O'Habits

40 Success Habits of Oprah Winfrey and the One Bad Habit She Needs to Stop!

Warren Cassell

• Publisher: Morgan James Publishing
• Year: 2010
• Print ISBN: 9781600377419
• eBook ISBN: 9781600379314
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Personal Success

If Oprah can do it, so can you! A roadmap to personal and professional success by following in the footsteps of the "Queen of all Media." We all know Oprah as the most influential woman in America but do we really know the habits she employed to achieve such success? In O'Habits: 40 Success Habits of Oprah Winfrey and the One Bad Habit She Needs to Stop!, Warren Cassell examines 40 habits that he explains catapulted Oprah to the top of the success mountain while referring to stories from and about Oprah. Whether you are a lawyer, teacher, entrepreneur, or salesman, you too can enjoy a level of success and happiness in business and in life once you adopt these habits. Warren also suggests that Oprah is bound to remain number one for the rest of her life provided that she shelves what he refers to as her one bad habit. In integrating the wisdom of Oprah with disciplines of business management, sales psychology, and personal achievement analysis, O'Habits appeals to both the male and female reader.

Part 1

A Word on Habits

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions for they become habits. Watch your habits for they become character. Watch your character for they become your destiny.

—Unknown

First we make our habits, then our habits make us.

—Charles C. Noble

I am writing this chapter on the first day of January 2009. It’s a time when I normally get my goal book and write down my goals and resolutions for the next twelve months. Each year, I resolve to be a better person and form better habits. Unfortunately, by March of each year I totally renege on my resolutions. However, I think I am in a better position this year given that I have done extensive research on the issue of forming better habits and especially since I have identified at least 40 of Oprah Winfrey’s that I can emulate. I am also resolved to be mindful of the things I want to accomplish this year. If we agree with Tracy’s notion of a habit, that is, “95 percent of everything that you think, feel, do and achieve is the result of habit.”,¹ then I think it’s safe to say that I will begin to feel, think and achieve my desires.

Joel Olsteen defines habit as “an acquired, learned behavior that we do without even thinking about it.”² Some are obviously good and some are bad. Having discovered most of Oprah’s good habits, one question arose. Can you really become a creature of new habits? I believe you can and the sorry one-liner “it’s a hard habit to break!” is nothing but an excuse for refusing to take control. Janet Rae Dupree believes that:

Rather than dismissing ourselves as unchangeable creatures of habit, we can instead direct our own change by consciously developing new habits. In fact the more things we try – the more we step outside our comfort zone – the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives.³

The good news: habits are learnable if we make that conscious effort. I once read that children can be potty trained in one day by providing them with lots of liquid and taking them to the toilet whenever you think that their bladder is full. Tracy says that “the speed of new habit pattern development is largely determined by the intensity of the emotion that accompanies the decision to begin acting in a particular way.”⁴ Using the desire to lose weight as an example, he says that it is a common desire that most fail to achieve. However, whenever their physician says that they will die if they do not lose weight, then the thought of dying becomes so intense or frightening that the individual immediately changes his or her diet and starts exercising.

The experts say that a habit can be broken in 6 weeks while Tracy says that a habit pattern of medium complexity can be formed in 21 days. The key is to quit feeding the bad habit and start nourishing the good ones. The irony is that we are fully aware that “good” habits will produce good and healthy lifestyles. So why do we continue to practice those bad habits? Dr. Phil suggests that we “cannot eliminate our negative behavior without understanding why we do it to begin with.” He says:

If you are engaging in some behavior or pattern of behavior you must assume that no matter how strange or illogical it may seem, you are engaging in it in order to create some result that you want. Whether you want it or not, you do⁵

I would also like to add that we tend to cling to poor habits because they keep us in our comfort zone and keep us away from change and adventure!

After watching Oprah, reading her articles and listening to her interviews over the past fifteen years, I’ve managed to identify 40 of her good habits (which I have dubbed O’Habits) that I believe have catapulted her to the level of success she now enjoys. Some of them are simple but effective in making us more productive and successful people and as such, I urge you to systemically adopt some if not all of the O’Habits in the following chapters. As this book is not only about Oprah, but also about you becoming a better person, I am giving the habits a human connection. After all, if Oprah can do it so can you and in the next chapter I will tell you why she’s an excellent example to follow.

Why 40?

When I was divinely inspired to write this book, I had no idea why I decided to list 40 habits as opposed to 10, 20 or 30. In fact, I did not at that time realize that 40 was extremely significant. As time passed, I then became convinced that this book must have been divinely inspired since the significance of the number forty was revealed to me.

The number 40 has a good relationship with the fulfillment of promises. Todd Dennis and Richard Anthony blog that “Of all the types and shadows of the Old Testament, none is as pervasive and important as the shadows revealed in the relationship between “forty”, and the fulfillment of promises.”⁶ It’s almost as if “40” is preparatory for transformation. Consider the fact that the normal period of pregnancy is 40 weeks, after which a living creature slides (literally) into the earth. Elijah had one meal that strengthened him for the next 40 days (1Kings 19:8), and 40 stripes was the maximum whipping penalty according to Deuteronomy 34:7.

Rick Warren in his famous work “The Purpose Driven Life” writes that “The Bible is clear that God considers 40 days a spiritually significant time period. Whenever God wanted to prepare someone for his purpose, he took 40 days.”⁷ He then made reference to Noah whose life was transformed by 40 days of rain, Moses who gained much courage and confidence to become a dynamic leader after spending 40 days on Mount Sinai and Jesus who became empowered after 40 days of fasting in the wilderness.

Arthur Blessing, whose story recently made it to the big screen in the movie “The Cross” carried the cross throughout every single country in the world over a forty year period. There is just something about the number 40.

I am therefore proposing that the following 40 “O’Habits” be digested over the next forty days while seeking to adopt as many as possible into our own lives. It’s hard to disagree with Rick Warren who says that “[o]ne reason most books don’t transform us is that we are so eager to read the next chapter, we don’t pause and take time to seriously consider what we have just read. We rush to the next truth without reflecting on what we have learned.”⁸ This book, therefore, is not a book to be read overnight, but rather, one should read and digest it one bite-sized chapter per day with a view to becoming a better person.

It is my desire that after the 40 days of reading this book, you would have adopted most if not all of the O’Habits with a view to understanding that these same habits are determining factors in attaining the goals you’ve set for yourself. Finally, I also hope that this book reaches the New York Times best seller’s list and stays there for at least 40 weeks.

Why Oprah Winfrey?

No matter what you’re selling, there’s no greater single guarantee of success than getting yourself booked on Oprah.

Time Magazine, May 9, 2007

At this point, you’re probably asking “why the habits of Oprah?” as opposed to Ellen Degeneres, Donald Trump, Martha Stewart or Tyra Banks. Well, first of all, it’s a lot easier to glean the habits of Oprah without meeting her, because apart from her show, she writes about herself every month in her magazine – “O The Oprah Magazine”. And not only does she have a lot of material out there, she is also very candid. She opens herself up to us in the hope that we too search within and find our true selves and for that, her influence in my opinion is second to none. Moreover, Oprah has decided that she will end her talk show after being on the air for twenty-five years. This book sums up what there is to learn from “the most influential woman in the world”.

In its December 2007 issue, the Hollywood Reporter in paying tribute to Oprah as its “Leadership in Hollywood Honoree” stated that her “influence had grown to rival that of the White House and maybe to be even greater in people’s hearts and minds.”⁹ No one dares debate that after all the worldwide attention, her meteoric rise has caused even the naysayers to throw in the towel. With a number one talk show for over 20 years, this multiple Emmy winner, who decided to remove her name from the list since no one else was winning, has a penchant for causing unknown authors to become best sellers literally overnight. Oprah is success personified.

Everything she touches turns to prophetic gold. Her influence transcends generations. She is a woman that has seen wave after wave after wave of struggles but has overcome time and time again to be the success story that she is today. As a result, she constantly speaks about those good habits that have made her who she is today. “O’Habits” examines such habits and encourages readers to adopt them in order to accelerate the process of prosperity and success in their own lives.

Brian Tracy, one of America’s foremost authorities on developing peak performance and individual achievements, notes that “the most important discovery in the field of psychology and success is that fully 95 percent of everything that you think, feel, do and achieve is the result of habit. Beginning in childhood, you have developed a series of conditioned responses that lead you to react automatically and unthinkingly in almost every situation.”¹⁰

I wanted to examine what has made Oprah as successful as she is and why no other talk-show host in the United States has been as influential as she is. I often wonder why some people were successful and others were not. Some seemed blessed and some seemed very much cursed. While writing this chapter and in fact just before writing this paragraph, I was summoned by telephone to the local police station, only to find that a young man was arrested and charged for burglary. He had been arrested at least five times prior to that and swore he was going to keep out of trouble. I represented him in court before and could not believe that he had committed another similar offence. On the other hand there are others, who, like Oprah, enjoy nothing but success after success.

Is Oprah’s success a matter of being at the right place at the right time? Her influence is undeniably tremendous. CNN and Time.com called her “arguably the world’s most powerful woman”; The American Spectator called her “arguably the most influential woman in the world”; Time Magazine called her “one of the 100 people who most influenced the 20th Century” and “one of the most influential people” of 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007. She is the only person in the world to have made all five lists. Her personality is engaging and people like to read about her. So, on that note, let us not only examine her habits but also let us aim to emulate them. Everybody knows Oprah and these are her habits!

Part 2

O’Habit #1: Oprah Goes to Bed
Early and Rises Early

Early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise.

Benjamin Franklin

In her “What I know for sure” column in the September 2006 issue of Oprah Magazine she writes that “every sunrise is like a new page, a chance to receive each day in all its glory.” Going to bed early and rising early is a habit that Oprah employs and is one that we should practice as well. If you watch the Oprah show or read the magazine, you would have heard her say that by 8:30/9:00 pm she’s in bed to be up by 5:00 am. This seems to be consistent with the favored quote “early to bed early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise”. But does it really matter whether you go to bed early and rise early?

Brian Tracy in his book “Million Dollar Habits” says that

“When you get up early, at 5:30 or 6:00 in the morning, you will have ample time to think about the day ahead and to plan your work activities. Early rising gives you an opportunity to read, reflect, and meditate. Early rising enables you to get up and going without a feeling of pressure to rush out of the house in order to get to work on time¹¹

Oprah knows that and goes to bed early, looking forward to the beauty and the opportunities of the morning. There is just something inspiring about the morning that people who sleep through the morning seem to miss. Henry Ward Beecher believed that “the first hour is the rudder of the day.”

Going to bed early also puts u...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half title
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction
• Part 1
• Part 2
• End Notes: