I’VE LEARNED THAT YOU CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING AND DO EVERYTHING AT THE SAME TIME.
–OPRAH
“Solitude is the soul’s holiday, an opportunity to stop doing for others and to surprise and delight ourselves instead…In solitude, we discover what makes us feel alive.”
“He who cannot rest cannot work; he who cannot let go cannot hold on…”
“To do nothing at all is the most difficult thing in the world, the most difficult and the most intellectual.”
“As we look deeply within, we understand our perfect balance. There is no fear of the cycle of birth, life, and death. For when you stand in the present moment, you are timeless.”
“None of us is built to run nonstop. That’s why, when you don’t give yourself the time and care you need, your body rebels in the form of sickness and exhaustion. How do I give back to myself? Hardly a day goes by that I don’t talk things out with my best friend, Gayle, who is usually interested in every detail—we call it book, chapter, and verse.”
“I can tell you with absolute assurance that it is impossible for women to achieve the kind of balance recommended by many well-meaning self-help counselors…My conclusion? Balance schmalance. Trying to establish a harmonious equilibrium between our society’s definitions of What a Woman Should Be is like trying to resolve the tensions between two hostile enemies by locking them in a room together.”
“We can be sure that the greatest hope for maintaining equilibrium in the face of any situation rests within ourselves.”
“Every time you say no to a less-than-appealing request, you say yes to something else. Maybe it’s one golden hour to take a bubble bath, read a good book, or play with your kids. Saying no frees you to pursue a dream—to take a class and develop your potential, or to work for a cause you believe in. The more time you can give to the things you truly care about, the more satisfying your life will feel.”
“Learning to delegate and finding the strength to say no are two of the hardest and most emotionally complex time management skills. Guilt, perfectionism, and the fear of imposing on other people keep us from sharing the burden. Yet when we can actually see the real and measurable limits of our time, ambivalence about embracing these two skills disappears.”
“When people come to me and say, ‘I want to be just like you; the only thing I want in life is to sing,’ I tell them this: ‘Please don’t make your career your life.’ Let it be your passion, let it bring pleasure, but don’t let it become your identity. You are so much more valuable than that.”
“We can’t take a recess from life—it keeps going on. But we can take recesses from feeling trapped anytime. If you take a deep breath and look around, ‘Look what’s happening to me!’ can become ‘Look what’s happening!’ And what’s happening? The incredible drama of life is happening. And we’re in it! What’s going to happen? Who knows? You can feel your body, alive, breathing, and use all your senses to connect you to the present moment. Moments of connection are free moments—Tahitis of the mind.”
“What I know for sure is this: You are built not to shrink down to less, but to blossom into more. To be more splendid. To be more extraordinary. To use every moment to fill yourself up.”
“When we finally learn that self-care begins and ends with ourselves, we no longer demand sustenance and happiness from others.”
“You must have a room, or a certain hour or so a day, where you don’t know what was in the newspapers that morning…a place where you can simply experience and bring forth what you are and what you might be.”
“All you need are sneakers. When you feel better, you act better, you have a better outlook, and you eat better. I’m the one who says, ‘Just one more mile. Let’s just go around the next corner.’ I love the way it feels. It’s exercise that lets me do everything else—that’s where I get my strength from, knowing I can do it.”
“Every challenge we take on has the power to shake us—to knock us to our knees. And yet what’s even more disconcerting than the jolt itself is our fear that we won’t withstand it. When we feel the ground beneath us shifting, we panic…What I know for sure is that the only way to endure the quake is to shift your stance.”
“When life demands so much of us—not just the responsibilities of adulthood but the speed and resilience of eternal adolescence—reading may be a necessary escape. It may be what makes the practical day, with its dishwashing and shoe tying, its clock ticking out our deficiencies and our mortality, not just bearable but embraceable.”
“If you peel back the layers of your life—the frenzy, the noise—stillness is waiting. That stillness is you.”
“People who are unhappy in their lives rarely take a deep breath. They don’t sleep well, don’t eat right, and carry tensions in their bodies. If you’re overweight or feeling burdened by endless stress, your body is telling you something. It’s time to start listening.”
“I had to hit burnout more than once before I understood the wisdom of balance—of coming back to my center for rejuvenation. For me, that now comes once a week on Sundays, when I clear both my schedule and my head to regather myself. If you neglect to charge a battery, it dies. And if you run full-speed ahead without stopping for water, you lose momentum to finish the race.”
“I have this job that I love, but I’m also like, When can I go home? In a way, that’s good, because otherwise, I’d never go home. I would just kill myself doing this show.”
“The biggest reason I have so much endurance is because I do what I want to do. I stopped trying to please other people. The other day I did something because someone else wanted me to and I was exhausted. Why? Because the intention was wrong.”
“The artist knows he must be alone to create; the writer, to work out his thoughts; the musician, to compose; the saint, to pray. But women need solitude in order to find again the true essence of themselves.”
“I’VE LEARNED THAT YOU CAN’T HAVE EVERYTHING AND DO EVERYTHING AT THE SAME TIME. I HOPE YOU’LL TELL YOURSELF THE TRUTH ABOUT WHAT MATTERS MOST TO YOU, KNOW THAT YOUR HOURS IN THIS LIFE ARE LIMITED FOR ATTAINING IT–THEN DECIDE HOW YOU’LL USE YOUR MOST PRECIOUS RESOURCE.”
–OPRAH