Iyanla Vanzant Quotes

When you are in relationship with people, in a thousand and one ways you are provoked, challenged, seduced. Again and again you come to know your pitfalls, your limitations, your anger, your lust, your possessiveness, your jealousy, your sadness, your happiness all moods come and go, you are constantly in a turmoil. But this is the only way to know who you are.

I don't want to sound like a self-help book, but it really has been transformative for me to take a look at my relationships in a new way and see my part in them. Everybody's going through that.

What makes a person is the ability to look at themselves and deal with their own lives.

There is nothing deep down inside us except what we have put there ourselves.

Women, the way I see it, are very evolved people. They're more mature, they're more aware of their feelings, in touch with their feelings. They're connected to things that matter more in life. They know what's important. Men basically run around like idiots until we meet somebody who can show us that those things are important.

A human being is only interesting if he's in contact with himself.

To know yourself you have only to set down a true statement of those that ever loved or hated you.

Access to your true essence will give you insight into the mirror of relationship, because all relationship is a reflection of your relationship with yourself.

Once we begin to question our thoughts, our partners-alive, dead or divorced-are always our greatest teachers. There's no mistake about the person you're with; he or she is the perfect teacher for you, whether or not the relationship works out, and once you enter inquiry, you come to see that clearly.

One can only face in others what one can face in oneself.

By now he had learned enough to know that when he was getting annoyed at somebody else, it was usually because there was something that he himself should be doing, and he wasn't doing it.

As individuals, I just think that our biggest responsibility is to be self-aware, and some of us are not.

Each character represented a trait that resides in me.

I love books, and all the best ones are people analysing their own emotions. You can learn from that.

I am deeply in tune with my heart and core, and it's made me a better writer, artist, and most of all woman. It's made me more myself.

Remember that no relationship is a total waste of time. You can always learn something about yourself.

A lot of people hurl themselves into relationships to lose themselves, but I think the best relationships help us to be more ourselves, to bring forth our best selves.

I began to understand my sensations, to know what I wanted, at around the age of forty - but only vaguely.

A lot of people are afraid to face themselves, especially when something goes wrong. But that's important, because if something happens within a relationship, it could be how you're allowing someone else to treat you.

When people disappoint you, it's just as much your responsibility to be aware of it and what you don't want.

I just want to live each moment, but it's kind of hard to do that when you are asked to analyze yourself constantly. But it's also good in that you are forced to think about things that you don't ordinarily think about. I think it's strange.

The ultimate mystery is one's own self.

I don't really look at myself as the kind of person who craves attention, but I've never been to therapy so there's probably a lot of stuff about myself that I don't know.

One of the reasons I'm an interesting person to be married to is my intensely late-blooming self-awareness.

Whoever comes to me finds me a mirror to whatever is in his heart. Thus, I try to help him to see qualities in himself that he needs to overcome.