Iyanla Vanzant Quotes

I don't have to go around trying to save everybody anymore; that's not my job.

One of the things I realized is that if you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don't prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list, your kids fall lower and lower on your list.

Today I will refuse to jump into the middle of others' affairs, issues, and relationships. I will trust others to work out their own problems, including the ideas and feelings they want to communicate to each other.

Whatever happens around you, don't take it personally... Nothing other people do is because of you. It is because of themselves.

Sometimes the best way to get someone's attention is to stop giving them yours.

It doesn't matter what the other is being, doing, having, saying, wanting, demanding. It doesn't matter what the other is thinking, expecting, planning. It only matters what you are being in relationship to that.

I've made apologies to people I needed to, but I can't apologise to people I don't know for things they don't understand.

We give a lot of others significance in our lives even when they don't deserve it. It doesn't matter if they're family or if you've known them forever. If they're not good for you, they've got to go.

As novices, we think we're entirely responsible for the way people treat us. I have long since learned that we are responsible only for the way we treat people.

I'm not in the business of warning people.

I don't like saying 'no' to people, and I'm going to have to learn how to say 'no' more.

My family and friends are the only people I pay mind to. It's none of my business what anyone else thinks. I don't even know them, so why should I care?

To edit someone from your life must be a properly evaluated decision. After all, the act of distancing yourself is difficult and, if executed improperly, could prove even more troublesome than if you were to have done nothing at all. The key is to create the distance gradually - a 'fade out' as I like to call it.

I can't spend my life worrying about others.

Here I am.... You get the parts of me you like and also the parts that make you uncomfortable. You have to understand that other people's comfort is no longer my job. I am no longer a flight attendant.

To think that I know what's best for anyone else is to be out of my business. Even in the name of love, it is pure arrogance, and the result is tension, anxiety, and fear. Do I know what's right for me? That is my only business. Let me work with that before I try to solve problems for you.

Don't take anything personally. Even when a situation seems so personal, even if others insult you directly, it has nothing to do with you. Their point of view and opinion come from all the programming they received growing up. When you take things personally, you feel offended and your reaction is to defend your beliefs and create conflict. You make something big out of something so little because you have the need to be right and make everybody else wrong.

Somebody says, 'Well, I can't be concerned about other people. About the best I can do is to take care of myself' Well, then you will always be poor.

People see everything through a filter of them, of their own selves. And it's like, you can't be depressed because somehow that has something to do with me. And it's like - no, it doesn't. This is my brain. This is my body. These are my emotions. It's got nothing to do with you. You don't want me to get help for whatever reason you don't want me to get help. But I'm out here, and I need to get help.

You can't be everything for another person.

...Nothing that your partner does is personal. Your partner is dealing with her own garbage. If you don't take it personally, it will be so easy for you to have a wonderful relationship with your partner

I am not morally obligated to care more for a man than he cares for himself.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me, if I do that well enough, then I'll be able to look after someone else -- the children or the husband or the elderly. But I have to look after myself first. I know that some people think that's being selfish, I think that's being self-full.

It's a big issue for me - feeling like I should be helping every person who asks for something or who has a problem.