All Jayme

Inspiration from Oprah’s commencement speech to Stanford graduates ‘08

Feelings, failure and finding happiness are the three main lessons Oprah shared in her commencement speech to Stanford University graduates whom she fondly called “O-eights.”

Oprah is and will always be the role model for me. She’s humorous, inspiring, passionate, beautiful and real.

Watch this video and be inspired.

My favorite quotes:

And I got that lesson. When you’re doing the work you’re meant to do, it feels right and every day is a bonus, regardless of what you’re getting paid.

If you really want to fly, just harness your power to your passion. Honor your calling. Everybody has one. Trust your heart and success will come to you.

And what I’ve found is that difficulties come when you don’t pay attention to life’s whisper, because life always whispers to you first. And if you ignore the whisper, sooner or later you’ll get a scream. Whatever you resist persists. But, if you ask the right question—not why is this happening, but what is this here to teach me?—it puts you in the place and space to get the lesson you need.

My friend Eckhart Tolle, who’s written this wonderful book called A New Earth that’s all about letting the awareness of who you are stimulate everything that you do, he puts it like this: He says, don’t react against a bad situation; merge with that situation instead. And the solution will arise from the challenge. Because surrendering yourself doesn’t mean giving up; it means acting with responsibility.

Don’t live for yourself alone. This is what I know for sure: In order to be truly happy, you must live along with and you have to stand for something larger than yourself. Because life is a reciprocal exchange.
To move forward you have to give back. And to me, that is the greatest lesson of life. To be happy, you have to give something back.

The lesson here is clear, and that is, if you’re hurting, you need to help somebody ease their hurt. If you’re in pain, help somebody else’s pain. And when you’re in a mess, you get yourself out of the mess helping somebody out of theirs. And in the process, you get to become a member of what I call the greatest fellowship of all, the sorority of compassion and the fraternity of service.

There is an edited transcript of the whole commencement speech at the Stanford News Service site. I read it after watching the video packing a double inspiration punch.

Have an inspiring Thursday!

Posted in: Reflections

Tags: happiness, inspiration, Oprah, passion, Stanford graduates 2008, Stanford University

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 19th, 2008 at 2:28 am and is filed under Reflections. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.