OYou Boot Camp

Electric!  That is the one word that comes to mind when I think of the OYou conference in Atlanta this past weekend.  A wave began at the conference center…a wave we are still riding high and hope to catch you up in as well.  As my sister and I share our OYou joy with you over the next few weeks, keep in mind that we all are the architects of change within our own lives.    So get ready… But before we start pouring out the lessons we amassed at the conference, I want to share with you our incredible journey and how Gayle King was the one who made that dream come true.

When it was announced that Oprah was making an appearance at the OYou conference, my sister and I grabbed a cup of coffee and pulled a chair up to our favorite talking table.  How exciting!  All of our OWN & O Magazine favorites were going to be only a few hundred miles away from us.   Now it is important to note my sister and I are not the kind of people who wait hours to see a celebrity and would never consider walking up and interrupting their lives….call it shyness or a sense of boundaries. Truth be told, we are totally opposite of our mother who ran in the streets with the original MTV DJs in Vegas.  BUT we didn’t want to miss out on the excitement of OYou and Oprah.

Before we got up from the table, we decided that we were going to work towards making our OYou dream come true with a crowd fundraiser and an O You! Boot Camp challenge.  We had eleven weeks until the conference and O Magazine had exactly eleven speakers scheduled.  Suddenly it was all lining up.   But during our Suze Orman week of the challenge, reality set in. We both knew that this wasn’t in the budget and Suze would easily “DENY” the trip.  So as the week came to an end, we came to terms with our decision and pushed forward.  Suddenly, our OYou Boot Camp became our OYou experience. 

As my sister wrote the last entry for the OYou Boot Camp, we both tried not to focus on the fact that the OYou conference was beginning in 5 days without us.   Surrendering it all knowing that God had a different plan, we focused on the excitement of the beginning of Rosie and Lifeclass that night.  THIS was now our focus…but, God had a different plan…and the plan was Gayle King.

Within two hours of posting the final OYou entry, everything changed!  O Magazine contacted us.  In what felt like slow motion, we were soon on the call with an Assistant Editor telling us that Gayle had seen our blog and personally wanted to pay for us to come to O You!  Now, for all of you who believe that this kind of thing doesn’t happen…START BELIEVING.

JOY = You were seen.  You were heard.  You matter. 

There is JOY RISING here at the Daily OWN! 

When we met Gayle with hugs, smiles and a ton of thank you’s, we found ourselves in a surreal moment.  But the odd thing was that we weren’t nervous.   Instead we felt humbled and grateful and at home with both who we were and the energy that was surrounding us.  There we stood in front of someone who changed our lives.  Gayle CHANGED our lives. 

There have been moments as we try to meet the goals that we set for ourselves with this blog that we wonder if we are being heard and wondering if we were heading in the right direction.  Whispers would tell us, “Just keep doing what you’re doing…I’ve got this”    All along this journey the whispers have been loud, yet when you get tired -which can happen with only 2 sisters covering all of OWN programs and inspiration – that is when you start to question the world.  But BELIEVE…because if your whisperer tells you, “I’ve got this,” it just might mean that Gayle King is right around the corner.

Sitting on this story was not easy!  Of course we wanted to immediately tell our readers…but we wanted to make sure that Gayle was okay with it.  While Gayle is one of the most open and personable people out there, we wanted to protect her generosity and the story.  But with a nod of approval from a wonderful assistant, we decided to share our story with you.  If you ever wonder about Gayle making her OWN wildest dreams come true, stop wondering and start believing.

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