On her first ever visit to Belgium, American global star Oprah Winfrey revealed the recipe of her success at the opening night of tech festival SuperNova in Puurs (Antwerp Province). An audience of 1,700 hung on her every word as she explained why it is best to be guided by the intentions behind your project. ‘If you are successful and that does not make you happy, then you have chosen the wrong kind of success,’ she says.
‘I didn't want to see myself as a brand, because I am a person. I was afraid of losing my authenticity,’ Oprah Winfrey told the opening night of Belgian tech festival SuperNova. Only later did she realise that it is precisely this authenticity that characterises her. Or how she puts it herself: ‘My heart is my brand.’
She discovered this by following her ‘natural GPS’, her intuition. ‘Everything I do I base on how something feels to me. I don't do anything that doesn't align with the values I want to convey to the world,’ Ms Winfrey says. For her, her intuition is the common thread in the many projects she has on her record.
In doing so, she is especially mindful of the impact her work has on others. ‘My work should also benefit others. I want to use my life for something bigger than myself and to show people how to live their lives differently,’ Ms Winfrey said. She learnt this during the early years of her talk show ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’, which ran from 1986 to 2011 and saw 30 seasons.
Media company ‘Harpo’, cable channel OWN, the ‘O’ magazine and the Oprah book club followed. The latest addition to the Oprah empire is a podcast. In 2017, she started the SuperSoul series, which has since become ‘The Oprah podcast’.