You can-do anything, and navigate yourself through anything if you have the proper road map. When you are guided by peace, driven by love and if you have a clear direction you will reach the highest point of your destination. My motto is, “Begin Within!” Once you clean up the inside, everything and everyone on the outside will fall in line with your center.
Be Clear About What You Are Doing
This sounds real simple, yet it is a point we often miss. This means making sure that your inner conviction and your outer actions are in alignment with and compliment each other.
Be Clear About Why You Are Doing It
Very often, we allow what we “don’t want” to determine and sometimes control our behavior. Doing anything just to prove you can do it will ultimately lead to a sense of being unfulfilled. Sit down and get quiet with yourself and make sure you know fully why you are doing what you are doing.
Identify and Heal Your Judgments
You must remain flexible. Judgments keep you stuck in what should and should not be, leaving little room for what can-be.
Know Your Worth:
Pick a destination that allows you to stretch and grow beyond your comfort zone into a higher vision of the self you know right now.
Declare Your Value:
Time and energy are valuable commodities. Declare your own self value by not wasting time or energy with things and people who are not moving you in the direction you have chosen for yourself.
Communicate Authentically By Asking For What You Want:
The easiest way to get what you want is to ask for it. When you flip-flop between what you feel, what you say and what you do, you send out mixed signals, which means you will get mixed and often unsatisfactory results. (It is also a good practice to make sure that your no means no and that your yes means yes.) Write it down, speak it out loud or clearly picture it in your mind will help you to do this.
Learn From The Past
Just because something hasn’t happened does not mean that it will not happen. Do not allow the past to weigh you down. Learn from your mis-steps and mis-deeds. (Be prepared to do a new things in a new way rather than crying over what didn’t work.)
Ask For Support When You Need It
Everyone wants to claim their own victory, however, most victories are a team effort. Open yourself to receive support, assistance and guidance from others.
Love What You Do!
I never think of my ministry, Inner Visions Institute, as purely a business venture. I consider it a service to the world. This means that it is the part of my life that I offer to God. Everything that I do for God, I do in love. I love to write! I love to teach and share ideas! I love to support other people in finding their passion and vision in life. It may not be written anywhere as a sound business principle, but believe me, it works! Love magnetizes whatever it touches and, it attracts more love to it. It also helps to know that love and money are ruled by the same vibration.
Don’t Do It Just For The Money!
My daughters and I started Inner Visions on my kitchen table. I wrote the Newsletter, they helped me fold it. At first, we didn’t even charge for it. We sent it out to anyone who requested it because we wanted them to have the information. When someone suggested to me that I charge for the Newsletter, I was appalled! Over time I came to realize that I could never charge for the love and energy I put into my work. However, it is necessary to charge people for the cost of production and my time.
Have A Vision! Stay Focused!
When times were real tight, nothing I did generated an income. I was tempted to throw in the towel and go back to practicing law. When I was alone at night, I would remember how I got started. More important, I remembered why I got started. Loving people! Sharing information! Healing the planet! When I woke up in the morning, I would be so charged up, I would count my pennies, make new arrangements to pay the bills and renew my vow to do whatever was necessary to spread the word.
Specialize! Make Yourself Unique!
One day, without any prompting from me, Dr. Dennis Kimbro walked up to me in a convention center and began to compliment me on my work. He told me how important my work was and how good I was at it. Not only did I need to hear those words on that day, he went on to give me the best advise I have ever heard. It is advice I still use today. He said, “Don’t try to do everything. Specialize!” Pick something and stick to it. He went on to say, “Make yourself unique!” Do what you do in such a way that no matter what anyone else is doing, people must have what you are offering. I specialize in loving with excellence and listening with compassion.
What makes you unique?
———————————————————————————————————————————-
About Iyanla Vanzant:
Iyanla Vanzant is the best-selling author of five books on self-empowerment, personal growth and spiritual healing, with the most recent book being Peace from Broken Pieces. As the founder and executive director of the Inner Visions Spiritual Life Maintenance Network, she conducts workshops, seminars and lectures nationally. Drawing from her own experiences of family dysfunction, abuse, and poverty, Iyanla encourages us all to look at ourselves, laugh at ourselves and then take the necessary steps to heal ourselves. Her practical message is based on the principles of universal law, self-determination and the power of Spirit. You can learn more about her work at www.innervisionsworldwide.com.
Iyanla has recently appeared several times during Oprah’s Lifeclass webcast segments. You can view the classes here: http://www.oprah.com/oprahs-lifeclass/oprahs-lifeclass.html She also recently appeared on Super Soul Sunday with Oprah, speaking about what she had to go through to get to where she is now. You can view these segments here: http://www.oprah.com/own-super-soul-sunday/Full-Episode-Oprah-and-Iyanla-Vanzant-Soul-to-Soul-Part-1-Video
Iyanla has a new show on the Oprah Winfrey Network called “Iyanla, Fix My Life!”. To learn more about it and apply to be on Iyanla’s show and have her help you, please visit http://www.oprah.com/ownshow/index.html?team_type=HarpoStudios
———————————————————————————————————————————-
Written by Iyanla
Iyanla Vanzant, accomplished author, inspirational speaker, talk show host and living testament to the value in life’s valleys and the power of acting on faith, goes behind closed doors and deep inside people’s lives for emotional, riveting conversations in the new hit series- Iyanla: Fix My Life
Iyanla has had a unique life filled with many personal struggles, which she has overcome and used to become stronger. Now, she’s back, helping people fix their lives, using her past to help others’ futures. Secrets will be revealed, truths will be uncovered and emotions will come out as Iyanla teaches us how to pull back the curtain on what is broken in our lives.
Iyanla: Fix My Life is produced by Harpo Studios. Join the conversation on Twitter using #FixMyLife
1 comment
Dear Ms Vanzant,
Your words about having a vision for yourself and your life really resonate with me. Because I have spent so much time focused on what I didn’t want my life to become, I have drawn those things to me. I am now working on getting my thoughts and spirit aligned with what God wants and has for me: my destiny. I love your candor and that you, no matter which way you are coming from, are always focused on speaking and working from love and truth. I have stood many years outside of my own truth in an attempt to please others. To not make them uncomfortable, I have denied my truth and my voice. I have honored their thoughts and feelings more than my own. But thanks to you and Ms. Winfrey, I am beginning to do the work of letting go of my harsh judgements of others, which in turn, has begun to free me to not judge myself. I feel like I have a new lease on life and for the very first time in 37 years I am falling in love with myself. This morning I said to myself- good morning beautiful – and that caused a papable change in my soul. I’ve NEVER said those words to myself even in my head. I feel myself tranforming. I feel the work that God is doing in me. I feel like I’m on the journey from the woman that I’ve known to the woman that I want to be – and it is Awesome. Praise God and thank you!