Quotes from Iyanla Vanzant

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.

You know, if you're a human and living on the planet, it doesn't matter what you do; you are not immune to the challenges, the trials, the difficulty. And that fact that I happen to be a coach and a minister and a spiritual teacher doesn't mean anything. I'm still human.

What a blessing that God allows a life to come through your body, and then allows you to place that body in a body bag and take it out. I had to say that there's a magnificent something that God has for me to do, to give me that level of completion. That level of experience. It's unspeakable.

Instead of running from what you don't want, walk with commitment toward what you desire. Focus on where you are going rather than being obsessed with where you have been.

Breathing deeply and releasing fear will help you get to where you want to be.

You have set standards for how you want to be treated and what you expect from yourself and for yourself.

The only way to get what you really want is to let go of what you don't want.

We have a tendency to always test people's love. 'I want to see how badly I have to behave before you'll leave me. Because I don't really think you want me anyhow.'

Tell the truth about who you are, what you feel, what you want, what you're up to. Tell the truth about that first to yourself and then to anybody else that'll listen.

Gossip is when you have a malice of intent or mindless, third-party conversation to someone about someone, something you haven't said to that someone.

Be willing to share all of who you are. So many of us want a partner, but we're not willing to show all of us.

The life you want is on the other side of the labor pains it takes to birth it.

The ego does not want to be wrong, ever.

Stuff your feelings because feelings buried alive don't die. And that fear or that upset or that anger or that whatever it is, it'll turn into something inside of you. So you want to get it out.

I knew all of the childhood prayers I uttered on my knees at the side of my bed. Many years of Sunday-school attendance had etched certain Psalms and rote prayers into the fibers of my brain. However, somewhere deep inside of me, I had the secret belief that I did not know how to pray, and that frightened me.

Oprah Winfrey gives you the stage? Shut your mouth. I said, 'I'm sorry for taking over your show.' She said, 'No, that's why we have you here.'

What is it that would make a creature as fierce, majestic and powerful as a lion is, subject itself to the intimidation of a man a whip and a chair? The lion has been taught to forget what it is.

I now realize that lives fall apart when they need to be rebuilt. Lives fall apart when the foundation upon which they were built needs to be relaid. Lives fall apart, not because God is punishing us for what we have or have not done. Lives fall apart because they need to. They need to because they weren't built the right way in the first place.

Their issues are not your issues.

When you enter a new experience, all that requires healing rushes to the surface . . . You have to pause.

Until you heal the wounds of your past, you are going to bleed. You can bandage the bleeding with food, with alcohol, with drugs, with work, with cigarettes, with sex; But eventually, it will all ooze through and stain your life. You must find the strength to open the wounds, Stick your hands inside, pull out the core of the pain that is holding you in your past, the memories and make peace with them.

When you feel unprotected, unsupported and unprepared to take care of yourself, your insides will feel if you have been through a train wreck. The best way to describe this experience is that you are having a head on body collision between your wannabe and your can never be.

When you are starting your life over, with a new sense of self, who you once were is going to challenge you. Who you once were is going to dangle old carrots, old wounds and issues, in front of your face. When that happens, you will be tempted to revert to old feelings, old patterns of thought, and old patterns of behavior.

When two broken people bring their broken pieces together, chances are they will never become a whole anything.