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I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time taking time to be more fully present, your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us. Starts right now.

The meaning of wisdom for me is recognizing the moment when what you know aligns perfectly with what you feel. That powerful flash of clarity telling you the right decision to make originates from only one source.

You with a capital y. There is the little you, your personality, and the greater you spelled with a capital y your soul. The people you love and trust most will hopefully always be there to offer advice, but you are on your own journey responsible for charting your own course. Whenever I felt most tested, lost or unsure of my own direction, these words from Invictus, which I memorized at eight years old, have been a way forward. I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

With every decision, you are steering your own ship beneath all of those protective layers built up between you and the world lives an inner voice that goes by many names. Some call it instinct or intuition. I call that persistent. Knowing our spiritual GPS, it acts as our internal compass designed to help you move through life. No matter what distractions or obstacles get in your way, your GPS is always turned on. Whether you're headed on the right track or about to take a destructive turn, your emotional guidance system let you know.

Every right decision I have ever made has come from listening to my gut, every wrong decision was a result of me dismissing that small still voice within me. Your life speaks to you in whispers that little nudge saying, hmm, something doesn't feel right. If you ignored those whispers, turn into pebbles thrown at you, warning there's a problem, there's a problem, danger ahead, if those signs remain unexamined, you will inevitably experience what feels like a heavy brick to the head.

Shutting out the brick guarantees disaster will eventually strike, you will see your life come crashing down like a brick wall. I've seen this happen so often in my own life, I now try to respond immediately at the first whisper. What every one of these Super Bowl Sunday conversations has taught me is that no matter who you are, if you've been faking your way through life, ignoring your inner compass, the wake up call can be harsh.

Job loss, the end of a relationship. Money problems, disruption in any form, no matter how devastating. These are also opportunities to stop sleepwalking through your life, to wake up and pay attention to the red flags, the whispers, the pebbles and bricks along the way. Your real purpose on Earth is to become more of who you really are, to live to the highest degree, what is pure, what is honest, what is natural, what feels like the real you.

You know, you found it when every cell in your body vibrates with your own truth, when you're filled up by what you're doing instead of being drained by it. Follow your instincts, that's where true wisdom unfolds, we start with Michael Beckwith, let's talk about vibration.

You use it a lot in your teaching and I noticed, like everybody, Tagab is on a same vibrational frequency and using that language.

And I don't know when it was I first got it that there is an energy and a frequency to everything. Yes.

And that your whole role and goal in life is to line up with whatever is the frequency that is going to allow you to move in the flow of your your own life.

How did you discover this is back in the eighties? I started using that terminology because I became aware that we are vibrational beings. We're not just flesh and blood. If you put anything under an intense microscope, you can ultimately see that everything is vibration. And as the scientists are now telling us, there's information there, but it's not solid. It's always moving. So we're vibrational beings. So as you were just saying, when we lift our vibration to what we want to experience, it happens first on a vibratory level and then it shows up and manifest in our life.

So people who are holding on to Ranko animosity, they're slowing down their vibration. Just had an aha there.

You're actually when you recognize your vibrational frequency, you're drawing into yourself all the time, literally the vibration that is most like what you're putting out. Right, correct. Right. Another way of saying is you cannot have which you're not willing to become vibrationally.

Oh, if you do get it, you'll lose it. Oh, this is why people that win the lottery, they lose everything, but they'll finally get the person they think absolutely can't keep that can't keep the relationship or they'll get a modicum of success but can't hold onto it because inside they weren't vibrationally aligned, they really hadn't become it. So you can temporarily manipulate and get things, but who have it completely, you have to lift your vibration and become that vibration.

Oh, that's so good. You need to repeat.

It is so good. Isn't that like hallelujah. That is so good. You're not really attracting things to you.

You're really radiating. Oh it's really a radiation cry right now.

I felt that so strongly that that's going to resonate with a lot of people. Yeah. You're radiating it from within out. It's like if I become the vibrational frequency of love, harmony, peace, and I'm radiating that, that's the key. It's going to show up in my life. That's the key. That's the word. You're not attracting it. You have to beat it and radiate it. And then it is drawn to you, right? I'm used to it.

So then the work then becomes about you work it on yourself. Yes. Yeah. You have to like yourself when you're by yourself. Yeah. You have to like yourself. I mean when you're by yourself, you have to look at those thoughts. They're beautiful thoughts, the crazy thoughts. You have to embrace yourself. You have to forgive yourself. You have to love yourself. And when you can fall in love with yourself and like yourself, when you're by yourself, now you can be with others.

But if you don't like yourself, when you're by yourself, then you're pulling on others to make you happy. Next, Carolyn Mays. If you saw everything about your life as a learning, as a lesson, as I'm looking for truth, I'm looking for is does this drain power? And my empowering with every choice I make, I'm either choosing to grace somebody or withhold it to give power or to take it back.

If people understand that every single thing, I'm either going to learn something from this or I'm not.

So every single choice we make is either going to enhance the spirit, right. Or it's going to drain totally the spirit. There's nothing in between. There is nothing in between. Well, give me one choice that could be in between. There isn't there isn't.

There isn't another way to say that is either you either walking in the direction of love or you're walking away like you're walking to fear.

And there is no other choice. Even if you're in a grocery store and you're thinking, should I buy this or not? And your gut says, you know, you can't eat that and you decide, I'm not going to listen to that voice right there. Even in that tiny thing, you've walked toward fear. Wow. Because you what? You've blocked your intuitive.

So every day in the smallest of ways and the largest of ways. Yeah.

We're either giving ourselves power or detract from it.

So how do you know when you are on the right path and what dream belongs to you or what husband belongs to you or what job belongs to you?

You know, you're on the right path. Here's your clue. You're not put in a position to betray yourself. You don't betray yourself anymore, you're not put in a position where you feel like you have to negotiate your sense of integrity.

Which is an act of betrayal, your heart, an act of betrayal. You don't feel like you have to compromise who you are. It feels right. I got that.

It's like if you're at a job, you know, you're really gifted and talented people are not paying you for what you value yourself to be.

You come into work every day feeling like I'm really not valued. I'm not being respected for what I do or my bosses unkind or whatever the situation might be. There's an unease with you.

That's right. Yeah. And so when you have more respect for yourself, put yourself in a position where you can feel your sense of value or worth. Right. That turns around. That's right.

And that's how you know, you know, you know, because you don't feel like this isn't costing me my power. This isn't costing me my psyche. This isn't costing me my soul. OK, this is really good. This is costing me my sense of I don't feel confused in some deep level. I'm not drained.

I can be tired after a day's work, but I'm not psychically drained where I feel like I'm losing life. This is Cheryl Strayed when my mother died. It brought me to what I think of as my most savage self, it stripped me of the thing I needed. My mother was the taproot of my life and suddenly I didn't have that anymore. And I had a wild love for my mother. I had wild sorrow. And then I went wild.

I went wild into my life.

So this is halfway into your trek after you bypass the Stockton High Sierras, you were soaking in a rare bathroom reflecting someone was in here. You say it was me. I was here. I felt in a way I hadn't in ages, the me inside of me occupying my spot in the fathomless Milky Way.

Yeah, yeah. I saw myself.

I felt myself in the universe. And I think so much of. Where I began this journey is I keep using this word lost, I was I was I didn't know where I was. You'd been so numb, didn't know where to place myself numbed. And also, you know, I think to so much of this goes back to that essential primal need that we all have to feel that we belong in our first definition of how we belong is given to us through our mother and our father.

And I didn't have either of those people anymore. And so who was. I am. Where was I? Oh, I was just lost in that Milky Way. And so when I felt myself located, that was the beginning of my rebirth in my sense of redefinition of my place in the world.

Now we'll hear from President Jimmy Carter. You said that you were praying, man, and you never prayed more than you did when you were in the White House. What is your fervent prayer?

What is the prayer that resides in your heart?

That I can use the best of my talent and ability and influence to enhance the kingdom of God on Earth, which I believe comprises peace and freedom and the alleviation of suffering human rights.

What's interesting is, you know, a lot of people feel like they have the weight of the world on their shoulders. They feel a burden. But when you are president of the United States, you literally have the weight of the world on your shoulders. Did you feel that constantly aware of that? Yeah. Yes, I did. I knew that I had the biggest military force in the world and the most influence and economics and politics and culture than perhaps any other human being on Earth.

And I wanted to use it wisely and with maximum possible element of humility and be aware of how my decisions could affect other people for the better or worse. So what role did your faith play in all of your works? Well, I tried to put my faith into practical application when I was in the White House and also when I was already a governor and so forth. When was it tested the most? Your faith when the hostages were being held and when I was urged by almost all of my advisors, including my wife, that I should take military action against Iran.

And I felt that my Christian faith called on me to avoid using military action when I didn't have to. And I was lucky that when I was president, we never dropped a bomb and never fired a missile. We never shot a bullet. Dr. Robin Smith. At the end of the day, do you feel closer to God? Mm hmm. Closer to yourself? Yes. Do you feel that this journey of being hungry and searching for what would feed you?

Do you feel that you're now home?

I feel closer to God. I feel whole. But what I'd like to say to you and to everyone listening is this. We don't want to think that Holness is a one time deal, right, wholeness and consciousness being awake in this moment. I got to choose that in this moment. And then and the next breath, I mean, our next sentence. I still have to re choose, am I going to go back to sleep or in the next breath, will I still be awake to myself?

To nature, to creation, to God and to you. And so, yes, I'm home, but not home in a way that where I think, oh, let me sit back and say that everything's everything's taken care of. No, well, I'm not going to have any more problems now.

How did you do the work, though? How did you get to there? I mean, I did a lot of things. I meditated, I prayed. I went to therapy, which I had done before, but I did it differently. I did it awake. I did it not covering up. I did it not rescripting abuse and neglect because neglected. I did it knowing I am in a hole and I got to get myself out and I have to get myself out.

Right. No one else can pull me out of this hole. And in this way it is my sanctuary where I will learn to be still, to be quiet, to listen not only to the voice of God, but to learn to listen to what is my own true and authentic voice to learn. What does that voice sound like? Many of us don't even know what our true voice sounds like. We're so unplugged. I was so unplugged that I couldn't tell.

So am I wrong? Am I bad? Am I mean, am I scared? Well, if I know my own voice, I don't know where I am and I'm just going to pay attention to that. To that. I don't have to understand it. I don't have to analyze it. I don't have to know the origin of it. I just have to trust it. Right. Trust it and trust me. Mastin, Kipe, I know you have said, Mastin, that addicts are just looking for God and all the wrong places.

Yes, I think so. I believe so. When I was going through my own addiction with drugs and alcohol, I was really wanting to be happy. That's all I really wanted. And there was so much guilt and shame around what I had done. I believe everyone has a God sized hole inside of them that we try to fill with shopping or with a relationship or food or sex or drugs. And it's not out there. It's in here.

And it's an internal connection. And that's what a spiritual practice. That's what listening to your intuition, having a creative expression and being of service is all about. That is how you sustainably fill up your God sized hole. Otherwise, it's like a drop that's disconnected from the ocean. You just wither and die. Elizabeth Gilbert, so was it just this sort of unsettling with yourself that was unreal combination? Yeah, it was a combination of things that had incompatibilities that that had occurred.

But I won't lay that on him because the reality is that it was much more of an internal volcano than it was anything else. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It was about that. I had woken up to the fact that that my life no longer resembled me and that it was finally going to get worse. Let's just hold that a moment. My life no longer resembled it didn't look like me. I had friends who came to my house and said, I can't believe you live in this house.

And I would say, no, it's great like that. Yeah. You know, that's great. I'm really happy, but it's not. And the deal breaker was that we were talking about having kids. And I think one thing that had happened as I had advanced on the trail toward marriage is something that happens to a lot of women, which is that I was ambivalent in many of these key moments in my life. I felt ambivalent. I was an equal yes and no.

I want to do this. I don't want to do this. I didn't want to hold up the train of progress. So I just always said yes, yes. And I never knew at that age in my 20s that I don't know is actually a legitimate answer that you're allowed to say. You're allowed to say, I don't know and you're allowed to ask for as much time as you need until you do know. And if somebody doesn't want to give you that time, they're allowed to leave.

But you're allowed to sit with your I don't know. And I never sat with it because it was uncomfortable. Nobody likes that place. And so I always said, yes, oh, sure. Let's move in together, let's get married, let's buy a house, let's do all the stuff that I was sort of half. Yes, half now. And when it came to Let's Have a kid, that's where I thought I cannot make that decision from a place of yes and no.

That has to be a yes or it can't happen. Marianne Williamson, the one thing that lived in me from return to love was that poignant moment when you said we were either walking in the direction of love or the direction of fear. And I got that so deeply that it really transformed me that there really are only two emotions. And for the rest of my life, I always recognize when I'm walking in the direction of love and the direction of fear.

Yeah.

So the passage that I love the most and that has been quoted the most, I think, from you is our deepest fears. Not that we are inadequate, our deepest fears that we are powerful beyond measure.

So when you wrote that, that came from what part of yourself that you knew that part of that is this fear that we might offend somebody else, that somehow if I have that you have less rather than realizing that if I'm living in the light of my own true being, it actually subconsciously liberates you to live in the light of your true being. The course of miracles talks about how what's true in the material world is the exact opposite of what's true in the spiritual world.

So in the material world, there are only so many pieces of the pie that I have a piece of the pie you have left. But in the spiritual world, the more I'm able to actualize and that's what enlightenment is itself, actualisation, actualizing the love that is in our hearts, the more I self actualize. I mean to look at your career as such an example. And that is true for every person. Yeah.

Sue Monk Kidd. The soul often speaks through, at least for me, through longing. Yeah. And when the soul longs it's trying to tell you something. But I think the soul speaks through what pulls us that allure. Your longing, the restlessness.

Yes. And often I remember too there's so many people can relate to this. I remember when I was a young reporter and every day I would get up and I'd go out and cover the stories. And I was on the news and it felt so out of alignment for me. I always knew that there was something more for me to do because my friend Gail, who we met at the same time that she loved it, she loved it. She felt so at home with that.

She was so inquisitive and curious and loved. And for me it felt like I'm in the wrong space. I felt sort of out of alignment. I'm wondering if when you were a nurse, which is such an honorable calling, and for people who are supposed to be doing that, nobody can do it better. Did you feel out of alignment being a nurse? As I felt being a reporter, I did.

I felt that I was not in my place of belonging. Yeah, that is a big thing for me to be in my place of belonging. In fact, all of my characters are always looking for their place of belonging. I think this is the big journey and I was looking for so good.

Yeah, we all are looking for where do I belong, where do I belong to? I mean, what is fate if not paying attention to what we belong to? Yeah.

So I think when I was a nurse, which is the most noble thing in the world, there isn't any greater sacrifice and giving your time and your energy to the helping and healing of other people.

I know I wanted it to work, but I felt out of line. I felt like I wasn't in that place of belonging. And it just took me a while to. Were you a good nurse? I was pretty good nurse. I cared, you know, I did my best.

Timothy Shriver.

Normal, normal, normal. The tyranny of that word. You know, it's just like it's a cancer in the culture. Yeah. Normal. Are you normal? Are you fitting in? Are you like everyone else? My God.

It's terrifying. And yet we all feel that.

So we come to these games expecting to be sad. We come to them expecting to feel pity. We say things like there but for the grace of God go I. People say that well intentioned to me all the time. Yep, yep, yep. And I always want to say to them that pity that fear that that embodies that I'm healthy and they're not. I think there's a strength and vulnerability that only vulnerability knows. I think in some ways the whole Special Olympics gamble is, is there a power in vulnerability and trust?

And I think the answer of our athletes is there is only power in vulnerability and trust. The other power is superficial and locks people up. It puts people behind bars, social, cultural, political, interpersonal. There is only power. I grew up. Everybody's in the spotlight. That's where we all wanted to get to. That's where you would be successful. And what I saw was sometimes, you know, when the lights are the brightest, people feel the most invisible.

I think sometimes where you think you want to go is not the place where you will find your most heartfelt, most meaningful, most purposeful life. I think sometimes it's in the places you think. I mean, I looked around thinking I wanted to be like all those people in lights. And I found myself happiest in places nobody wanted to be. I'm Oprah Winfrey, and you've been listening to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast you can follow Super Soul on Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.

If you haven't yet, go to Apple podcast and subscribe rate and review this podcast. Join me next week for another super soul conversation. Thank you for listening.