Extended interview: Oprah Winfrey on life lessons, the road to happiness and new book

Hi, I'm Nora O'Donnell and this is person to person our guest today is Oprah.

Oprah Winfrey is a powerhouse and media icon hosting the Oprah Winfrey show for 25 years and interviewing more than 37,000 people during the show's run. She is one of the most influential and famous people in the world. Oprah retired from her daily TV show in 2011 launching her media empire which now includes the Oprah Winfrey Network, O Magazine, Oprah's book club and lifestyle website Oprah Daily. She's also an author. Oprah has written over a dozen books about self care

and healing. Now she's coming out with a new book with Harvard professor Arthur Brooks called build the life you want the art and science of getting happier. So we visited Central Park.

Those are the things that make you the happiest. They make me the happiest bread and trees in a cafe in New York City for an intimate person to person conversation about the road to happiness. So good to see you. So good to see you. I was a philosophy major and Aristotle of course talks about the power of reflection. So to hear you reflect about everything you learned on

the show and as you write in the book. The Oprah Winfrey show is a

front row seat to unhappiness. Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. You know, I learned it was my greatest classroom. I've never had a therapist, but I had so many therapists on the show. I got my therapy from the Oprah show and I learned so much. So when I first started having conversations with families from, you know, different walks of life, that's when I came to understand that there is a common bond that we all share, that we're all really

seeking the same things. And knowing that that thing was happiness came from the show. And every day I would sit and talk with the audience for a half hour, sometimes 40 minutes. A producer would be like, oh my God, when is she going to let go of the audience? What I really want is to have a conversation with the audience to see why did you come? And what did you get from the show?

And did you benefit at all? And why do you watch all of that? So 10 years in the audience became my focus group. I would always ask people, what do you want? What would it take to make you happy? And most people, when I say, what do you want? They just say, I just want to be happy. Tell me what that looks like. And as the years progressed, women were more able to identify what that specifically was. But when I first started asking that question in

the mid nineties, they would always just say, well, I just want to be happy. I just want to be happy. Well, what does that look like? Define it. Define happiness. Define it. And what I realized is that most people have never defined it. And then they'd say, well, I want my kids to be happy. Well, that's your kids. But what do you want? And so being able to answer specifically what that looks like for you is the beginning of being happier. You know, I used to always think that I would be

happy going to Broadway because I thought that's just a natural progression. You gotta, you gotta do Broadway. When the show ended, I was, I was like, gotta do Broadway, gotta do Broadway. And I remember the Tony Kushner sent me a play. I've never shared the stories. And after a while, I started to realize I really don't know how I'm going to do this play every night for eight shows a week. I don't know how I'm going to do that. And I don't even

love the play as much as I love the idea that it was Tony Kushner.

Mm hmm. And the idea of being on Broadway. So I then really started to examine for myself, what would that look like for me being in New York? Where would I walk my dogs? Where would I live?

Where would I go to the grocery store? If I can't be surrounded by the park, how am I going to really exist? Just getting around the city was, was always overwhelming for me. So I made a conscious choice for my happiness early in my career that New York would not be the place that I would seek. My dream was Chicago. And so the very idea of being in a place where I felt like I could, I could

take roots, was, was, was what I was looking for to make myself feel secure, solid, confident. So on that, in terms of what you

said, that defining happiness, because that's part of, I feel like what this book does in the beginning is exactly what you just said. It said, happiness is not, I want to be happy. You got to, what is it? Yeah. What does it look like for you? So what, how do you define happiness? Well, you call it happier-ness.

Yeah, I call it happier-ness. Because as Arthur explains in the book, none of us can be happy all the time. But I will say that I

have reached a level of enjoyment, contentment, satisfaction, and purpose, that I'm pretty much happy all the time, even though I have negative feelings. And one of the things I think that he expresses so well in this book is being able to identify your negative feeling versus believing that that is a constant state of mind for you or happiness or unhappiness. So the fact that I have

a bad emotion or bad feelings, but can observe those feelings and then change them.

You wrote in the book that the heart of the Oprah Winfrey show was that it was a classroom.

Mmm, yeah. And I think the heart of me is really a teacher.

One of the big lessons I learned from the show was this, that after every conversation, no matter who it was, in one form or another, that person would say, how was that? Was that okay?

Mm-hmm.

That happened the first time Beyoncé taught me to twerk.

Yes.

At the end of it, she handed me the mic and she goes, was that okay?

I went, you're Beyoncé, it's very much okay.

I learned to twerk.

And then it happened when I was interviewing a father who had abused his children. At the end of it, he goes, was that all right?

Mm-hmm.

Obama's like, is it good? Is it good?

Yeah.

And so what I started to see was that there was this thread that connected all of the conversations and that what people were really saying, they were looking for a validation, like, was that all right? Did you hear me? And did what I say matter?

And I just could, I could tell you after every interview, I'm sure it happens to you in one form or another, a person, the people were looking to say, was that okay?

Why do you think we're in a happiness slump in America?

Ooh, I will tell you, one of the most profound reasons, I think, is because everybody is looking at other people's social media, what they believe to be other people's lives, which is only a snapshot of other people's lives, and feeling envy about that. And one of the things that Arthur and I talk about in this book is that envy is the great destroyer.

The happiness killer.

It is the happiness killer. And so any time you, any time you're looking at anything else with envy, you have already killed your own happiness or your ability to be happier in that moment and probably in moments to come.

So I, coming from where I've come from, rural Mississippi, never imagining the life that I have, for a long time, I have felt that I had enough, even though I kept getting more.

But inside myself, I feel that I am enough, which is one of the great lessons.

What is at the root of most people's dysfunction is that you don't think that you're good enough.

You don't think that you're worthy. You don't own your own essence and your own power.

You write, one must recognize that the person in control of your happiness is and forever will be you.

I wonder, how would you advise, given everything that you've been through in your life and talked about in your childhood, how does one take agency over their life and their happiness?

Oh, I love this question. I know this, that many of the things that have happened to you have also happened for you.

And that I learned when the crisis or the challenge showed up for me, I immediately would ask, sometimes out loud, but certainly in my own conscious spirit, what is this here to teach me?

And how can I get that lesson as soon as possible?

And this, I guarantee you, the moment you have the conscious realization of, oh, this is why this is here, showing up to allow me to see whatever that is in your life, it changes for you.

Unhappiness is not the enemy.

No, it is not the enemy. The unhappiness, and if, actually, one of the things that's so powerful, I think, about what Arthur has written specifically is about how your emotions are there to allow you to feel the feel and then take the wheel of this feeling that I'm having. I'm having this feeling, and now I need to do what?

And not to allow yourself to be overcome by the feeling.

So you have a feeling of anger, you have a feeling of sadness, you have a feeling of disappointment.

It doesn't mean you are those things, you are those emotions.

And so now, what am I going to do now that I'm feeling disappointed about a certain thing?

How did you find Arthur Brooks?

During the pandemic, I was in search of fuel to keep myself inspired, to keep myself open to possibility, to keep myself hopeful.

And I started reading his column in The Atlantic and then looking more and more forward to that column every week on how to build a life.

That column was called How to Build a Life.

And then I invited him for dinner, and he is the perfect person to have for dinner because you just probe his brain about all the things you've ever wanted to ask about your own emotions and searching for happiness and well-being and all of that.

So I am the kind of person, as you know, that believes that life is better when you share it, whether that's bread or information.

And I called him up and I said, what you should do, I think, is take all these columns that you've written and put them in a book because I think people would really benefit from having all of that information in one space.

And he said, okay, I think that's a good idea.

Where did the idea come to write a book together?

Well, he said, why don't we write a book together?

And I said, well, you're the one, you're the professor, you're the one who's mastered in it.

And he said, well, you've mastered too.

You just don't teach it in a classroom.

And I thought, well, that is true.

And so I agreed to do it for that reason.

He said that when you called him, he was incredulous about, you know, meeting him, talking to him.

Yes.

He couldn't believe that Oprah was calling Arthur Brooks.

Yeah.

And, you know, sometimes that happens when I call up people for book clubs and they'll say, no, no, it isn't.

And I go, yes, it's Oprah.

Oprah calling.

When we come back, Oprah tells us the ingredients to happiness.

So after all those interviews in many years, what did you learn from Arthur about happiness?

The thing that I learned from him mostly is that we are in control of our happiness and happiness.

You get to decide whether or not you choose to be happier or not.

And it's not the circumstances.

And why do you call it happierness? Because getting there, it's not a destination. It's a direction.

Yeah, I love that. I love that term.

Yeah.

Because we here in the United States, our Declaration of Independence says we have the pursuit of happiness.

We think the pursuit of happiness, we don't think that we're just supposed to pursue it.

We think we're supposed to have it.

We think we're supposed to have it.

It's one of the reasons why I think all of the, you know, Finland and all of those countries, Norway, that get high rankings, high rankings.

One of the reasons they rank so highly is because their expectation isn't up here.

They are content with really a lot less than we are.

So there isn't this constant pursuit that you've got to be better and better and better and better.

They know when they've had enough.

And for me, it's understanding that the pursuit is not out here, but it's here.

The pursuit is within.

The pursuit is to, first of all, have a great understanding of your own identity and what is required for you to be happy.

And to know the difference between your negative feelings and your emotions and your state of being.

So my state of being is always a state of satisfaction, enjoyment, and purpose, which is what defines happiness.

You need enjoyment, you need satisfaction, and you need purpose.

So what Arthur has also taught me is to have more fun.

He has taught me to be more open to saying yes to experiences that I normally probably would have not said yes to.

So now you're going to concerts like Beyoncé.

I'm not the Beyoncé.

You don't normally do that.

I normally don't.

I don't go to concerts.

I don't stay out late.

I am the homebody of all time.

So I have been more open to going to different places in the world and hiking, but also just open to saying yes to life in a way that I had not been before.

And I think sort of distilling in so many ways what you've learned all of these years, too, and the ingredients, too, if you're thinking how do I get to happiness or happiness, as you outline in the book, family.

Yeah.

Friendships.

Work.

Work.

Work.

And faith.

And faith.

Faith meaning not religion, because we're not here to tell anybody about any religion you need to be, but you need a faith in something that's more transcendent than yourself.

You need, if that's nature, if that's, you know, a walk in the park, if that's music, if that's art.

I don't know how people survive without some kind of spiritual practice or some kind of acknowledgement that you are not the only thing that matters in the world, that there is something bigger than you by whatever name you choose to call that, and that there is the mystery of life, and that you lean into that.

That's key.

You have enormous choice to choose whatever you want to do in terms of work, so what was your intention in working with Arthur on this book?

My intention was to spread the message that you cannot control all of the external circumstances in your life, but you can control how you feel about those circumstances in your life.

And once you recognize that you are the, you, it boils down to the thing that I do when I go to teach in South Africa to my girls.

I always teach a class called Life 101.

And at the end of that class, I leave them with the poem Invictus, which I learned when I was eight years old.

The last lines are, I'm the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.

And so what that, taking control of your emotions and not allowing your emotions to control you, taking the will, allows you to be the master of your fate and the captain of your soul.

And to do that with greater happier-ness.

Yes.

I love Invictus.

And if I had on short sleeve shirts, you would see my goosebumps.

Really?

And why did you get goosebumps?

I had written that down before, many times.

But to hear you say it, and also because the stories we learn as young children, and then the stories we tell ourselves, the songs and lyrics and poems and phrases and quotes that we repeat, what we tell ourselves becomes truth.

Yes.

Yes.

Yes.

It was the very first, like, big person's poem.

Yeah.

That I memorized and then grew to understand what that actually means.

And so being able to be the captain for yourself and master your own fate begins with mastering those emotions.

So I think that's one of the most significant things that Arthur has to teach us about being happier.

And when we come back, Oprah tells us her first thought every morning.

What makes you happy in your daily life?

So, so, so, so, so, so, so many things.

I have trained myself that the first thought is thank you.

That is my first thought.

And then I move from, what do I have to do?

Or what is this day?

What day is it?

Oh, I'm in New York.

I'm talking to Nora later.

But my first thought, no matter where I am in the world, is thank you.

And that is also my last thought, going to bed.

Is Oprah ever envious?

Mm-mm.

Mm-mm.

Mm-mm.

It's just not a part of my...

Ever.

I can't.

Yeah.

I'm happy for other people's happiness.

I am particularly happy when other women rise.

I mean, when I heard you were going to be doing the evening news, I was so happy for you, because I remember when Barbara Walters first did that with Harry Reasoner and how horribly she was treated during that time.

And at the time, I was being treated horribly too, you know, by even the local anchor.

So for you to be able to sit at the helm in that seat, I'm nothing but happy for that.

Do you remember you called me?

You just talked about being someone there in the unique role of being able to travel the world as a woman and tell the most important stories in the world.

That sounds like me.

That sounds like me.

Yeah.

I felt proud for you and I felt I understood having seen this from, you know, another perspective and been much older than you that, wow, that is a really big deal.

That is a really big deal.

You have the gift of letting people see something that they cannot see themselves.

Do I?

You do.

Okay.

I accept that.

Yeah.

I think that's your gift.

I mean, that's what you do with this book.

That's what you did for me at that moment.

I think that's why Arthur and I are so complimentary to each other, because that's what I've been trying to do my entire career, is help people see the fullness of themselves.

It's holding up a mirror so you can see.

Even when you're looking at the most dysfunctional people that I'm talking to on the show, you can say, well, I'm not that and I don't want to be that.

And oh, if they were able to triumph over that, I could triumph over that.

And so now this opportunity to do this through a book and perhaps maybe a podcast or however we can spread the word that your happiness, your happiness is going to be up to you.

And it's up to you to be the master of your fate, the captain of your soul, and most importantly, the master of your happiness.

No matter what, I'm going to be okay.

And I think that's what this book helps you get to.

No matter what, I can be in control of how I choose to react regardless of the circumstance.

Thank you.

Thank you.