Life Lessons FromOprah Winfrey & Steve Jobs

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Life Lessons 
From
Oprah Winfrey & Steve Jobs
 

“Our beliefs can move us forward in life, or they can hold us back.” 
- Oprah Winfrey

Born into poverty, sexually abused from age nine until her late teens often by friends and relatives, pregnant at 14.

Oprah believed she was destined for better things in life. Today, her estimated net worth is $3 billion.

“You have to trust in something, your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever.”
- Steve Jobs

What happened to Oprah Winfrey and Steve Jobs affected them deeply. And as their biographies tell us, this left them questioning themselves, and creating strong limiting beliefs of "I'm not good enough" and "I'm not worthy."

But instead of allowing their limiting beliefs to control their life, they did something about it!

What did they do? First of all, they acknowledged and accepted what happened to them. They consigned the events to the history books. While this seems like a simple and logical thing for anyone to do, it's sadly a very forgotten first step for most of us. It's so important let me repeat it: they acknowledged and accepted what happened to them.

The next thing they did was to draw a lesson from their experience, a lesson that would drive and fuel their ambitions.  By doing this, they effectively transformed their old limiting beliefs into a useful belief.

For Winfrey, her lesson was that she had a choice of how she wanted her life to turn out, and she choice success and happiness. Her limiting belief of “I’m not worthy” became “I am good enough.” For Jobs, his lesson was to remain true to his core beliefs of blending beauty and technology for everyone to enjoy. His limiting belief of “I’m not good enough” became “I’m going to show them, because I can.”

These are the two simple steps of transforming your limiting belief into a useful one that I'd like to share with you. First is to accept and acknowledge your limiting belief. After that, draw a lesson from the experience to help transform your previous limiting belief into a more useful one.

Is it as simple as that?

For some of us, yes, for some of us, no. The key is to keep at it and to repeat these two steps ALL the time until you feel a change taking place within you. With resilience and perseverance, this will work!

And if you need help with your resilience, please click on the “read more” button on the bottom left of this article and download your free copy of my ebook on how to build personal resilience.