Oprah Winfrey: Learn to listen to the whispers

Things come in whispers in life. Are you listening?
Photo by Kevin Shorter via Flickr/Creative Commons.

Note: I attended Oprah Winfrey’s Life You Want Weekend Tour in September 2014 in Atlanta, Ga.. I’m blogging every day this week about the main messages from the event. Today is Day 2. 

By Chanda Temple

During Oprah Winfrey’s recent Life You Want Weekend tour in Atlanta, she told the audience that things come in whispers and we need to learn to listen to them.

A whisper tells us if something is not right or does not make sense. If we don’t listen to that whisper, God will still work to get our attention. He may hit us with a pebble, a little thump up side the head to the point where we say, “Hmm, that’s odd.” It’s supposed to get our attention.

If we don’t pay attention to the pebble, we then get a brick. When the brick comes, we are in crisis and that crisis is supposed to get our attention, Winfrey said.

If we don’t pay attention to the brick, we will face a brick wall, which means there’s now a disaster to get our attention.

“Life is always speaking to you, especially in our greatest trials,” Winfrey said. So the question is: Will you listen to the whispers?

When Oprah Winfrey was growing up in Mississippi, her grandmother would wash clothes for other people and then hang the clothes to dry in the backyard. She told Winfrey to pay attention to how she did it because Winfrey would one day have to it, too. At that moment, Winfrey knew she wouldn’t be doing that. The message came to her in a whisper.
Photo by: Sonya Boatwright

Chanda Temple worked as a reporter for 20 years before becoming a public relations professional. She blogs about being better in business and more at http://www.chandatemplewrites.com. Follow her on Twitter at @chandatemple.