What I Know For Sure

In 2014, American talk show host and life coach guru Oprah Winfrey published a collection of the short essays she had been writing for fourteen years in O, The Oprah Magazine. Titled What I Know For Sure, as the magazine pieces had been, Winfrey’s book puts together the smaller bits of advice, self-help, inspirational and motivational maxims, and guidelines for better living that have made the author a household name and a highly successful lifestyle entrepreneur nicknamed “The Queen of All Media.”

The book opens with an anecdote that explains its title. Winfrey shares that in 1998, the film critic Gene Siskel asked her in an interview a question that she found both profound and thought-provoking: “What do you know for sure?” As she considered her answer, she realized, “I’ve asked and been asked an awful lot of questions over the years…but I have to say, the man managed to stop me in my tracks.” This encounter spurred Winfrey to try to cogently assemble the ideas that have had meaning in her life and wisdom that she has accumulated over the years.

However, for anyone who has followed Winfrey’s career and watched her daytime talk show, the book is a repetition and distillation of her ongoing brand of advice and direction rather than a stark departure. The key messages, as always, revolve around focusing on self-improvement and self-actualization, tuning in to the world around you, listening to yourself and your needs while making sure to hear the needs of others, and an optimistic approach to the potential of the future.



Because it is a distillation of a variety of shorter pieces of writing, What I Know For Sure is organized around eight themes: joy, resilience, connection, gratitude, possibility, awe, clarity, and power. For Winfrey, mastering these eight states of mind is the key to becoming the strongest and most evolved version of one’s self.

Winfrey’s version of joy is the ability to recognize and savor peak experiences, which can be as simple as reading a good book or dancing in a moment of happiness. Because this is a skill that can be learned and developed, the book points out that living a joyful life should be seen as a choice – a way to be present and open to the small good things. Connecting this idea with the vaguely Buddhist current underlying some of the book’s precepts, Winfrey points out that being able to find a small thing joyous soon leads to learning to be happy with less.

Resilience is something Winfrey had to learn during her difficult childhood and young adulthood after surviving sexual abuse and the resulting very early teenage pregnancy. According to the book, the thing that turned her life around was the realization that what matters is how we respond to the negative events that life constantly throws at us. Being able to use setbacks as learning and growth opportunities is key to being a resilient rather than a defeated person.



One result of her childhood was isolation and a lack of connection – a value she subsequently tried hard to remedy through close friendships, relationships with her neighbors, and even her pets. As Winfrey points out, a number of sociology studies over the years have shown a correlation between social connections and improved happiness and success. It stands to reason that humans, as social animals, do best when they have time, space, and access to the people important to them.

One of the best ways to experience joy and to cultivate its continued presence in your life is to seek out opportunities for feeling and expressing gratitude. The book advises keeping a gratitude journal and jotting down a few things every day that make you thankful as a way of elevating the good, lucky, privileged, and special things in your life over those that can be negatively compared against what other people have.

If you are aware of the things that make you feel grateful, you will be more attuned to the possibilities and opportunities that come up in life. For Winfrey, being aware of what is possible is tied closely to the idea that we are all responsible for our own actions – that our intentions are conscious and controllable. For her personally, the decision to start holding herself accountable for everything led to the understanding that some of those around her, such as previous bosses or boyfriends, were using her or taking advantage of her. Since she believed that they were responsible for their actions, it was easier to cut them out of her life rather than excusing or enabling their behavior.



For Winfrey, life is a spiritual journey filled with miracles – miracles which she contemplates in order to feel awe. Inspired by everything from her own birth to her small daily experiences of nature, Winfrey uses her faith to instill a feeling of amazement at how blessed she has been. The book urges us to let ourselves experience the wonder of the world.

Although it can mean a variety of things, in this book the idea of clarity is firmly committed to a sense of one’s inner voice. Clarity about your own needs, desires, beliefs, and opinions can help you avoid stress and pressure and to focus on your goals and dreams.

Finally, when you have successfully learned personal intentionality and responsibility, and when you have achieved clarity, you can tap into the power that Winfrey believes resides in each of us. Motivated by the civil rights movement, Winfrey rejected the complete powerlessness that she felt as a young woman, instead, taking control of those aspects of her life that she could alter and improve. The book ends by urging all of us to recognize the privileges of freedom and choice that we all take for granted – and to use those privileges to live our best life.



Responses to the book have pointed out both the somewhat clichéd and obvious nature of much of Winfrey’s advice and also the powerful and positive influence she has had on her fans and the culture at large. Writing for The Boston Globe, Meredith Maran puts it succinctly: “What I know for sure: With all Oprah Winfrey has done and been and given to the world, despite the unavoidable truisms scattered among this book’s truths, she and her book deserve the epic readership, rapt attention, and grateful fan mail they’ll surely amass.”