carried. I have the tears, but the tears are really for the girl that carried that shame. I don't, I don't feel that anymore at all. I absolutely was able to free myself and release myself when I understood. And I went in search, as you said, I went in search to find out. And that wasn't even the first group of molesters. I, I started talking to molesters because I wanted to understand how and why they did it. What was their motivation for doing it? And how they were able to do it and live with themselves in doing it. I interviewed a young boy in his, I think he was in his 30s at the time, who started molesting his sister when he was 17 and his sister was five.

• 43:06Oprah Winfrey?

  And he said, it would have been better if I had killed her. I would have been better off murdering her because I just murdered and ruined her life. So she will never be the person that she was supposed to be because, because of that molestation. So I, you know, over the years, I probably did 200, 250 shows on, you know, sexual assault, molestation, children, because I was in search of the answers for myself.

• 43:37Jay Shetty?

  What have you learned about the difference between someone who that becomes the breakdown of their life? And for you, how it became the breakthrough of your life? Like, what have you learned about the difference in how people who are hearing and they may be in a breakdown can actually go, oh, that's not going to stop me. That actually could propel me forward.

• 43:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I think for myself,

• 44:00Oprah Winfrey?

  being able to have a level of success

• 44:04Oprah Winfrey?

  after the pregnancy, for, for example, if I had been taken out of school, none of this would have happened to me. If I had, I had been deprived of an education and then had to go get a job at a whatever salary, working for whatever, just to take care of my child. I might've had a very, very, very different attitude about life. But because I was able to go back to school. And as my father said, take this second chance. I was able to see that you are not the, the worst thing that has happened to you.

• 44:45Oprah Winfrey?

  You can go forward, you can continue, you can have successes in your life. And I think for a lot of people who didn't get that chance, for whom having the child then put you in a circumstance where now you gotta work and then you gotta take care of yourself and you gotta pay the rent and you gotta do the, the, the, the. Life just keeps piling, piling, piling, piling on. And you feel like you've been put in a position where you no longer have a choice. Well, I can see from certainly my perspective that you always had a choice. And even if I had been given a low paying job and then you try to get another job and a better job, it just would have been a, well, I've never, never would have made it here.

• 45:29Oprah Winfrey?

  But it would have been a longer route to whatever we call success, to being able to be comfortable in your life.

• 45:37Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 45:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Being taken out of school and not having an education would have just been the end of me.

• 45:44Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 45:44Oprah Winfrey?

  It would have been the end of me. And so the difference between picking yourself up and allowing it to be an open window to something else, I think depends on what happens and how it happens and who you're surrounded by. I will say that through all of this, I still was listening to that voice.

• 46:08Oprah Winfrey?

  I was saying to God, how did this happen to me? Why is this happening to me? What do I now need to do? And even when I was thinking about ending it all for myself, I didn't really want to end it. I didn't want to be in that kind of pain and suffering. You know, as I think a lot of people who attempt suicide, they don't want to die. You just want this to end.

• 46:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 46:33Oprah Winfrey?

  I want this pain to stop. I want this to be over. And so, you know, I feel that I have been guided by a divine force my whole life. There is just no other explanation for me, a black girl from rural Mississippi, to have been in the places that I've been and, and exposed to the things that I've been exposed to. In an era where I would have to say, I didn't even think it was hard, Jay. I look back at, you know, my early career in Baltimore and my early career in Nashville and

• 47:15Oprah Winfrey?

  I was often the only black person in the room and certainly the only woman in the room and the only. But it didn't even occur to me that that was a problem. Because I thought, well, if I got the opportunity to be here, it means I'm supposed to be here. And so this is how it happened. I won a contest because shortly after this pregnancy, I was one of the kids chosen to go to the White House for the White House Conference on Youth. I was speaking, I was an orator, I was doing all these things in school that gave me a higher profile. I was chosen by a local radio station to be in a contest for the Miss Fire Prevention Contest. I win that contest. I'm the first black girl ever to even be in the contest. Nobody ever.

• 48:01Oprah Winfrey?

  So this is 1970 and I win the contest and I'm shocked and so was everybody else shocked. How did I win? And I win the contest. Why? So all the girls are in this pageant and you're asked the question of what do you want to be? And do with your life? I was going to be a teacher. Two of the girls had used the teacher

• 48:26Oprah Winfrey?

  explanation. So they'd said teacher, somebody else had said teacher. I go, I gotta come up with something other than teacher.

• 48:33Oprah Winfrey?

  I was thinking, God help me, God help me, God help me. What could I be? What could I be? And I thought, the thought comes to my head, I'd seen Barbara Walters on the Today Show that morning. I passed the TV, the TV was on and I saw Barbara Walters, sitting there, being Barbara Walters. And out of nowhere, this answer comes into my, my mind. And I say, I want to be a journalist, a broadcast journalist, and I want to use journalism to help stories, to tell stories so that people can see the best of themselves in these stories. I don't know, I pull that out of the ethers. Yeah, yeah, came down. And so I go back to the radio station to pick up my prize, which is a Long Jean watch and a digital clock radio.

• 49:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Ones that flip. And there's a DJ waiting in the corridor and he says, oh, you're that kid that just won that contest. He goes, have you ever heard your voice on tape? You want to come in, you want to come in my studio? You want to hear your voice on tape? And this DJ sits me down, his name was John Heidelberg, sits me down, tears off some copy from the AP WR machine. He said, here, read this and I'm going to record your voice and let you play back and let you hear your voice. And I started reading like Barbara Walters. And that guy says, hey.

• 49:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Larry, come in here. Read, come in here. Hear this kid read. And before you know it, I was surrounded by five guys watching this kid read. Cause I've been reading since I was, since my grandmother. And that's how I got my first job in radio.

• 50:13Jay Shetty?

  Unbelievable.

• 50:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Unbelievable.

• 50:14Jay Shetty?

  Unbelievable.

• 50:15Oprah Winfrey?

  Hand to God.

• 50:16Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 50:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Hand to God, but I can, you can see it.

• 50:18Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 50:19Jay Shetty?

  But you're listening.

• 50:20Oprah Winfrey?

  But I'm listening.

• 50:21Jay Shetty?

  You're listening, you're tuned in.

• 50:22Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm tuned in.

• 50:23Jay Shetty?

  You're, you're following it and you're ready.

• 50:24Oprah Winfrey?

  And I'm ready.

• 50:25Jay Shetty?

  You're ready because you walked into that room, you'd already had all these skills that.

• 50:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, that's what I say luck is. Luck is preparation, meeting the moment of opportunity. Cause I could have been a kid stumbling through the thing and he just said, okay, here kid, here's your tape. Instead, I was a kid who read like I knew what I was doing. And he called in everybody else to listen to me and they say, would you like a job in radio? And I ended up working after school, I was 16. And then I get a call from the local television station when I was 18 in college still saying, we are interested in hiring you for TV. And I'm like, well, I don't know if I can do TV because my dad, I had a 10 o'clock curfew.

• 51:10Oprah Winfrey?

  And my dad was like, you have to be home. But I'm doing the news and the news isn't on until 10 o'clock.

• 51:17Jay Shetty?

  That's hilarious. That's so good.

• 51:20Oprah Winfrey?

  And so I had to have my professor, Mr. Cox, talk my dad into letting me have the job so I could be on the news. Cause I had a 10 o'clock curfew. And my dad is like, I don't know how you're gonna do that news, you gotta be home by 9 o'clock.

• 51:35Jay Shetty?

  That's amazing.

• 51:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Isn't it amazing?

• 51:37Jay Shetty?

  That's amazing.

• 51:38Oprah Winfrey?

  And so from there, you know, everybody's trying to get to New York. I had the feeling, and I'm just saying to everybody, you know, inside yourself. I had the feeling that New York wasn't for me. I had the feeling that LA wasn't for me. I had the feeling that Chicago was for me. And I was on.

• 52:00Jay Shetty?

  There's a feeling, there you go. Not the trends, not the.

• 52:02Oprah Winfrey?

  Not the trends. Everybody was trying to get to New York, cause that's the number one market. It's the number one market and LA is the number two market. And at the time, Chicago was the number three market. And I was on someone else's audition tape and I get the call. I knew at the time that the call came, that it was time to go. I could feel it and everybody listening to us, you're working at a job right now, you're in a relationship right now. You feel already the whispers that it's time to move. And if you lean into that feeling and allow yourself to be open to it, you can manifest for yourself, I believe, what is the calling for your life?

• 52:46Oprah Winfrey?

  But you gotta be willing to respond to it. I mean, you know, all this.

• 52:50Jay Shetty?

  No, no, no.

• 52:51Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, all this because this is, this is how you're sitting here on Netflix.

• 52:54Jay Shetty?

  It's so reassuring and reaffirming.

• 52:57Oprah Winfrey?

  It's affirming because you've, you've already done it and now you see it. I'm just mirroring it back to you.

• 53:02Jay Shetty?

  But so much more confidence in hearing you say it too. Like there's so much more gravitas and wait for me to hear it from you.

• 53:08Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm telling you, it's the truth. You are the master of your fate. That thing that I had learned at seven, eight years old from Invictus, you are the captain of your soul. You are the one. You are also working with the greater forces of your life. And regardless of what you call it, what put you here? What is the reason why you are here? That's what I'm trying to do right now. I mean, I, I went to the Sphere to see U2, okay?

• 53:40Jay Shetty?

  Oh, you were at that legendary iconic moment.

• 53:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Legendary iconic moment. Were you there?

• 53:44Jay Shetty?

  All over our feeds. No, no, I wasn't there. I just watched it on the feed. Like it was all on my TikTok and Instagram.

• 53:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh my God, that was a night. That was a night. At the end of the U2 concert where we've been screaming, it's a beautiful night. I went to the edge of the, of the seating and I couldn't tell what had just happened. Because it all disappeared and I couldn't tell, was that the sun? Were we outside? Was that the, what just happened? And, and I just stood there. And I tell you, Jay, I had that feeling again. I thought, this was fantastic, what I just experienced. But this sphere could be a tool for taking people to the edge of the universe.

• 54:34Oprah Winfrey?

  And you could have the most fantastical experience of meditation and consolation with yourself. I just thought, wow, what an incredible tool, what an incredible instrument for creation.

• 54:52Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 54:53Oprah Winfrey?

  And allowing people to have a multisensory experience. So I went back and I called my, my friend Jennifer Rudolph Walsh and I said, Jennifer, I was just at that spear thing and it was unbelievable. And I think you could do something really, really fantastical there that would allow people to touch the inner parts of themselves in a way that they never have. But I just let it go. And Jennifer says, well, you should do that and you should get this person and this person. And I was saying, it's not about the people as much as it is about the experience. How do we create an experience that immerses people in awareness of why you've come to the planet?

• 55:37Oprah Winfrey?

  I want to remind people of why you're here. Why are you here?

• 55:41Jay Shetty?

  It's getting me chills.

• 55:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Why did you come? What is your mission? And are you on mission or are you off course? How do we get you back on course and ignite the light of your life in such a way that you see the highest possibility for yourself and your connection to the rest of the world, the wholeness of everything? And that you leave fired up, inspired from the inside out. How do you do that?

• 56:11Jay Shetty?

  You tell us, I'm in.

• 56:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, so I'm doing it.

• 56:13Jay Shetty?

  I wanted to wait. So you have this experience at U2, you feel this.

• 56:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 56:18Jay Shetty?

  You, you, you can visualize it, you almost see it.

• 56:20Oprah Winfrey?

  I can see it.

• 56:21Jay Shetty?

  And today you're actually gonna tell us what this is. I wanna know.

• 56:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Now I'm doing it. I'm actually doing it. So we're calling it Aha, Aha, Aha Moments of Aha, Hope and Aliveness.

• 56:37Jay Shetty?

  Oh my gosh, are you kidding me? That's amazing.

• 56:40Oprah Winfrey?

  Aha.

• 56:41Jay Shetty?

  That's beautiful.

• 56:42Oprah Winfrey?

  And the reason it's aha is because in all those days where I would talk about aha moments on the Oprah show, I just love every time anybody have an aha moment. And aha isn't me telling you something. And aha is you remembering what you already knew.

• 56:57Jay Shetty?

  Yes, reawakening something you've forgotten.

• 56:59Oprah Winfrey?

  It's reawakening what you've always known. I was thinking about, everybody's like, you're not speaking up about politics and you're not doing this and you should be saying this and you should be doing this and other thing. It's hard to be heard in a world where there's so much noise. How do I get people to come back to the stillness of themselves? And the stillness of what we know is the source of all things? And reconnect to that thing and ignite that within themselves? So that you go out in the world and you show your light and your grace in ways that lift the world up.

• 57:41Oprah Winfrey?

  How do I get people to do that in a way that they actually see the rising of their life? You see your connection to nature and their trees and the, you know, the divine, all of it. And you were able to do that in a way that makes you feel lighter and better. So that's what we're gonna do.

• 58:01Jay Shetty?

  That's beautiful. And so we can, people can buy tickets, they can come, they can attend.

• 58:05Oprah Winfrey?

  You can come April 2nd, 3rd, 4th. We're turning Sin City into Soul City.

• 58:10Jay Shetty?

  I love that. So 20,000 people roughly?

• 58:12Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, it's 18,000 people.

• 58:14Jay Shetty?

  18,000.

• 58:14Oprah Winfrey?

  People, per, per show.

• 58:17Jay Shetty?

  And three shows.

• 58:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Four shows.

• 58:18Jay Shetty?

  Four shows.

• 58:19Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, two shows on Sunday.

• 58:20Jay Shetty?

  I wanna come.

• 58:21Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, you must come.

• 58:22Jay Shetty?

  I would love to be there.

• 58:23Oprah Winfrey?

  You must be there. It just fell into place with all of these great creators. Ethan Todman, who did the era's tour for Taylor. Ez Devlin, who did Gaga's tour, who did Beyonce's tour. Creating these incredible sets and experiences. So it's visual, it's sonic, it's atmospheric. So we're using all the tools of the sphere.

• 58:47Jay Shetty?

  Oh wow.

• 58:48Oprah Winfrey?

  To allow people to immerse themselves in this experience of music, of dance, of meditation and singing. And you know, Jacob Collier, do you know Jacob Collier?

• 59:00Jay Shetty?

  Yes, of course.

• 59:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Obviously, they're going to be performers, but the audience is its own performer.

• 59:06Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, wow.

• 59:07Oprah Winfrey?

  So we have Jacob Collier with the audience being its own performer.

• 59:13Jay Shetty?

  That's beautiful. I mean, I saw the Wizard of Oz there last year.

• 59:16Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 59:16Jay Shetty?

  And that was unbelievable. But I can't imagine meditating in that space. I can't imagine dancing in that space. I can't imagine experiencing the presence in that space.

• 59:27Oprah Winfrey?

  I went to see the monks. I told you, I went to the monastery recently and I went to visit the monks to see what that experience would be like. And then imagine that experience, meditating with your own, creating a sound bath with 160,000 speakers. Okay? Not to mention Max Richter, one of the world's great composers, who is sonically designing the entire experience from the time you walk in.

• 59:54Jay Shetty?

  That feels like the most iconic historic.

• 59:58Jay Shetty?

  Monumental event of this type experience ever.

• 1:00:01Oprah Winfrey?

  Uh huh.

• 1:00:01Jay Shetty?

  Ever. Yeah.

• 1:00:02Oprah Winfrey?

  I can't think of anything better. You know what I feel like it is? I feel like it's my offering to the world at this time.

• 1:00:07Jay Shetty?

  Right now.

• 1:00:08Oprah Winfrey?

  I felt like the world needs to feel its own heart beating. And each of us to feel that in such a singular, powerful way that we know that regardless of the chaos and the confusion and all the drama, drama, drama, noise, noise, noise, that there is a reason why you are here. And the aha experience that we're creating at the sphere is to cause a remembering, is to cause people to remember.

• 1:00:38Jay Shetty?

  This episode is brought to you by Ultra. Making space for ourselves matters. Having time and room to try new things. Our feet benefit from more space too. That's why Ultra Running Shoes feature Ultra Fit Design, giving toes more room for comfort and balance, helping feet feel stronger. These aren't just running shoes. They're perfect for walking, hiking, any pace, any level. They feel right from the first step. Go to ultra running dot com forward slash on purpose and use code PURPOSE10 for 10% off. That's A L T R A running dot com forward slash on purpose. Stay out there. You brought this up earlier and this experience that you're designing is doing exactly that. We were saying there's so much noise.

• 1:01:23Jay Shetty?

  And it's almost like the only thing that breaks through the noise is an aha moment.

• 1:01:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, is an aha moment.

• 1:01:28Jay Shetty?

  You're absolutely right. Yeah, that's the only thing.

• 1:01:30Oprah Winfrey?

  The only thing, yeah.

• 1:01:31Jay Shetty?

  When, when we all have that moment where you sign, you go, you know, you have that awe.

• 1:01:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:37Jay Shetty?

  Inspiring moment. That's the only thing that breaks through noise.

• 1:01:41Oprah Winfrey?

  I know.

• 1:01:41Jay Shetty?

  And so you're actually giving us the opportunity.

• 1:01:43Oprah Winfrey?

  I'm trying. Listen, I put together this wonderful creative team. And what's been important to me is that everybody that comes along, comes in without ego, with full collaboration, with the desire that we're all working towards one thing. This is our gift, our offering to the world. Yes, you're gonna pay for the ticket, but it's a way of saying, peace be with you to the world.

• 1:02:10Jay Shetty?

  So needed right now. I mean, I was gonna ask you that. As, as you've had this, your own aha, to add, to put on the event and the experience. When you see the noise, what do you do? And what do you encourage others to do in the noise?

• 1:02:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Listen, stillness speaks to me. And I protect myself from all of the craziness, really. I mean, you can do or say anything and all of a sudden you're getting vitriol from all the thing and people are slamming you and other than. And I have learned to just insulate myself from the chaos and the noise of the world by practicing stillness for myself in such a way that I feel that I can still hear the voice of God and not be drowned out by the noise of the world. That's what I do. And so I have limited myself on the amount of news that I take in. I, I used to just be in it every day and I just like, it was a regular thing.

• 1:03:09Oprah Winfrey?

  I don't do that anymore. If there's nothing I can do about it, I will take it in. So at least I'm aware of what's happening in the world, but I don't let myself get into the, what are we going to do?

• 1:03:20Jay Shetty?

  And, and it's interesting, isn't it, that we get really comfortable in that space?

• 1:03:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Exactly. People get comfortable in the space and you just get mired down in it. And so I was thinking, you know, my whole career trajectory, since I was able to make decisions for myself about the show and not be dictated by my bosses. But since I took ownership of the show, my whole goal has been to bring light into people's lives. And I remember when I made the decision to purposely, on purpose, operate the show with intention. I had read Gary Zukav's book in 1989 called Seat of the Soul. And in that book, he speaks of intention being one with cause and effect.

• 1:04:09Oprah Winfrey?

  That became my religion.

• 1:04:12Jay Shetty?

  Say that again, because that is so beautiful.

• 1:04:14Oprah Winfrey?

  Intention is at one with cause and effect. You cannot participate in the cause without experiencing the effect of the intention. So the intention is what's going to drive everything. And so when I first got that principle in 1989, I mean, I got it, got it, got it, got it. And started practicing it with every guest, just like you before your show. You're the only person that's ever done this, other than myself, is before the show, you asked me what my intention was. I started doing that in 1989.

• 1:04:50Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 1:04:51Oprah Winfrey?

  And the very first show I did, a woman had, uh, lost her daughter, had been murdered by, um, her 18 year old boyfriend, 16 year old daughter. And I went into the green room and I said, so what is your intention in being here? And she said, I'm here because your producers asked me to be here. And I said, but why did you say yes? What is the reason why? And she said, I said, yes, because I wanted to talk about my daughter's life. And everybody else wants to talk about her death. But she had a life. She was loved by her siblings. She was loved by her parents. We loved her, her grandparents loved her. She was loved.

• 1:05:34Oprah Winfrey?

  But all people want to talk about is how did it happen? And why didn't I see it and talk about the murder? And I said, well, I'm going to exploit your daughter's life to the point where people can see their daughter and your daughter. That's my intention. My intention is to, every story I ask you about your daughter, I'm not trying to be a voyeur. I'm trying to get you to tell a story. So every person in that audience say, oh, my daughter did that. My daughter was like that because people think it can't happen to their daughter. But you know, it can. So that's what we're gonna do. We're gonna exalt and elevate your daughter's life. So her death would not have been in vain. That's my intention. So I will make sure you get your intention.

• 1:06:19Oprah Winfrey?

  And that changed the way I did every show.

• 1:06:22Jay Shetty?

  When you look at your career, it's just, it's trailblazing because it's always ahead of the game. And you were talking about things when people didn't even know they wanted to hear about them. Because you're talking about fertility, you're talking about grief, you're talking about loss, you're talking about rape and abuse.

• 1:06:37Oprah Winfrey?

  I remember we were talking about alcoholism and people were like, no, just put the bottle down. There's no such thing as alcoholism. It can't be a disease. I mean, yeah.

• 1:06:45Jay Shetty?

  How did you get the world to care about the things that actually matter?

• 1:06:50Oprah Winfrey?

  I think that people developed a sense of knowing that my intention was a pure intention.

• 1:07:01Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:07:01Oprah Winfrey?

  That I was on the journey with them. You know, I have always said that I am just a surrogate viewer. I get to ask the questions that you all would want to, but I just have the microphone. And I think the people could feel from me that, wow, I was in the midst of my own discovery. You know, all of these spiritual learnings and spiritual practices, remembering your spirit. I was learning that too. So when I first learned that intention worked, I now want to share it with everybody. Hey y'all, look at this. This principle actually is working in my life. I believe it can work for you too. And that has been my philosophy since I was a little girl on that dirt road in Mississippi. I'd get a candy bar, I'd hold on to it, I'd hold on to it. It would melt in my pocket.

• 1:07:46Oprah Winfrey?

  The peanuts would be falling out of the payday bar. Until my cousins came from down the road and I could say, well, some isn't this good? Because I believe life is better when you are able to share it and experience it. That's why, whether it's the experience at the sphere that we're doing, or whether it's an idea or a book, you know, the whole book club started because I love books. One of my producers loved books and she said, why don't we just do this with the whole audience? And I go, well, how are we gonna get the audience to read a book? And she said, well, you're gonna tell them to read the book and then you're gonna come back and talk about the book. I was like, you think we could tell people just to read a book? And, and it, and it did.

• 1:08:29Jay Shetty?

  You did it.

• 1:08:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Now we're 30 years later, we're 30 years later.

• 1:08:32Jay Shetty?

  I know you know this, but it's important to say, I hope you know just what an incredible service you've done to the billions of people on the planet that have been affected by you.

• 1:08:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you for that.

• 1:08:42Jay Shetty?

  And the millions of people like me that you've impacted in order for us to do our mission and to perform our service and operate from that.

• 1:08:51Oprah Winfrey?

  But you know what we do? We'd sit around in the room. It used to be, you know, it started out with five of us and 12 of us and, you know, ended up being 580 of us. But we'd sit around the room and say, okay, what's going on in your life? And what's happening at the beauty shop? When you go to there, what are people talking? It's about talking about, and even now.

• 1:09:08Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:09:08Oprah Winfrey?

  Same thing you're doing on your podcast, talking about what is?

• 1:09:12Jay Shetty?

  Everyone talking about?

• 1:09:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes. What is stirring the souls of people?

• 1:09:16Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, what's coming up at the kitchen table? What's coming up at the grocery store?

• 1:09:18Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, what are people talking about? Yeah. You know, one of the most popular, you know, podcasts I've done, was this, this, this idea of no contact with families.

• 1:09:28Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:09:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Which is huge for people. And in the era I was coming up with, when I was, when we were telling this to Gail, Gail goes, I didn't even know that was allowed.

• 1:09:39Jay Shetty?

  I love that. Gail's advice. That's amazing. I didn't know that was allowed.

• 1:09:43Oprah Winfrey?

  I didn't even know you were allowed not to speak to your parents.

• 1:09:45Jay Shetty?

  That's amazing.

• 1:09:46Oprah Winfrey?

  So.

• 1:09:46Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, that started a whole movement. There was a whole conversation.

• 1:09:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Whole, whole, whole thing around, around that. But I think so much of what our shows were built on is like what is resonating in the hearts and minds of people who are watching? What do they want to know? But here's the big secret, okay? About 10 years in, I had a doctor's appointment and couldn't do the two shows a day. I was doing two shows a day. And I realized I couldn't shake hands with the, I would shake, shake hands and do autographs. I would do 350 autographs after every show.

• 1:10:23Jay Shetty?

  After every show, twice.

• 1:10:24Oprah Winfrey?

  So 700. I would just be sitting there autographing and I would just never look up. I was just signing, what's your name? What's your name? What's your name? And then this day I had a doctor's appointment. I came back and I had so much energy. I went, wow, I did not realize how draining that is just to do that for an hour and a half.

• 1:10:41Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely.

• 1:10:42Oprah Winfrey?

  And so I asked myself the most important question. What do I want? I thought, I really don't like doing autographs. But what would I really want to do? I would want to sit and talk to people about where they come from and why they came. And you brought your sister in law, you came with your cousin. Oh, your mother and your, oh, you got your husband to come. Oh, my God. So I started doing that about 10 years in. And the show lifted. It just lifted because all of our ideas were coming from what people were telling us was going on in their lives. So we just started listening. What I heard, Jay, I heard women say over and over

• 1:11:26Oprah Winfrey?

  in one form or another, I did this right. I married right. I did the things I have the kids, but I feel like something's, there's something more. There's something missing. There's something more. There's something missing. And I said to my team, you know, that's a thing. People keep saying it in one form or another. I did this right. I still feel like, huh? I don't know. What else is there for me? I go, what they're missing is the thing within. What they're missing is the connection to spirit. How do we get people to see that for themselves? Even amidst the ridicule of Oprah's trying to start her own church and Oprah's trying to do. We started because I was there. I was looking for that for myself.

• 1:12:07Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:12:07Oprah Winfrey?

  And I know that if I feel it, gotta be a million other people who are also feeling the same thing about, there's gotta be something more. There's something deeper. There's something more profound than just going to work every day and, you know, shuffling along.

• 1:12:21Jay Shetty?

  Oprah, we created a couple of games for you that we wanted to play with you.

• 1:12:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay.

• 1:12:24Jay Shetty?

  This is called interviewer on interviewer because I'm interviewing the interviewer. So this question is, what interview of yours were you most nervous for?

• 1:12:33Oprah Winfrey?

  The most nervous I've ever, ever been was Diana Ross. My very first time interviewing Diana Ross.

• 1:12:42Jay Shetty?

  Because?

• 1:12:43Oprah Winfrey?

  Because I was a little black girl with the hairbrush, watching The Supremes on The Ed Sullivan Show. I was there the first night that they came on. Diana Ross was the first time I'd ever seen a black woman who was beautiful on television. And I just thought, there's a beautiful poem by Nikki Giovanni that says, she went to school and Sunday school and heard about Nebuchadnezzar, who was king of the Jews. She heard about Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fire. And then she heard of Sheba. And she said, ah, wanna be like that. Well, when I saw Diana Ross and The Supremes on The Ed Sullivan Show for the first time, I thought, ah, wanna be like that.

• 1:13:28Oprah Winfrey?

  And it was just, imagine you're living in a world where nobody looks like you.

• 1:13:32Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:13:32Oprah Winfrey?

  Nothing reflected in the world looks like you. Remember that famous concert? Maybe you're not old enough to remember, but she had a famous concert in Central Park where it rained and the water was dripping down her hair. And she was wearing diamond earrings and those great Diana Ross eyes. And her mascara did not run. That was like 70 something because I remember calling, I was working in the newsroom and I called at the credits, her production company, the next day. And I asked them, what was the mascara Diana Ross is wearing?

• 1:14:08Jay Shetty?

  Because it didn't run.

• 1:14:09Oprah Winfrey?

  Because it didn't run.

• 1:14:10Jay Shetty?

  That's so good.

• 1:14:11Oprah Winfrey?

  Lancome waterproof, they told me. And how many carats were those diamond earrings? And they told me 10 carats. So for years, my whole goal was to get 10 carat diamond earrings.

• 1:14:23Jay Shetty?

  Did you get them?

• 1:14:24Oprah Winfrey?

  Like, I got them. Like Diana Ross. So the night before Diana Ross comes on the show, I go to my home and I cry myself out, Jay. I sit in the bathtub and I cry until I like released every kind of emotion. Like pretend she's here and you're speaking to her and now you said this and now you said that. And I just started bawling, crying so that I would not make a fool of myself.

• 1:14:51Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 1:14:51Oprah Winfrey?

  The next day with Diana Ross. And I still cried, but I didn't go into ugly cry. I got my ugly cry out in the tub the night before so that I would not ugly cry. So that's, that's the answer to that. Diana Ross.

• 1:15:02Jay Shetty?

  Which interview deeply impacted you the most?

• 1:15:06Oprah Winfrey?

  A little boy, a little freckle faced boy, whose name I don't remember, but he looked like Opie Taylor from The Andy Griffith Show. He was about seven or eight years old and it was a show on children of divorce. And I remember him saying, he tried to get his mother to stay. He says, I bought her a wing. I bought her a wing and she still didn't stay. And that, that sadness, he started crying and sense of rejection that that little boy felt still, I remember because it had never occurred to me that divorce impacted children so, so strongly. And on that same show, we did adult children of divorce.

• 1:15:50Oprah Winfrey?

  And there are people 40 and 50 years old who still were never told why their parents divorced. And so the shows where I had my own aha moment where I'm like, ah, huh, I didn't, I didn't, I never thought of it that way before.

• 1:16:05Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:05Oprah Winfrey?

  And another show we did with a woman who's daughter had been murdered and she had said she was gonna go home and try and kill herself afterwards. Because she said, my last thing was gonna be doing the Oprah show. And then I was gonna go home and kill myself. And her daughter had been dead for some time. She still hadn't changed the room. And the expert on that show said to her, why don't you start celebrating your daughter's life instead of your daughter's death? And she said, I never thought of it that way before.

• 1:16:36Jay Shetty?

  Wow.

• 1:16:37Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:16:37Jay Shetty?

  So she was inspired by someone else?

• 1:16:38Oprah Winfrey?

  Inspired by that.

• 1:16:39Jay Shetty?

  That's unbelievable.

• 1:16:40Oprah Winfrey?

  So I'm, I'm inspired by those shows where, the reason why we're calling the show at the Sphere, the aha, because there's nothing more exciting to me than an aha moment.

• 1:16:50Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, I agree.

• 1:16:51Oprah Winfrey?

  There's nothing more exciting than.

• 1:16:52Jay Shetty?

  Because you never forget those moments.

• 1:16:54Oprah Winfrey?

  You never forget it.

• 1:16:55Jay Shetty?

  You'll never, ever forget it and you'll know exactly where you were.

• 1:16:57Oprah Winfrey?

  Thousands and thousands and thousands of imprints people left on my heart. I am a fuller, why, more wiser, more humanly expanded being because of my encounters with thousands and thousands of people sharing their stories. And, you know, it has humbled me and allowed me to see the thing that we obviously both know, but allowed me to feel it in my bones and my guts and my spirit. We are, as Maya Angelou always said, more alike than we're different. And I could see the threads. I mean, there's really only like six or seven different stories and just different.

• 1:17:41Jay Shetty?

  That we tell ourselves.

• 1:17:42Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes, yeah.

• 1:17:43Jay Shetty?

  No, what I'm hearing you say though, is that we don't hear people's stories enough. What I'm hearing from you is a life lived.

• 1:17:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:17:50Jay Shetty?

  Listening to, sharing, spotlighting people's stories.

• 1:17:53Oprah Winfrey?

  I have paid attention. I am not just sitting up there talking.

• 1:17:57Jay Shetty?

  Of course.

• 1:17:57Oprah Winfrey?

  I have literally paid attention. One of the things Maya Angelou used to say to me, girl, one of the reasons God has blessed you so much is because you're obedient. I have been, I will say, blessed in my life because I'm obedient to the call of my life. And I would say to anybody who's watching or listening right now, if things feel out of order, it's because you're not paying attention to the true call. You might be paying attention to what is in your head you think you want. But why are you here? Is the most important question you can ask yourself.

• 1:18:38Oprah Winfrey?

  And are you about the business of why you are here? Or are you about somebody else's business? Or are you about your idea of what your business should be? But why are you here? That's really what our whole Sphere event is about. Causing people to deeply research that question for themselves. Zuckoff says this in Seed of the Soul, that when the personality comes to serve, the energy of the soul, its personality aligns with the energy of the soul.

• 1:19:20Oprah Winfrey?

  That is authentic empowerment. And that's the only way you can get it. You can only get it when you're using your personality to serve something that's bigger than yourself. And when you combine your personality with the real reason why you have been called to the planet earth, nobody can stop you. There's nobody like you. There's nobody who's in the vibrational force field. Nobody can stop you. You just become your own phenomenon because you have done the thing that you came to do. And that's what I'm all about, is trying to keep myself on the course of why I really came.

• 1:20:05Oprah Winfrey?

  And did you know this story? The miracle of my life is that my parents never married and they were only together one time.

• 1:20:17Oprah Winfrey?

  I was an afternoon delight on the way home from school. I was a mistake. I was born out of wedlock. I was a bastard child. I was all those things. It was one try.

• 1:20:33Jay Shetty?

  A miracle.

• 1:20:34Oprah Winfrey?

  I was, yeah. But so is everybody.

• 1:20:37Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:20:37Oprah Winfrey?

  So is everybody. I mean, Alan Lightman just wrote this wonderful article in the Atlantic talking about the impossibility of each of us being born. Like, the one sperm hitting that egg in that moment makes you. And he was saying in that article that if you put a ruler from here to Pluto, the possibility of you being born as you is just like a tiny little fragment of an inch of that ruler. And so

• 1:21:04Jay Shetty?

  We're all so rare.

• 1:21:05Oprah Winfrey?

  We're all so rare. And so getting people to understand that for themselves is really what my journey has been about. And now my big offering is about. It's the culmination of getting people to see it. And I've done it, you know, for years on my show, but now to be able to have this masterclass of music and musicians and composers and artists all coming together with this offering of aha.

• 1:21:32Jay Shetty?

  I can't even believe to imagine the level of aha moments people are gonna have in that space.

• 1:21:36Oprah Winfrey?

  I can't either.

• 1:21:38Jay Shetty?

  It's like

• 1:21:39Oprah Winfrey?

  It makes my, it makes my heart rejoice.

• 1:21:41Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, to have the full 360 degree sensory experience and to be with 17,999 other people to do it together. I mean, that's

• 1:21:50Oprah Winfrey?

  It's a dream come true.

• 1:21:52Jay Shetty?

  That's gonna reverberate for, for decades afterwards.

• 1:21:54Oprah Winfrey?

  I hope so.

• 1:21:55Jay Shetty?

  In people's lives.

• 1:21:56Oprah Winfrey?

  I hope so.

• 1:21:56Jay Shetty?

  Like truly.

• 1:21:57Oprah Winfrey?

  And even if it just reverberates for the people, it will reverberate because what happens to you, then you push, push out into the world. But, you know, one of the greatest, most peaceful resolving lessons that I got from my teacher, Maya Angelou, was this lesson about legacy. And when I come back from doing my school, opening my school in 2007, I went to her house and I said, Maya, oh my gosh, I wish you could have been there. Cause she had the flu and she could come. And I said, because it's gonna be, this school is just gonna be my greatest legacy. And she said, you have no idea what your legacy is gonna be. Because your legacy isn't your name on a building. It's not buildings. I said, no, it's not buildings, Maya. It's gonna be the girls. They're gonna be the girls.

• 1:22:42Oprah Winfrey?

  She said, I said, you have no idea. Because it's not just the girls. It's actually every show you've ever done. It's every person you've ever met. It's every life you've ever touched. So your legacy, she said, is not one thing. Jay, she said, your legacy is every life you touch. So I feel like you, you having this platform to speak to people. You have no idea how many people hear something that you say, something that I say, something that all of your guests say, and how that reaches out into the world in such a way. They are moved.

• 1:23:23Oprah Winfrey?

  And for every person who is moved, who is inspired, who is encouraged, who's given some hope, that's your legacy. That's your legacy. It's not the books. It's not the things. It's not the appearances. It's not the, it's every life you touch. And that is true for you and for everyone who's watching and listening to us. It's the work that you do and the kindnesses that you offer into the world and the unkindnesses, you know?

• 1:23:58Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:23:58Oprah Winfrey?

  That thing that Maya also says is that people may forget what you did or what you said. They never forget the way you make them feel. So thank you for doing that so beautifully. You doing that so beautifully.

• 1:24:09Jay Shetty?

  Thank you.

• 1:24:09Oprah Winfrey?

  On purpose.

• 1:24:11Jay Shetty?

  Now I have that in your words, my, my life is perfect. Now I have that in your voice, sorry.

• 1:24:15Oprah Winfrey?

  On purpose. With Jay Shetty.

• 1:24:19Jay Shetty?

  Now that's gonna be on every, Spotify is gonna use that everywhere.

• 1:24:23Oprah Winfrey?

  What does it feel like for you to have reached this pinnacle? Cause this is definitely a pinnacle moment for you. And what does it actually feel like?

• 1:24:32Jay Shetty?

  I feel like I'm at the beginning of where I've not even imagined being. So I feel like I'm at the beginning. It feels like a new responsibility, a new chapter of personal growth and offering of service. And, and a new opportunity to raise our standards and levels and our ability to give more, to serve more, to, to really live with a greater sense of purpose. And to say, this is our moment and opportunity to really push the boundaries on how we can help others and serve others. That's what this has given us.

• 1:25:13Oprah Winfrey?

  Well, I just love the fact that you've used the word serve and service multiple times because that is the key, you know?

• 1:25:19Jay Shetty?

  It's everything.

• 1:25:20Oprah Winfrey?

  It's everything. And I say to anybody who is stuck in life right now, or not knowing where to go or feeling a sense of confusion, that if you switch the paradigm of whatever it is you're doing, to ask the question, how do I use who I am and what I'm doing in service to something bigger than myself? The answer to that will lift you out of whatever it is you're being stuck, won't it?

• 1:25:50Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. I couldn't agree more. When I met the monks, there were two things that appealed to me about them. The first was the mastery of emotions and the mind. And the second was their dedication to service. And half the day was spent in silence and stillness. And the other half was spent in service and offering.

• 1:26:07Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 1:26:08Jay Shetty?

  And that's what moved me because I thought, well, that's life, isn't it? Taking care of your own mind and body and spirit. And then being of service to others, using all of that. It was so simple and it made so much sense to me that to simply use your skills, talents and gifts in the service of others, there's no greater thing.

• 1:26:26Oprah Winfrey?

  There is no

• 1:26:27Jay Shetty?

  There is no greater thing.

• 1:26:28Oprah Winfrey?

  And also no greater fulfillment

• 1:26:30Jay Shetty?

  No.

• 1:26:30Oprah Winfrey?

  For people. I mean,

• 1:26:32Jay Shetty?

  And everything can be used, every talent, every gift, every, whatever you have. I think sometimes people feel like, oh, but I'm not a speaker or I'm not a, a singer or whatever it may be. And it's like, no, you could be an accountant, a lawyer, you know, there's

• 1:26:44Oprah Winfrey?

  And also one of the things I've learned too, have you, you, you probably figured this out too, that the thing that causes people to really experience the deepest sense of awe is when they see moral beauty, when they see someone in service to someone else and they didn't have to be.

• 1:26:58Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:26:59Oprah Winfrey?

  You know, you see those guys and women handing, you know, one bag to the other in a flood or hurricane and they're out there helping their neighbors. And it warms your heart because you know, that could be you. And yeah, I mean, it's those acts of moral beauty and service that really cause us to feel.

• 1:27:17Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, you're reminding me of, there's this beautiful statement from Emerson where he said, plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit.

• 1:27:25Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:27:25Jay Shetty?

  And I love that.

• 1:27:26Oprah Winfrey?

  That is my philosophy.

• 1:27:27Jay Shetty?

  That, yeah, I fully agree. It's like, that's the greatest

• 1:27:29Oprah Winfrey?

  Come to my house and you will see all the trees I planted under whose shade I will not sit. Eventually, you know, that, those, they're gonna grow. I've done like tree tunnels that, yeah, like 20 years from now, when I'm no longer here, they will be flourishing, but that, that's what you do. Yes, I believe that.

• 1:27:46Jay Shetty?

  We're here 20 years from now.

• 1:27:48Oprah Winfrey?

  Okay, well, yeah, 20 and I'll be 90.

• 1:27:50Jay Shetty?

  We love it. We love it. No one will have better energy. Oprah, we end every interview with a final five. These questions have to be answered in one sentence. So Oprah Winfrey, these are your final five. The first question is, what is the best advice you've ever heard or received?

• 1:28:05Oprah Winfrey?

  Best advice I ever heard was from Maya Angelou, who said, baby, when people show you who they are, you need to believe them

• 1:28:16Jay Shetty?

  Yes.

• 1:28:17Oprah Winfrey?

  The first time. Your problem is, takes you about 29 times and they're still showing you the same thing. So when people show you who they are, believe them the first time.

• 1:28:31Jay Shetty?

  Second question is, if you could save every couple one unnecessary argument, what would you tell them?

• 1:28:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Mirror back to the person, your validation for what you've heard. Because my greatest lesson coming from the Oprah show was that all of us are looking to be seen, to be heard, and to know that we matter. And if you can let a person in the midst of, when the argument starts, or the, the discussion gets heated, you mirror back to them, I hear you. What you're saying to me is, you want me to do blank, blank, blank. I hear that. I don't think I could do it. Or I do think I could do it, or I think I can do it in this time. But mirroring back to the person and validating that they are being heard,

• 1:29:21Oprah Winfrey?

  you do see them and what they're saying actually matters to you, whether you can do it or not. If you can do that, you can end a lot of arguments because that's what everybody is looking for.

• 1:29:31Jay Shetty?

  Yeah, so true.

• 1:29:33Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, they're just looking to know, do, but you're not hearing me. You're not hearing me. You're not listening to me. You say, yeah, I'm listening to you. This is what you're saying.

• 1:29:41Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:29:42Oprah Winfrey?

  And then you mirror it back. You're saying that and now I'm saying this. Can you hear that?

• 1:29:47Jay Shetty?

  Question number three. If you had to choose a life of only certainty or only curiosity, which one would you choose and why?

• 1:29:56Oprah Winfrey?

  Curiosity. Yeah. One of my favorite sayings is happiness is having something to look forward to. And reason you're looking forward to it is because you're curious about how it's going to fulfill itself. And so I love the idea of being curious. If I had already known this was gonna happen, how do you continue with the same amount of vigor and determination and all? I think it's the curiosity that allows for the adventure. Otherwise it's just like, let me sit back and wait on that plane to come.

• 1:30:31Jay Shetty?

  It's funny, though, because we live in opposites sometimes.

• 1:30:34Oprah Winfrey?

  Yes.

• 1:30:34Jay Shetty?

  We live wishing everything was certain.

• 1:30:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Was certain, yeah.

• 1:30:37Jay Shetty?

  That it's true. If you actually only had a life of certainty.

• 1:30:41Oprah Winfrey?

  Then what is there to aspire to?

• 1:30:42Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. There'd be no movement.

• 1:30:44Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:30:44Jay Shetty?

  Question number four. What's more difficult, forgiving yourself or forgiving someone else?

• 1:30:49Oprah Winfrey?

  Definitely forgiving myself. I can forgive other people. Best definition I ever heard for forgiveness also came from the show, giving up the hope that the past could be any different. Give up the hope that the past could be any different. So, so many people are still stuck because they're hoping, wishing, in denial about, and aggravated because it was, it happened the way it happened. Give up the hope that it could be any different and get to acceptance. Forgiveness really is, is allowing yourself to move forward.

• 1:31:32Oprah Winfrey?

  You forgive not for the other person, you forgive for yourself so that you are not stuck holding on to the thing. Yeah.

• 1:31:39Jay Shetty?

  So good.

• 1:31:39Oprah Winfrey?

  Isn't that a good one?

• 1:31:40Jay Shetty?

  So good. We need a book of Oprah-isms from the show where it defines every word.

• 1:31:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:31:47Jay Shetty?

  Like, almost like a glossary of like, you know, like an index.

• 1:31:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Oh, well, that's a lot of work.

• 1:31:51Jay Shetty?

  Because you have some beautiful definitions. You're talking about definitions of intention, forgiveness.

• 1:31:55Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah, but I have learned so much. I was paying, I mean, I feel like I do sit in a wise seat right now that I have earned.

• 1:32:03Jay Shetty?

  Yes, absolutely.

• 1:32:03Oprah Winfrey?

  Because I was paying attention. I wasn't just doing a show. I was paying attention. I was listening, listening, listening, listening with my inner heart and inner ear and discernment, with a sense of discernment, which I think is what's missing from the world is people don't have discernment. So I learned through the show in determining, oh, is this person telling the truth? Is this person now just trying to make up something? Is this person, you know, a great sense of discernment? And that's been really very helpful to me.

• 1:32:36Jay Shetty?

  Yes, absolutely. A fifth and final question. What's the aha moment that you want the world to have right now?

• 1:32:43Oprah Winfrey?

  That you are the light you seek. You're the one you've been waiting for. It's right there.

• 1:32:48Jay Shetty?

  It's within you.

• 1:32:49Oprah Winfrey?

  It's within you.

• 1:32:50Jay Shetty?

  Inside you, yeah.

• 1:32:51Oprah Winfrey?

  It's within you because you come from the greater source. And there is no disconnection unless you refuse to see the connection. And so the light is within that you're seeking. Yeah. And we're gonna show it to you with the screen.

• 1:33:06Jay Shetty?

  Absolutely. Tell us the dates again, please.

• 1:33:08Oprah Winfrey?

  April 2nd.

• 1:33:09Jay Shetty?

  April 2nd.

• 1:33:10Oprah Winfrey?

  3rd, 4th. Get your tickets now. Ignite the light.

• 1:33:13Jay Shetty?

  I love it.

• 1:33:14Oprah Winfrey?

  This has been delightful. We have to do it in real time, though. You have to.

• 1:33:17Jay Shetty?

  I would love to.

• 1:33:18Oprah Winfrey?

  And you have to come sit under the trees.

• 1:33:20Jay Shetty?

  I would love to.

• 1:33:21Oprah Winfrey?

  I have got some trees.

• 1:33:22Jay Shetty?

  Anytime.

• 1:33:23Oprah Winfrey?

  I've got some trees.

• 1:33:24Jay Shetty?

  I would love that. And I would love to do this again, online, offline.

• 1:33:27Oprah Winfrey?

  Online, offline. I mean, really, we could talk. We got some stories.

• 1:33:30Jay Shetty?

  I could talk for more. I could talk to you for three more hours.

• 1:33:32Oprah Winfrey?

  I could, I could.

• 1:33:33Jay Shetty?

  I'm just being respectful of your time. Like, I could.

• 1:33:36Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you for giving me all this time, sitting up here on Netflix.

• 1:33:40Jay Shetty?

  No, this is amazing. You're, you're, this was, uh, this was a joy to my heart.

• 1:33:44Oprah Winfrey?

  And you're right, it is just the beginning.

• 1:33:46Jay Shetty?

  It is just the beginning, yeah.

• 1:33:47Oprah Winfrey?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:48Jay Shetty?

  Yeah.

• 1:33:49Speaker 02

  Mr. President, my company told me of the explosion on our rig on October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami.

• 1:33:56Jay Shetty?

  They all heap the blame on me.

• 1:33:58Speaker 02

  Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess, and Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:34:06Speaker 03

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You start, you freeze in there. That's what.

• 1:34:10Speaker 02

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:34:13Speaker 03

  I'm not the first daddy.

• 1:34:14Speaker 02

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only appears October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a minute without parent.

• 1:34:19Speaker 04

  Espolón Tequila. It arrives in a cloud of feathers with a cry to wake the dead. Espolón Tequila. Balanced, delicious. Perfect for nights out, nights in, and people who like to drink tequila. Just add ice, lime, and your mouth, then hold on tight. 100% agave, 0% ego. Espolón Tequila. For a real margarita, ride the rooster.

• 1:34:43Speaker 05

  Espolón Tequila, 40% alcohol by volume, 80 proof. Copyright 2026. Comparia America, New York, New York. Drink responsibly.

• 1:34:49Jay Shetty?

  Our relationship too.

• 1:34:50Oprah Winfrey?

  Our relationship.

• 1:34:51Jay Shetty?

  Really special way. But yeah, thank you.

• 1:34:52Oprah Winfrey?

  Thank you.

• 1:34:53Jay Shetty?

  I pray you the best. Thank you.