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Dr. Wayne Dyer: "Everything That Happens Is a Lesson"

Aired on 12/26/1986 | CC tv-pg
Editor's note: We were deeply saddened to learn of Dr. Wayne Dyer's passing. The following is from his December 1986 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show.

We've all had bad things happen to us. What makes us different is how we process the experience.

Best-selling author Dr. Wayne Dyer told an Oprah Show audience in 1986 that the key is to extract a lesson from every experience, even the negative ones. "If feeling bad when bad things happen is going to improve the quality of your life, then I would be here on the show saying, 'Let's teach people to feel bad,'" Dr. Dyer said. "But that's not why I flew here today. It's like when bad things happen out there, you can either get a lesson from it—there are no accidents to me in a perfect universe, there are only lessons. Everything that happens is a lesson, and you either learn from it or you become a victim of it."

Watch as one of America's foremost self-help gurus reveals how to make sure even the most difficult life experiences yield deep insights.

Original airdate: December 26, 1986