Unlocking Inner Peace: Healing and Growth with Iyanla Vanzant

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1:08We talk through a whole bunch of things, but I'm going to hit you with this one. Sometimes there are just things that you will never understand because you're not supposed to. You're supposed to learn from them. And so in this episode, we talk about the importance of learning through your journey. And not only that, but how to protect your healing. So sometimes life isn't just about the healing. It's how you protect it. So without further ado, this is the queen, Ms. Yamla Van Zandt. You're listening to Mick Unplugged, hosted by the one and only Mick Hunt. This is where purpose meets power and stories spark transformation.

1:46Mick takes you beyond the motivation and into meaning, helping you discover your because and becoming unstoppable. I'm Rudy Rush, and trust me, you're in the right place. Let's get unplugged. Ms. Van Zandt, how are you doing today? Hi, how are you? Oh, thank you so much. Thank you, thank you, thank you. Just thank you for everything. I thank you more than you'll ever know. And we're going to get into some of that today. But just the human being that you are, the wisdom and care that you show people and the truth. I think I think that also is the biggest part. You're not afraid to tell people the truth.

2:29And sometimes most times the truth is what people actually need to hear to overcome things that they're going in their life. But but but Miss Van Zandt, I always ask my guests this first question about their because that thing that's deeper than their why. And you've been you've been so passionate. You've you've gone through so many things. If I were to ask you today, what's your because? What's that deeper purpose that you have today? Serving God. That's it, because it serves God. It serves God for me to heal. It serves God for me to support. It serves God for me to fall down and get up. It just serves God.

3:13That's my big cause. That's again, that's why you're amazing right there. And, you know, I want to I want to tell you what I haven't told you offline and something that's going to be passionate for me, therapy for me. you know, growing up, I grew up in a two parent household, right. But it was as if I had a single mom because from an emotional standpoint, like my dad wasn't, wasn't present. And, you know, like later in life, when I was in college, my parents separated. And I can say, I don't have the greatest or a relationship with my father, but I've learned to heal from that through you and how you teach.

3:55It's okay. I think a lot of people think that you're supposed to forgive, but it's okay to heal and work through it. It's okay to learn lessons, right? It's okay to do that. And so I'd love for you to just talk to the viewers, to the listeners about it being okay to learn lessons in life. Yeah, well, that's it. That's the ultimate goal, to learn lessons. And if you learn the lesson well and you take copious notes along the way, you will heal. You know, you will heal. Forgiveness has become almost a buzzword these days. And the real work that requires deep forgiveness really isn't about forgiving anybody else.

4:42It's about forgiving yourself for the way you thought about it, the way you spoke about it, the way you allowed it to become an excuse or a reason. The real forgiveness work is about yourself. But because the universe is so merciful and graceful, it gives us the opportunity to forgive others, hoping that along the way we will bump into the truth and forgive ourselves. Yeah, that's good. And thank you for sharing that as a man, because so very often men think if they don't have a great relationship with their dad, that they have to spend the rest of their life either trying to find it or falling apart because of it or and not learning the lessons.

5:33As you said, that's the most important thing. Absolutely. You're exactly right. And one of the things that that you told me, you were not talking directly to me, but you were speaking indirectly to me was, Mick, just move on, right? Like you can dwell on it all you want to where you could try to piece things together. You could look at the past and do things, but just move on. Like just, it's okay to close a chapter and move on because the lessons that you learn may come back in the future. And now you know how to react or how to adjust or how to communicate. So I'd love for you to just give us a moment of what moving on means to you and why it's so important to us.

6:13Yeah. And, you know, we say just move on, and that is not in any way minimizing the impact of the experience. Not at all. But how long are you choosing to cry? How long are you choosing to be hurt? How long are you choosing to use that as an excuse? So when we say just move on, or when I say just move on, I'm saying, okay, let's reframe this. let's unpack it first of all because you know Mick how many people are angry sad hurt upset and don't even know why they think it's because let's say in your case daddy left no no are you upset because daddy left or are you disappointed because you didn't get what you needed are you angry because of what was expected of you because the person was there.

7:10See, that's not about daddy. That's about what got triggered inside you and how you responded or reacted to it and how you've allowed that feeling inside of you that has gone uninvestigated, unexplored, unexamined to govern you. And then you just laid that basket at daddy's doorstep. So just move on means be willing. First of all, give yourself permission to feel what you feel without making it nice or sweet or calling it something else. If you're pissed off, say you're pissed off. You know, if you're hurt, say you're hurt. If you are disappointed, but you know what the challenge is? So many people have such a limited emotional vocabulary until they can't do the work required to get the lesson needed to really move on.

8:01So unpack it, whatever it is, unpack it, explore it, investigate it, and then let it go. See, this is about to be a masterclass right here. Everybody that's watching like all, all these nuggets of wisdom truly help. They truly work, you know, and I want to go a little bit deeper into what you just said. So for the person that's watching this, like, sounds great. How do I impact that? What advice do you have for them? Breathe and let yourself feel it. Let's start there. Breathing is a powerful step towards spiritual hygiene because it keeps your, it opens your mind and it purifies your heart. So many of us don't breathe.

8:46So many of us stop breathing when daddy left or when mommy died or when boo-boo broke our heart, you know, we stopped breathing. So move on and breathe, first of all, because you've probably been tensed up since the thing happened. Breathe and give yourself permission to feel it. You know how many people won't be mad at their dad, won't be mad at their mom, won't be really heartbroken by whatever the disappointment was. They just won't do it because they believe that to do that is a sign of weakness. Or some people get in it, the anger, the upset, the grief, and they wear it like a red badge of courage and use it as an excuse to do everything, but they haven't really felt it.

9:37That means drop your hands to the side, sit in that feeling and dare it to kill you. Dare it. Absolutely. Absolutely. And here's where I'm going to give you even more credit in my situation, because I used to think that I was carrying a chip on my shoulder of anger and that that is what was driving me to be successful. Right. Like I didn't want to let my mom down, but I also was angry at the situation. But by studying you and we're going to talk about all the courses that you have to offer and all the things that you do in a moment. But you give you you have resources for people if they want them.

10:21What you made me realize was it wasn't the anger that was pushing me or was motivating me. It was the fact that I didn't want to be like him. And that was OK to understand that. No, it's not anger. You're not angry at your dad. You just what you're doing is protecting your healing so that you don't become your dad. And that is totally OK. But I truthfully was not able to understand that until I started studying your works. Well, you know, not only that, that happens very often. And you have found that a secret sauce. Let me tell you what the secret sauce is. You didn't want to be like your dad, but you did the work required to become Mick.

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12:34And for the past year, AI has been everywhere. But here's the truth. Talking about AI does not make you more productive. Using it does. For me, AI has become a part of how I lead, build, and create. Between the podcast, my team, and multiple businesses, speed matters. Zapier has helped us connect the tools we already use and automate the things that used to eat up ours. Lead routing, follow-ups, internal workflows, even connecting AI models like ChatGPT directly into our process. No tech headaches, no bottlenecks, just results. Zapier is how you break the hype cycle and actually put AI to work.

13:16Whether it's enriching leads, coaching your sales team, resolving tickets, or streamlining marketing, Zapier makes it simple. Join the 3.4 million companies already automating with Zapier and transform how you work with Zapier and AI. Get started for free by visiting zapier.com slash mick. That's Z-A-P-I-E-R dot com slash Mick. Because some people don't want to be like that, but they spend so much time not being like that until they never become who they are. The secret sauce is not holding on to I don't want to be like that. it's because that wasn't there or because that happened or because I had that experience.

14:06I don't really know who I am. So let me do the work required to self-identify as opposed to demonstrate an inherited trait. How about that? That's why I love you. That's why I needed you. I'm telling you, that is why I needed you. And for those that are watching, if you're listening, I want to give some quantification, some qualifications here on Ms. Van Zandt. Because those that are believers or followers like I am, we all have heard the saying many times, God gives you no more than you can bear. Right? Well, Ms. Van Zandt, you can bear a lot. You can bear a lot. your journey, the things that you have healed from and that you're probably still healing from.

15:01I'll be honest. I don't know many people who have gone through those circumstances of life. And are you meaning are able to talk about it, are able to shed light into it, are able to interpret it and learn the lessons from it to help others. Would you just take a few moments and just talk through however you'd like to a little bit about your your healing journey? And then we're going to get into the spiritual hygiene as well. Well, you know what I know now that I didn't know as I was going through those things, but that was my curriculum. That was my spiritual curriculum. And we all have one. And some of us take algebra.

15:43Some of us take calculus. You know, some of us take geometry and some of us take, you know, computer science or whatever it is. So my curriculum, in order for me to step into and fulfill my purpose, required that I learned the power, the presence, the, how can I say, the effectiveness and the efficacy of universal law and spiritual principle. Because I didn't grow up with a structure. Classic case. You know, my mother, my birth mother died when I was three. And nobody told me. Nobody told me. So I grew up thinking that one woman was my mother who wasn't. Now, within, I always felt something was a little off.

16:34But I didn't know what it was. That experience, I learned at 30 that my mother wasn't my mother. Taught me the power of truth. So I am like one of the first things you said is telling people the truth. Truth is my oxygen. Truth is my oxygen. I grew up with a lot of neglect, a lot of abuse that made me think something was wrong with me. Something was wrong with me. I'm bad. I'm wrong. And I lived that until, so those experiences, those experiences helped me to understand that I have to find my own worth, my own value. I have to figure out what those are. So, I mean, I could go through lots and lots of things, but whatever it is that you've experienced.

17:27I was sexually violated as a child. I was physically abused as a child. I lost my mother as a child. I buried two of my children as an adult. It was in my curriculum. And everything that I've experienced, see, I don't talk about it as what I went through. I talk about it as every experience laid a brick in my foundation that allows me to stand fully in my purpose without falling flat on my face. if there's a collection plate you send it my way i that was the word right there that was the word that was the word yeah my purpose my purpose isn't is in the world i'm a teacher but in this ancient most ancient and and universal structure to teach us to educate and the most ancient definition of educate is not to put in, it is to draw out.

18:30That's what education is. It is to draw out. So every experience I've had has drawn out something in me that I had forgotten about, that I may have missed. So I'm a teacher and I educate, give people the tools, skills, information they need to draw out the truth of who they are. Amazing. Amazing. And to me, that's this perfect segue to spiritual hygiene. When I saw the title, I said, oh, and then when I read a few of the first chapters, I said, oh, I got to read these again. One of the best reads I've had, it is to me, it's a blueprint. It's a masterclass. It's, I mean, the title says spiritual healing.

19:26To me, it's something that is spiritual and makes whoever's reading it really have a reconnection with themselves. Like that's what I got out of it, right? I need to have that reconnection with me, that self-finding, that peace mission. I'd love for you to take a few moments and let's talk about what sparked you to do this book. And we'll start there before we get into the book. Okay. As I share early in the book, I lost my youngest daughter, Nisa, two years ago now. she was a non-compliant type 2 diabetic and I say type 2 because type 1 is a very different thing type 2 diabetes can be really managed and controlled with diet exercise a shift in lifestyle but Nisa had what many people have which is denial she didn't believe that she was a diabetic.

20:31She wouldn't accept that. So she lived her life and ate as though she wasn't a diabetic. And it just went downhill from there. And so watching her as a spiritual teacher, I could see the writing on the wall. But loving her as a mom, my hair was on fire. And I was trying to stop. I became the food police and just really the controlling czar trying to get her to accept where she was and to take responsibility for her health. Until I realized, until the spiritual teacher realized, this is her choice. This is her curriculum. And no matter how much you talk and how much you fuss, it's not going to change.

21:19And what I realized along the way of that two-and-a-half, three-year journey from the time when her, health really started to decline, was that she had poor spiritual hygiene. She didn't cleanse her mind from the experiences that she had as a child. She didn't have her heart open to receive love and to be loved because of what she said about her experiences. And when I finally realized this was such a powerful realization for me. Nisa, none of my children were raised by Iyanla. None of them. All of my children were raised by Rhonda, the broken motherless girl who grew up in abuse and neglect. That's who raised my children, not Iyanla.

22:14And once I got that, Mick, and told the truth about it and looked at it, oh yeah. I had she had bad spiritual hygiene because I had bad spiritual hygiene and I taught her everything she knew about how to abuse herself, abandon herself, reject herself, deny herself. And I had to live with that and watch it and watch. How spiritual hygiene could have saved her had she made the choice and she didn't. You know, one of the outcomes of reading the book is understanding that sometimes, a lot of times, we have not just physical and emotional burnout, but we have physical or spiritual burnout too. Yeah.

23:06Talk to us about that, because, again, in this book, that was one of the first three things that I took out was I need to look at my burnout levels, right? Because a lot of times we think emotional, we think physical, but a lot of times it's the spirit, right? Yeah. Because like everything else, you know, we live in a world that clamors for our attention and demands a certain level of doing. You've got to do this. You've got to do that. You got to get a career. You got to pay your bills. You got to have a good credit score. You got to have likes and followers. You got to do, do, do, do, do. Right.

23:44And we start doing our spirituality, whether it's wearing clothes a certain way or whatever we think. And spiritual power is not about doing. It's about being. How many of us know how to be still? Be still. You know, I have a prescription that I've been giving people for the past month, and that is to spend seven minutes, three times a day for 21 consecutive days in stillness. No phone, no music, no lights, cameras acting. Just be still and breathe. Seven minutes, three times a day for 21 consecutive days. And people are starting to report to me. I'm on day 40. because they'll do a day and forget.

24:41And if you miss a day, you got to start all over. Seven minutes. We can't be still and breathe and listen for seven minutes. And that's why we burn out spiritually, emotionally, mentally, because we're too busy, just too busy. See, I needed that. I needed that. So I'm writing this down three times a day. Seven minutes for 21 consecutive days. Yeah. Don't journal. I'm going to report back. Don't listen to music. Don't do anything. Just be still. Just be one. Okay. Yes. See, you knew I needed that. That's why you brought that up. Because if you ask anyone, you ask anyone in my circle, You ask anyone around me, I am.

25:34And I don't wear this as a badge of honor, so I'm not saying it in this way, but I have so much going on that it's like when I have a moment, it's like, all right, let me go solve this other thing or let me go do this since I have some time. But what I actually need to do in that time is just be still. So I'm going to be still. My mom is smiling right now because she tells me that all the time to be still. So I know she's watching or listening and she's probably clapping her hands. So my mom thanks you. Let me ask a question and not to you specifically, but to all of us. If we're so busy getting everything done, what is there for God to do?

26:16If you can do it, where do you get the grace? Where do you get the mercy? Where do you get the support? Where do you get the insight? Now, it's happening all of the time. It really is. And particularly when we're on purpose and when we know we have a relationship with God's source creator. But if you have to do it, what is there for God to do? Just a question. That's the end of the sermon right there. The doors of the church are open. If you want to work with Ms. Ventano, we'll get there in a second. You talk a lot about something that I want to open up the floor because I know how busy you are.

26:59No pun intended, but I know how your schedule is also. So I want to make sure I'm cognizant of that. But for those that are that are watching, that are listening, you talk a lot about protecting your healing. Can you talk to us about what that means and then more importantly, how we can do that? Protecting your healing means, first of all, becoming aware of what it is that you're healing. Let's start here. To heal means to make whole and to restore to original purpose. What is our original purpose? Our original purpose is to celebrate life. And we do that with breath. To celebrate life. to anchor the presence of the divine and to do what brings you joy.

27:54Those three things, celebrating life, anchoring the divine, do what brings you joy, equal love. So anything in your life that thwarts, hinders, obstructs, delays, is denied thwarts your capacity to celebrate life, to anchor the divine, and to do what brings you joy needs to be restored or brought back to holiness. That's healing. Doesn't mean that you're broken, wounded, damaged, you know, any of that stuff. It just means that the three things that we're here to do, the one thing really, which is love, but how we get to love is through those three steps. those things are not happening. So protecting your healing, first of all, means getting clear about what it is that requires restoration.

28:52You know, maybe you are people pleaser, or maybe you're a striver, maybe you're a controller. Those things will keep you from celebrating life. So you got to get clear about what they are, create clear boundaries for yourself to get that healing done. You don't have to tell everybody what you're doing. That's a big thing. We think we got, oh, I'm going to the mountain and meditate for 62 days. Can I tell you a quick story? I want to tell you a quick story. It's a parable. Yes, ma 'am. But there was a man who was in search of love and happiness. That's what he was in search of. He searched all over the world doing again.

29:31He went to this teacher. He went to that teacher. He studied this religion, that religion. And finally, somebody said, oh, there's a monk in the mountains of the Himalayas. He can tell you what that is. So he dropped everything, got on a plane, flew to wherever he had to fly to, took a boat somewhere, and then walked for three days to get to this particular monk to find out how he could get to love and happiness. Got to the monk, had to wait for two days because the monk was meditating. The monk came out and he said, okay, you've come to see me. What is it that you want? He said, I want to know how I can find love and happiness.

30:12And the monk said, oh, okay. He said, don't think about monkeys. The man said, what? He said, don't think about monkeys. He said, wait a minute. It took me 11 days to get here to see you. People told me you were wise and wonderful. and I've come here to learn how to find love and happiness and that's what you're going to tell me? He said, yes, that's the secret. Don't think about monkeys. So the man was very disappointed and he went back, all on the walk, back to the boat, he thought about monkeys. On the boat to get to the airplane, he thought about monkeys. Got on the plane, all the way home on the plane, he was thinking about monkeys.

30:57He got back home for the next two years all this man could think about was monkeys. He said, what in the world is going on? So he got back on the plane, flew back to the boat, got back on the boat, walked another three days, go back to the guru and says, why is it that all I'm doing is thinking about monkeys? He said, oh, because the mind loves to do the very thing that'll keep it from being happy. You want love and happiness? Don't do the things that don't make you feel loving or happy.