Iyanla: How You Can Do Better

Living a wholistic life means taking care of all aspects of your being so that means your mind, your body, your heart or your emotional self or your spirit. We live on four different planes of existence. I guess people would call it body and soul. I call it mind, body and spirit. At the mental level, what impedes us from living a wholistic life is replaying dramatic experiences over and over in our mind. Memory is a great thing but when the memory gets stuck in a traumatic experience or difficult memory or challenging memory, we’re constantly feedling that into the body. So we live in the past, although we’re in the present.

Emotionally, what impedes us from living a wholistic life is not being able to express our emotions. Well, I shouldn’t say emotions because there are only two emotions – love and fear – but how we’re feeling at any given time. So not being able to express anger or shame or fear or guilt or resentment or bitterness. That these feelings come up and we don’t know how to express them or process them out so we get stuck at these emotional levels. Spiritually what happens to us is really not having a connection to our source, not having a daily spiritual practice, where we still the mind, where we connect with the heart where we remember the truth of who we are. Physically its how we eat, we eat on the run, we eat fast foods, we eat dead foods – anytime we cook a food, it’s dead. And so we’re constantly feeding our body dead foods. And the mind becomes sluggish and the body becomes sluggish and negative experiences take over.

The truth of the matter is, you only have one relationship and that’s the relationship you’re having with yourself. Every other relationship that comes into your life – your parents, your siblings, your lovers, your friends – these relationships are representing to you the thoughts and the feelings that you are holding within yourself about yourself, within yourself, about life, within yourself about your Creator or God. That’s all these people do is demonstrate to you your secret thoughts, your secret feelings. So what we have to do, what we’re called to do, is to really get clear and get balance in how we think, how we speak, how we feel and what we do to ourselves, with ourselves and for ourselves. When you do that, every other relationship cleans up.

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There are four pillars to every relationship. Number one – tell the truth. We are in relationships where we’re not asking for what we really want, we’re not saying what we really feel, and speaking what we really know. Tell the truth, that’s number one. Number two – trust, that no matter what happens, no matter how it happens, no matter who’s on the other end of it, trust that you will be OK. One of the reasons that our relationships fall apart is that we are looking for the other person to give us something, to do something, or to be a certain way.

When we don’t see that, we get upset and are angry at the other person. Know that no matter what happens, you will be OK. Number three, you gotta make clear choices. Everything you do is a choice. You’re choosing to stay with a negative partner – that’s not your partner’s fault. It’s on you.If you’re choosing to be upset by your mother’s negative criticism, that’s on you. You can’t change her but you can choose how you respond. And number four, forgive everybody for everything. If you choose how you’re going to be in relationship with certain people, if you trust that you can leave this relationship and you will be OK, then relationships will be fine.

One of the reasons we get stuck in negative patterns is that we don’t commit to a clear vision of what we want our lives to look like. If you don’t have a clear vision then you do get stuck. When you have a vision, you begin to align your behavior and align your choices toward that vision. If your vision is to find a loving, supportive husband or wife and you guys want to sail off to the Mediterranean together and you’re dating Boo Boo, and Boo Boo never shows up on time, Boo Boo is stingy, doesn’t share money, you’ve caught Boo Boo in three different lies, why are you still seeing Boo Boo? Get out of that. The reason that we stay stuck in repetitive patterns is because we don’t pay attention to what we do, how we do it and why we do it. But when you have a vision and you start moving toward the vision you become more conscious and clear about what you are doing. Pay attention to what you do, how you do it and why you do it will break you out of a repetitive pattern.

Have a  daily spiritual practice – I’m not talking about going to church, joining the choir and becoming a deacon. I’m talking about getting still, I’m talking about connecting to the essence or your creator that is within you and following the guidance that you receive. It’s always there. Spirit is not partial to those who live in good houses in the suburbs. But if you don’t connect to it, you’re not going to get the guidance to do a different thing in a different way.

(Photo: OWN Network)