Oprah Winfrey's Commandments for Success

Disclaimer: I take no credit for this article. I am publishing it in my blog because it fits in with the theme of my blog and I admire Oprah's success. The source of this article is mentioned in the end.

1) Don’t let others define you or tell you what you can’t do.Oprah Winfrey said: “Nobody had any clue that my life could be anything but working in some factory or a cotton field in Mississippi. Nobody.” For her entire life people have been telling Winfrey what she can’t do— and why. But Winfrey hasn’t listened to them. Rather, she says, she listens to her own instincts. “Gut [instinct] is what got me where I am today,” she said in 1998.

2) Take responsibility for your life.That doesn’t mean you have to absolve others of wrongdoing if you’ve experienced that in your life. It just means you still have to overcome it. As a victim of sexual abuse, Oprah Winfrey had the triggers that have led countless others to drug and alcohol addictions. But Winfrey wasn’t looking to check out from life; she was looking to lead a productive and fulfilling life. She took responsibility for how her life would turn out. “I think of myself as somebody who from an early age knew I was responsible for myself, and I had to make good,” she said.

3) Embrace God.Oprah Winfrey said: “There’s only one way I’ve been able to survive being raped, molested…only one way to cope with fears of pregnancy, my mother on welfare…my faith in God got me through.” Reading the Bible has been part of Winfrey’s everyday routine. She has said: “I act as if everything depends upon me and pray as if everything depends on God.”

4) Have compassion for others.Winfrey had a compassion she just couldn’t, and maybe didn’t want to, hide. While this was considered a “negative” for a news anchor by her bosses, it proved to be one of her great strengths as a talk show host.

5) Study the competition.When Winfrey was starting out, Phil Donahue was the king of the talk shows. “I watched Phil every day to see what I could learn,” she said.

6) Just be yourself.Winfrey’s genius lay in just being herself. She said, “My head hurts when I have to be in any situation where people are being phony. So if I can’t be myself and take my shoes off when my feet hurt, then I’m not going to do very well.”

7) Live your life with passion.Winfrey’s audience could see that from the start she was engaged in something she loved when she was doing her show. “I’m a person who lives my life with great passion, and I think that comes across on camera. …I believe you’re here to live your life with passion. Otherwise, you’re just traveling through the world blindly—and there’s no point in that.”

8) Pursue quality in your work first—money will follow.Pursue the work you love, which allows you to do it to the best of your ability. It is only then that money will follow. Today Winfrey’s net worth is estimated at around one billion dollars, making her one of the wealthiest women in the world. But the pursuit of money was never her objective, only the pursuit of quality. “Part of the reason why I am as successful as I have been [is] because success wasn’t the goal. The process was. I wanted to do good work,” she said.

9) Have a generous heart.After the murder of four-year-old Angelica Mena at the hands of a convicted child abuser, Winfrey hired former Illinois governor James Thompson to draft a 1aw that would create a national registry of people convicted of child abuse. Winfrey then lobbied hard for it. In December 1993, the National Child Protection Act, which was nicknamed the “Oprah Bill,” became law. Winfrey has also used her wealth to give her family better quality of life and to help needy and worthy students attend college on scholarships, in addition to other numerous charitable causes. “Education is freedom, and that is one way you can make a huge difference in someone’s life,” she said.

10) Read.As a little girl, Winfrey could almost always be found with a book in her hand. Reading brought her comfort and perspective, especially when she was young and troubled. “Books showed me there were possibilities in life, that there were actually people like me living in a world I could not only aspire to but attain. Reading gave me hope. For me, it was the open door.”

11) Continue to grow—personally and professionally.By 1990 Winfrey decided that her topics, which had helped bring her to the top, were for the most part too frivolous. She wanted to do shows of more substance that made a difference in people’s lives. By growing as a host, Winfrey has stayed influential and relevant. “I want to use television not only to entertain, but to help people lead better lives. I realize now, more than ever, that the show is the best way to accomplish these goals,” she said.

12) Guard against hypocrisy.In January 1995, during a show that dealt with a guest talking about her drug use, Winfrey admitted her own drug use when she was in her early twenties. She called it her “great shame.” She said: “I would have felt like a hypocrite, not saying [I had smoked cocaine], talking to people about baring their souls and standing there like I didn’t know what they were talking about.” Regarding her relationship with her half-sister, Patricia Lee, who sold the tabloids the story of Winfrey’s teenage pregnancy and her premature baby’s subsequent death, Winfrey said: “I didn’t feel I could continue to go on the air speaking to people about forgiveness if I couldn’t do it myself. There was a lot of pain, a lot of stuff let out. But I did it so that we could go on and live with each other.”

13) Strive to be the best.“The greatest contribution you can make to women’s rights, to civil rights, is to be the absolute…best at what you do,” Winfrey said.

Source: http://lovemorenyatsine.wordpress.com/watering-your-spirit/