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
We are missing the truth. We live in a society that lies and fosters and sells dishonesty at a discount. Remember the line, 'America spells cheese K-R-A-F-T? That does not spell cheese! We tell our kids that as long as it looks good on the outside, don't worry about the inside. Or work hard and you'll be rewarded in the end. That's not necessarily true anymore. We don't tell the truth about certain things. Young people see our hypocrisy. We haven't given them a model to follow.
Truth is love's mother, and we all know it is not wise to lie to anyone's mother.
In order to feel loved, be respected and stay connected, we humans have a tendency to lie. We lie about who we are, what we want, what we need, what we have done or will do. Perhaps 'lie' is too strong a word. Let me say that what we do is withhold the truth.
When you need to be loved, you take love wherever you can find it. When you are desperate to be loved, feel love, know love, you seek out what you think love should look like. When you find love, or what you think love is, you will lie, kill, and steal to keep it. But learning about real love comes from within. It cannot be given. It cannot be taken away. It grows from your ability to re-create within yourself, the essence of loving experiences you have had in your life.
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.
I've always wanted people to know who they are from the inside. Then they can create the life they desire and deserve. I've always believed that my job was to facilitate the evolution of the human consciousness.
People say I've had a difficult time in life. I think I've had an exciting time in life.