Special: What's Holding You Back?

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. Recently we did a show called Women Who Love Their Jobs. I happen to be one of those women where we profile women who made careers out of their passions, women who shop for a living, travel, because that's the whole idea. You take what you love and you find a way to turn that into something you can give back to the world and get paid for it. So if you love eating, there's a way to get paid for that.

1:22I missed my other calling, I see. We got a lot of response after that show from a lot of other women who said that they wanted to find greater fulfillment in their jobs and in their lives, but they really just don't know how to do it, which is a key question, I know. Like Angele in New Brunswick, Canada, who wrote to me saying, I've worked as a secretary for over 20 years. For many of those years, I hated the work. And then I just adjusted. I decided to make the best of it, she says. Decided it's a living. And when I saw your show about women who love their jobs, it really hit a sensitive chord with me.

2:00Sometimes I just want to do it, leave what I'm doing and do something that I really love. But there are truly so many obstacles. If only I could see that it's possible. If only I could get beyond the fear. Those are all such key words. If only I could see. If only I could believe. If only I could get beyond the fear. That's what's holding you back. And we want to get you beyond the fear and to understand exactly what is holding you back from living the life of your dreams. I call it from being who you really are. We're here to help you understand that there are choices. There are choices, choices, choices that you make and have made every single day of your life that lead you and have led you toward or away from fulfillment, whether it's a career or in your personal life.

2:42The question is what makes some women achieve their goals while others don't? First I want you to take a look at the story of Bonnie Warner. She is an exceptional woman who has achieved exceptional things, and she's been following a map that she laid out for herself at the age of 14. Now, your goals may not be as big as Bonnie's, but there's a great lesson in her story. I was your very typical high school student, and I remember saying, oh, we've got another assembly with another speaker. There was this guy that came to our assembly. He made a list of 100 things in his life that he wanted to accomplish, and he had accomplished like 89 of them.

3:15And I couldn't think of 100 things to do in my life, but I could think of five. I wanted to go to a good college. I wanted to go to the Olympics. I wanted to be a TV commentator. I wanted to be a private pilot. And I wanted to build a log cabin. I have no idea where they came from. It was just dreams of a 14-year-old. Bonnie Warner's big dreams became her map for life. But there were challenges along the way. Her parents divorced when she was young. We had some tough times. My mother was an elementary school teacher. And for a while she was disabled. and we were on food stamps for a little while.

3:51I knew I had the ability to go to any college, but we didn't have the finances. So I just really, really worked hard in field hockey so that I could get a scholarship to Stanford, and it worked. Bonnie was ready for her next goal. I wasn't sure if I could ever really become an Olympic athlete, but I thought I could maybe be an Olympic torchbearer, and when there was an application for it, I filled it out, and bingo, I got it. It really changed my life. She was on her way to the Olympics. There she took a ride on that thrilling winter sport called luge. I wasn't thinking the very first time I took a luge ride that I would be on an Olympic team, but it very quickly became that.

4:28She took long breaks from college to keep her Olympic dreams alive. She sold her prized Olympic pen collection for extra money. Bonnie made the U.S. luge team and went to the Olympics three times. After seven years, she graduated and landed a job at a big market TV station covering the Olympics. Between edit sessions, I'd often have to go work out and run up and down the streets of San Francisco to stay in shape. With money in her pocket, she took off for her dream of becoming a pilot. And I fell in love with it the very first day. Got a license six weeks later. Well, is Joan of Loka into Oakland?

5:01Now I'm really in my dream job. I love what I do. I'm a 727 captain for United. When I first started learning to fly, I didn't think to myself, well, I'm a girl. I can't. I leave the airport and I go to my other life, which is trying to make the Olympic bobsled team. I've never won an Olympic medal and maybe the odds are against me. Well, I say the only thing that's impossible is to win a medal if you don't try. So, I'm trying. My number one priority in my life is my family. I love just sitting by the sandbox, playing with little Katie. Sometimes some of the things that drive me in when I'm working out and I don't feel like lifting that extra weight or running a little bit harder, I don't want to ever quit because I want to be a good example for Katie.

5:45I have one last goal, and that's to build the log cabin. Maybe as a family we're going to build the log cabin, but it will happen. Small potatoes for you. The log cabin, you can do that in between flights. Well, you know, that's why I'm lifting weights, you know, so I can lift those logs. So you want to physically build it yourself, or you just want to have one built? No, no, no. I want to build it myself. Like log by log? Well, yeah. You know, that's why I got a big, strong firefighter husband to lift those logs, too. You don't have to do that, Bonnie. You don't have to do that. You can, you know, there are people who build log cabins.

6:20Yeah, no, but I want them with those kits, you know, and I've sort of saved these little, these diagrams and stuff, and I'm going to get a piece of land someday when life calms down. Dean, put a chair up here so Bonnie can come up here, because I like you, Bonnie. You know what's really...I think Bonnie can inspire a lot of women today, because the question is, what is the difference between Bonnie and everybody else, and this woman, Angèle, who wrote, saying, I wished I could, I wished I could, I wished I could. Do you know what it is, Bonnie? Well, I think it's finding a passion. I love being a mother.

6:51I love being an airline pilot. And I love the Olympics. So it's easier to set out a map, to follow the map. Now, if If going to the dentist was my mission for the day, I think I'd get lost. Yeah. I don't have a passion for that. Because you had big dreams for yourself. Yeah. You set out these goals when you were how old? I was 14. Fourteen. Now, what I say, Dr. Austin, who wrote the book, What's Holding You Back, is going to be joining us in a moment. But what I hear is the key, and I hope everybody can get this, the difference between you and everybody else I interview is what you believed. Exactly.

7:24It's what you believed. If you have a goal and you believe in it, you can achieve it. And I think you have to also really want it. And I think it's the passion in that goal that makes it easier, too, to... If there's an obstacle out there, you don't even see it even. Or if it's there, you figure out, well, you can go around it or under it or over it or through it. If the belief is there. If the belief is there. And also not taking no for an answer. I remember in college when my coach said, you can't do luge in field hockey. But I had to do field hockey to pay for college, and I had to do luge to be in the Olympics.

7:58So I wrote, it was the only all-nighter I ever did in college, I wrote a 14-page paper to explain to my coach how I could do it all. And that paper is what got me my scholarship. And just the other day, somebody was saying, you know, Bonnie, you're 38 years old. You can't possibly win an Olympic medal. I said, I won't win it if I don't try. And so I sat down and I wrote a 20-page paper to myself. It's just to myself on how I'm going to go about doing that. You just have to make a plan because then each day makes, has a mission or a goal, you know? I love Bonnie. These issues might sound familiar to you.

8:32Take a look. I'm afraid of spending the rest of my life just doing what I'm doing now. It scares me because I'm not ready to leave my comfort zone. I'm very anxious about being able to handle everything that comes along with having a career and a family at the same time. I'm having a really hard time at work recently, and it's mostly because of one person there, my boss. I've cried myself to sleep at night wondering what my purpose in life is. If only I could get that special break or meet the right people. No, I need to admit it. I'm holding myself back. Okay. I got a lot to say on this subject.

9:14So if you felt any of those things, we're going to help you begin to understand what's holding you back. That's the key. Dr. Linda Austin is the author of What's Holding You Back? Great title. Ask yourself that today. What is holding you back? And she says that women often construct their own internal glass ceiling that keeps them from success. What is the key that's holding most people back? Fear? At the heart of it, there is fear. Yeah, when you peel away everything. There is fear and anxiety. And, you know, it's interesting. Males and females have a different approach to fear. If you watch little boys in the playground, they practice being afraid.

9:55They jump off the first rung of the jungle gym. Well, that's not scary enough, so they'll get a little more scared. And their play takes them into the experience of fear. One of the things that women have to do to overcome fear and anxiety is to practice. And this, for example, being on this show, I mean, that's a... This is not a baby step. That's true. That's true. I had no idea. But in daily life. Ten million people right now. Thank you. Thank you. Around the world. Will you hold my hand? Not just the United States. Yeah, sure. Ten million. I didn't bring a best friend, so you'll have to be my best friend.

10:33This is it. I will be your best friend today. Throughout the show, we're going to go through the eight critical choices that Dr. Austin says that women must make to achieve success. And know that we offer this as a catalyst to get you started. I don't expect that maybe some people will after the end of the show. You go out and you decide that you're going to change your whole life. But it's to get you thinking about what is holding you back and what you were really meant to do. What you were really meant to do. I think that everybody has a calling on their life. Everybody has a calling on their life.

11:03And for some people it's, like for myself, it's, you know, on television and speaking to millions of people. And for you today that's what it is. Right. And for other people it's whatever it is you find your joy in. Like the other day, I got a French pedicure from this girl, and she was so good. Buffy, she did such a great job. I went, God, you are really good. And she said, feet are my passion. She found it. She said, feet are my passion. And I said, girl, you are in the right place. Okay, Buffy, the first choice is, will you take risks, you say. Fear of the unknown is the biggest hurdle for most women.

11:45Sherry is one of these women. Sherry Schultz - I've been a cashier for more than 20 years now, and I'm stuck in a rut. What I don't like about my job are the same things that make me feel comfortable in it, that it's routine, that I know what to expect, that I've done it a long time. And to leave that job to pursue something else is unknown. I don't know what that will bring, and it might bring something good, but I don't know that. I did complete my bachelor's degree in public administration two years ago. The disappointing part to me is that I haven't used it. I really feel disappointed in myself because I have potential that I'm not using.

12:21I think people who get to know me know that there's so much more I could be doing, and so when they have more belief in me than I have in myself, that's upsetting. That's difficult. If I'm really honest with myself, I have a fear of both success and failure, and I want to get over it. I don't want to spend another five years, ten years, one more day, one more week. I don't want to do it anymore. In her letter to us, Sherri also wrote, I do not fit in well when I have to compete with others for recognition. And Dr. Austin says that being willing to compete is another choice that women must make to succeed.

12:56Is that true? Absolutely. And again, the male and female experience is often so different. I was watching my son play basketball in the state championship, and he kept bumping this other kid and finally got a foul. And afterwards I said, Matt, why don't you be a little, I mean, why are you doing that? And he said, he said, Mom, it's a game. And so males come up learning that that rough and tumble pushing, you don't always have to make nice. It can be a game. Females traditionally have not learned that to the same degree. And we have a much harder time with competition. Yeah. At the end of the day...

13:27Because we were told to play nicely. Right. And at the end of the day you hold hands... And don't get dirty. And you sing kumbaya. Absolutely. Yes, true. Right, right. I saw a study, Oprah, of third graders, and even in third grade the girls said, well, I don't want to do too well because people will think I'm bragging. Right. Or it might make my best friend feel bad if I beat her on my math test. Even in third grade our girls are saying those things. Already. A lot of it for me is I've allowed other people's feelings to take priority over my own feelings. Sometimes I haven't wanted to compete with someone because I haven't wanted to stand in their way of opportunity, but I haven't looked at that as an opportunity for myself.

14:10Other times I just haven't wanted to take the risk. I wasn't sure that I would succeed, so I didn't want to attempt a failure. Wow. So what are you going to do about this, Sherri? Well, I'm on national television. So I don't think, when I get back, I have a very supportive group of friends. So I think they'll remind me of that, and they believe in me, and I'm starting to believe in myself. So tell me, what do you think? Because Bonnie was saying you have to, it's about following your passion. Right. Mine was talking. Look what it got me. So what, what is yours? I care a lot about people. I'd like to be an advocate.

14:43I'd really like to take the experience, the education, just the heartfelt feelings that I have for people and really put that passion in, really make a difference in people's life. And what is a way that you can take, as Dr. Austin said, a tiny step? Now, it doesn't mean you have to be at Congress next week, But what is the way, right where you are right now, in the work that you're doing right now, an hour or two hours a week, that you can take a step in that direction? What could you do? I think I could investigate what kind of advocate I want to be, who I want to advocate for, so I could narrow that down.

15:16And it's not enough to say I want to be an advocate, but I have to know whether I want to advocate for patients, I work in a clinic, or whether I want to advocate for children, because I like children. So I really have to focus that in and then find the steps to prepare me for that. Now, Dr. Austin says that connecting with a mentor can help you compete, but many women seek mentors who just make them feel better, correct? Yes. Studies show that when women choose mentors, let's say women in industry or academia, we tend to pick mentors who are good and sweet and nice. Males, on the other hand, tend to choose mentors who are strong and powerful and will help get them where they want to go.

15:52But, you know, I think you find mentors in your daily life. My first mentor was my best friend when I was 11 years old, Jane. And she is still my mentor. And she helped me think about how to get ready for college. So your best friend can be your first mentor. This program has been very empowering. What you've been doing over the last several years has been very empowering, financial help, spiritual help, you know, learning about our passion, your expertise. That's made a big difference, not only in my life, because it's allowed me to come on and really come in a public arena that I would never have done before.

16:25Oh, this is big. You can not do anything. Well, one of the things that Gary Zukav says all the time, that the path to spiritual growth, real spiritual growth, is self-awareness. And for everybody who's watching, and Dr. Austin says this in her book, too, What's Holding You Back, you can't begin to even figure out what's holding you back if you don't have an awareness of what is and what is not as important to you. If you don't know what makes you happy and what that picture would look like, if you don't know really what your passions are, then you can't begin to even start to follow them, because you haven't done the first step of self-examination and self-awareness to figure out, who are you, what does that mean, what do you really have to offer the world?

17:07That's the first step, is it not? Absolutely. It all starts with that motivation. And often the motivation for women is to experience love, or it may be to express something within oneself. It may be to master and overcome an old childhood issue. It may be to experience all. It requires honesty for yourself, most important. Yes. The first step is getting yourself intact. Right. Like, who are you, what do you want to do, and how can you then manifest that? Okay. Dorita says that she isn't afraid to take risks, but like many of you watching, she cannot find a job that brings her joy. Listen to Dorita.

18:10for fashion and travel. I want to be a part of the city, a part of people in the know. I would even love to be a part of the inaugural ball. But if you don't know the right people, you can't get in. And I keep thinking about modeling or entertainment because I feel I was born to be on a cover of a magazine. Sometimes I feel like a joke to other people when I told my best friend why I quit my last job. She laughed and suggested I go to therapy. Even my husband, who is trying to be so loving and supportive, doesn't really get it. I tell them that I can't stay in some job for 20 or 30 years if it's not the right job for me.

18:48My soul is crying out and my heart aches. I've cried myself to sleep at night wondering what my purpose in life is. If only I could get that special break or meet the right people. Until that happens, I will continue to search until the day I die. There are a lot of people who feel that way. A lot of people feel that way. Yes, you're not alone in that. People say, yes, because they're always coming up to me asking me to give them a break.

19:16I'm not the break giver. Dr. Austin says that Dorita needs to make another critical choice. She needs to maintain her motivation in a given job long enough to learn the lessons that she needs to learn, really. Absolutely. You know, Dorita, you said in your note that you are gorgeous, and you are really gorgeous. Thank you. But I'll tell you something. Society tells us, and you probably came up thinking that gorgeous women have wonderful things happen to them. They have great men parachute down from the sky. They get noticed by people in front of the drugstore and given movie parts. And unfortunately, it mostly doesn't work that way, that reaching your goals takes days, weeks, months, years, sometimes decades.

19:59It takes hard work. It takes a plan. One of the things in your story that jumps out at me is you keep quitting your jobs. And I would wonder if you are quitting your job before you've had time to really learn about yourself within that job, that you hit a bump in the road and you go, pfft, I'm out of here. Right. Before you've stopped, let yourself have a weep fest, if that's what you need to do, talked it over with someone, analyzed whatever your contribution was. Maybe it was only a 10 percent contribution to what happened, but still there's something in that 10 percent that you could learn and grow from.

20:37Yeah. And the decision to learn from failure is one of the eight critical choices that you need to make. See, now, I don't believe in failure. I do not believe in failure. And I have technically failed. Some things have not worked. But my...I did this speech at Wellesley several years ago, and that was one of my life lessons to the graduating class, is that for me failure is God's way of saying, or the universe's way, whichever you choose, God's way of saying, move in another direction. It is a big life. It is a life lesson, like to get you to stand up and say, aha, maybe this isn't what I needed to do.

21:11It's just to move you in a different direction. But the perception is, if you perceive it as, oh, my God, this is the end and I've failed, then that can overcome your life. You can end up being depressed and everything else about that. Well, for me, it started, my first job was in the federal government. And after being there for six years, I took a look at those people, and I said, do I really want to look like these people and be here after 30 years? They're all watching you right now. I know. I'm sorry. And I said, absolutely not. So that's what it began for me. I had an awakening when the death of my mother occurred, and it was like my mother worked really hard her entire life, And she never got to enjoy any of the things that I get to enjoy.

21:56And she died far too early. And I said, is that what life is all about? And then I started this searching and searching. And then when I had my 40th birthday, it was like the light came on again. I said, you know, you really need to start finding out what it is that you want and seeking out your purpose. I'm here for a reason, and I do know that I'm here for a reason, but I need to find that reason. Okay. So I'm saying the fact that you want to be on magazine covers is a small... ...because I don't think the universe honors, you know, the goal of, I want to be a star, or I want to be famous, or I want to be...

22:35It honors what you truly, what is your heart's deepest desire. Mm-hmm. And the form that that then takes is about what you bring to the table. It's not about if I could just be on the cover of a magazine, if I could just make a contact. No. Isn't that true? Well, let me explain to you what I meant by that comment, Oprah. Please do. I will do that. I know that I'm not at Tara Banks, but I was simply meaning that... You are gorgeous. Well, thank you very much. You're gorgeous. Thank you very much. Yeah. But who hasn't picked up a magazine cover and said, oh, if she could be on there, I can be on there?

23:07That's what I meant by that statement. Mm-hmm. What do you want to say, Dr. Austin? Well, you have to start with a plan. OK. You have a vision of that. You have how you're going to pursue that. You have the training that you need. And you begin today, this week, on your plan to achieve that goal, if that's what your goal. Now what I would say is that you have to look very careful to see if the activities along that path are ones that are meaningful to you. Right. I mean, being on a cover is a one-day thing. And what about all the other months and years in between? You're going to enjoy that process.

23:42Right. What does that mean? What it truly means. Yeah. Okay. What does that mean, being on a cover? Oh, girl, I could talk to you for hours. Well, what does that mean? What will that mean if you are then on the cover of a magazine? Recognition. Hmm. Mm-hmm. Recognition. So what you're really looking for is recognition. Perhaps. Yeah. Mm-hmm. A sense of validation. Right. For who you are. Mm-hmm. Okay. Which does not mean that it has to take the form of the cover of a magazine. Okay. So what you're looking for... See, right here you're beginning to define what you really want. Mm-hmm. We've done many shows on...

24:12with guys going through midlife crises, and they go and get the little red sports car. And then they get the red sports car. You know what I'm talking about. Right. And it doesn't bring them what they thought the little red sports car would bring them, because what they're looking for is the feeling... The feeling. ...of once again being youthful and desirable and, you know, all that that brings. There's a difference between a high and a life's goal, in other words. Okay. Karen says her boss, the way she reacts to him is the main source of unhappiness in her life. Having a really hard time at work recently, and it's mostly because of one person there, my boss.