Review – Oprah’s 2020 Vision Tour: Your Life in Focus

Oprah’s 2020 Vision Tour: Your Life in Focus

*Looking for a quick review? Skip down to the Likes & Dislikes and Down & Dirty*

I saw Oprah’s 2020 Vision Tour was coming to my city (Ft. Lauderdale) on January 4th with Lady Gaga as her special guest. I knew this was a wellness tour, and the timing couldn’t have been more perfect.

2019 was a rough year for me. My marriage ended after 29 years and at 52 I am struggling to find out who I am and what I want in life. My struggle with my weight drives every single other thing in my life, and for 2020 I know that I need to make changes. As a single mom, I can’t blame my husband anymore! HE didn’t buy the Mallomars, I did this time.

As a WW member who has been paying monthly for 2 years (but hasn’t gone in a year), I knew that Oprah’s 2020 Vision Tour was partnered with WW (formerly Weight Watchers) but I must say, I wasn’t quite expecting it to be so much of a 7 hour WW commercial. That was fine for me, it got me reinvigorated with the program, but there were a lot of people who had no idea and just came to see Oprah and Lady Gaga.

THE DAY

The sold-out arena was mobbed. We parked ½ mile away only to walk up and find out that my friend’s bag was too large and we had to go back to the car (luckily a dude with a golf cart helped!). It seemed that about 1 in 8 women were being turned away. It would have been great if the guy holding the sign stood at the entrance to parking instead of in front of the building. Between that and the horrible traffic to park, we missed the pre-show Dance Party lead by Daybreaker from 9-10 am.

Oprah’s Wellness Journey

At 10 am we saw a film about Oprah’s history, then she came out and talked to the audience for a good hour. She talked about her life, weight struggles, and the day she wheeled the wheelbarrow of fat onto the show. She talked about how her mindfulness and thoughts changed. How it’s now about maintaining a healthy weight FOR HER. She talked about her spirit and her connection with herself, God, and those around her and about being present in the moment. She was very open and honest with the audience.

“Healthy is the new skinny”~ Oprah, 2020

That was the focus of the day. Not just your physical wellness, but your entire being.

2020 Vision Workbook Exercise with Oprah: What’s Your Wellness Quotient

We each got a gift bag with some goodies and inside was a 2020 Vision workbook and pen. This was definitely the first show because there were some issues. We couldn’t couldn’t get the lights bright enough to see the workbook, though most of us used our phone’s light. Oprah lead us in filling out The Wellness Quotient, which asked us 5 questions each about Emotions, Learning, Work, Nutrition, Movement, Purpose, and Relationships. Oprah didn’t expect it to take so long, so she filled the space visiting with with her best friend Gayle King and the Ft. Lauderdale mayor in the audience while we waited for everyone to finish. Then we added up our scores, and found the 3 categories that need the most focus in our lives.

Transformation Talk: Jesse Israel

“Through a unique blend of meditation, community building and uplifting leadership, I help people and organizations become their most powerful — so they can make a lasting contribution to the world.”

We went through a guided meditation, and it was pretty cool to hear total silence and stillness in an arena of 15,000 people. I was never one for meditation, but between Oprah and Jesse, I am rethinking that, and already downloaded some meditation apps.

2020 Vision Workbook: Set Your Intention

Oprah guided us via the workbook to find our motivation, the why behind the why. To figure our wellness intention, and how it will bring us fulfillment.

LUNCH!

We each had a ticket in our bag for lunch. It was a boxed lunch from Panera with a choice of a turkey or veggie sandwich or salad greens with chips and an apple. IT WAS A MOB SCENE. They ran out of Turkey on our line so we started again on another and got the turkey, but they were out of water.

The break felt long. We were able to wait in line and have photos with the Oprah posters everywhere, there were supposedly WW Connect Lounges that we never found. We waited on the merch line, and this is where I and many others were very disappointed. They had a great selection of items (though much was sold out), but the t-shirts were the tiny women’s fitted shirts that go up to an XL and run small. Oprah had just talked about how hard it was to find plus clothes, and her own merchandise was too small for at least 50% of the audience that is there to try to lose weight! Honestly, this disappointed me so much.

KINRGY Movement Experience with Julianne Hugh

The Dancing with the Stars coach had us all up and exercising our sleepy turkey selves for a fun 15-minute workout, but we had to be careful, we were up pretty high. Still, it was very cool to see the whole arena moving like that!

2020 Vision Workbook Exercise with Oprah: Create your Commitment Contract

We all put our goals and commitment to achieving them in a contract to ourselves. I’m actually still working on mine, because I really want to think it through.

Oprah + Mindy Grossman, with Tamela Mann

Oprah sat down with the new leader of WW, Mindy Grossman, and talked about how WW changed over the years, and the new focus on wellness, not just weight. Then they brought out gospel singer of the decade, Tamela Mann, who has lost 50 pounds so far on WW and she sang a beautiful song.

Oprah’s 2020 Visionaries: A Conversation with Lady Gaga

Lady-Freaking-Gaga. I was so excited for this! It was a long and very intimate conversation with Lady Gaga and her struggles with mental health. I don’t know what was new information or not, but she revealed that she had been repeatedly raped when she was younger, causing her all sorts of mental health issues. She was so open and so vulnerable, Oprah was left a little speechless.

I love Gaga’s goals of having a mental health professional at every school and her mental health awareness message. She talked about her psychotic break and the huge cocktail of pills she takes to control it. While I loved the message, it started getting a bit repetitive, I think because Oprah was just too surprised by Lady Gaga’s open vulnerability that she didn’t lead the discussion as much as she could have.

Lady Gaga also talked about her head-to-toe excruciating pain from Fibromyalgia and presented her Doctor’s theory as FACT–that it stems from mental trauma, and it can be treated through mental health therapy, which I felt was a little irresponsible. But she was responsible in not sharing her unorthodox combination of tons of pills to keep her sane and calm. I also think she took away a bit of the stigma of taking medicine to help your mental health, which was the best takeaway.

I admit, I, and many of the women around me were bit disappointed that Lady Gaga didn’t grace us with a song, but after thinking about it, her honestly and vulnerbility (as well as Oprah’s during this talk) made up for it. I loved this quote.

“This is an exercise in discipline for passion for yourself. This is a time to give back to you. When you give back to yourself, you set the stage for you to give to others around you. And to heal the world” – Lady Gaga

Check out her mom’s foundation: https://bornthisway.foundation which focuses on youth mental health and kindness.

Oprah’s Closing Talk

Short and sweet. I’m not sure if it was running late and they cut something (a finale was mentioned in the description) but it was a quick wrap-up. So if you are seeing this in your city, if it is getting close to 4:00 after the headline guest, you are not missing anything if you leave.

Likes:

• A WHOLE DAY WITH OPRAH!!! She was there the whole time from 10-4 (except lunch) and she was amazing, open and honest.
• Cute Gift Bags
• Great Lunch
• Very motivating
• The program inspired me to set and reach goals this year and have a clearer vision of what that is.
• I enjoyed the KINRGY and meditation, and I loved that Oprah sat in the audience and participated.
• I learned a whole bunch about Lady Gaga that I never knew, and her openness was really amazing.

Dislikes: (some are venue-related)

• Let us know about bag size limits at the parking entrance, not after we walk ½ mile from our car and have to go back!
• Very few plus-sized shirts at the merch stands. This is WW, I was very disappointed Oprah didn’t personally make sure that they were size-inclusive.
• It felt like an all-day WW commercial.
• There were perks if you signed up for WW right then, but nothing for current members or Lifetime Members who have been paying for years. (Early access or ticket discounts would have been nice too!)
• The Jumbotron was malfunctioning, and the lighting was horrible for using the journals.
• Lunch distribution was a madhouse. They needed more stations (and more water and turkey).
• Lady Gaga didn’t even hum a tune and talked about her Doctor’s theory on Fibromyalgia as if it were fact.

The Down & Dirty: