Whoopi Goldberg Says Her Daughter Alex Has Taught Her to ‘Pick Your Battles’: ‘You Don’t Have to Fight’ Every One (Exclusive)

Whoopi Goldberg’s daughter had some words of wisdom for her mother, the actress says.

Speaking with PEOPLE ahead of her new memoir Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother, and Me, out now, the EGOT winner, 68, shares that her daughter, Alex Martin, 51, has taught her some important lessons as a parent.

“[She taught me] to pick my battles,” Goldberg says. “Yeah, that's what I learned from my child. Pick your battles and then fight those.”

“You don't have to fight every battle, because you can't win every one,” the actress continues. “But the ones that you think have merit, pick those. That's what I learned from my baby girl.”

Goldberg welcomed Martin, her only child, on May 9, 1973, with her first husband Alvin Martin; the couple’s marriage ended in 1979. Both Goldberg and Martin have spoken of their early years together. The family struggled financially at the beginning of Goldberg’s acting and comedy career.

"When I was on welfare, because I was a welfare mom, they paid us $27 a week," Goldberg previously said on The View. "All I wanted to do was work."

Martin and Goldberg have a close relationship, and have appeared in films together, including 1985's The Color Purple, for which Goldberg was nominated for an Academy Award, and 1993's Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit. Goldberg is also a doting grandmother to Martin’s children — daughters Amara and Jerzey, and son Mason — as well as a great-grandmother to Amara's daughter, Charli Rose.

Goldberg's book, Bits and Pieces is also centered around family, as the entertainer writes of her relationships with her mother, Emma Harris, and her brother, Clyde K. Johnson. Harris died in 2010 and Johnson died in 2015.

Writing about her family, Goldberg tells PEOPLE, was “almost harder to do because it was like losing them again." Despite the challenge, the actress says that the process became a way to remember her relatives.

"I talked to a couple of friends and talked about what I wanted to do,” Goldberg says of the writing process. “And then I just thought, 'Well, I'm just going to do it. I'm just going to do it.' And I did and it's great.”

Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE's free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.

Bits and Pieces: My Mother, My Brother and Me  is now available, wherever books are sold.