and when my dad was in town he would watch her with me. Soon Oprah got her own TV show, and so I watched her in the afternoon. I added “working for Oprah” to my dream list.
Years later, when I was a senior in college, my father asked me at winter break what I wanted to do when I graduated that coming spring. I was getting a degree in Communications: Radio-TV-Film, and I told him I still wanted to work for Oprah. Oprah was in the entertainment business, and she was about helping people—two of the things on my dream list. But I told him I didn’t know how to go about it.
My father instructed me to get a legal pad. I loved when he said this, because it always meant an idea was being hatched and that an adventure would ensue. To this day, I get a thrill of excitement when I pull out a fresh legal pad: it represents all possibility to me and the genesis of something being formed.
I sat down with my father and the legal pad of possibilities and wrote two letters, both introducing myself and stating my dream. One letter was going to be sent to all of the alumni from my school who were living in Chicago, where the Oprah show was produced (I would later get the list from my college). The letter told them a little about me, and a lot about my dream to work for Oprah.
The second letter was to Oprah herself. It was a lot like the first letter, only the first letter asked if that person knew someone who worked for Oprah that I could get in touch with to ask for a job, while the letter to Oprah just asked for a job directly.
I sent over fifty letters, plus one (the one to Oprah). I heard back from one of the fifty. It was from an alumnus who was a high-level financier at a bank that specialized in loans to entertainment properties. His wife knew someone at the Oprah show, and he knew someone at the company that distributed the show. First, though, he wanted to talk with me.
From my tiny town in Texas and out-in-the-country home, Chicago seemed a million miles away from the phone I held pressed to my ear. And John, the alumnus, was like a superstar with his huge job and connections. The phone felt like a live wire in my hands as I felt a charge being connected to this bigger world of possibilities, and I couldn’t believe John’s kindness to spend a few moments with me.
The first thing John did was ask me a battery of questions about the entertainment industry. He especially wanted to know what I knew about syndication. I worked at the local ABC affiliate station while in college, but knew nothing about syndication. John told me about the NATPE convention—National Association of Television Production Executives—which was being held in New Orleans that month. It was a convention all about syndication. He offered to send me his tickets because he wasn’t able to attend; I just had to get myself there. I assured John that wouldn’t be a problem.
John’s instructions for me once I got to NATPE were to go and talk to everyone in the King World booth, and to meet one executive there specifically. He knew this executive and I was to use his name when introducing myself. King World is the company that sold the Oprah show to TV stations around the country. That, John said, was called syndication. Then I was to call him when it was over.
When I told this to my father, he had a different set of instructions for me. As part of my preparations for going to NATPE, he had me make business cards with my name, address, and phone number on them. He told me to talk to everyone at the King World booth just like John said, but to do it quick. Then I was to go all around the rest of the convention and introduce myself to everyone that I could, handing out all 500 of my cards to people I spoke to personally. I was to tell each of them, during some part of that conversation, my dream.
I took both my father and John at their word. I walked all over that convention floor and shook a lot of hands. I also told my dream to a lot of people. I especially made sure to talk to all of the production companies headquartered in Chicago, in case the efforts to meet with Oprah fell through, so that I could triangulate my strategy in getting to her company. I didn’t hand out all 500 cards, but the stack was a lot smaller when I came home.
Sending me to NATPE had been a bit of a test with John. It was instructional, and at the same time it was a way of gauging my interest and dedication to my goal. Fortunately, I passed. Soon after NATPE, John called and asked if I could fly to Chicago by the end of the week to interview at The Oprah Winfrey Show. I did, and was offered a job on the spot.
John’s sending me to NATPE was a response to my efforts. This is important to note because dreaming is a relationship between our inner voice and our outer efforts. That sentence should be bold and underlined. What we see in our imagination, or what our dreams tell us, is but a wisp until we respond to it and bring it manifest in the physical.
Dreaming is both nighttime and daytime, both imagination and effort. If we live solely in our imagination, we won’t get very far in life, neither if we live solely in effort—both are required. Together, dreaming and manifestation work as a dance that moves us forward and draws the form and direction of our life.
Sending me to NATPE was also a gift from John. Rather than remaining something abstract, I now had an image of the entertainment industry, and specifically of me in the entertainment industry. Walking the convention floor I had, literally, stepped into the business for that brief window, and I could see myself working in it. I would walk into different exhibitor booths and could imagine myself shaking hands with buyers, talking about television programs, sitting at tables and scratching out deals. By forming into an image, the entertainment business became a tangible reality.
Image is our blueprint. As much as images are the language of our present experiencing, they are also the destination we direct ourselves toward. It is from image that our conscious processing makes decisions.
Lesson Three:
We can do anything by seeing it. We can create any reality we choose. We are the creators and captains of our life.
Images are the bases of all our actions. Just like driving a car somewhere, if we can’t see where it is that we are going, we have nowhere to go. The images that we see inside are our destinations. As Richard was instructed in the book Illusions, putting ourselves into our images makes them manifest in real life and in very real ways. Walking the floor of the NATPE convention directly put me into a now-tangible image, which then became a now-tangible destination.
The trip to NATPE was also a gift in another way. Not only did going there prepare me for the job interview with Oprah’s company, it put me in a situation where I could be creative, or not, to make a little, or make something much more.
I could have spent the whole time talking to just the folks in the King World booth. That was, after all, what I had come there to do. Instead, at my father’s suggestion, I walked the convention floor over and over, speaking to people from MCA, Columbia, Paramount, Universal … all the studios and all the boutiques. I saw how television shows are packaged, watched how buyers and sellers talked to each other, what they ate, and how they dressed. My worldview expanded, and I made countless contacts. This was all very good, because I didn’t take the job at Oprah.
The job offered to me at The Oprah Winfrey Show was to work in production, and production was starting the following week. I had, by this time, only a few more months left to graduate college. I was faced with a choice: graduate from college, or take the job at Oprah that I had dreamed about since junior high. I chose to graduate.
I made my choice with freedom and lightness of heart, because I had verified that dreams of our passions can become manifest. The lesson that my dad had been teaching me, that I had read in Illusions, I had now tested and experienced for myself. Rather than feeling like the closing of a door saying no to the job offer, the offer was a promise to me of endless possibilities. I said no with the newfound assurance that I had
