Addressing life hacks this month, I am tipping over a sacred cow today. In my EXIT interview, I examine the branding of cultural figures, like Oprah, as untouchable deities. I certainly have been guilty of buying into the Change Your Life quick fixes and short-circuiting my critical thinking impulses.

I don’t believe in failure. It is not failure if you enjoyed the process.
– Oprah Winfrey

When her iconic show, The Oprah Winfrey Show, left the air, the world collectively lost their shit for five minutes. We missed the air of transparency that allowed us to forget she is the 1%.  We mourned the daily encouragement that we too can be the 1% by taking lessons from the O playbook. How do you question the wisdom of a woman who has managed to turn her foibles into a billion dollar empire? However in the months following her daily departure, and the creative misfire that is the Oprah Winfrey Network (OWN), the O hangover has lifted. Oprah Winfrey, like Marie Antoinette before her, has revealed she’s eaten too much cake. Anyway you spin it enjoying failure would make you a masochist.

Oprah says she’s lived her life by quotations and sayings. She is an advocate of feeling based logic like The Secret and the power of positive thinking. These mental constructs work as great opiates.  There is also denial of the ugly truth. Rewards and successes are not always merit based.

Not every person is born to lead. Being successful in one area of your life doesn’t guarantee success in another. Context is always decisive. Aphorisms are band aids to real world ills. They offer the illusion of reason behind the unreasonable.

Oprah repeats triumphantly how she personally eschews traditional therapy. She has never needed it and never will. The Oprah Show has been her therapy. Look how successful she is. Therefore, the following must be true.

• You can forego therapy if you just talk about your issues/failures aloud.
• Some people, aka O, are more blessed with wisdom than most.

Here is what is unsaid.

• Ms. Winfrey has 24-hour personal access to the world’s acclaimed scholars, Nobel prize winning authors, billionaire business moguls, spiritual healers, cultural visionaries, influential heads of state and the President of the United States.
• These interactions may not be clinical but they are therapeutic.

Oprah, at this point in her story, has been wealthy and famous longer than she was impoverished. She lives the extravagant life of a billionaire. Agree or disagree, you would have to be in denial to dismiss the fact she is insulated from life’s hardships. Her paradoxical message is most apparent in her weight mismanagement.

Her brand encourages people get the help they need but she, a confessed food addict, won’t. Any expert will tell you an unwillingness to engage in professional counseling about addiction forestalls recovery.  Home spun wisdom is not a curative. Food issues are seldom about food.

In diet, wellness and exercise, failure is unequivocal. It is rooted in rejection. You say “yes” to unhealthy behaviors and “no” to healthy behaviors. Results are only obscured by storytelling.

Perhaps if Oprah had ever done formalized therapy she would understand the root of her decades old weight issues. Imagine how many other world issues she could’ve devoted her energy to if she vanquished those demons.

Where is the shame in seeking a health professional, or any licensed expert, if you are trapped in repetitive cycle of self-abuse? It is more embarrassing to launch your ego before a world audience, watch yourself flailing and not reevaluate the message you are sending. Could it be changing human behavior is not easily done and it isn’t going to happen watching TV?

Not everything in life happens for a reason. Despite this, we do what we can to reconcile the situation and move forward.  If you want REAL change you need to jump into the deep end and wrestle with your ugly. No aphorism or kindly successful entrepreneur will rescue you from yourself.

Finally, I am a confessed Oprah fan. Why else would one think critically of another? I realize how desperately people want to believe in divine intervention. As with Oprah and anything here in The Perspiration Journal© take what you can use and leave the rest behind. There is new brain science to speak to the power of affirmation but it is about doing not “wording.”

In the words of Plato, “rhetoric is the art of ruling the minds of men.”
- Erwin

Question of the Week:
Who are your modern day heroes and what are they selling?