25 Quotes & Sayings By Iyanla Vanzant

Iyanla Vanzant is a spiritual coach, television host, and motivational speaker who believes in the power of love to transform one's life. She is a renowned minister, lecturer, and author of a number of inspirational books including a New York Times bestseller. Vanzant says her success is due to the fact that she "never let anyone tell me what I can or cannot do."

1
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. . Iyanla Vanzant
If you are afraid to take a chance, take one...
2
If you are afraid to take a chance, take one anyway. What you don't do can create the same regrets as the mistakes you make. Iyanla Vanzant
3
Fear wears so many clever disguises it is virtually impossible to always recognize it. Fear disguises itself as the need to be somewhere else, doing something else, not knowing how to do something or not needing to do something. Iyanla Vanzant
4
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. Iyanla Vanzant
5
Education does not take place when you learn something you did not know before. Education is your ability to use what you have learned to be better today than you were yesterday. Iyanla Vanzant
6
Everything that happens to you is a reflection of what you believe about yourself. We cannot outperform our level of self-esteem. We cannot draw to ourselves more than we think we are worth. Iyanla Vanzant
7
I have a body, but I am not my body. I have a face, but I am not my face. Iyanla Vanzant
8
I have learned the hard way to mind my business, without judging who people are and what they do. I am more troubled by the lack of space being provided for the truth to unfold. Humans cannot seem to wait for or honor the truth. Instead, we make it up based on who we believe people should or should not be. Iyanla Vanzant
9
Some of us pray demands. Some of us pray complaints. Some of us pray knowing, and some of us pray not knowing. But prayer is the attitude that you hold in your heart. Iyanla Vanzant
10
If you are a card-carrying human being, chances are that you share the same fear as all other humans: the fear of losing love, respect and connection to others. And if you are human, in order to avoid or prevent the pain, trauma and perceived devastation of the loss, you will do anything to avoid your greatest fear from being visited on you. Iyanla Vanzant
11
In my deepest, darkest moments, what really got me through was a prayer. Sometimes my prayer was 'Help me.' Sometimes a prayer was 'Thank you.' What I've discovered is that intimate connection and communication with my creator will always get me through because I know my support, my help, is just a prayer away. Iyanla Vanzant
12
I don't think there's such a thing as a selfish prayer. Prayer puts you in communication so you can talk about whatever you want to talk about. Iyanla Vanzant
13
I had no preconceived idea what fame would be like, because I never thought I would be famous. I just wanted to do my work. Hell, I just wanted to pay my rent on time. Iyanla Vanzant
14
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. Iyanla Vanzant
15
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. Iyanla Vanzant
16
I try not to set myself up as different or as a celebrity or special. I have a husband that can get on my nerves. I have kids that test my patience. I've got a cat I can't keep off the sofa. It's real. On a bad day, I'm reading 'Acts of Faith.' Iyanla Vanzant
17
I wasn't ready for fame and all that brings to your life. It was an amazing experience, but so overwhelming, because no one can tell you beforehand when it will happen or how it will impact you. So no one can tell you how to handle it, being stopped everywhere you go because people saw you on 'Oprah.' It took me over, and I wasn't ready. Iyanla Vanzant
18
I gave myself permission to feel and experience all of my emotions. In order to do that, I had to stop being afraid to feel. In order to do that, I taught myself to believe that no matter what I felt or what happened when I felt it, I would be okay. Iyanla Vanzant
19
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. Iyanla Vanzant
20
Everyone has something that blocks us from the full experience and expression of our nobility. Iyanla Vanzant
21
Pain is pain, hurt is hurt, fear is fear, anger is anger, and it has no color. Iyanla Vanzant
22
In my mind, marriage is a spiritual partnership and union in which we willingly give and receive love, create and share intimacy, and open ourselves to be available and accessible to another human being in order to heal, learn and grow. Iyanla Vanzant
23
The remedy for life's broken pieces is not classes, workshops or books. Don't try to heal the broken pieces. Just forgive. Iyanla Vanzant
24
Whether at work, at home or in public, we have been trained to believe that who we are at the core of our being is often unacceptable. As a result, we work diligently to live up to - and sometimes down to - what others have made us out to be, whether or not it is an accurate reflection of who we are. Iyanla Vanzant