Iyanla Vanzant on exiting ‘Fix My Life’: ‘I don’t want that energy’

'I don’t want people calling me names and talking about me.'

Iyanla Vanzant further explained her decision to end her series Iyanla Fix My Life, during a new interview.

As a guest on Real Quick with Danielle Young, the host and life coach expressed positive thoughts on the ending of her show and made it clear that although the broadcast is over, the work does not stop.

Read More: Iyanla Vanzant on why the Black people don’t want to address our issues: ‘For us, it’s cultural’

“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 remarked. “I’ll be around, I’m just not doing Fix My Life anymore.

She also shared the sometimes negative behavior exhibited by guests as she attempted to work them through trauma is one reason she decided to wrap things up.

“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 remarked. “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 went on to explain how her own life has ups and downs, however, she is ready for what’s next.

“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.

“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.”

Read More: Oprah sells majority of OWN for $36 million to Discovery

In October, theGrio reported Vanzant’s decision to end her popular show. During a virtual press conference, she initially revealed the current and upcoming season would be her final. The six-time New York Times best-selling author excitedly shared the news.

“This is my last season. This is my legacy season, I’m out. We out. 2020,” she exclaimed.

“The only thing that I do on the show is act out things that I’ve been writing about and teaching for 38 years…Where’s my Nobel Peace Prize?” she laughed during the press event.

Iyanla Fix My Life is aired on OWN, the television network under the leadership and ownership of Oprah Winfrey. It premiered in 2012 and featured both famous and non-famous guests who sought to overcome issues of past or present with Vanzant’s guidance. DMX, Karrueche Tran, and Trina Braxton have all appeared on the show.

The series has won four NAACP Image Awards in the reality programming category in 2014, 2015, 2017, and 2019.

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