E-mail a friendIyanla Vanzant
airdate August 21, 2008
In her workshops and lectures, Iyanla Vanzant focuses on getting your life together. Having overcome an abusive childhood, teen pregnancy, abusive marriages and welfare, she speaks from personal experience. Vanzant is now a lawyer, ordained minister and motivational speaker with a mission of empowerment. The author of 13 books, including five New York Times best sellers, she's also founder and executive director of Inner Visions International and the Inner Visions Institute for Spiritual Development.
Motivational speaker addresses the rumors that surrounded her and Oprah several years ago and the real reason she stopped appearing on the talk show. (1:22)
Full interview. (12:06)
Iyanla Vanzant
Tavis: Iyanla Vanzant is the founder and executive director of the Inner Vision Spiritual Life Maintenance Network and a bestselling author of more than 20 books now. Her latest in stores now is called "Tapping the Power Within: A Path to Self-Empowerment for Women." She joins us tonight from Washington. Iyanla, nice to have you back on the program. I just hate that you're not here in person.
Iyanla Vanzant: I know; I can't get my hug. Thank you, Tavis, for having me. (Laughter)
Tavis: Glad to have you on. I mentioned that you are the bestselling author of more than 20 books now -
Vanzant: Not 20, Tavis.
Tavis: Well, right at point -
Vanzant: Thirteen.
Tavis: Oh, okay - is it 13?
Vanzant: It's 13.
Tavis: All right. You know where the 20 comes in? The 20 comes in - this is the 20th anniversary edition of this book, which happens to be your very first published work.
Vanzant: My first published work that I sold out of the trunk of my car that I sold on consignment to neighborhood bookstores that originally got Simon & Schuster interested in me to give me my first contract. So this is my baby, all grown up, 20 years later.
Tavis: So why reprise what's inside of it? There is obviously a lot of good new material in the book, but why go back to this one 20 years ago, first done?
Vanzant: Well, "Tapping" has been out of print for the past nine years, and for many people, this was their primer. This was their workbook, if you will, go beginning their journey - their spiritual journey, their personal growth journey. And it's been out of print, and people have been looking for it. They were trying to find it on eBay; mothers were trying to give it to their daughters who were going off to college.
And so I said okay, the book is 20 years old. Now, where am I 20 years later? So we looked at it. The original manuscript was so incredible that we didn't change the original manuscript except for a few grammatical areas. Thank god, my writing is better now than it was 20 years ago. (Laughter) But we changed a few grammatical things.
We left the original manuscript completely intact, because that's where the power was, that's where the strength was, and we added to each chapter a new chapter entitled "What I Know Now." And I talk about what I've learned about spiritual growth, about personal development over the past 20 years. I just thought that was worth sharing.
Tavis: We can read the jacket copy and get this answer but it's not like getting it from you. How would you describe, then, what "Tapping the Power Within" is, what the text is?
Vanzant: I would say that it is your treatise, if you will, your primer for your spiritual code of conduct - how to build your character, how to build your inner strength, how to build your spiritual connection, and how to tap into your authentic identity, which has absolutely nothing to do with what you do for a living, where you live, how much money you have.
Your authentic identity is about who you are from the inside out, and how do you live that every day in a practical way that brings more meaning to you and more meaning to the people in your life.
Tavis: I wonder if at a moment like this you think that this book, in some ways, is more necessary now than even 20 years ago. And when I say a moment like this, I mean to suggest a number of things, not the least of which is that fear seems to be much more rampant now - define it any way you want to define it. Certainly as Americans we live in a world now gripped by fear. People are frozen by fear now I think in ways they weren't even 20 years ago when the book first came out.
Vanzant: Absolutely - absolutely. Let me say that - fear. Because things as we know them are changing, and they're changing rapidly. We are losing people. We talked about the number of people, iconic figures, that we've lost in the past two weeks - Bernie Mac, Isaac Hayes, our beloved congresswoman. That's on the public scale. On the personal scale, marriages are crumbling, people are going missing, the rate of disease and trauma in the family is rising, and people are gripped with fear.
And as long as we continue to look outside of our selves, as long as we're grasping for something or someone to save us, as much as I like our presidential candidates, they can't save us on a day-to-day level. It is your inner power, it is your inner strength, it is your authentic identity that is going to get you through the divorce, through the child going bad, through the fat mounting up on your butt, through all of those things. (Laughter) You've got to have something on the inside to address what's on the outside.
Tavis: So Iyanla, let me pick up on this notion you raised earlier - my phraseology, not yours - this ocean of a death season that's being visited upon Black America in particular, but I think America more broadly, given the fact that some of these persons are iconic figures. You mentioned Isaac Hayes - we've lost him in the last two weeks.
Bernie Mac we've lost in the last couple of weeks. LeRoi Moore we just lost a couple of days ago from the Dave Matthews Band, Stephanie Tubbs Jones, the congresswoman. So that said, what do you say specifically to Black folk, because everywhere you go, everywhere I go, it is the conversation - what is happening inside of Black America where we're losing so many of these iconic, powerful figures?
Vanzant: Well, you know me, Tavis - I'm not going to look at anything from the dark side. I'm going to take it to the light side.
Tavis: I'll take that.
Vanzant: And it is a public demonstration of change and transition - change and transition - and nothing will scare the pants off you greater than change. We resist change; we don't like change. We want it, but we don't want to engage it. Change and transition. These people have made a transition from one form to the other, which is a clue to us that we have to change and make transition from one form to another.
Whether you're changing or transforming the way you eat, the way you live, the way you think, the way you speak, the way you move in your life. So many people are faced with loss of job. Well, what are you going to do? Are you going to live the rest of your life unemployed or in fear of being unemployed? Maybe you have to change the way you earn a living, change the way you spend your money.
So these to me are public demonstrations that are calling us for a change and a transition. Do it now, or you'll be forced to do it.
Tavis: The point of the book is to help us, as the title suggest, tap the power within. That's what the goal here is. What's the process?
Vanzant: Well, and the book says a path to self-empowerment for women, because my number one concern is for women, although there are things in there that I believe men can use. But I see too many women today suffering in silence. The first process is to find your voice. Know how to ask for what you need, because if you don't ask for what you need, the need gets bigger.
Learn how to ask for what you want, because if you don't ask for what you want, you'll be forced to accept what people want you to have, and it may have absolutely nothing to do with who you are or what you need - Finding your voice. So many of us, Tavis, have lost our voice.
When we see the change and transition in the world, when we see the pressure of the world, when we see the gas prices, we think there's nothing I can say, there's nothing I can do. Wrong. You have a voice, and we have to find that voice - both our inner voice, our voice in our personal lives, and our voice in our public life.
Another process is boy, we are so busy. Busy, busy, busy, busy, busy. And part of the process of tapping the power within is silence. (Laughs) We've got to find places and spaces in our day where we can get still to just listen to that still, small voice. And I almost hate to say that, because it's become cliché, so to speak, in the spiritual movement and the personal growth movement, but silence will heal you.
Silence will take you to places in your personality before those places erupt in your life. Because we all have places in our personality that we need to look at, and we need to be silent in order to get that done.
Tavis: You mentioned earlier that in each of the original chapters you've added a new chapter talking now about a new segment about what I know now. Many of your fans came to know you, and love you now, but came to know you because of the exposure you received on the "Oprah Winfrey Show." You have a section in here where you talk about that experience and about Oprah, looking back on that moment. You care to just give me a top line on what readers are going to see about that?
Vanzant: Wow, because so many people have speculated about what happened and did she throw you off and what happened between you, and Barbara Walters stole you, and it was just crazy. And I say that Oprah Winfrey was nothing to me but gracious and honorable, and it was my lesson. It was my lesson of not being clear about my vision and who I was at the moment that really put me in the situation that allowed me to be, how shall I say, pirated away from the experiences that I had with Oprah Winfrey.
It wasn't about her; it was my lesson. And that's important, Tavis, for us to understand when things happen in our life. And it's easy to point a finger at somebody that you have to ask yourself, what am I learning here? What's my lesson? How did I create this? How am I responsible? And I say the reason that I disappeared from the "Oprah Winfrey Show" was because I was in the midst of a huge personal lesson, and baby, did I get it.
Tavis: That's courageous of you to mention on - to be so frank about it on TV, but even more courageous in the book to delve down into - to drill down into what's behind all that, and readers, of course, will see that when they get the new book, "Tapping the Power Within."
Before I let you go right quick, got about a minute to go, I saw the piece you wrote in the current issue of "Essence" magazine, the issue with Obama and family on the cover - a very nice cover of the Obama family. I saw your piece in there that you wrote. You talk about your favorite Bible verse, one of your favorites - Proverbs 3:6, a verse about seeking and finding direction.
Vanzant: "Seek and lean not on your own understanding." Is that the one you're quoting?
Tavis: "Seek his will in all you do, and he will show you what path to take."
Vanzant: Absolutely. I have two over there, so I had to figure out which one it was. Seek his will. Tavis, I lived on my own for a long time and made an absolutely mess of my life (laughs) because left to my own devices, I will self-destruct. So I learned how to seek the will of the creator, seek the will of God, seek the will of my highest, most holy self moment by moment by moment. Because without that, the only thing that I have to stand on is my humanness, and right now, my humanness is very fragile.
Tavis: The new book by Iyanla Vanzant is "Tapping the Power Within: A Path to Self-Empowerment for Women," a revised and expanded 20th anniversary edition that also comes with a free CD inside the book. And full disclosure - this book is released on Smiley Books' imprint with Hay House. Iyanla, nice to have you on the program, all the best to you.
Vanzant: Thank you.
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