I'm Oprah Winfrey. Welcome to Super Soul Conversations, the podcast. I believe that one of

the most valuable gifts you can give yourself is time, taking time to be more fully present.

Your journey to become more inspired and connected to the deeper world around us starts right

now.

In 1997, the worst hate mail I'd ever received came after doing the Ellen DeGeneres show.

Ellen came out and I was her therapist on that monumental coming out show and I'll talk

about that in a moment. But the truth is for me, I know this that if you in any way are

keeping a secret or if you in any way are pretending to be something that you are not, you

will never, ever become all that you were meant to be. It just cannot happen if you're living

in some kind of pretense, phony world. I think many people hide behind the facade of their

own lives in various ways. I can say for myself that being able to be myself in front of

all of you has been one of the great gifts of my life to be able to be truthful to say

whatever was going on in my life. I wasn't always that way. I shared a story of starting

out in television news and pretending to be Barbara Walters was not until I was able to

literally break free of pretending to be an anchor woman and pretending to be like Barbara

Walters that my career started to take off. So I know that as long as you are trying to

carry on the facade and for me it was something as superficial as trying to sit like Barbara

and cross my legs like Barbara and lean into the desk like Barbara. Superficial but still

prohibiting me from being and being able to exercise the fullness of myself. I know

for anybody, if in any way you are pretending something that is not true for your life,

you will not be able to move forward because that untruth, that uncertainty about standing

in your truth, blocks you from all that you were meant to be. Ellen being able to literally

...