Iyanla Vanzant Quotes

There have been times in my life when I felt compelled to write things down as a matter of therapy, but whatever I kept about those days, I shredded. It was too personal.

Part of my therapy is to write.

If your inner life is not producing what you would like on the outside, don't be discouraged... just be willing to change.

When you come from so many damaged places you don't ever want to spiral back there, so you gotta continue to check yourself.

I don't care if you are religious or not and I think the message is that at the end of the day, everybody has to mature and everybody has to heal and mend their own injuries, emotional injuries, on their own pace.

In retrospect, I'm grateful for the break-up of my marriage because it forced me to deal with all the buried issues I probably wouldn't have otherwise faced. I'm a better, kinder, happier person today because of the spiritual and emotional growth I've experienced.

Forgiveness is a gift you give yourself.

In the beginning, I was searching for myself in my music. My music was for me. I didn't have the mental room to be conscious of the listener; I wrote to save myself.

When I write, it's to heal. It's my own self-therapy so that I don't actually feel sad all of the time.

I wrote 'Road Less Traveled' to make myself feel better and process what I was going through.

I've been writing books because it's been my way of dealing with the demons. The act of sitting down and writing the books down has started healing process that's been long overdue.

Sometimes you have to let your life fall apart and let it come back together on its own and learn to care for yourself in a different way.

I've had a lot of therapy in my life.

For me, the healing process starts with graciousness and forgiveness.

The more you stay with and/or complain about a toxic person, the more you're merely delaying doing the important inner work you need to do - to heal your wounds, expand your limiting beliefs, and show yourself far more love and respect.

I haven't been that great at attending my own openings. Still, I'm learning to enjoy this a lot more than I used to.

Be patient with yourself. Self-growth is tender; it's holy ground. There's no greater investment.

The time it takes to feel better about a breakup is directly proportional to the time it takes to feel better about yourself.

There are certain people in my life who didn't care to be in my book. And so I cut them out. And I had broken up with somebody. And I was, you know, really upset and depressed. And so that was, you know, reasons to keep going.

Healing fails to occur because it is much easier to injure another than to heal oneself.

There were things that had been weighing heavy on me for quite some time. And I went into this hole, trying to work through some of these things so that I could be a better me and be a better mom to Julez and be a better wife and a better friend and a better sister.

Sometimes we have to soak ourselves in the tears and fears of the past to water our future gardens.

You have had many sadnesses, large ones, which passed. ... But please, ask yourself whether these large sadnesses haven't rather gone right through you [that is, passed through you]. Perhaps many things inside you have been transformed; perhaps somewhere, someplace deep inside your being, you have undergone important changes while you were sad.

When you find yourself in a new situation, everything that requires healing is going to rush to the surface.

The more difficult it is to forgive someone the greater the opportunity for spiritual growth.