T. D. Jakes Quotes

I had a calling inside of me. I had a sense that when I was going through experiences like living on the streets, losing my parents to AIDS, just having my whole world turned upside-down, there was this feeling inside of me like I was meant for something greater.

I refuse to let what happened to me make me bitter.

I've had to deal with my tragedies, and how you cope with them is what life's all about. You can choose to let them consume you or choose not to.

Sometimes the worst thing that happens to you, the thing you think you can't survive...it's the thing that makes you better than you used to be.

Enlightenment doesn't mean we were never wounded; it means we've found a way to evolve beyond our wounds. Enlightenment isn't idealistic; it's practical. What's idealistic is thinking we can live from our wounds, stay in our weakness, and ever transform the world.

You will find that you survive humiliation. And that's an experience of incalculable value.

That is the challenge Companion. To take what has happened to you and learn from it. Nothing is quite so destructive as pity, especially self-pity. No event in life is so terrible that one cannot rise above it.

I've overcome a lot - sexual abuse, death of a loved one, bad parents and experienced life. My nature is such I not only survived all this but I have thrived. I've always been psychologically ambitious in that I've never been willing to settle emotionally for anything less then what's needed. I've wanted more then that from life.

You've been told that you're broken. That you're damaged goods ... there is also Post-Traumatic Growth. You come back from war stronger and more sure of who you are.

People change when they hurt enough that they have to change, learn enough that they want to change, receive enough that they are able to change.

You need to take the traumas and make them part of who you've come to be, and you need to fold the worst events of your life into a narrative of triumph, evincing a better self in response to things that hurt.

No matter how painful your past has been, you have made it through.

The more you get past pain, the more it goes from coal to diamond.

Your demons will cause your angels to sing. Use the pain as fuel.

The worst loss you've ever experienced is the greatest gift you can have.

You are not defined by your past. You are prepared by your past.

No personal calamity is so crushing that something true and great can't be made of it

And all the things that break you are all the things that make you strong. You can't change the past 'Cause it's gone, and you just gotta move on.

When a man's pride is subdued it's like the sides of Mount Aetna. It was terrible during the eruption, but when that is over and the lava is turned into soil, there are vineyards and olive trees which grow up to the top.

As my sufferings mounted I soon realized that there were two ways in which I could respond to my situation -- either to react with bitterness or seek to transform the suffering into a creative force. I decided to follow the latter course.

If you allow yourself, you can become stronger in the very places that you've been broken.

Of course we all break and we all cry and stumble. It's whether you allow the negative experiences to define you or shape you and make you become who you are in the best possible way. You use them as tools.

A lot of people deal with things that are bad. Once you've been through something, you grow from it and you take a lot in. You can always turn it into something positive.

'I Will Not Be Broken' has really become very healing for me. Any time you go through a cataclysmic event... it's going to inform the richness that you sing from... The experiences of life make all your emotions, I think, deeper.

Don't let your wounds make you become someone you're not.