Atlanta resident and entertainer Steve Harvey is the type of person Oprah Winfrey loves. He worked in his 20s as a blue-collar worker, started comedy at age 27, lived out of his car for three years, finally achieved his dream of being a great stand-up comic. After "Kings of Comedy" and his sitcom went away, he needed to reinvent himself.
On part one of Oprah's Sunday night OWN show "Lifeclass," he explained how he let his creator guide him to his next level. His plan, Harvey said, "dwarfs anything you can come up with."
"The two most important days of my life are the day you were born and the day you find out why," he said.
[He is promoting his third book "Act Like a Success, Think Like a Success," out on Tuesday.]
He realized early he had a gift of humor. But God helped him realize he could motivate, he could inspire, he could uplift. "God didn't make me just to be funny," he said. "He needed to make me famous to get me known enough so I can sit here with a person like Oprah Winfrey and have no shame telling everybody it's Him."
Harvey learned his life of ups and downs could turn him into a relationships author, a game show host and a successful talk-show host.
He advised the audience not to be afraid of change. "Too many people get stuck," he said. "You can't be this forever. Everything changes. You can participate in the change or react to the change. If you react to change, it's too late. Be a participant. Get ahead of the game."
And he said anyone seeking to make a difference needs help. "If you can accomplish everything on your own," Harvey said, "I have news for you: you're doing nothing."
He keeps a vision board, tracks all his ideas and plans for the future. He'd like to send 10,000 children to college. He'd like to do more for Africa. He would love to address violence in the country. But he also has more personal goals. He keeps 3.5 tailored into his pants for his ratings goal for his talk show. He also keeps sayings inside the hem of his pants.
"I have to keep my goals in front of me,' he said.
He told a woman trying to get out of a rut that achieving a goal takes "laser-beamed focus. The road to success is always under construction. Just know when you strike out on your goal, you'll have to get ready for flexibility. There will be detours, pitfalls, stop signs... That has to be expected."
Failure, he said, "means you learned another valuable lesson that pushed you one step closer to success." He noted, "I have failed more times than anyone in this room but I don't let failures define me. Success is not a straight line. It's crooked."
To get over the fear: "I aim for stuff so big that the dream is bigger than the fear."
He also said to hang out with successful people or people striving to be successful: "If nine of your friends are broke, you're going to be the tenth one. Stop telling your big dreams to small-minded people." Drop the dead weight, he said.
Harvey recalled an old Cleveland friend of his who never left the streets. He invited the friend to see his show in Detroit. He had forgotten to reserve a room for the guy at a nice hotel. He entered the hotel and saw the dude threatening the hotel clerk and using his name. "I don't pull people off counters," he said. "They don't know him. They know me. That was the last time he's been on the road with Steve Harvey!"
The second part of 'Lifeclass" airs next Sunday at 9 p.m. where audience members will get to ask Steve anything, like an extended version of what he does on his talk show.
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