NEW ORLEANS, LA – JULY 02: Oprah Winfrey speaks onstage during the 2016 ESSENCE Festival presented By Coca-Cola at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on July 2, 2016 in New
Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for 2016 Essence Festival)
We were super inspired by Oprah Winfrey ‘s speech at the Essence Festival in New Orleans on Saturday!
Watch this video clip from her speech where she
shares the story of the six trees…
• “I used to dream the dream driving through the white peoples’ neighborhoods. You’d see their fancy houses. Sometimes they had gates, but all of them had trees. .I thought, ‘Oh, rich people have trees. Some people want pocketbooks and cars, but I want me some trees. … About three years ago, I was sitting in my kitchen window, making coffee in the morning and I saw the six trees. I was making the coffee. I saw the six trees. I went out on the porch to actually count the six trees, and this
is what i noticed: That I could dream the six, but beyond the six trees in my kitchen window are 3,687 trees. How do I know? Because I had them counted. I dreamed the six. That was as much as my small mind and my imagination can see. I dreamed the six, but God can see beyond the six.”
Very captivating!
This was Oprah’s first-ever speech at the Essence Festival and she looked amazing in her red dress.
She started up by saying – “This is my first time here. What took me so long? What took me so long?…All I got to say is it’s beyond happiness to be
here.“
Oprah is one of the richest women in the world and she’s at the helm of a successful media empire. Poverty, teen pregnancy, failure are just some of the obstacles she has overcome.
NEW ORLEANS, LA – JULY 02: Oprah Winfrey speaks onstage during the 2016 ESSENCE Festival presented By Coca-Cola at Ernest N. Morial Convention Center on July 2, 2016 in New
Orleans, Louisiana. (Photo by Paras Griffin/Getty Images for 2016 Essence Festival)
One of the key messages we picked up was this – “The key, the secret, the magic is to surrender to God’s dream for you.“
Here are 5 insightful quotes and lessons from Oprah’s speech curated by Nola.com
• “I am living the dream. And I want you to live the dream because I’m not living the dream because I’m special. I’m living the dream because I was obedient to the call of the dream. I want you to leave here today thinking about what is the dream for you? What is God’s dream for you? What does the creator’s dream hold for you? So often we spend our lives hoping and wishing and hoping and wishing and desiring things. This is what I know for sure: You don’t get what you hope for. You don’t get get what you wish for. You get what you believe.”
• “For everything there is an equal and opposite reaction. … It means no matter what you do, what you say, the energy of who you are is going out into the world, into your home, into your relationships and that energy is always coming back to you. You are responsible for the energy that you are putting out into the world because that
very energy — bam! —is coming right back to you every single time, whether you believe it or not, because it is law. It is law.”
• “When you’ve done everything you can do, you don’t just have to stand. When you’ve prayed and … wanted and dreamed and held on and believed and got turned down and turned back and turned around, it taught me when you’ve done everything you can do, Surrender all. Surrender all.”
• “You have no power over any territory other than
your own, but you are the master of that. You get to
be the captain of your own soul and if you just manage that, if you just took care of your territory, all the glorious, glorious, glorious wondrous opportunities and possibilities are waiting for you. The question is, what are you resisting?”
• “Your life is big. Your life is huge, and we spend so much time wanting to be in somebody else’s life, and you don’t get honored, you don’t get revered, you don’t get celebrated wanting what somebody else has.”
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