Iyanla Vanzant On Leaving 'Fix My Life', Growth With DMX, Healing, Trust + More

wake that ass up in the morning the breakfast club morning everybody it's dj envy angela yee charlemagne the guy we are the breakfast club we have a special guest on the line that's right ayaan lavanzant welcome thank you how are you grand rising grand rising same to you dang so you ending fix my life just the final season yes i'm out you tired of fixing people you seem very you seem you seem very happy yeah you know i'm i'm very clear it's it's run its course it did what it needed to do and now i get to have a summer off for the first time in 12 years were you tired of fixing people's lives was that what it was it was giving you too much stress dealing with everybody else's problems and heartache and no i love people and and i think that you know that's my purpose i love teaching and that's what i got to do you know you just got to know when it's time to go you just gotta know i know that fix my life changed the uh television the genre of reality tv you know what we did and what we brought to the platform has never been done and i'm sure it'll be done again but not by me how do you think you're gonna continue to deserve once the show is over meaning meaning helping people i'm teaching i'm getting ready to do a huge workshop on sexual abuse trauma doing it online uh the pandemic you know just taught us a powerful gift about online so now i i have to know how to do more than turn the computer on yeah oh no finish what you were saying no i i said i will continue to teach and you know i train coaches i train ministers um i'll i'll continue to write just not at a hectic pace you know what it's like to have to get up every day and be somewhere yeah cooties i i feel you now let me ask you this obviously you had a very popular episode with dmx and unfortunately he did pass so what were your thoughts when that happened when he passed when we had the episode uh when he passed you know he was anointed but they had never been consecrated meaning that that anointing had never been honored and recognized and unfortunately you know he was rewarded for bad behavior um but i saw the soft sides of him when he talked about his grandmother you know people don't know that and he could pray the pain off the wall okay he was so anointed so you know he's he's resting and and he left a powerful legacy but he's also a cautionary tale about how we need to take better care of each other and call each other on our stuff you know you know i remember um when you said that you were disobedient to what your inner guidance was telling you to do when it came to dealing with dmx what what was that to consecrate him we had an entire uh process that we were going to take him through um but unfortunately the the location that we chose for the for the show uh had no heat um dougie fresh agreed to come in iced tea was going to come in so that some of his peers and and partners could really bless him and consecrate that anointing i had a whole group of men to come in and because we could the house was cold we didn't do it we didn't do the consecration you gotta you gotta walk us through what a consecration is i don't i'm i'm not that involved in my my spirituality yeah you know most of us were baptized as babies oh okay yeah but when you when you when you're older and and particularly because he had a ministering spirit i mean he really had a ministry experience his speaking was to the soul his writing was from the soul so i was just going to do you know an ancient traditional african way watch him anoint his head with oil pray over him and um and change his name right did you have a name in mind no i wouldn't have known the name until we had done the ceremony then i would have asked wow wow what do you what do you find when you're doing uh fix my life there's some times that people are very open like i felt like in this season lisa ray was very open to hearing everything that you had to say and making the changes that she needs to make and receptive but then there are people who are very um resistant yes resistant to that what are you what do you find more pleasure in when people are open or breaking down those walls to people who are so resistant to actually uh digging deeper well you remember you see 48 minutes of maybe three or four days everybody's resistant you know the piece you may not see that piece but it's you're bearing your soul in front of the public that's not an easy thing to do that's right so i i had learned you know after years and years and years of doing this work to meet people where they are and push them pull them drag them kick them forward that's so cool when i meet the resistance i have to see what kind of resistance it is and then i have to know whether to push pull drag kick and to get him to prove to the next play how long does it take for somebody to trust you because you know you're talking to somebody that you don't know and it's hard to open up your feelings and gain that trust so how long does it usually take for somebody to say you know what i'm going to open up and trust this individual well you know what on to fix my life set i always have what i call prayer warriors somebody they're holding the space calling in the energy and each person is different but you know i meet them and then i have the weapons of the bosoms once i lay that head that head in the bosom they going down they're going down that's my secret weapon and a hug yeah so it really all depends on the person but but usually um you you don't come that far without trusting they trust me in the beginning i cannot tell you the thousands upon thousands of letters that we got where people said i've never spoken to anybody about this you know what an honor that is for me you've never spoken to anybody and you're going to write this to me so we always try to respect and honor the guests but by the time they write me they're trusting me what happens is they get there see those cameras and they go into fear and and that's what i usually had to dismantle was the fear you know you know queen you you laughing but something about the bosom does bring a person back to like that child-like nature yeah yeah because you know your first nine months of your life you spent under the bosom maybe the first two years of your life you ate activism you know so the bosoms are mothering and nurturing you know and and it it don't even matter what size if you are if you are bring the love to that place and the other thing is the bosoms are right over the heart so it's a heart to heart connection i don't care who you are you lay your head there and you hear that heartbeat you you just surrender that's right that's right i want to talk to you about something i'll be talking to my therapist about because i often wonder can a person truly be healed from every life experience do you ever get to a place of wholeness or do you just get close to it when you get to wholeness you're dead everything here is a lesson it's that's why we're here so you never can when you do all that you've come to do you'll exhale and you won't inhale again now what changes i think is maybe what you're asking me charlemagne is does it get easier you know it doesn't get easier whereas in my 20s and 30s i used to fall apart if a relationship you know went bad now i help him pack because i know people come into your life for a reason a season or a lifetime and when that reason or that season is over it's time to go i didn't know that when i was 20 and 30 hanging on somebody's ankle trying to keep them from going so what happens is you you learn the lesson and then the next time you face the situation you apply what you've learned so that you can learn some more and then they'll come back again and you get better and better each time wow you know it's interesting because along those lines you also i saw you write on twitter the only true way to create a more loving productive and fulfilling life is by forgiving the past right but what if whoever hurts you in the past is you know not wanting forgiveness still doing things that are hurting you how do you forgive the past well you don't see you the the impression is that you have to forgive the other person how about forgiving yourself for participating i don't know start there because every everybody comes into your life for a reason a season or a lifetime so something in your soul called this experience forward but when you're focused on what they did or what he did she did what's going on outside you don't get a chance to look inside every bad relationship i've had i was by voluntary participation every difficult situation that i'm in like if i get still enough i can go back and say um okay this is how i contributed to it so forgive yourself instead of worrying about the other person why do you feel people it's not easy for people to leave those situations because we could talk about it after the situation it's so easy to discuss after why do you think when people are in those situations they can't say you know what i'm out or i can't leave is it comfortability what do you think the reason is because the number one human fear is a loss of love that's a i mean that's a bone-wrenching fear so when you we think we're in love or we think we love something or someone to let it go raises fear and fear is the ultimate tool of the ego and fear will make you believe oh you know you're gonna die your eyes gonna fall out you're gonna end up in the park with the squirrels so we will hold on and and the human mind loves comfort and familiarity even if it stinks and it's toxic we if it's familiar you know what's the same better the devil you know than the one you don't know we'll stay there because it's comfortable and it's familiar and that means we have control you know so many women think there's no such thing as a man who doesn't cheat or and that's what you're saying like as far as the devil you know as opposed to the devil you don't know and they'll stay in a situation because like well all men cheat anyway so i might as well stay with this person who is taking care of me at least i know who they are as a person instead of trying to get into a whole new situation and it happens to me all over again what do you have to say about that well i don't believe in cheating i don't believe in cheating i want to know what agreements did we have did we have an agreement and a commitment that this was a monogamous relationship and if we did and you violated that agreement and you violated that commitment that tells me that you don't have no integrity and that don't have nothing to do with me and i don't choose to be in relationship with people who surrender their integrity who don't have integrity women take on the cheating as as though it has something to do with them you got to look at this person and say okay this person's got integrity issues this person has issues with honesty as that's something i want to deal with and if you're going to deal with it stay and stop complaining i don't believe in cheating i believe in violation of agreement and i believe in broken commitments well i'm glad you don't believe in cheating because black men don't cheat so no i don't think i think that i like commitments yeah they violate commitments they have difficulty with commitments and in this country where they're educated programmed and conditioned dehumanized devalued most brothers are struggling with their personal integrity their personal value and their personal worth and that's why they use mr man and his three two friends to try to garner up some worth and value wow what are your thoughts on you know i was watching the funeral of dmx and his uh ex-wife spoke and she talked about the demons in the industry and and people following those demons what what are your thoughts on that because the the industry is very demonic and very negative in in a lot of ways yeah you know i wonder this is the wondering no heat no judgment i promise you no ain't no gudsman i wonder what would have happened had the producer said to him you come in here high you can't hit my stage i ain't paying you i wonder what would happen had we called him on his stuff you know so i don't know if they're demons in the industry but there sure is a lot of incentive to lose yourself you know eminem lose yourself in the music moment to get the external validation fame is a drug it's a drug sometimes i think it's worse than crack or heroin people lust after they'll do anything for it and then all of the trappings that go along with it that's why i buy my own groceries i go to the supermarket i pump my own gas because i don't even want to entertain the demon a celebrity because it's a drug and many people chase it so i understand what she says but we we can't blame the industry individuals have to come to the table as healthy as possible and we have to have strong yeses and strong no's and clear boundaries i think i think what you said is very true you know you got to come into a situation as healthy as possible because money fame it doesn't change you it just multiplies whatever it is that you are so if you came in as an addict it's probably just going to multiply that that addiction so how do you get somebody help if they didn't even come in as a healthy version of themselves well again it goes to you know i have a student one time and she she was behaving badly and people were talking about her behind her back and when we carefronted her about the situation you know what she said turned to her fellow students and she said don't let me die don't let me die damn when you see me putting myself in harm's way call me out call me out don't let me die we let him die him and so many others we let them die because we didn't call them out on their stuff but what if you call them out and they still don't want to get help create clear boundaries a producer should not you can always say you you come here high you can't go on my stage i'm not gonna do that i'm not gonna subject my audience to you you come here clean straight or you don't go on the stage cancel a contract put it in the contract and i'm just saying that in that particular industry but it's in everywhere it's in television it's in movies you know and it's the drug of external validation so when people come broken how many a young artist do we have or artists in general i mean i can go all the way back to billy holliday and ray ray charles who who are broken and in a culture where you're not supposed to talk about your private business you don't want people to know your weaknesses and we self-medicate um so when but when we recognize it when we recognize it managers agents assistants because i mean look at our county absolutely another thing you mean to tell me nobody can say yo brother i'm not participating in that what you doing absolutely don't let him die wow when it we're talking about business relationships right but when it comes to friendships if you have somebody that is struggling and has a lot of demons addictions and things that they're dealing with there's just this balance of wanting to make sure that you don't leave them for dead and help them and support them but also not put yourself in a situation where that's all you're doing is trying to help them and it's harming yourself how do you establish when it's time for you to walk away or do you walk away i do i do you know why and this is an old saying that i that works for me it's hard to watch someone that you love hit rock bottom but don't forget god made the rock what a lesson is that rock bottom right what if their lesson is all alone with nobody what if that's the moment that the creator can step in and because we can't do it to us human beings we can we can barely save ourselves from a bag of lace potato chips now if somebody asks you for support but how long do you drag yourself drag yourself drag yourself so don't forget god made the rock sometimes the lesson is at rock bottom what is the key to finding healing well you how are you defining healing healing yeah healing from me is to restore to wholeness and availability for original purpose but you say that don't happen until you die wholeness well well no healing healing okay doesn't happen until you absolutely die and wholeness you know when you are dead you are whole i guess i haven't been dead this in this lifetime so i don't know but in terms of the healing work and the process of healing what is our original purpose our original purpose is to awaken to our god self to celebrate life and to do what brings us joy so the closer that you get to that and most of us struggle struggle struggle through life trying to accomplish something have something and never get to that place where we just have joy you know and one of the things that i want to do when i uh leave fix my life i haven't had a summer off in 12 maybe 14 years i'm telling you not a summer i wouldn't know the beach if it bit me on my butt because we started working i worked june july and then we start shooting in august every day so one of the i want joy i want to i want to go to the beach i want to eat popsicles the one with the two stick i want to walk my so does the dogs not give you does the show not give you joy that like that or oh yes it did but it was work yeah i love what i do this is pete i name my dogs for what i want this is peace and my other one is freedom oh peace wow okay peace yeah i thought she said peter said pizza but had it how do you know when it's time though like what made you say okay this is the last season was it a day that you woke up and we're like okay i'm not doing this anymore how did you know well you know when you're serving god's people you got to be in good relationship with god so i take my direction from god so i was praying one day and the holy spirit said this is done and i was like what what exactly would you be speaking of sir [Laughter] you know and i knew and it was done so i had to work with that you know i'm a black woman almost 70 years old with a national platform on a network owned by a black woman how do you walk away from that so i had to really work with it and then i had to remember why i went there what my intention was that intention was met my that purpose was met and it was getting harder and harder and it and it was work it was i love it i had a great time great crew but it's just time to go i could stay another five 5-10 years if i wanted to but you know what i'm old i can't remember where i put my glasses on you know you know you know queen the reason i asked you about uh the healing thing is because it's like you know i i can go to therapy you know i can meditate i do all of these things but it'd be like one thing that you might hear you know from the past or one person you thought that you know you you had you had healed from and you hear something or see them and it triggers you and it feels like it brings you right back to that bad place again so i'm like damn do you ever get to a place of just healed can i offer can i ask you a question you don't have to respond okay i would encourage you to ask your your therapist or your your co whatever you know the person you're working with are you doing healing work or are you doing growth work there's a distinction between growth work meaning growing beyond where you were growing into something new getting a whole new perspective whereas healing work is releasing clearing neutralizing and cl healing work is not intellectual it's energetic that's right so there has to be a lot of energetic work that goes on all right so yes the prayer in the meditation and and the therapy is good but ask your therapist are we doing healing work they're both great or are we doing growth work because when you do growth work you get to that moment when that thing is neutralized you've uprooted it from the root and the cause that's healing work growth work is you learn how to manage and move through situations with a different response yeah i would say i would say i've been doing a lot of growth work i have a sacred purpose coach and i have a lot of you know people around me that are in the mindfulness space who've been telling me for the longest i got to do more healing work to move just move that trauma through my body so yes yes that's it that's why you know starting next week actually this week i'm doing a five-day process on releasing trauma um just releasing the energy of trauma so that the healing can occur because it's hard to heal when you have the energy of the trauma in your body and in your mind you've got to do the healing work to release the trauma so that you can then create balance as long as the trauma's there that imprint it's really hard to do healing work because you re you re trigger it all the time yeah can black people ever be trauma free when we live in a world when we're watching videos of us getting assassinated every other day can can we ever be trauma free in this country well i don't know if we can be trauma-free but we certainly can have a different response to it and i nobody's doing that work you know it's traumatic for me it's even more traumatic for me as a mixed person i'm black and native american and what's going on in my native american community right now is just i you know you don't even hear about it i don't know which is worse hearing it and seeing it or not hearing it and seeing it right so but we can respond differently to it i have a very different response to george floyd and ahmad aubry and sandra bland then i had to amadou diallo and eleanor bumpers that people don't even speak about okay so i have a very different response now and how i take it in and what i do with it have you ever done things like ayahuasca work with like a shaman to you know people go on these retreats and they do the uh ayahuasca have you tried that i don't know what ayahuasca is but i am a native american [Laughter] i don't even know what that is is that like what about is that is it like the 420 you all know about the 420 the weed yeah i don't know what it is so i heard it and then i just smiled 420 is the day where everybody smoke weed yeah they celebrated what it is um it's like a i think it's a plant or something like that it's a let me see ayahuasca it's a brew made from these shrubs but like say shrooms or something like that you know how sometimes people will do mushroom tea and then have these experiences and then next thing you know that i haven't done it but i've always seen people doing it and then they start like crying and all these things come out of you it's a it's like spirituality spiritual medicine well no i haven't done that i've done a whole bunch of others but what is it what is your take on things like marijuana because is that you know i beat flowers like do you think that you know cause some people use that as a treatment to their therapy so what are your thoughts on people using marijuana i grew up i smoked so much weed is that what it's called we called it reef yeah they don't call it reef okay they call it whatever you want to call it i smoked so much weed growing up till the tips of my fingers was brown i don't have nothing i don't have no problem with plant-based medicine you know but um and then i got to the point where you know i just didn't need anymore i don't drink i don't smoke you know what i don't have any judgments about anything what i have judgments about or what i have upset with is how it people are criminalized i've had soup with marijuana if you go up in the hills in in um kingston jamaica you're gonna have some happy flowers in your soup and your your iced tea and your curry chicken and your goat everywhere so i don't you know but here let's tell the truth the big people whoever they are were angry because the little people were making money selling it that's right okay so it had to be criminalized and so now um now that it's legalized and the big dispensaries it's amazing to me i just i don't have no heat about it i love happy flowers if you love it i don't know like i said i smoked enough when i was young my fingertips were brown wow okay i got i got a couple more questions for you queen number one you recently tweeted on forgiveness addresses how we think and feel about others and ourselves and how those thoughts manifest within our lives can you can you expand on that a little bit yeah you know when you when you have unforgiveness in your heart you use a lot of energy because first of all you're thinking about the person you're re illuminating in it and then you get angry you know you may haven't been mad at somebody ain't seen them since god left chicago and you just start thinking about him and the next thing you know you are sour as a story of my life you know so it and then you unforgiveness makes you angry at yourself and your inability to do anything about something that's already happened that's right it's already happened and now you're still thinking about well why didn't i say this why didn't i do and that shouldn't happen in nation so unforgiveness uh i think the only thing worse than unforgiveness is bad credit that unforgiveness you in trouble that in your 562's credit score you're not going to get too far not at all yep that's right but you know what i was going to say what works for me is having empathy for other people who have done things that i feel like were wrong to me as i look at the situations that they're in and i kind of try to analyze why they may have done what they did and instead of me being angry at them for that i have more empathy for them because i analyze why they did it and it kind of helps me more than anything that's the method that i've been using you know what when somebody hurts me or upsets me or betrays me violates me they psychosocial history don't matter to me i really don't care why they did it okay what i look at is how am i going to hold this within myself because that is the only thing i have dominion on i don't dominion over why because your mama left you and bought you generic cookies that you treat me like this no no that's your psycho social history how am i going to hold it and how am i going to be in relationship with you and i that's compassion because that means that i'm not going to participate in my own suffering and compassion requires that we recognize someone's suffering and then take action to alleviate it and sometimes the action to alleviate someone's suffering is to leave them alone so that they don't create no more suffering for you yeah sometimes i look at it like it's their problem more than is mine right like it's more problems that they might have rather than who i am as a person or they just may be crazy as hell either way how am i gonna respond that's the big thing how am i going to respond yeah i was gonna say i was watching one of your episodes right where the couple was married and it feels like he wanted to he said he wanted he didn't want to be married anymore he wanted to get out of the marriage you think every couple feels like that at some point in america yes yes yes yes absolutely because we go into marriages for the wrong reason we go into the marriage thinking that the other person can make us be or feel or do a certain thing we don't go into marriages all the time as equals we go in looking it's like an exchange a give and a take i give you i get as opposed to equals and as equals you'll have good days i'll have good days you'll have bad days i'll have bad days hopefully they won't be running at the same time so i think that if we go into a marriage or a relationship um and and understand that that person's needs and wants and desires are just as important as mine and that your partner's needs and wants and desires and what we all want is peace and joy and to express ourselves authentically and so sometime to do that you've been looking at somebody for 16 years and i can't express myself authentically with you today i'm just tired of looking at you don't breathe it's my last question queen and it go it ties into the forgiveness question i ask how do you view grace because i feel like we don't give enough give each other enough grace nowadays you know um grace is when you well let me put it this way mercy is when you get what you don't deserve that's mercy and grace is when you don't get what you do deserve because sometimes we deserve a little pow-pow on the butt you know and grateful not this time and sometimes and and so i think great you know the mere fact that we can inhale and exhale that's grace because the distinction between the living and the dead is that inhale that's the distinction because no matter how you get there shot stab poison suicide whatever the moment of transition or death is the same for everybody i don't care who you are you exhale and you don't inhale so the fact that you're inhaling and exhaling that's grace some of the things that i've done in my life that i didn't get power powered for that's grace you know and some of the things that i refuse to do that and i still got rewarded for that's mercy so i don't think we give enough grace to each other or to but a lot of times we can't give the grace because we don't have the forgiveness wow now you're right you're right well alania thank you for joining us we really appreciate being with you all always a pleasure and you still have to come even though we know fix my life you know this is the final season but you are still doing work so you're always welcome to come on the show and and charlemagne asked your ask your therapist about that oh it's a whole nother animal it is that's what i got to get to the healing work i i love you queen and i value you and i appreciate you and i can't wait to see you good grandma let me um did you write your book envy did i write it i saw you did you write your book did weren't you writing a book you and your wife yeah we're still right now we're almost we're like 98 done okay how did you know okay i saw your story with you and your wife oh yeah yeah oh no i don't pray all the time i watch things with 98 done um yeah it's it's time it's a great time we're happy you know we wanted it to come out this year we've been married 20 years this is our twenty years yeah so we wanted it to come out for our 20th anniversary but we can't travel and this is one of the ones where we want to talk to people and talk to couples and just talk about everything the good the bad the ugly how we dealt with things the the wrong moves the right moves and everything so yeah we're gonna put yeah to the bus like and like you said sometimes the bosom conversations you know put me back where i needed to be you know so yeah the 21st we'll do we're going to release it on the 21st anniversary and and and please do that um envy because i think when i saw your story i was like wow a lot of brothers need to hear need to hear what he's saying you know you were so authentic and you too charlemagne you talked about your stuff that some beautiful because you know a lot of men can't hear me a lot of people can't hear me but when they understand that they that another brother can be a soft place for them to fall and when they see themselves in you that's very helpful so good i i appreciate you thank you both of you so much thank you queen charlemagne you're my brother you always got a soft place to land with me brother okay thank you all right no queen all right [Music] you

Channel: Breakfast Club Power 105.1 FM

Views: 733,238

Rating: 4.900311 out of 5

Keywords: the breakfast club, breakfast club, power1051, celebrity news, radio, video, interview, angela yee, charlamagne tha god, dj envy

Id: mTqKCMUDNFI

Length: 36min 10sec (2170 seconds)

Published: Wed Apr 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/ladygold9]

I watch a lot of programs on the OWN network, and am so tired of the repetitive commercials for Iyanla’s show, showing the same footage over and over and over! It does NOT make a person want to watch the show, but turns them completely off! Same for “The Haves and the Have Nots”! And another thing I just don’t get at all is in one of Iyanla’s commercials, she says :

“Did you ever tell a baby I see your brokenness?”

WHAT IN THE WORLD IS THAT SUPPOSED TO MEAN???!! THAT JUST MAKE ANY SENSE AT ALL!!’