The way Oprah Winfrey makes the most of her opportunities and appears so self-assured about her decisions, she doesn’t seem like someone who has a lot of regrets.
As legendary “Today” host Al Roker celebrated his 70th birthday, he had a conversation about the big day with Oprah. She offered him advice and discussed her one major regret. Surprisingly, it involves her OWN cable network.
In 2008 and 2009, just as she was wrapping up her long-running self-titled talk show, the media mogul launched OWN: The Oprah Winfrey Network. Looking back, the Oscar nominee now thinks that she should’ve taken time between the two projects.
“I would not have taken on the responsibility of trying to build a network while still ending the show. That is my one regret,” she said. “I should have handled all of that differently, I think. I should have completed one thing, taken a year to do nothing, and then decided what was the next thing for me to do.”
In retrospect, she feels that she should have taken her own advice and given herself time to reset.
“I’d made a decision that it was time for the show to end, I don’t regret that,” she said. “What I do regret is trying to do multiple things at the same time. I would have done the thing that I tell everybody else to do: ‘When you don’t know what to do, do nothing. Get still with yourself and do nothing.’ I would have given myself that time.”
Winfrey has built an empire trusting her instincts. It looks like this is the one time she listened to everyone else, and she now recognizes that as the wrong decision for herself and the network.
“Everybody has that natural life force instinct inside yourself that lets you know what’s right or wrong, or that is your emotional GPS system, and any time I’ve ever gone against that, any time, is when I’ve made a mistake,” Winfrey said. “Every time I’ve just gotten still and listened to what my gut said — what that still small voice that resides inside me and you and everybody else says — I would never have made a mistake.”
At the end of the day, if Winfrey has only had one major regret in 70 years, she’s ahead of the game. If we need advice on a big milestone from someone, we could do a lot worse than Winfrey and Roker.