The Path Made Clear

The Path Made Clear contains Oprah Winfrey’s tips for how to discover your real purpose so you can live a life of success and significance.

Oprah teaches that we all have a calling while we’re here on earth. In order to find what it is, we need to recognize what makes us who we are. She calls these the seeds of our identity. For example, someone who is born with a love and gift for music probably has been watering this seed by learning to play an instrument from a young age. One day, they can bloom into a musician or a music teacher.

Sometimes, however, these seeds hide so deep that we don’t find them until later in life. We have the chance, through choices, failures, and successes, to nurture and discover new seeds along the way.

Oprah shares the story of her beginnings on TV to illustrate this. In her early career, she was a news anchor. It would be an exciting job for most people, but she wasn’t happy with what she was doing because she felt like she couldn’t be herself. Her bosses were also unhappy with her because they felt she displayed too much emotion for an anchor.

Eventually, she was let go and hired as a co-host on a talk-show. This was considered a downgrade in her career, but she loved it. She discovered a seed that had been hidden inside that she didn’t know about. She loved to interview, listen, and engage in meaningful conversations with people. And because it was her true calling, this is where she shined.

To find what your calling is and find your seeds, live a life full of awareness, particularly to yourself and what’s in your heart.

They say nothing worth having is easy, right? This is true to so many things, and it’s true for finding your dreams. Sometimes it’s downright scary to go for your dreams, but Oprah teaches that fear is a natural part of growing as a human being.

Every important undertaking will bring some level of fear, and the amount you feel is relative to just how significant it will be for your personal development.

When Oprah interviewed the author Steven Pressfield, he explained that every dream he has is met with resistance. He said that the bigger our dream is, the more resistance we will feel moving forward with it.

She likens it to Newton’s law of motion. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction. That reaction comes as anxiety and fear. Once we are able to overcome the resistance, the key to realizing our dreams comes from committing fully to them.