New York Times best-selling author and motivational speaker Stedman Graham believes the key to realizing your potential rests with knowing who you are.
It is the cornerstone of his twin best-selling motivational-self-help books — "You Can Make It Happen: A Nine-Step Plan for Success" and "Teens Can Make It Happen: Nine Steps to Success."
At the Tucson Festival of Books, Graham will lay out his "Nine Steps" for an audience of teens. He will tell them that if they don't understand who they are, they will be average at best.
"If they don't know who they are, they have no sense of self or no identity, then they won't be able to maximize their potential as a human being," he said during a phone interview from his Chicago offices last month.
If his statement strikes you as ironic, then you recognize Graham from checkout-counter newspapers and gossip magazines. Those publications do not acknowledge him for being accomplished, wealthy and successful in his own right. Instead, the man simply known as Stedman is the boyfriend and one-time fiance of mega-celeb Oprah Winfrey.
People are also reading…
"I think that's why I can tell the story. That's why I'm in the position to tell the story that no matter how the world defines you . . . don't allow other people to define you," he said. "You define yourself regardless of what kind of box they try to put you in. You can't do it any better than that."
Young people are especially vulnerable to being labeled — gangbanger, troubled kid, rich kid, brain, jock or with racial epithets — and allowing those labels to define them.
"They will never know how to take information and education and make it relevant to their development. They won't really grow because they'll be stuck in a box doing the same thing over and over every single day," he explained. "And they will be labeled by the world, so they will be labeled by their race and their agenda and their class and their peers and their family and their house and their car. They won't be able to define themselves so they will only be average."
Graham, who has written several motivational books that have topped The New York Times best-seller list, has long championed youth and education through his management and consulting company, S. Graham & Associates. The company, of which he is chairman and CEO, specializes in the corporate and educational markets.
Graham is passionate when it comes to helping people achieve their potential, especially in today's world, where success seems so unattainable. The economy has put up roadblocks that to young people seem impossible to overcome, he said.
That's where he thinks his nine steps are vital.
"It's really about investing in yourself so you have control over your life and you have more choices and more options," he said. "That's not to say we're not all affected by the economy. . . . You have to be able to have faith, and you have to have a vision of where you want to go and who you want to become. You can maintain that course if you have a vision.
"If you have no vision for your life, if you have no hope and you don't know where you're going, then everything becomes an issue," he added. "Everything becomes blown out of proportion. Everything becomes about survival. You have to know where you're going to stay on course."
Graham has taken his teen "Nine Steps" program all around the country, speaking to groups of several hundred or thousands, as he did recently at a Future Farmers of America conference. There were 12,500 kids in the audience — the largest group he's addressed, he said.
"Anytime I get a chance to speak to young people, I try to do that," he said. "I'm very much involved in the whole youth culture."
At the end of the day, he doesn't mind that he's best known for his relationship with Winfrey so long as he touches some of those kids.
"I don't have a problem with any of it. That's not my name; my name is not 'Oprah's boyfriend' — my name is Stedman Graham," he said.
If you go
Tucson Festival of Books
• Where: University of Arizona.
• When: March 14-15.
• Online: tucsonfestivalofbooks.org. A complete guide to the festival will appear with next Sunday's Star.
• Details: Stedman Graham will speak at the UA Social Sciences Auditorium on March 14 at 11:30 a.m. and again at 1 p.m. This event will be geared toward minority high school students, but anyone who wants to attend can RSVP online by going to www.uofabookstores.com/uaz/TFOB and clicking on the Stedman Graham link under Saturday's Events.
• Et cetera: Graham will sign his books at the UA Bookstore after his second presentation.
