Why can't women get along? Because we're afraid. We're afraid to be vulnerable. We're afraid to be soft. We're afraid to be hurt. But most of all, we're afraid of our power. So we become controlling and aggressive and vicious.
Iyanla VanzantRead
The only relationship we can have in this life is the relationship we have with ourselves. We cannot love anybody more than we love ourselves. We cannot treat anyone any better than we treat ourselves. When you forget you, give up on you, or devalue yourself, anyone coming into your life has a universal responsibility to follow your lead.
Interpretation
The quality of our relationships with others is directly linked to how we perceive and value ourselves.
This quote emphasizes the importance of self-love and self-respect as foundational to any relationship we have with others. It suggests that our ability to love and treat others well is contingent upon how we love and treat ourselves; if we neglect our self-worth, we inadvertently influence how others treat us in return.
In practice
In a personal development workshop, Iyanla Vanzant's quote can inspire discussions about self-worth.
Why can't women get along? Because we're afraid. We're afraid to be vulnerable. We're afraid to be soft. We're afraid to be hurt. But most of all, we're afraid of our power. So we become controlling and aggressive and vicious.
Challenges come so we can grow and be prepared for things we are not equipped to handle now. When we face our challenges with faith, prepared to learn, willing to make changes, and if necessary, to let go, we are demanding our power be turned on.
Feminine power is silent, dark, mysterious, healing, nurturing. A woman can walk into a room and control it. She doesn't even have to open her mouth if she knows where her power is.
You know when I was 20 and 30, they were insecurities. Now they're just a new normal. I'm 60 years old, so my expectations of who I am and how I look and how I show up in the world had to shift. Not because I couldn't help it, or not because I did anything wrong, but because I had to get into the natural flow of my being as a woman.
Your greatest adversary is also your greatest teacher. Like it or not, it is the job of certain people to bring out the worst in you. What they trigger is already in you. They are here to reveal the sore, tender wounded places in your heart and mind, and they are providing you with a wonderful and divine opportunity for healing.
You have a right to say no. Most of us have very weak and flaccid 'no' muscles. We feel guilty for saying no. We get ostracized and challenged for saying no, so we forget it's our choice. Your 'no' muscle has to be built up to get to a place where you can say, 'I don't care if that's what you want. I don't want that. No.'
TV started for me just as a means of keeping my husband Desi off the road. He'd been on tour with his band since he got out of the Army, and we were in our 11th year of marriage and wanted to have children.
If you really want to get along with somebody, let them be themselves.
Every human walks around with a certain kind of sadness. They may not wear it on their sleeves, but it's there if you look deep.
The relationship between husband and wife should be one of closest friends.
It's okay to send flowers, but don't let the flowers do all the talking. Flowers have a limited vocabulary. About the best flowers can say is that you remembered. But your words tell the rest.
There's a tremendous sense of shame that people who are lonely feel. I say that as someone who felt ashamed of being lonely as a child and even at points during adulthood.
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