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1. Her motto is take charge. That is consistent through Oprah and her life is to take responsibility for your own life and to live your best life. If you are doing that on a daily basis then that is something that Oprah is interested in. You are not only committed to your work but you are living it in a daily manner.
I love what Gandhi said, “I am the message to the world.” Everything that you do, say and are is in complete alignment with what you are promoting.
2. Personal choice. Most people, Oprah says, are directed by voices outside of themselves, whether it is your parents or your work or whatever. Personal choice is about making your own way in the world and really following your own voice to be the person you want to be in this world. I was just listening to Anne LaMott, who is a fabulous author and speaker. She wrote Bird by Bird, one of my favorite books for writers. What everybody loved so much about Anne LaMott, who has a huge following, is that she tells the ugly truth but she is hilarious about it.
She was telling a story about how she helped kill one of her best friends. It was a very hard story to listen to, but at the same time very beautiful, very moving and very honest. Very few people are willing to do that kind of thing.
She gets lots of hate mail. She just wrote a letter about slapping her son, who was in his teens, and she wasn't proud of that but she wrote it. She got hate mail about what a horrible person she is. That is the kind of thing that Oprah looks for.
3. Child and domestic abuse. Oprah is still completely committed to fight against the abuse of women and children. It is not just preventing that abuse, but improving the lives of women in some way, shape or form, particularly women and children.
4. Education. Education changed everything for Oprah. She also wants to change education and help women and children become educated, like what she is doing in Africa. If you will notice that this year, there is really a focus on people who are making major change in the world, outside the political system. That is really a trend in our society today.
We have rogue people who no matter what the political system is they are following their mission and making a difference in this and other countries in their own way without the support of the government or necessarily the government of those countries. That is pretty miraculous in our country. Oprah is finding a lot of those people. It is a testament to her that she is so committed to inspiring all of us through these remarkable acts of both ordinary people and people who are ordinary people who become extraordinary.
These are her hot buttons meaning these are the broader issues that she has spoken on. Everybody can go to Oprah.com to see what the shows are that she is looking for people right now. You can take a look there and say, do I fit into something that they are interested in doing at this time? Those are more specific kinds of things. These are very broad.
For example, she just had a show as I mentioned, on going green. That would not fit into these categories, but it does fit into educating the public. It is not educating girls, necessarily, but it is. It is starting with the mom and saying if you want to run your household and keep your kids healthy you can go green. Here is how it is going to affect you in all different ways.
One of the people that she had on was a mom with a kid who was real young, one or two. He was coughing and getting asthma. They could not figure it out. It turned out it was because of these household products that they were using. She went on this process of investigating so she could change these products for her son. If you can see that this big issue really boiled down to a small issue was she wanted to keep her children healthy.
- Learn more about how to get booked on Oprah in Susan Harrow & Jordan McAuley's How to Get Booked on Oprah: Appear on Oprah, in O Magazie, and on Oprah's Favorite Things.
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