Iyanla Vanzant
Iyanla Vanzant
Iyanla Vanzantis an American inspirational speaker, lawyer, New Thought spiritual teacher, author, life coach and television personality. She is known primarily for her books, for her eponymous talk show, and for her frequent appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show. She can currently be seen on television as the host of Iyanla: Fix My Life, and as a frequently featured guest teacher of Oprah's Lifeclass on OWN: Oprah Winfrey Network...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionTV Show Host
Date of Birth13 September 1953
CityBrooklyn, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I see a couple of things missing. Any society, any community, even in the family, when the elders don't do their jobs, the youth suffer. We have no done our job. I'm saying anybody 55 and up. We didn't teach people the basic things.
Your job, work, life assignment must be the spark that fuels your fire. It must be a passion that you pursue. You must want it enough to do it for free. You must be willing to stick with it, taking the ups and downs, giving it all that you are for as long as you can! You’ve got to taste it, smell it, know it whether you are awake or asleep. If you do not have a lustful passion for your work, you really need to find something else to do.
It is an honor and a privilege to be of service and support; however, I realize people are not putting their confidence in me. Instead, they are actually learning to trust themselves. My job is to affirm and support them in the process and teach them to do what I do when I need strength: I begin within.
Everybody does not have to like you. That is not their job. Liking you is not anyone's purpose in life except yours.
What do you do when it seems as if people want to stay in their pain. They have a story to tell and they tell you every chance they get. Well, believe it or not, they may like where they are. Our job is to leave them there. You can point the way out of pain, but you cannot force them to get out. You can support the move beyond their limitations, but you cannot make the move for them.
Your greatest adversary is also your greatest teacher. Like it or not, it is the job of certain people to bring out the worst in you. What they trigger is already in you. They are here to reveal the sore, tender wounded places in your heart and mind, and they are providing you with a wonderful and divine opportunity for healing.
To honor life, we must be willing to grow through what we don't know yet, and outgrow what we know no longer fits us. We must be willing to give in to the process, moment by moment, realizing a new plot may be unfolding.
People have a right to change their minds and it has absolutely nothing to do with you. People change. As people change, their needs change. When people have a need, it is their responsibility to themselves to see their needs are met. And it has absolutely nothing to do with you.
Any time there is 'un-forgiveness' between people who love each other, there is suffering. Any time people face challenges that they really don't understand... there is suffering.
I grew up in the Holiness Church, where prayer was an event.
Sometimes we pray in our heads and we never get a real opportunity to solidify what it is that we're praying for or what we're praying about. So once you write it down, it's like a flow. It comes out and you solidify the thought or the idea or the request.
I'm the person that I always was, but in terms of how I approach my living, I'm not the same person at all. At all. I've buried a child, I've ended a marriage, and the grandson that I was raising is now grown. My family has totally shifted.
Order is the first law of heaven, and you have to have order to survive on Earth. Figure out what has to be done each day, each week, each year and develop a system to achieve it.
We really don't know how to love each other because we haven't really learned to love ourselves. In many instances, not all, it's not malicious. We've just been conditioned to such bad behavior.