Washington: Oprah Winfrey has credited Dr. Maya Angelou for giving her the best life lesson to date.
In a video titled "Oprah`s Lifeclass" posted in Huffington Post, the queen of talk show shares how Dr. Angelou`s advice helps her cope up a bad relationship.
A long time back, Winfrey told Dr. Angelou about her bad relationship wherein she used to spend a lot of time waiting by the phone for a call that rarely came.
Responding to her Dr. Angelou`s gave this advice, "When people show you who they are, believe them." And from that time, Winfrey said, this lesson became one of her favorite life lessons to date.
"When a person says to you, `I`m selfish,` or `I`m mean` or `I am unkind,` believe them. They know themselves much better than you do," Oprah is heard saying in the clip.
During the relationship discussion, Oprah told Dr. Angelou about how she was being let down by the man she was dating.
But, Oprah said, Dr. Angelou didn`t understand her frustration and instead asked her why she was blaming the other person when he already showed you who he was.
Oprah said that moment changed her outlook about relationship.
"When you look back on bad relationships... For myself, [it was] sitting in a window waiting for him to show up, not even getting on the phone because I was afraid that if it was busy for one second that he would call and I would miss the call, not taking out the garbage on the weekends because I might be out the moment that he called, not running the bath water because he might call while I`m running the bath water... When you look at that process of waiting on somebody who has told you they were... going to be there for you and they were not, they are showing you in that moment exactly who they are," she said.
In the clip Oprah also recalled that Dr. Angelou had told her, "My dear, why must you be shown 29 times before you can see who they really are? Why can`t you get it the first time?"
After that, Oprah said she modified the life lesson to `When people show you who they are, believe them the first time`".
ANI