Iyanla Vanzant Quotes

I was not emotionally mature enough to accept any kind of success when I was young. I needed to go that long route.

You're seeing me develop, not only as a filmmaker if you've seen my earlier films, but you're seeing me kind of learn how to be a human, how my philosophy has evolved.

Learning to live with the given is the great humbling educational process of life.

No whining, no complaining about anyone. Everybody in your life has come to teach you lessons.

Argument does not teach children or the immature. Only time and experience does that.

Being more mature now, I've managed to make peace with my past, as it's making peace with me. Certainly there's a mutual gain for reflecting on both phases of my life, and although I consider the here and now perhaps to be more important, there are still many people who appreciate my past ephemeral stages and the lessons they represent.

Now you see how you are, the wisdom mixed in with all the scars.

No one ever told us we had to study our lives,make of our lives a study, as if learning natural historyor music, that we should beginwith the simple exercises firstand slowly go on tryingthe hard ones, practicing till strengthand accuracy became one with the daringto leap into transcendence, take the chance of breaking down in the wild arpeggioor faulting the full sentence of the fugue.

In life we often look to others for simple, but difficult answers, despite the fact that we have those answers ourselves.

I learn from my mistakes. It’s a very painful way to learn, but without pain, the old saying is, there’s no gain.

To celebrate growing older, I once wrote the 45 lessons life taught me. It is the most-requested column I've ever written.

We have to go through certain things in order to appreciate life and learn lessons.

I've become less angry and a little more humble by age and by experience and by going through the ups and downs of life.

The first lessons with which we should irrigate his mind should be those which teach him to know himself, and to know how to die ... and to live.

Misfortune can force you into doing things you should be doing anyway. Lessons come from adversity. Anything can happen to anyone... You can find a new lease on life - more meaning than you thought possible in simple things... Let go. Live in the moment. Go forward.

Let this be a lesson to us all, said the preacher. You will be walking someday in the dark and the truth will come shining through, and behind you will be a life that you never want to see again.

How many times have I been in my therapist's office, saying, "I think I'm smarter than this! I've been down this road! I've learned this lesson!" And she's like, "Yeah, and you're learning it a little bit deeper."

You realize that especially when you're writing a book like this, looking back on your life, that there's just such a depth of understanding you acquire over time with the help of the people who love you that that's when you can really get down to what you really think and believe.

The older you get, you always learn more. Sometimes it's a process of learning about yourself and what your journey is. Sometimes the process moves forward at a rapid pace in a short amount of time - or moves backwards. And you're like, "Man, I thought I had made so much progress, and now all of a sudden, I'm 10 steps further behind than when I started."

You’ve learned a new rule and it’s simple: don’t put yourself in situations you’d like to run away from. But when you run, run back to yourself, like that bunny in Runaway Bunny runs to its mother, but you are the mother and you’ll see that later and be very, very proud.

The biggest (and hardest) lesson I've learned in life is that the external world is just a reflection of the world within.

Rejection reveals your character.

I want to know why this is such a part of me. I want to know why this thing that happened to other people has happened so much to me. I keep looking for the lesson.

You meet all kinds of people that help put life in perspective and turn the horror into some kind of lesson or avenue of awakening that lives with you all your days.