Winfrey explained how that little voice, what she referred to as her “spiritual self,” guided her through the best and hardest times in her life: when she was raped as a 9-year-old, when she was pregnant and lost her son as a 14-year-old, when she found out she had gotten the role in “The Color Purple,” the movie role that won her an Academy Award.
Then she explained how every person has that little voice and that “oftentimes when things are not going the way you want them to, it’s your life pushing you in a different direction.”
“When you start to feel it, you’re supposed to pay attention to what that is,” she said.
Winfrey began her career on radio and then moved into television, becoming a newscaster in Nashville, Baltimore and Chicago. Daytime TV came later, and she found massive success with “The Oprah Winfrey Show.” She was so powerful and popular that there was a time when anything that she endorsed on her show, whether that be a book, a pair of shoes or even a political candidate, would become an instant success. This phenomenon became to be referred to as “The Oprah Effect.”