Special: Choose Your Life

0:00Through 25 seasons, 4 ,561 episodes, I believe the Oprah Winfrey Show is one of the greatest classrooms in the world. I really never thought of it that way. The aha moments, the breakthroughs, the connections, the occasional ugly cry. I miss him so terribly. I miss him every single minute. The LOLs. The moments that mattered. Maddie! The eye-opening life lessons. Never allow them to take you somewhere else. I'm bringing them back. It's time to open the vault. I've personally chosen these classic episodes to share with you again. Every single person you ever will meet shares that common desire.

0:45They want to know, do you see me? Do you hear me? Does what I say mean anything to you? You are listening to The Oprah Winfrey Show, the podcast.

1:00So how many of you can say, truly say, that you love your life? You love your life. Okay. If you're not living the life of your dreams, I hope those of you at home are asking yourself that question. Do you love your life? On a scale of one to ten, where are you in the love factor for your own life? If you're not living your dreams and you feel that there's no way out, there just isn't any way out of the day-to-day grind, we believe that today's show will give you a kick in the tush. You're going to meet people who actually chose their life, and they let nothing stand in their way. You probably recognize my first guest, Andrea Thompson, from the hit show, In What?

1:39PD Blue. Thank you. Well, now, at age 40, Andrea made a bold decision to quit acting. So I know a lot of you are thinking, why would anybody leave a hit TV show on all the, you know, fortune, fame that comes with it. But what you really did, you went from making what you used to make in a day and more to now what you make in a year. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Unbelievable. But you know what? I didn't grow up with a lot. My mother raised four of us on$25 ,000 a year. My father wasn't around. She wasn't getting any support. And we had a great childhood. We clipped coupons. We made things ourselves. We had a wonderful time.

2:19Because money doesn't always buy you happiness. Some of the most miserable people I know are wealthy. I know. But when I say that, people don't want to hear that coming from me. Yeah, I know. I know. But you know what? That's true. And also, I think I'm on the cover of some magazine this month, Is Oprah Happy? I turned up to see, am I? I think so. I thought I was. But you've got to read in a magazine and see if you are. My answer to that is, like, is it any business if Oprah's happy, except for, you know... For my own business. But interestingly enough, I agree with you, money doesn't buy happiness.

2:49And if you aren't happy before you get it, It only compounds your misery. Well, what you're doing is you're delaying happiness. You're delaying gratification. You're saying, if I just lose ten pounds, I'll be happy. Right. If I just get all my bills paid off, I'll be happy. If I meet the right man, I'll be happy. If you are not happy right here and right now, you never will be. I know. And the fact is, you better find it. A girlfriend of mine sent me an email yesterday, and it was about a woman who had waited for a special occasion. Well, her sister flew into town for her funeral. Mm-hmm. And her husband said they went to pick out the clothes at the mortician's.

3:20Oh, yes. And he pulled out this beautiful filmy little negligee made of silk and this gorgeous lace. And he said she bought this nine years ago and she never wore it because she was waiting for a special occasion. And that time never came. So have fun in the here and now. None of us are guaranteed another year, another week, another day, another hour. I'm not, you're not, my son is not. Yes. You know. It's the lesson of John F. Kennedy Jr. to me. Absolutely. Are you happier now? Yeah. You are. Yeah. Can't you see it? Yeah, I can feel it. Yeah. So you never look at a script that you could have had or a show you could have been on or a movie you could have starred in and think, oh, no.

3:59No, I did it for 20 years. I don't have any bad Hollywood stories. I was treated very well. I've always been employed. I made a great living. The best thing that happened to me on my 40th birthday, because Christmas and my birthday are really close. It's my best year ever. One, because I love turning 40. And two, because... It's fab, isn't it? It's the best. 30 was like, oh, my God. It was just all this existential angst, you know. Forty is like, hey, I still look good. I feel good. Rock on. You know, it's just, it's great. Rock on. My next guests say they figured out how to live their ultimate adventure.

4:35For ten years, they've actually lived on their bicycles. Now, that is not my idea of fun. I like a nice home with nice things around me, but whatever gets you going. They've lived on their bicycles, no home, no permanent job, no headaches. The carefree life they chose fills them with joy. It was one of those dreams that was on the back boiler. It was always nice to say to people, oh, I'm going to go and cycle around the world. When John Paul and Alicia first met through a bicycling club in Wales, he shared his dream of cycling around the world. I always said that I never had anyone to go with.

5:13And that's when Alicia just turned around and said, well, I'll go with you. And I was flummoxed. You know, you're only going to live so long. So you should get out there and do whatever it is that really takes your fancy. At the time, John Paul was in a job he did not love, managing a grocery store. In his spare time, though, he loved biking. Alcia was an artist who went from job to job, not happy with any of them. Travel was her passion. We started to plan and organize it, and we fell in love during that period. And then started planning on getting married, and that incorporated itself in, and the trip became a honeymoon.

5:48And it would be the honeymoon that didn't end. They peddled through Ireland, Holland, the United States, and the UK. The hardest thing is to actually say goodbye to all your friends and your family, knowing that you're going to be gone for, you know, a year, two years, more years. You won't be there. You won't be there for birthdays and Christmas and Christmas time. and very sort of family time and with your friends. And that's a hard thing to do. And it takes a while to get used to. But the benefits, of course, of making a different life for yourself is enormous. They originally planned to quit after five years and settle down.

6:22When we got near the five-year point, it was, well, maybe ten years will do it for us. We'll be able to finish in ten years. We've gotten to the ten years and we realize it's going to be a lifestyle. When money gets short, they'll stop and work for three to six months in whatever country they're in. We look for any work that we can find that pays us as much as possible so we can work as little as possible. Their adventures get more and more ambitious. The latest took them across the world's largest continuous landmass from Argentina to Alaska. That took in total. Two years, two weeks and two days, believe it or not.

7:00So far, they've ridden 70 ,000 miles through 25 countries over the world's highest drivable pass in northern Peru. Through the largest salt lake in Bolivia, they've been stranded because of a mountain blizzard in Spain. Choosing a lifestyle where you can't control your environment at all times does lead to certain dangers. We ran into some smugglers while we were in Spain, and we got mugged while we were in Peru. You sleep on the ground every night, that you maybe get a shower every, if you're lucky, every couple of weeks. One of the main reasons that I chose this lifestyle is that I couldn't really perceive going back and working in an office and getting up every morning and being in the same office day after day.

7:43I can't imagine not doing this because I think it would be very boring otherwise. And I don't want my life to be boring. Well, there's something for everybody, isn't that the truth? They could have stopped by here and gotten a shower. We got a nice little facility. That's really pretty amazing. So you make choices in life. That's what we're talking about. Well, when Marcy Anderson's weight reached an all-time high of 405 pounds, she also made a choice, a decision. She was 48 years old, and her decision, she said, was that it was time to choose a new life. I was a fat girl all my life. I made a choice to eat my weight of 400 pounds.

8:25I was a huge closet eater. I would stop and pick up three cheeseburgers on my way home from work because I knew I'd be hungry if I was eating what I was supposed to eat for dinner. I tried everything to lose weight. I've had my stomach stapled. I've joined every weight loss group. I've tried fasts. I've tried liquid protein. Every fad that came out, I tried it. Every time I tried again, I was heavier than I was the last time I tried. As I ballooned to 405 pounds, I faced a potential death sentence. In December 1998, I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes. I had no circulation in my feet. They were turning black.

8:59I spent three tortured days contemplating suicide. I'm living by myself. I have no family out here. What do you do without legs? You die. Then I made a choice to change my life once and for all. I woke up on the fourth day and thought, God, are you lazy? Just take the weight off. Just try one more time. Just one more time. I made a promise to myself this time that it wasn't going to take me one day longer than it had to be. to and it didn't. 14 months later I had lost 270 pounds. I decided from the beginning that what would be a success for me is to stay out of restaurants because you don't know what you're eating if you're not preparing it yourself and so that was the first thing I did was stop eating out.

9:42When you're following someone else's diet the first thing you learn how to do is cheat so I had to make up my own and that's what did it for me. I can't cheat me this time so I started cooking, adapting recipes that I had without fat, without red meat, without sugar. I gave up on pasta and rice. I concoct things. I make my own dressing. That's what makes it fun for me. I couldn't have done this for a year on chicken breast and whole wheat bread. It wouldn't have worked for me. The weight just sort of started to melt. It was incredible. The first 50 pounds I took off, the diabetes was gone. So they took me off the medication, and that was just an incredible victory for me.

10:23And then I started walking for exercise. I think the first time I walked, I got a quarter block and I had to sit down on the ground because I couldn't breathe. It saved my life. It got my circulation back in my legs. I did my first 5K a couple of weeks ago and actually looked like a midlife Barbie doll in a size 4 now. This has been better than winning the lottery for me. This has been better than almost anything I've ever done for myself or anything anyone could ever do for me. Unbelievable. Please welcome Marci Anderson.

10:57Fantastic. What a pleasure. What a pleasure. So from 405 to size 4, that's almost unbelievable. Yes. Yeah. And it was a choice. It was definitely a choice. It was a choice to stay alive. Marcy's family had not seen her incredible transformation until Marcy went home for the first time in two years to surprise her parents and sister. Can you imagine? She always was a heavy girl and went to grammar school heavy, went through high school heavy, went to college heavy. Once she got out of school, though, she bloomed. We feared for her health for so long. I don't know how she walked. I don't know how she carried her weight.

11:39It still breaks your heart because you know who she is, you know what she's capable of doing. and it's just outside appearances. It's going to be a shock to see her. I can tell you that. The last time I saw her was almost two years ago. I don't know what to expect.

12:01I cannot wait to see their faces. Oh, wow. Oh, my God. Oh, my God. I can't believe it's you. What happened? Oh, my God. It's the first time I've ever been able to put my arms around you. Holy cow, my God. I can't talk. I can't stop.

12:25I'm in absolute shock. Oh, my God. Can you believe it? I don't believe it.

12:37Thank you. Thank you so much. George and Chris Thornburg were living what most people consider the good life George and Chris were. They had the big house, the nice car, their own company. They took expensive trips. One day George came home and he said, honey, I quit. I was working as a Willfield Service person in Bakersfield, California, the sole proprietor in the business. It was basically 24 hours a day, seven days a week on call. It was stressful. I was tense. I was not what you would say a happy person to be around all the time because I felt so much pressure to continually provide for the business, to provide for my new wife, my new house, and everything else.

13:17He was eating one to two packs of Rolaids a day. He brought his job home, and it tends to our relationship. To help get his mind off his job, George coached high school football. Being around the kids, interacting with them, made me hungry for something else. He realized working with young people was the life he wanted to live. I came home one day and said I just quit my job and we're selling the business and I'm going back to school. I thought it was a joke and then I started realizing how serious he was and just a whole gamut of emotions overcame me. I was angry and I was sad and scared. He told me you can do this with me or without me, but I'm doing it.

14:04George's choice to go back to college and become a teacher meant that he and Chris would have to make sacrifices. Some of the hardest things that we had to give up were the house that we'd moved into two months earlier, the car, the trips that we would go on. We had no social life. We were living a comfortable life and became poor students. When you make a decision to change your entire lifestyle, there is a little bit of apprehension, fear. It was hard for me. I cried every night for probably a month, and I would lay there and try and sob quietly so he wouldn't know that I was crying.

14:46I had to be the cheerleader. I had to be strong for him. A few years later, George completed his degree and began living the life of his dreams. Every day when I go to work now, it is a new day. There is absolutely nothing going to be the same about me. this day compared to any other day. What I get in the classroom is an entrance reward and that's a reward that you cannot, I don't feel that you can always receive in the business world. George is amazing. He has a gift with kids. I think education is George's calling. I think the largest way I've changed as a man today is the fact that I can say I'm honestly happy doing what I'm doing.

15:21Life right now is the ultimate. We have a beautiful house now. We're back on our feet. I have happy husband, a beautiful son. I really couldn't ask for much more. You can choose to chase money in your life, or you can choose to chase your dreams. Going to education has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. That is powerful. You can choose to chase money, or you can choose to chase your dreams. What is the common theme that I'm seeing in all these stories is that you don't get your dream without some sacrifices. Do you feel that? There was a definite, there was a huge sacrifice to begin with, but it's all come back tenfold.

16:03Mm-hmm. You feel that now, too? Oh, yeah. I would do it again, but I wouldn't want, I wouldn't want to do it again. It was hard as heck. You would do it again if you knew you could be here. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, the scary part is taking the first step out, not knowing what the future holds, and just being brave enough to do that. You can follow your money or you can follow your dreams. Right. How many of you have dreamed of running away and living in an exotic place, but think it could never happen? Too much holding you back like kids and bills and job? Well, Diane and Ellen Epstein had the courage to turn their favorite vacation spot into their permanent home.

16:42And I do mean courage, too. That's all you ever need is the courage to live the life of your dreams. I've had the dream to live in Rome for 20 years, from the first time I ever set foot in this city. And I remember even from that first trip, I was very sad to leave. And so finally I said to myself, well, if I don't want to be sad anymore, I'm going to have to go and live in Rome. It was 1981 when writer and businessman Alan Epstein's love affair with Rome began. I love the beauty of Italy. To live amongst this beauty and heritage of art, of architecture, makes my soul feel good. Years later, he met his wife, Diane.

17:18From the beginning, one of the things that we shared in common was our passion for Italy. When we got married, we came to Italy and we spent four months here. And during that time, we wrote up exactly what we wanted in our lives. Back in California, Alan and Diane had built a successful matchmaking business. Our American life would be the envy of many people. We had a lovely house in Marin County, California. We had a nanny because we had two small children. And so at a certain point, we said, we've got to start putting in some plans to get from here to there. And so they did. They began researching schools for their children and devised a plan to start an international version of their matchmaking business.

18:01There are a million things that have to take place in your life for that really to happen. But if you really do want to choose your life, if you really do want to make your life your own creation, then you have to face all those questions, as we did. They left their California home, hired somebody to take over their business, and said goodbye to family and friends. We came here with 13 suitcases. Are you moving to Italy? Yeah. We packed up everything that we wanted to bring, and we brought it on the airplane. We didn't send anything. Everything was with us. They moved to their new apartment in Rome.

18:34The transition was not easy. We had automobile accidents when we first got here because the driving here is very, very different. Although their original business plan didn't work out, Alan and Diane have both created careers for themselves in Rome. He as a writer and tour guide, she as a counselor. I was the kind of person who required everything to be exactly as I had planned it to be. But I think coming to Rome and learning different customs, learning different ways of being, learning a whole new set of expectations has made me a much more tolerant, much more sort of relaxed person because I don't have those expectations anymore.

19:10I find that my time is much more devoted to living with family and the home in mind as an anchor for life. Had I not fulfilled this dream to come and live in Rome, I think I would have been a sad and depressed and unfulfilled person. It has been five years, and Alan's love affair with the Eternal City is still going strong. Salute. Salute, Ariel. Wow. That's fantastic.

19:43You can read more about Alan and Diane's Italian adventure and his new book called As the Romans Do. That's a great title. So how did you...you just adjusted to As the Romans Do. Well, we tried. That was the whole idea from the beginning, because we wanted to be in this place. And in order to live successfully in Rome, you have to live as the Romans do. As the Romans do. Or else you go mad and you'll have to come back, because they're not changing for you. What's the biggest transition? The biggest transition, I think, is the whole sense of time. We're used to having things done very quickly as we want them, convenience in every respect.

20:20They're taking things very slowly and very casually. Were you very fluent in Italian before, were you? Me? Yeah. I didn't speak a word of Italian when I was in Italian. Really? Yeah. I'm thinking that'd be difficult. I had studied quite a bit. But the whole thing of fluency, you don't get fluent until you get there. and you learn the language that they speak rather than the language you learn in the classrooms here. Oh, so my little tape's not going to be in there. Yeah, it's...it'll get you...it'll get you... I'm going to Italy this summer and I'm practicing. Yeah. Well, it'll get you so far, but then on a day-to-day basis...

20:53Buongiorno. Buongiorno. ...you learn...you learn the phrases and the little ways of saying things that mean exactly what you want to say, and they're saying to you things that mean exactly what they want to say. That's the living language. Wow. And we've learned a lot from our kids, too, because they go to Italian school. They know it all. Yeah, as the Romans do. They're always correcting us. Fantastic. But you feel happier, you think. Yeah. Oh, this is a dream come true. And as everyone said today, you know, you have a fantasy. And no matter what's going on in your life, whether you love it or you don't love it, if you don't fulfill that fantasy and that fantasy is that strong, you just can't go on.

21:28You have to do it. The worst thing to do is to die with regret. Exactly. I couldn't agree more. Okay. Megan Dahm chose a new life for herself on a dare. She decided if she had the guts to pick up and move 1 ,200 miles away from home to a place where she didn't know not one person, then she believed she'd be able to accomplish absolutely anything in life. Megan, what made you dare yourself? I had what was essentially a glamorous life. I lived in New York City. I was a writer. I was a writer in New York. That's all I'd ever wanted to be, and that was what people expected of me. I went to parties.

22:05I did readings. I had lunches with editors. And I loved my life, but always in the back of my mind, I wanted to live on a farm. I wanted to be on the prairie.

22:21Really? Yes. There was a part of me that loved the city, that there was a... So you'd be, like, at the Four Seasons, having one of those nice Cosmopolitans, thinking in the back of my mind I'd like to be on a prairie right now. Really. Yes. I grew up reading Little House on the Prairie, and I ran around in a sunbonnet, even in New Jersey, where I grew up. And I discovered Nebraska because I travel a lot for work. I was... Nebraska? Nebraska. I do... I was doing a story, and I traveled a lot, and I spent a week there, and I met a couple people who were extraordinarily friendly to me, and the combination of their hospitality and just the landscape, it stayed in the back of my mind.

23:09I really always thought, could I live there? No, you know, I would come back to New York and think, no, this is my home. So you were just there? I was there working. In a little house on the prairie now? Now I live on a little house on the prairie, Oprah. Do you still put on the bonnet and go outside? You do, really? And how do you feel doing that? Privileged. Really? I have the ability to look out the window of my office, sit at my computer, email my friends in New York and all over the world, do my work, and look out at a wheat field and the sunset and my sheets hanging on the line. With real clothespins.