Iyanla Vanzant said that the choice to end her show “Iyanla, Fix My Life” is “liberating,” and she’s now ready to move on to the next stage of her life.
In a Dec. 29 interview on the “Real Quick With Danielle Young” YouTube channel, the life coach mentioned that it was difficult managing guests from troubled backgrounds whose bad attitudes made work undesirable.
“The one thing that eight years of ‘Fix My Life’ has taught me is how mean and nasty and unkind people can be. I don’t want that energy in my life anymore,” Vanzant commented. “I don’t want people calling me names and talking about me. I’m just very sensitive to energy. I don’t deserve it and I don’t want it. So now, if you want a piece of me, you’ve got to come to me and you got to pay for it.”
Vanzant also addressed the conclusion of the long-running series, and her personal and professional plans going forward.
“It is liberating. It is good. It’s good to have been able to do something with excellence and love, and then get the opportunity to say, let me do something else. It doesn’t define me. I’ve been doing this work for 34 years. I’ve been on TV for eight. It’s just part of the evolution,” she said. “I’ll be around, I’m just not doing ‘Fix My Life’ anymore.”
She noted that while life has its challenges, it’s worth experiencing for the happiness and fulfillment experienced, and Vanzant expects to be around to face it.
“As long as you are alive, you’re going to have challenges, hurdles, and obstacles, but you’re also going to have joys and victories. I plan to be alive for a little while. My greatest challenge right now is trying to get my lashes on,” she shared.
Vanzant also remarked that she has achieved all that she can with the show, and she is ready to take on her next project, whatever it may be.
“My life isn’t broken. My life is evolving, and I am being prepared for things that I’m not prepared for now. I don’t know what’s coming to me. But I do know this, which is another reason I’m leaving Fix My Life. I have hit the apex of everything that I know. I’ve hit that apex. So it’s time for me to go to the next level. Which is a level of learning, growing, risking, and changing and evolving. And I don’t need to do that on television.”
Previously, Vanzant had announced the ending of “Iyanla, Fix My Life” during a virtual press conference back in October.
“This is my last season. This is my legacy season, I’m out. We out. 2020,” she stated.
Vanzant revealed that her method of treating guests is rooted in spiritual principles and a deep desire to support others in achieving their greatest desires.
“I do the same thing in my on the show that I’ve done in my books, which is telling the truth, based on spiritual principles and universal law and provide people with the skills, the tools, the information,” she said. “We have very clear intention for “Iyanla, Fix My Life” to entertain, to inspire, [and] to help people recognize what they do and how they do it that keeps them from getting what they want.”
The former criminal defense attorney has hosted the popular OWN series since June 2012, and imparted her knowledge and know-how to numerous guests, including celebrities such as Toni Braxton, rapper DMX, and actress Karrueche Tran, helping them deal with their emotions and internal struggles face to face.
She has used her position to confront topics like addiction, domestic abuse, infidelity, and abandonment. Oprah Winfrey even regarded her as “the most powerful spiritual healer, fixer, teacher, on the planet,” according to O, The Oprah Winfrey magazine.
When asked by O about the most powerful life lesson learned from Winfrey, she answered, “Just do you, boo. Be the best you you can be instead of trying to be a copy of someone else. Oprah always tells this story about wanting to be Barbara Walters, but she can only be Oprah. Just like I don’t know how to be Oprah, but I do know how to be Iyanla. Fortunately, Oprah gives me the space, opportunity, and platform to be able to do that.”
