Iyanla Vanzant - Until Today!: Daily Devotions for Spiritual Growth and Peace of Mind

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If by chance no one has told you that they love you today, I would be honored to be the first to say, I love you today! I love you because you are and have been so willing to grow. And my how you have grown! Youve grown from struggling to searching. From trying to do to learning how to do. Youve grown from fear to having faith, to demonstrating your courage. You have grown in many ways, consistently demonstrating your willingness and courage to take the next stepthe step toward the profound and divine wisdom buried within yourself. The step toward knowing more about yourself. This is exactly why I love youyou are so profoundly divine.

Growth is a very profound experience. It can be beautiful and ugly, empowering and confining, thought-provoking and mind-boggling, pleasant and unpleasant, all at the same time. Just when you think youve got it, life seems to say, Well, now take this! And you do. Then, the minute you are ready to throw your hands up, give up or beat up on yourself for doing the same thing in the same way and ending up in the same place again, you realize you havent done so badly after all. You know you have grown when you can meet a challenge, an obstacle or a difficulty without totally losing it. Somehow, someway in the growth process, you have come upon the understanding that the more you grow, the more you know, the more you are encouraged to grow and know.

There is more of you waiting to unfold. There is more about the world you desire to understand. There are more people coming into your life, and you are gaining more knowledge about yourself through your experiences with them. There is so much more, so much new information coming your way that you are continually being reminded that you owe it to yourself to do all you can to prepare yourself to receive these new insights. There is also so much more wealth, well-being, peace and joy waiting for you, and, because I love you, I want the very best for you. Offering you this book is a demonstration of my support as you prepare for the work and blessings that are to come.

I want to tell you a story. You know I always have to tell at least one story, and this is it. In preparing for an upcoming event, I gave my team what I thought was a simple assignment. You see, you cannot teach what you have not experienced. I asked each person, each potential teacher, to write a five-hundred-word description of themselves, using the first person, in the present tense. I had faith that these powerful and loving individuals, with whom I have worked for over seven years, would take the task in stride. What we learned in the process was profoundly healing for us all.

As we sat to review each response, my team members shared with me the overwhelming feelings, even fears, they had experienced while completing the assignment. I know from experience that examining yourself, what you do and how you feel, can be one of the most challenging and frightening things you will ever face in life. To then share that information with others is the stuff that fried brain matter is made of. Yet my team members understood that the journey into self-acceptance and self-love must begin with self-examination. We all also understood that until you take the journey of self-reflection, it is almost impossible to grow or learn in life.