How to Navigate Life’s Big Transitions with Oprah and Bestselling Author Jim Collins

So I had you all many revelations reading this book. The key question is not what you are good at, but what are you encoded for?

Yep.

Y'all, it's a different way of looking at your life. Not what are you good at, but what you are encoded for. Hi, everybody. I'm so glad to be with you here on the Oprah podcast. And who am I excited today for you to learn from the man who's sitting with me? Jim Collins is a renowned

business writer. He is a researcher whose many books, including his number one New York Times bestseller, if anybody's in business, you've read his book, Good to Great. But he says his most recent research project that he spent 10 years working on turned almost everything that he believed on its head. And that research has now culminated in this groundbreaking new book, What to Make of a Life. And before we get started, I wanted to say that when I first read Good to Great, remember?

You remember.

I think it was around 2004.

It was exactly that.

Was it?

Yeah.

Okay. I was so charged up by it that I asked you to come to Chicago and speak to my entire staff, hundreds of people, right? And I can't tell you how many times I've said, let's confront the brutal facts.

The brutal facts, yeah.

Yeah. So many times over the years I was so inspired by that book.

Yeah, thank you.

Yes.

And it's wonderful to see you again, Jim.

It is wonderful to see you again.

Thank you for coming all the way to my front porch. It's a very, it's a wonderful part of the porch. Jim Collins is a business writer, prolific researcher, and author. He is best known for his runaway bestseller, Good to Great, which sold five million copies worldwide and became like a Bible for many business leaders.

In his new book, What to Make of a Life, Jim asks readers to think about their own unique skills and natural gifts, and to recognize the intrinsic value of major life transitions. He makes the distinction that what you are good at

may be very different from what you are wired to do with your unique innate abilities and passions. He hopes to help you answer this question. What is your code for what to make of your own life? We often ask the question here on this podcast of what makes a meaningful life?

And I just have to say, I was intrigued, I was inspired, I was fascinated by every story in this book and the way you researched and the way you analyzed what makes a meaningful life. That's what this book is all about. For all the notable people that you talk to.

And this is what I want to say to you all. No matter where you are, what stage you are in your life, this book is going to apply to you because we all have a life, we all want to have meaningful lives. And I look forward to watching this become a bestseller because I think this is a book

that should be on people's bedside. You know, you go and you read it and you come back to it and come back to it. Why did you come up with this idea for What Makes a Meaningful Life? I love that title, What's the Make of a Life?

Yeah, you know, what's interesting too is that for a long time I didn't have the title. Yeah. So, I was afraid we'll never publish because I'll never find the title. Yes.

But it was buried in the text. What's interesting is I think some people are going to be surprised because I had done all this stuff, studying companies and so forth and why am I looking at the question of life? And as you know from reading, it just has really deep personal seeds for me.

In the book, Jim describes cliffs as a time of major life transitions. He explains fog as the period of confusion and uncertainty that typically follows a cliff. Jim believes being in frame means you are in alignment with your natural gifts.

And finally, he sees encodings as the essence of what makes you, you. So I want to start here. You tell the story of being in Hawaii. Yeah. And it was your wife, Joanne,

who seeded the idea for studying how people move through their cliffs in life. So can you tell us the Ironman story?

Yeah.

So Joanne, we've been married 45 years now. And back in the 1980s, Joanne was a world-class athlete. And there was this thing called the Ironman. And of course, that's...

We all know what the Ironman is.

Yeah, the Ironman. And of course that's... We all know what the Ironman is. Yeah, the Ironman is. And Joanne was not just doing the Ironman, she was competing to win. And she was so wonderfully made for it. She's a competitor by nature, an incredible athlete, so well in frame with it. But in her 1985 race,

where she did win the world championship, she had this lingering hamstring injury. And in that race, actually, it was an amazing thing to watch because she had this 10-minute lead with about 10 miles to go.

You write of that so beautifully. Oh. She had like a 10-minute lead.

And then a 9-minute lead. And then an 8-minute lead.

Exactly. And the hamstring caught up, and she ended up, of course, winning the race, but by only about 90 seconds. And the main thing is, the hamstring injury never healed. And here she had this thing that defined her. She was so beautifully made for her.

She was so exquisite at doing it. And it was being ripped away from her by this injury. And so one morning, we're sitting at our little kitchen table, and she said simply, just gasped.

It was a gasp.

She said, I feel like I'm dying. and she said simply, just gasped, it was a gasp. Yeah. She said, I feel like I'm dying. Because this thing that defined her, imagine if you could never have another conversation, right? I feel like I'm dying.

Yeah.

And I had no answer. That one phase of her life was ending. And I think that's when the seed of people go through cliffs where life as you knew it has changed in some fundamental way, something inalterable has happened.

And you have to confront the question, well, now what to make of a life now that that's done, now that that's over, now that this is so changed under my feet. And I think that's when the seed of looking at these people through the lens of their cliffs.

Yes. That's why I love this book so much is because it's, it demonstrates story after story that nobody gets through life without a cliff.

No one. No one we studied anyway. No one you studied.

And I conclude that nobody gets through life without a cliff. Yes, right. So, if you're living a life, you're going life without a cliff. Yes, right. So if you're living a life, you're gonna have a cliff. And so the thing is to be prepared for, not only be prepared for what you do when the cliff comes.

That's right.

So let's go back to your first cliff. You begin, what to make of a life, makes me emotional, thinking about you going back to visit your father. So let's start with that story. Can you tell us a story when you were in high school, you took a long bus ride.

I sure did.

To visit your father.

Yeah, so I think the deepest seeds of this go back to that.

My father-

It makes me so emotional thinking about you as a young boy on that bus.

I was, and my dad, I so desperately wanted my father to be a father. And he had taken us off to San Francisco in the middle of the Haight-Ashbury in the 1960s. And it ended up not just the summer of love, it was also violent. My mom finally took me and my brother and myself back to Boulder where we'd come from, Colorado. We lived in this ice cold basement and we didn't have a Christmas

tree. So your mom had decided, whatever your craziness is, I'm gonna be better off being a single mother. Yeah, that's right. And she took the boys and...

And left. Yeah. Yeah, my mom's just doing the best she can in this really cold basement. And this entire time though, I just had this, I really hoped, desperately hoped my father would reappear.

Doesn't every kid? Yeah, it's like, I want a father.

Yeah.

And so in early high school, I made this little pilgrimage down. My father was living in an adobe hut with a dirt floor in New Mexico. And I had this kind of romantic idea. Like I had this thought, I'm gonna bring,

it was around Thanksgiving, I'm gonna bring him a turkey. And so I got this-

How old were you?

It was like early high school, maybe like 10th grade, I think is basically what it was. 13, yeah.

Yeah.

And I got this prepackaged turkey. And you can picture me, right? And I get on this Greyhound bus from Colorado down to the adobe hut with the dirt floor and the wood stove. And I had this romantic image that I would bring this turkey, my father and I would cook it in the wood stove. My father would emerge as a father.

And I don't know why-

And he's gonna be so happy that you're bringing the turkey. Exactly. And you write it so beautifully, Jim. That's why I'm so emotional,

because as I was, oh, this is like a scene out of a movie. Yeah. Yeah. It's, yeah, not a happy part of the movie. Yeah.

And so, and then, and I get there. And what's so etched in my mind is that whole weekend, my father never asked a question about me that I can recall. And he mainly spent the weekend talking about how hard his mom had made his life.

Yeah.

And trying to get me to convince her to give him money. So,

he, you're, you, you're the son, you go back to see your father, you're excited to see your father and he's like, how to get your mom. My grandma. His mom. Yeah. To give him

money. To give him money. Yeah. And I, I had this, that's when I had this shattering realization, there will never be a father there. And when I got back on that bus going back north to Colorado, that's when for me, my father died while he was still alive. And that was the seed, it's like,

I'm what, a 15-year-old kid or whatever. And I'm looking out at sort of the fog of life. I have no idea how to do it. I have no male role models. I have no sense for how you find your way in the world, what to do with a single life. You only get one of them.

And I was just heading out into the murk completely unguided. And I think that's when the seed, like, I was trying to figure out what to make of a life as a 15-year-old kid and I had no idea. I had no idea how to have an idea.

So here's what you write about cliffs on page 154. You say, the cliffs of life can take many forms. And those of you who are listening and watching to us, you may recognize yourself in some of these forms. Yeah. In the lives we studied and in our own lives. Here's a short list of possible cliffs that can hit a life. Mourning the end of a significant relationship.

Experiencing a dramatic change in personal finances. Dealing with a health event or diagnosis. Feeling upended by a natural disaster. Getting fired or laid off. Seeing demand for your work, job, profession dry up. Discovering that someone important is untrustworthy.

Oh my God, betrayals really are cliffs for people. Reeling from a business or professional setback, losing an incredibly important person in your life, leaving behind a life-defining role or impossible-to-replicate experience, or any version of waking up to the fact

that one phase of life has come to an end. That's right. You've determined there's no such thing as a cliff-less life.

Yeah, but we even, as you know from the material, we tried to find cliff-less lives to study. And we were unsuccessful, and that's when I concluded cliffs are us. We actually, we all have them. And there can also be positive cliffs too.

There can be cliffs where you achieve something and that part of life is over.

So, for everyone who's watching and listening to us, no such thing as a cliffless life. It's what you do when the cliff comes, when you get to the cliff. And you write that a lot of people move into what you call fog.

Yeah.

Remember the moment we heard actor Michael J. Fox had Parkinson's disease? He'd had this giant career, first with sitcom Family Ties, and then the blockbuster Back to the Future series and so much more.

And I thought it was so interesting how you showed us in What to Make of a Life that it was seven years from the time he was diagnosed to the time he actually told the public. And that he was in a fog basically that whole time.

Talk about that.

So I expected clips, right?

Yeah, you expected clips.

I expected clips because it was kind of the study design. I was looking at people, matching them at clips, et cetera. What I really didn't expect was the prevalence of fog where something happens like a diagnosis or probably, I think you might have met Catherine Graham, right? Yes.

When Catherine Graham...

I love Catherine Graham.

Oh, boy, how can you not love Catherine Graham, right?

I love Catherine Graham.

And she loses her husband to manic depression, takes his own life, and all of a sudden, she has the newspaper on her hands. And what I realized is that in the wake of a cliff, we observed these periods of fog where you're lost, you're befuddled, you're confused, you're disoriented, you're reeling, you're uncertain.

Yeah, that happened to me when I entered the Oprah show. I was in a fog for a while.

Okay, so that's very interesting, actually. So that, and I remember when we first met, you were contemplating that. And then you decided to go over the cliff, your own cliff. Right, here we are today, you're on the other side of the fog. Right, but the fog, do you mind me asking what the fog was like?

The fog was terrible. I was trying to figure out, I was just talking with the crew last night. We were talking about the things and the shows and the next chapters and the things that I was doing, trying to figure out where do I land this, because I knew for certain that it was time to end the show. And the big mistake that

I made was that I did not wait. I did not take the time to wait a year and figure it out. I went from one thing right into trying to build a network and trying to build a network at the same time that I was ending the show. And so I was in a fog of what do you program and how do you program a whole network?

It's not the same thing as doing a show every day. Yeah.

Yeah. And I think one of the things that I really, really want people to gain from this book is the self-compassion for being in the fog. Yeah. So, first of all, when you go through a cliff, we're all gonna have them. Fog's not a defect.

I mean, you're Oprah, you had fog.

Yeah, I had major fog.

Katharine Graham, is Catherine Graham, had fog. Yeah. Right? And so, that you have these periods, and your experience, one of the things we learned is you need to move in small steps through the fog.

Yeah, well, this is what I learned once I was in the fog.

Yeah.

Exactly what you say about simplex steps. Yeah, so I'm curious. Once I was in the fog, I realized the way to get out of the fog is to take just the next right move. Exactly. Yeah. So, you know, I took this big leap

instead of taking a simple step right after the show. And then I have this big leap, and now I'm trying to figure out how to get out of it. What is the next right move? And that was simple step after simple step after simple step. That's right.

Go back to the reason why you wanted to do it in the first place and then take simple steps to get yourself out of it.

And do you mind me? Yeah. I'm curious, how did you know when the fog had started to clear? So I mean, so there's this foggy period, you eventually get to simple, taking those next steps to get through it. And at some point, you know, you might be, you know, the fog kind of clears. How long did it take you to get there?

And how did it...

Took me a couple of years.

A couple of years in your case.

Took me a couple of years.

So, years. Took me a couple of years, yes. Yeah. I was going through the motions of working feel right, this doesn't feel right, this doesn't feel right. And so I was running around the country. So I went from having a show where people came to me every day on the show

and I decided, okay, done with that. Now, the next chapter, I'm running around the country interviewing other people. I'm like taking the crew all around the country and around the world and I was like,

well, this doesn't feel right either. So yeah. And when did, did the fire dim at that time

or was it just-

Yeah, my fire dimmed. My fire, it was like, this doesn't feel like this is coming from a truthful, authentic place for me. And so I'm going to end this and figure out what is the next thing to do.

And was there a time you knew the fire would come back? Actually, when I started doing this. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was right back in frame. Right. Yeah.

Okay, so I could have been in your study.

Oh, 100%.

I mean, we're just talking about what chapter you're in.

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But I think it's really important to reemphasize that the fog is not a defect. Fog is not a defect. That it's a period that people go through.

That's right. Right?

That's right. When you have come through the cliff period. Yep. And how do you get through the fog sooner? What would you say is the best advice for that?

People might be surprised to know that it took you a couple of years. Yes. Right? You must have it all figured out. But to know that it could take you a couple of years. And the way you get through, what we based, learned in the study is you take these steps, right? You're kind of wandering through the fog.

And if you try to jump just cause you want to get out of the fog, like I'm uncomfortable in the fog, I've got to have an answer. You just might jump right off another cliff. And so, but if you just sit still,

you don't go anywhere either. So it's a matter of- You got to take some kind of action. Steps, exactly, steps. I don't know what's on the other side of the fog, so I just look around at what's right in front of me, I'll take this step. And once I sit there,

then I'll kind of look around again and I'll take the next step, taking the obvious next step to step, step, step, and the fog gradually becomes clearer. But while within that, you're back to this, right? So... I started back... I actually started doing SuperSoul.

I started doing interviews with thought leaders. Yeah. Because that is what really feeds my soul. That's right. And feeds my interest. And it's what I want to do to help people live better lives.

So, trying to do other kinds of programming was not working for me.

And what part of the path out of the fog, especially if the cliff is shatteringly unexpected, then you can be really, really lost. But the whole first part of the book, you know, has to do this thing with, you know, coming into frame with your encodings, the things that really feel good.

Well, that's what I want to talk about now.

Let's talk about encodings.

Exactly, and I think the key is, you iterate to eventually get back in frame. And what I love about your story is, in a way, you went out and then you circled back.

Circled back. I did the encircled back thing.

You did. Yeah. And now it's a different set, but the encoding, the being in frame and...

Well, let's talk about that so people know what we're talking about. So I had you all many revelations reading this book. And I thank you, Jim, for giving us a new language, actually, for explaining the fullness of purpose. Because people, I know, put so much emphasis, you all do,

and I have too, every graduation speech is about your purpose, your purpose, your purpose. And I think that this is a crucial line in the book you write, the key question is not what you are good at, your purpose, your purpose, your purpose. And I think that this is a crucial line in the book. You're right. The key question is not what you are good at, but what are you encoded for?

That's right, yep.

Y'all, it's a different way of looking at your life. Not what are you good at, but what you are encoded for. So can you explain how is it different in coding versus purpose?

Yeah. So, encodings are like these capacities we have that await discovery through the experiences of life. And you and I have a set of encodings, I have a set of encodings, and most of them I think we will not discover when our life runs out. We just hope to discover some of them.

Mm-hmm. And that what happens is, it's like a constellation, I think we will not discover when our life runs out. We just hope to discover some of them. And that what happens is, it's like a constellation, and then there's a window frame. And at any given moment, the frame is either not many encoding shining through or it shifts and a whole bunch of encodings

are shining through the frame. And they activate and it's like it just clicks. So, somebody who I know you love, I fell in love with studying Toni Morrison. I wish I had the joy that you had of knowing her. One of the great joys. One of the great joys. So, she had always been about books, but when she took up that pencil. She was encoded for being an author.

So encoded for being an author. And it was like, once it clicked, it was just like, bang. And she didn't set up.

And prior to that, she was an editor and doing things for other people. Exactly. And then she started to write The Bluest Eye because it was a book that she most wanted to read herself. That's right. And she thought, I'm gonna write this book because I wanna read this book because nobody's writing stories about black girls like this.

So I'm gonna write a book that I would wanna read. And then when she started writing, she realized that she was not only born to write, she was encoded to write.

Totally encoded. And she couldn't, there's one of my favorite little vignettes, and we'll just keep with the conversation, but it's just one that so sticks with me. She's at home writing with her number two Ticonderoga soft lead pencils, right? That was what she loved to write with

in these lined pieces of paper. And she's writing and she has this sentence that has to get out, right? And one of her sons, toddler at the time, comes up and kind of spits up on her paper. Yeah.

And she doesn't wipe away the spit. She keeps writing, cause she's like, I can wipe that away later, but the sentence can't wait.

That's right. And the sentence is right here.

I don't wanna lose this sentence.

I don't wanna take the time to even wipe the spittle. Exactly. And let's just say this started in her 40s. She was in her 40s when this happened.

Yeah.

And actually I think that's one of the really uplifting things about this study is you can find either a first frame or new frames later in life. So, this idea that somehow, well, to be a novelist like Toni Morrison, you must have had to been doing it like from you were 18.

She was in her 40s, as you know, and that's when she started writing. And it was a discovery for her that, I'm a writer. And then she never stopped, right? Once she was in frame, once she was doing what she was encoded for, I mean, she would do it until she simply couldn't anymore.

OPRAH WINFREY That's right. Writing was the thing that fulfilled her and gave her. And the same thing for me. I mean, I started speaking in the church when I was three, four years old. That's how I got my validation. I know for sure that I was encoded to communicate with people in the way that I do

and to continue this trajectory of self-renewal for myself and to help other people to get it. But it started with little Bible verses speaking in the church. So I am encoded to be a communicator. That's right.

Encoded.

Yeah, and it's a discovery, right? That's the thing that's different about a strength versus an encoding. You turn your encodings kind of into super strengths, but you can make yourself strong at something by just sheer willpower and study or practice or whatever.

Encodings are these discoveries that when you hit them, it's like when she picked up that pencil, or when you discovered, I can ask a question, I can be in a conversation, or when John Glenn got in an airplane for the first time, the aircraft was like it had a glove on his hand. Yeah. That just extension.

Yeah, you were saying John Glenn and Gordon Cooper, that they were not just great astronauts,

but encoded to be. Totally. I mean, I don't know about you, but I'm reasonably confident that if I were on top of a spaceship or I was in a fighter jet with somebody chasing me in the sky, trying to knock me out of the sky, my heart rate doesn't go down.

Theirs, John Glenn's heart rate was about the same as being on his couch watching TV. And Gordon Cooper, before they launched into space, he took a nap, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, you tell that story, he took a nap.

So, that sense of their encoding to be calm under that incredible intensity of, you actually might die the next moment and you have to perform. That's an encoding. And then they...

You can't even be trained for that.

It just is. Yeah, it just is. And then, of course, the great challenge in their life was the cliff of the end of that and had to find new things. But that's what encodings are. When the frame clicks, and then, of course, as you were describing earlier,

you also know when you're out of frame, right? So, the same person, with the frame shifts and now you're out of frame, you sort of languish. And the challenge then is how to get back in frame, get back in frame with the encodings. I love how you light up about your friendship with Toni Morrison.

Have you ever encountered a writer like that?

Oh, I mean, you better be ready for some serious mental exercise.

I know. When I finished reading her book, Beloved, I remember looking her number up in the phone book or calling Nyack, New York and getting her phone number. That's just when people used to be listed. There used to be a phone book, y'all.

And there used to be such a thing as a phone book with people's numbers in it. Anyway, and I called her and I said, Ms. Morrison, I just finished reading your book Beloved and how extraordinary it was for me and an experience. I said, but do people tell you they have to go over the sentences? And she paused and she said, well that my dear is called reading. Yes. In that voice. In that voice. In that voice. I think it's so interesting that you would say that my eyes light up talking about her

because one of the greatest lessons of the Oprah show was when she said, do your eyes light up when you see me? Do your face light up when you see me? All the mothers in the audience gasped.

And it's interesting to see when a kid walks in a room, your child or anybody else's child, does your face light up?

Or, and that's what they're looking for.

When my children used to walk in the room when they were little,

I looked at them to see if they had buckled their trousers, if their hair was combed or if their socks were up. And so you think your affection and your deep love is on display because you're caring for them. It's not. When they see you, they see the critical face. What's wrong now? But then, if you let your, as I tried from then on,

to let your face speak what's in your heart, because when they walked in the room, I was glad to see them. It's just as small as that.

You know, many years later, people told me that changed their interaction with their children. Which is so important today, because people are so, you know, engrossed in their phones, their kids coming in a room, you're not present at all. But do your eyes light up when I come into the room,

Miss Toni Morrison. Wow. So on page 173, you write, what if your parents have expectations for what you're supposed to do? I know some of you are going through this,

but their expectations do not fit with your encodings. What if following the expectations of your family knocks on everything that you actually want to do in your life and sends you into the fog? What if those expectations prolong the fog so that it lasts not just years, but maybe decades,

or maybe even your entire life? Your encodings are your encodings, regardless of what your parents or anyone else thinks they are or should be. And the task, first and foremost, is to trust your own encodings.

Yep.

I love that. Yep. But so many people are living their life based upon what somebody else's expectations are or what they think the expectations should be. And the question we should be asking is,

what am I encoded for?

Yeah. Yeah, and I think actually what's, somebody asked me, somebody who'd read an early version of the manuscript asked the question, what is more important, discovering your encodings or trusting them?

Ooh.

And the more I thought about that, because I'd just been studying the lives, I think what really stands out to me is I think we're all getting clues all the time about our encodings, right? We hit something and it's like,

oh, that clicks, that feels natural, or I feel really drawn to do that, whatever it happens to be, flying jets or doing music, singing, conversing, whatever it happens to be, right? And then there are messages, voices,

that, well, but you should be this or you should be that. And what really stood out to me about all the people that I studied is when they got those clues and when they felt those encodings starting to come through the window, the really critical thing was they trusted them.

They trusted them. And they didn't know where they were necessarily leading. Right, it's not that they had a plan. It's not that they could sketch out and say, well, that'll leave me here in five years, in 10 years or whatever.

It was just, I have to do this. I have to solve genetics puzzles. I'm really interested in these computers as Grace Hopper was, or I have to fly or whatever it is. And then even if your parents are saying, we were talking earlier about John Glenn,

they were initially disappointed that he became an aviator. First of all, they were afraid he might not survive. Right. But the other is, um, they hoped he would come into the family business. If he didn't do that, that he might become a doctor. And, and he actually had to convince them to let him get his pilot's license. And then when he decided to stay in the Marine Corps and then go on and become a jet fighter pilot and eventually an astronaut, his parents, I think, ultimately

were, of course, very proud of him. But they had a different vision for him. But what happened is when those encodings lit up when he was in that aircraft, he trusted them enough to basically say, I'm hewing to the encodings. I'm trusting them.

And if somebody would say, well, what's the plan? The answer might be, I don't know what the plan is. I don't know where it will take me. All I know is that if I trust these. Yeah. They

will go someplace interesting. Okay. Well, we have a couple of people who have questions for you. Yes. So, who are joining us. Matthew lives in New York State. I hear you willingly jumped off a cliff, a so-called cliff. the cliffs that we're talking about today, just last year. Tell us what happened.

Yeah, so I had been with Nike for about 15 years and decided to step down from a role in communications that I had. And it was an intentional decision for me to leave and I'm grateful for the experience, but I just felt within myself that I knew

that it was time to explore something else. And as you've been discussing, you know, cliffs and fogs, I'm certainly in a place right now of kind of wading through the fog without the familiar conditions that really shaped and defined my identity at my job for so long. And while I'm really excited about what's ahead, I'm also adjusting to not really having the same structure

that I think, you know, I really grew up professionally over the last 15 years. So, Jim, my question for you is, you know, when you're at a crossroads and the next chapter is not really defined, are there tools or disciplines that you can recommend

to stay grounded during this time of transition?

Yeah, yeah, it's a wonderful question. And so, first of all, welcome to the fog. And there's nothing wrong with you.

As you just heard, I was in it for quite a couple of years.

Yeah, you might be there for a while, get used to it. And you have brought about your own cliff, and you can do that. I think that we've already talked about some of it with this notion of taking the series of next best steps, right, this simplex stepping where I'm just

going to take the next best step, the next best step, and just iterating through the fog. That's part of it. It will take whatever time it takes. But I would offer this would be a great time to reflect on your experiences and ask what have all your experiences taught you

about your encodings? If you look back on, so you're in your 40s,

is that right?

Approximately. That's correct. Okay, so you've got two, three decades of empirical experience as to, and if you kind of go back through and you were to say, you know, if I look at these experiences,

this is what I really felt in frame. These are the times when the encodings, like if I were to picture a time of like the encodings lit up, they were in this experience, and this experience, and this experience, and those are clues as to what those encodings are because you've already hit them in some way.

And also when you felt the fire at the strongest, right? And when those two go together, you wanna capture those. And so part of it is, again, you want to trust, sort of, it's like they're a compass as you simplex up through the fog of what are those encodings. When I was really lost in the fog in my 20s, I was really lost in the fog of youth.

I created a little thing I called the bug book. And the idea was that I had a little lab notebook and I wrote my name on the front of the lab notebook. So you studied yourself. I studied myself, exactly. And I-

You were that kind of guy.

Exactly. And I studied myself like a bug. And what I meant by that was I made sort of observations. The bug named Jim really finds meetings that go nowhere and consume all his time really irritating, right? Well, so I'm not encoded for that. I was not encoded for good political machinations. I had no capacity to understand them and so forth.

And so, but, and then I noted some other things that happened were like when I had to make sense of something and teach it, bang, all of a sudden, everything clicked into frame. And so, this bug book of myself, as if I was studying myself that way, became kind of my guide to iterate through

to eventually pop into frame. And the great challenge for you is, what's the next version of being in frame? It might be something really different than what you did before. We have people in our study who went from

something over here to something over here, but they were both in frame.

John Glenn all the way to Congress.

All the way to Congress. So you just have to find something where a big chunk of your encodings are in frame.

But I can tell you this book is going to be so helpful to you and you're going to be so inspired by seeing the trajectory of other people's stories. Yeah. And in your 40s, I mean, you were a baby.

Oh, you were so young.

You were so young. I mean, the fact that, what is so inspiring to me about this book is that there's so many people in their 60s and 70s who send the circle out and then come back and then try something new and that it's never, never, never, never over, especially if you understand what you're encoded for

and you're operating from what it is you are really the strongest at and what you were really meant to do and meant to be. And how your life is to be used here on the planet. That's what I love so much about what to make of a life.

Can I give you one last little thing? Something we learned is that, so some of the people when they went through a cliff and they were really looking at what's next, think of it as maybe when you were a kid, there was a seed of something that got planted

that you never watered because your life went a different direction. And you could water those seeds for a whole marvelous next chapter in your extraordinarily young life.

Thank you so much. Thank you. All the best, all the best. So what holds people back from maximizing their encodings?

So, this book really changed me in so many ways working on it. And one of the things that really became clear to me is both in looking at others and in looking at yourself is the power of not judging yourself. First of all, not judge when you're in a cliff, not judge when you're in a fog,

and to not judge your encodings, right? They just are what they are. The sense of self-acceptance of, I'm not going to spend a lot of time saying, well, but I should have different encodings, or I should be a different, you know, X, Y, or Z.

I think that when people have, whether it's the judgment of others or the self judgment, I think that makes it really hard for them to be in frame. And for me-

And by in frame, you mean in sync, in alignment.

With the encodings and what feeds your fire.

It means in alignment with what you're supposed to be doing. Exactly. And the reason so many people are out of alignment, out of frame, is that they're wanting to be something that they're not actually encoded for.

That's right. Yeah. That's right. And I think part of it is also you can let your ambition drive you out of your encodings, right?

Because if you think, well, I have to achieve this, but what if it's not what you're encoded for? Yeah, well, I want to just, we have one more Zoom. Oh, wonderful. Sarah joins us from Chicago. She's an AI neuroscientist who I hear is feeling a little overwhelmed. Hi, Sarah. Hi, Oprah.

Hi, Jim. AI neuroscientist.

I feel overwhelmed by that.

I feel overwhelmed saying AI neuroscientist. What does that mean? What does that mean?

It means I'm a neuroscientist who has built AI for 21 years now. Essentially, I look at how the brain is impacted by the use of generative AI and energetic AI. I've been doing this a really long time.

Your question for us today.

Just some context. Jim, Oprah, thank you for having me be part of the conversation. This past year has been one of the most transformative seasons of my life with many cliffs. I turned 40, I restarted my PhD after delaying it for over a decade.

I moved from Canada to the US. I'm helping my 15-year-old son transition into a new high school in a new country and I'm on a global book tour. This isn't the first time that I've rebuilt. Earlier in my life I survived cancer and sorry Jim I'm getting a little emotional but I left a marriage when my son was two and I raised him alone for 11 years. Then my question for you is, once you've lived through so many transitions

and once survival feels like second nature, how do you learn to truly savor a season that's calmer? And do you believe everyone can do this?

Wow. So the savoring of the calmer. So first of all, are you in the calmer mode now or are you still in the tumult mode?

I feel like I should be in the calmer mode, but it's very difficult to embrace all these wonderful things that are happening because there's also a lot of change for everyone in our family.

Yeah. So, there are these two kind of different phases of life that we saw in the people in the study. And there are kind of the fog phases, the tumult phases, the post-cliff phases. And then there are these phases of great clarity, right? And what I'm really struck by is how

they really feel very, very different in the sense that when you're coming through the cliff or you're really going through the fog, one of the questions might be, do people flourish when they're in the middle of that? And actually, I don't think the answer to that

is that they do. I think when you're really in the fog and when you're really in the cliff mode, that's not a time of great flourishing. It is a time of wandering, it is a time of angst, and it's a weird kind of struggle because it's not like, well, I'm on a mountain and I know what the mountain is

and I know what it'll take to get to the top. It's a struggle of, I'm not even really sure what mountain I'm on or whether I even wanna be in the mountains and that's a different kind of struggle. And so I think that everyone is gonna feel in those times that they're not really flourishing.

I think that's just a brutal fact. The thing that the study teaches me is that people get to the other side and it might take a really long time. And when they get to the other side, all of a sudden it switches from lack of clarity and befuddlement to like the searing clarity.

And when you have the searing clarity back again, then the way it really feels is, I don't know if, it's an interesting word, calm. It's full of energy and a sense of movement and a sense of sitting forward in the saddle and a sense of like, that's just like, I am now, I'm no longer bumping along, I am going.

But the external is propulsion, but the internal might be more calm in the sense that it's, you feel like I've clicked back in frame, I'm calm with that, but my energy is incredibly directed now that I'm on the other side. And those kind of fog phases and clarity phases really stood out. And the same people can have a period of great clarity followed by fog, then followed by great clarity again.

Then maybe fog again. And they're distinctly different in how they feel.

Are you having trouble accepting the goodness that's come into your life? Are you having trouble accepting it and receiving it?

I sometimes feel that the more that I do, the more I have to justify, you know, exciting book tour, exciting things with TV and all sorts of wonderful things.

And I feel-

What's your book? It's a 100 Ways to Future-Proof Your Brain. It's got a giant brain on it. So it's a 100 Ways to Future-Proof Your Brain. But I love what Jim shared because I do feel a struggle to distinguish between the fog and the clarity and this pressure that I put on myself that I need to still justify.

I still need to perform.

Here's the one thing I'd really pass along is you sort of don't know the outcome of the entire life until it's done. And that the flavor can change. And I'll just share with you a personal thing that's really changed for me.

I really relate to this notion of when you're at a certain phase of life, I used to describe it as having these hot coals in my stomach that are like these burning fire-filled coals and almost like molten lava in there. And I think it goes back to feeling neglected by my father

and a variety of other things, but like that need, I've got to perform, I've got to deliver, I've got to write that incredible sense. And I always used to worry that if I lost that, I'd lose my drive. And what's happened, and I think it happened for the people in our study over time, is the hot molten fire did go away, but the drive didn't go away.

What happened was the fire changed color to where it is more like green and yellow and warming glow, that I don't need that hot molten lava in my stomach anymore because now I just want to wake up at four in the morning and jump out of bed because I so look forward to getting to do what I get to do. And what I would really hope for you is that that molten lava of perform and deliver and all that gets replaced

by this sense of it someday you say, I don't need that because the fire I have now warms me from within so strongly and it will stay till I'm out of breath.

I love that. Thank you so much for that, Jim. I look forward to that.

I look forward to that too. When the fire is not molten hot, but that it's just a warm, glowing presence that abides with you and carries you and that you can enjoy, you can find great satisfaction.

Because what happens when you're so into the fire, into the fire, everything that's happening becomes so intense that you aren't even able to absorb it. You're not able to absorb the book tour and what it means to have accomplished the writing of that book.

You're not able to absorb what it means for your son to move to another school and that transition because you're just going from one. The velocity is so intense that you can't you can't take it all in. And I will tell you that what you just shared is a beautiful thing. We both wish that for you.

We really do. And I wish you great success with your book.

Yes.

Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Oprah. Thank you. I look forward to being on the other side.

Okay. Thanks, Sarah. Good luck to you. May I ask you? Yes.

Did the color of your fire change?

Oh, absolutely. I'm just, you know, doing the first of all, nothing was better. Nothing was better nor will ever replace or should the years of the Oprah show. There will never be a time like that again for me and I think for all the team members. I mean, and that's what I mean by the velocity and the intensity. And I can speak to that because I know that so many things happened at such an intense rate

that I don't remember half of it. I don't remember. Because we were just sitting around the table the other night talking with the crew and they were saying, and this story and this story. I go, I don't remember that, I don't remember that. Because I was just going at such full speed.

And so now what I have is great pure satisfaction from every conversation. So I'm not going from this conversation to the next conversation to the next conversation. I'm not trying to fill, you know, 200 shows a year. I'm not trying to, you know, prove anything. First of all, neither you nor I have anything left to prove.

Right. We've done it. We've, you know, reached the pinnacle of success and achieved and all of that. So everything that I do now is basically an offering to help other people see their lives in a more meaningful way and what to make of their lives. That's what it's all for for me.

Yeah, and I think that's because when the fire changes color and you are at this different phase, then these amazing things happen late. And this notion that somehow we have this peak when we're young and then it goes like this.

Well, that's the thing I was saying, no matter where you all are in your life, this book is gonna be so valuable to you because I'm so shocked at the number of people who've done extraordinary things. To read that Meryl Streep,

most of her Academy Award nominations came after age 60.

Yeah, she did so many of them. She was, I mean, talk about somebody who's encoded. Yes. And has been in frame doing this for so many years. And that was a place with her story. I watched every one of her films in sequence, which was very interesting.

Well, as I was reading about her films, I was thinking, gosh, you know what? I'm going to have myself a Meryl Streep festival. Absolutely. I'm gonna have myself a Meryl Streep festival and watch all of those movies.

That's right. And you see the evolution, you can see different phases of life, playing different roles. But what's so interesting is, I mean, she has more Oscar nominations than any other.

Anybody. Anybody, by like a factor of two. Yes. And they don't stack early. They're spread throughout, and she has about half of them after the age of-

Her first one was at age 29.

That's right. For deer to heart.

And then she gets all the way out into her 60s, and she has as many nominations in her 60s as when she was in her younger years per decade.

It's amazing, and the fire hasn't gone out. You can just see that it just gets out. Yeah, we're just waiting for devil wears product too. Okay, so I found this to be a seminal question that you posed on page 99. Stop and think for a moment, you say, what is the relationship between work and money? I love this, y'all are gonna love this.

Is the purpose of work to make money or is the purpose of money to be able to do one's work?

That's right.

Well, that depends on how we define and think about work. I think people get really caught up in the money thing. How do you flip the arrow of money, as you say?

Yeah. So, that was a really critical thing for me to see was that it wasn't about just the economics. It was about what's the direction the arrow goes. And there's so many different people that illustrate this in the study. But, you know, I think about Maurice White, the founder of Earth, Wind & Fire. And he's doing one meal a day that cost a dollar. So, a dollar a day, a meal a day, while he's getting his music going

to eventually get to do Earth, Wind & Fire. And he didn't do music to make money, but he needed money to do music.

Right, right.

And so he had to do the gigs and he had to put things in place. But then later when Earth, Wind & Fire was really going, it was really interesting. He would do these albums with the band, but then he always took the money from that

and put it back into doing more music and more spectacular performances. Oh, my goodness. Some of those performances were...

Do you remember?

I do.

And then putting it right back in, and then those would generate economics to do more. And so, it's like, if you understand that money is fuel to do what you're encoded for that feeds the fire rather than the point is to make money. The problem is if the point is to make money

and then you make money, what do you do next? If the point is, as we were talking earlier, we don't need to do any of this for money.

Right, right.

But that's, if that's not the point anyways, you never want to stop. Yeah.

Because... But I will have to say, even in the years of the Oprah show, when I first started doing that show, if they had told me you were not going to make any money doing this show, I would have done it. one of the most important moments in my life was doing The Color Purple. I did that for $35,000. And I remember when my lawyer was saying, I'm gonna ask them for 50, and I go,

no, don't ask them for 50, I'll do it for 35. So I've never actually made any decision based on money. I've never done anything for the purpose of making money.

And actually, can I spend just a moment on this? Because we have some people in our study, like Robert Plant from Led Zeppelin, who just went on with his singing, doing amazing things late in life. And he turned down the opportunity to do probably the first billion dollar

reunion tour with Zeppelin. And he decided not to do it. And people say, that's easy, because he's already wealthy. And what I want people to understand is that Robert Plant's circumstances changed,

but the reason he did what he did was always the same. So he started out without money, then ended up with a lot of money, but his motivation was always the same, which was to sing. And so I'm curious if that's true for you, that the motivation has always been the same. Motivation has always been the same. It's just the circumstances are different.

Exactly. And the fact that I was encoded to do that talk show, I was encoded to do that, is what allowed me to be so successful at it. It was as natural as breathing to me.

Yeah, it was like Gordon Cooper.

I was the most comfortable and the most in front of an audience. Okay, I wanna talk about this because so many of you are gonna be able to relate to this. And Jim talks about in What to Make of a Life, the competence doom loop.

I've seen this so many times during my working career. And you write on page 111, one of the great traps of life, and see if this is you, one of the great traps of life is the curse if this is you, one of the great traps of life is the curse of the competence doom loop. It goes like this, you become reasonably competent

at something that doesn't capture your encodings or ignite the inner fire, but it pays you well. Work hard at it, become better at it, achieve a modicum of success with it. This then leads to increased opportunities to do even more of what does not fit your encodings

or ignite the inner fire, and you're getting paid even more to do it. That's the loop that so many people are in that can't get themselves out.

Yep. I actually have a lot of compassion for how that happens because they may have family responsibilities. That's right. They may have a need to provide for others.

There may be reasons for that. And so it's not like it's a defect, but once you get trapped in it, it's really hard to get out of it because you just get better and better paid at doing something you're not encoded for.

That you don't even like. Yeah. And one day you wake up to discover that years or decades have passed. You're well paid and out of frame. The inner fire is still there, but gradually going dormant. I could talk to you all day. You're the guy to have for dinner party. You're the guy to have over. But I want to know how doing this research

changed you. You do a whole list of changes, but what are the dominant ones that you feel that you've been changed by writing this book?

Well, so first of all, as you know, there's a whole list in the back of like, I used to believe this. I used to believe this. And now I believe that. Yes.

And we don't need to repeat all those. People will find those. But what I really changed was emotionally. I think one of the stone that had really sharp edges. And then doing this study was like water going over that stone and softening off the sides of those edges.

And now the stone is, maybe it's still got some edges on there, but it's smoother, right? It's a smoother stone. And what happened? And that's like how my emotional sort of was like this. So, you softened.

I softened tremendously and a couple- But less judgmental of other people

and their choices and their lives and their everything.

Exactly. So one is just the increased sense of understanding and not an instinct to judge people for being in the fog, to judge people for being in a cliff, to judge people for it might take them a while to find their way, even when they're young, right?

Some of our people didn't come into frame until their 30s or 40s.

Because you say the fog of youth, the fog of disappointment, the fog of regret.

Success. And the fog of retirement for those who take that path.

Yes, fog of retirement.

Yeah, exactly. And that then led to, I guess to spend a lot of my life feeling frustrated with what people are not. And people around me suffered for that. People who were on my team, people in my life, frustrated with what they are not, and most egregiously frustrated

that they're not more like me, right? That's not very helpful. And what this study taught me as I began to look at these lives and began to realize how different they all are and how much there's such these beautiful expressions

of their own encodings and what feeds their fire and these amazing things that they did late in life. And that's, again, just one of the biggest things that I want people to accept that about 60, like that's when it really goes off Big creative things happen. So there's a notion of retiring at 65 is a terrible notion. Oh, it doesn't fit with their lives.

Yeah. But what happened is, as I began to realize that the amazing thing that the people I studied were, how they were such marvelous expressions of their encodings and their fire

and how it played out and how they went through the cliffs and found new versions of it if their life changed. I began to look at the people in my own life and I began to look at them differently. I began to look at them as, instead of feeling frustrated what they were not,

I began to be able to see what they are and what they're really encoded for. And then my shift became one where it was like, instead of frustration, it was almost the sense of awe. I look at that, that person's encoded for this. That is marvelous. That is spectacular.

That is beautiful. And so I shifted from feeling frustrated with what people are not to feeling grateful for what people are. And I can't even begin to describe how significant that has been for me.

I live better that way. But the other is for the people in my life, that my basic experience of them is, I'm grateful for what they are.

Instead of wanting them to be something they can't be anyway.

Exactly. Yes. And then they flourished. Yeah. And so, that was huge. And then the other is, all the way back to the beginning of our conversation, one of the biggest transformations for me was I understood why my father never got out

of the fog, why my father ended up not being able to be a father. And even though my father died many years ago, I was only 23 when he died. He was 48. And I carried this rage and anger.

And by the end of this, one of the biggest transformation for me was I was able to forgive my father.

For being who he was.

For being who he was, but also an understanding of the terrible cliff that had hit his life when he was a young boy, and that how he didn't have the knowledge of this book...

OPRAH WINFREY Yeah.

...that would allow him to get past that.

OPRAH WINFREY So, he actually lived in the fog...

RONALD MCCARTY Until he died.

OPRAH WINFREY ...the rest of his life.

RONALD MCCARTY That's right.

OPRAH WINFREY As people can do. and they never come out of it and they stay in the fog. Yeah, and when I wrote the last page of the book, which is about me finally seeing my father in a different light, I'm sitting there and I wrote the story, and I wrote what is the last paragraph of the book. I didn't plan it to be the last paragraph.

I just, when I wrote it, I knew. Right there it was. I knew that's the last sentence. And as soon as I wrote, put the period on, I uncontrollably broke down and I cried for an hour.

Mm, Jim.

I cried for an hour, because it was like this decades of release that came and I was able to embrace my long dead father. And I really wish I could have given him what's in here, that came and I was able to embrace my long-dead father. And I really wish I could have given him what's in here, but I couldn't, right? I can't go back and give it to him.

But I understand how he ended up in the fog and never got out. And now my main feeling for my father is not rage, but real compassion and deep sadness. And that has been an utterly wonderful gift and transformation for me.

When I did the audio recording of the book, when I got to that last page, I was like, I don't think I can get through this without crying. Like we had to like stop, pause, but it was this huge catharsis.

Well, I thank you for writing the book. Yep. Thank you so much for joining me here on my front porch.

You know, I have to say, when I heard that you wanted to have a conversation, I thought back to our time together in Chicago, and I just thought, to be in your hands as a conversationalist, and the chance to just be with you again, and that you would read my work.

Oh, not only read. I'm just so grateful. I told you, we are all, like, passing it around to each other. Yeah. I can't recommend this with a greater regard. I think it's going to make a real difference in your life, reading about other lives and also understanding

what your own encodings are and what to make of a life is available wherever books are sold. It's a great guide for anybody at any age or any stage of life. Big thanks to Matthew and Sarah. Thanks for Zooming in with us.

And thank you all for listening and watching. Go well. You can subscribe to the Oprah Podcast on YouTube and follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts or wherever you listen. I'll see you next week. I'll see you next week.

Thanks, everybody.