I really admire Oprah Winfrey, and I consider her a role model for success. There is absolutely no question that she has a powerful consciousness that is skilled at achieving her desires. The ability to achieve is a skill; one that can be learned. It’s one of the reasons why I wrote The Physics of Success. Like music, it is a skill that can be learned, but can also manifest as a talent. Some people seem to be born with it, but the skill can be developed in almost anybody.
I just read an article about Oprah’s announced The Life You Want Arena Tour. Tickets start at $99, and range to $999. If it will help you get moving, I’d say it’s probably worth the price (I must point out that my book is a lot cheaper, though…).
Quoting the article:
“It’s about living the life you want, because a great percentage of the population is living a life that their mother wanted, that their husband wanted, that they thought or heard they wanted,” says Winfrey…
The first sentence of The Physics of Success states:
“This book will tell you how you, too, can live the life you would like to live, assuming you know what life that is.”
Is there an echo in here? It sounds like substantially the same idea.
In several posts (here, here, here, and here) I made reference to the “Default”, whether it is a default place or the “Default Option”. The Default Option may be what your mother wanted or what your spouse wanted. It might be what you heard or thought you wanted.
Wait, am I stealing Oprah’s ideas? Not at all, we’re just talking about the same thing. Besides, I wrote those blogs long before I read the article.
The Default Option may be something along the order of having three job offers and picking the best one. Or it may be just picking the single job offer that you got. The point is that you’re selecting options based on what might be the easiest thing to do at the moment. Perhaps it is living up to your mother’s expectations, picking the best commute, the best salary+benefits, or the most résumé enhancing position.
These defaults may look really good at the time. In fact, a lot of people (myself included) are often very excited about a new position and the promise of a more profitable future. The truth is, there’s nothing at all wrong with a job if — and here’s the clinker — if you’re goal is to have a job.
I was once a Systems Engineer at Symantec, and while I was there Enrique Salem was the CEO. Enrique was once a Systems Engineer there, just like me. Neither one of us are at Symantec any longer, but the point is that having a job does NOT mean anything is holding you back from greater things. That’s not at all what I’m saying.
You can bet your bottom dollar Enrique had something in mind other than being an SE, as did I. And actually, being an SE is not a bad gig, it’s actually very exciting and rewarding. But there is a difference between aspiring to be, an SE (or a doctor, or a lawyer, or for that matter, an outdoor guide or anything else) and ending up in a job just because we did what seemed like a good idea at the time. Even if it’s a good job.
Ms. Winfrey is a huge proponent of Success Principles, and we are both in complete agreement. She is very open about how she applies these principles, and I will completely agree that they work very effectively for her. Ah, this is where we tend to part ways, ever so slightly.
What might work for Oprah might not work for the average viewer. There are levels of consciousness, and I personally believe that Oprah has an extraordinary level of consciousness. This is not to be confused with intelligence (although I’m certain she is quite intelligent, as well!). There are a lot of highly intelligent people with not so much in the way of consciousness. But I digress…
Oprah is so talented that a Ouija board would probably work. For her. She’s either a natural talent or got so skilled that being successful is as natural as breathing.
I’ve taken a look at some of the stuff she shares. Like many things, these things will work. I do take some exception at her belief of why they work. I feel there are some missing pieces. Oprah doesn’t need all of the pieces, but for a lot of folks those extra bits can be very important.
In a previous post I discuss my thoughts about using quantum mechanics to explain how our actions cause results. The problem is simply one of size; we are simply too big. Quantum events are influenced by an observer, but there are over 10 thousand trillion trillion quanta in your body. That’s a lot of events to influence.
One day I was thinking about just that issue after I had been studying String Physics for a while. That’s when I made the connection that we are not actually causing countless trillions of wave states to collapse into, say, a Mercedes. In the Universe of String Theory, there is room for quite literally everything. Somewhere out there is you in a Mercedes; you just aren’t there, yet. Well, maybe you are, but go with me on this.
Getting into the Way-Back machine we skip right over Quantum Mechanics and go back to Relativity, and discover we are moving through the Universe along what is commonly known as the Space-Time Continuum. Given that somewhere out there is “you-in-a-Mercedes”, and presuming you haven’t already had one, “you-in-a-Mercedes” must be out in front of where you are now.
Which means that instead of influencing trillions on trillions on trillions of individual events, all you need to do is steer in the right direction. Another way of looking at it is that you don’t need to personally organize a football league and personally build an actual stadium if you want to go to a football game. All you need to do is drive to the stadium that already exists.
It’s a whole lot easier.
