A Curated Feed

Would you like a secret to elevating your energy, feeling more alive, feeling more inspired, more excited, more good about who you are? If your answer is yes, you’re going to love today’s episode, so let’s dive in.

Welcome to the School of Self-Image, where personal development meets style. Here’s your hostess, master life coach Tonya Leigh.

Hello, gorgeous friends. I’ve had something on my mind recently that I wanted to share with you all. I’d love to hear your thoughts, your feedback, and to have a conversation around this.

But it was inspired a few weeks ago – I was talking with a friend of mine. She called me up and she was in a panic state. And she had said that’s he was just on her social media feed and some dude was saying how businesses were about to start collapsing. She was talking about the recession.

And it was so interesting listening to her because I don’t have any of those thoughts in my head. In fact, my thoughts about a recession are that they happen. Throughout history, you can see a cycle of recession followed by a season of prosperity. So, I just see this as readjustment, recalibration, it’s just a part of the cycle. It’s not something to fear. It’s something to be educated about. But it’s not something to fear.

But it made me think about what she is consuming. Now, in the coaching world, there is a school of thought that you don’t change your circumstance. You change your thought about the circumstance. And that is such a valid point because, sometimes, you find yourself in circumstances that, in that moment, you cannot change.

An example of that would be what you weigh in this moment. Let’s say you weigh 180 pounds. In this moment, you cannot change that circumstance. So, it is good to work on your brain in those moments, creating thoughts that will help you feel better about the circumstance, so you can show up more powerfully in that circumstance.

But more and more, you all, when I look back over my life, one of the biggest factors in my change, in my self-image, has been changing the circumstance, which is often changing the environment, changing what surrounds you. And so, I am going to give all of you a challenge to start changing your social media feeds.

I want you to think about that word, a social media feed. It is something that you are feeding yourself every single day, for some of you, hours every single day. Is it nourishing? Is it quality? Does it feel good in your body and in your brain? If not, you need to stop consuming it. It does not need to show up in your social media refrigerator.

If it is not in your refrigerator, you cannot consume it. These environments that we curate around us, that we find ourselves in, are either going to be like fertilizer for our growth, or like soil that has no nutrients in it.

So, part of this work in elevating your self-image is changing your mindset. But what you will notice is that, when you begin to intentionally curate your surroundings on purpose, it becomes so much easier to feel as you want to feel, to feel from your future, to feel those more positive emotions that are going to inspire you to show up in a more positive way.

And one of the ways that we can do that is to be very purposeful and intentional with what we consume via social media. An analogy to consider is, if you do nothing but consume junk food all day, food that doesn’t have nutrients and what your body needs, you’re going to end up feeling heavy, low energy, maybe some brain fog, you don’t feel good about yourself, lethargy, and that impacts how you show up in the world. Junk in, junk out.

But when you start to fuel your body with nutrient-dense food, good, whole, clean foods, you start to feel more energy. You start to think more clearly. You start to feel lighter. You start to feel full of more vitality. Goodness in, goodness out.

And the same goes with what you are consuming on social media every single day. Since my friend’s conversation that I had, I’ve been paying attention to how my social media feeds feel to me. Now, rule number one for myself is that I don’t spend a lot of time on social media. I’m usually in there to connect with my community. I’m in and I’m out.

But occasionally, I will scroll through and see what’s happening on Instagram. And because of the algorithm, no everything is always showing up. You usually see certain people that you like their stuff and follow a lot.

But I’ve been paying attention to the accounts that are no longer a match for me. These are probably accounts that I started following years ago. And suddenly, there will be a video, or an image pop up and I will realize that I am no longer a match for that account.

Now, listen, that doesn’t mean that account is bad. That account may speak to some people. It may give them energy. It may make them feel alive. But for me personally, it is no longer a match. I hit unfollow immediately.

I have been purposefully curating my social media feeds over the last few weeks. And I want you to do that to. I want you to feed yourself with things that feel good, that excite you, that calm down your nervous system, that inspires you, that get you excited to be alive.

The more I have purposefully curated my environment, including my social media feed, I find that I’m more creative, I’m more peaceful, I’m just more happy in my life.

I talk about, in the School of Self-Image, about the red-velvet rope. This is a policy that my members put into place. It’s having that rope around your life where you intentionally decide what is allowed into your space.

I’m sure you don’t leave your front door open and just let random people come into your house and say whatever they want to say and do whatever they want to do and be whoever they want to be.

I’m assuming that you have a red-velvet rope around your house that states who can come in and who’s not allowed. And yet, so many of you don’t have that for your most important asset, which is your brain. You’re just letting everybody come on in, say what they want to say, planting all of these seeds of thoughts and beliefs that don’t serve you, that make you feel bad.

I want us to have social media feeds that fuel us, like that good, nutritious meal. So, I want to give you some practical tips on how you can begin to curate your feed on purpose.

So, the first step is for you to decide how you want your feed to feel. Pick three words that embody the feeling that you want to have when you go on your social media accounts. And these three words will be different for all of us because we’re all different people, we all have different values, and different goals.

During this season in my life, my words would be, stylish, inspiring, and calming. I do not want to log onto social media and get my sympathetic nervous system kicked into overdrive. I don’t want my social media feed to cause me to pump out extra cortisol. So, calming…

So, when I go through my social media feed, those become my guiding words as to whether I should continue following this account or not. Does this account offer a stylish perspective of life? Does this account inspire me? Or does this account help me to feel more calm?

So, my social media tends to be full of style influencers. I find them to be very inspiring. Not all of them. I still have to get a feel of the vibe of that certain person. But I truly enjoy style. I think it’s fun. Also, a lot of home décor, travel accounts. And then, there are some inspiring accounts from fellow coaches and people that I just admire in the personal development space. But you’ll know by how it feels in your body.

I want to give you also some guidelines as to how to know if you need to unfollow an account. You need to unfollow any account that doesn’t spark joy because, at the end of the day, we’re after this feeling of joy, of calm, of peace.

And so, if you are following accounts that, as I said earlier, causes you to go into sympathetic nervous system overdrive, you probably do not need to be consuming it. Consider unfollowing any account that makes you feel like you’re behind.

This is a thought that I hear so often from clients, “I’m not there yet. I am behind.” So, if you are following accounts that spark that thought and just keep reinforcing this belief, unfollow immediately. If an account makes you feel like you need to hurry up and get somewhere, unfollow it.

I always think about my future self. Would she be thinking this? Would she be feeling this? And the answer usually is no if it’s negative. So, I don’t need to keep reinforcing that energy in my life now if I want to be a match for her.

The other way you can think about this is, unfollow any account that doesn’t belong in your future. So, if in your future you are healthy and fit, would you be following this account? It’s an interesting question.

Now, some of you might be following influencers that inspire you and motivate you and it feels good. But for some of you, you are following accounts that keep reinforcing this belief that you’re broken and you’re not there yet.

So, I love to ask myself, would the future me be consuming this? And if the answer is no, unfollow immediately. Unfollow any account that just doesn't feel right, and you don’t have to understand why.

You don’t need to explain it. We have this thig called an internal guidance system. It’s our internal GPS. It’s called intuition. And sometimes, we cannot logically understand why something doesn’t feel right. But any time I don’t listen to that voice, I get myself into trouble. So, if something doesn’t feel right, unfollow.

Here’s a good one; unfollow any account that keeps you stuck in the past. I notice that when I was going over my social media feeds over the last few weeks, there were so many accounts that I followed years ago. And I was like, that’s from my past. It is not a match for who I am now or who I’m becoming. Unfollow.

And finally, unfollow any account that does not support you in embodying your desired self-image, that keeps you from embodying who you want to be. What you are going to notice, as you begin to curate your social media feed on purpose, and then you take tat practice into other parts of your life, your home, your friend circles, your closet, and you begin to intentionally curate your world, you’re going to feel better.

You’re going to feel more calm. You’re going to feel more fulfilled. You’re going to feel more excited. You’re going to begin to see yourself in a different way. In this process, it’s as if your self-image changes as you begin to change your environment, as you begin to change what is around you, to mirror back to you how you want to feel and how you want to see yourself.

But because we’re on social media a lot these days, I think it’s a great place to start. And if you want to nourish your mind and your body and your spirit with something juicy, I have a little surprise for you. It’s happening on July 6^th. It’s going to be available to my email subscribers only.

So, if you do not want to miss out on that, head over to schoolofselfimage.com/manifesto, and get on the mailing list. That is schoolofselfimage.com/manifesto. This is going to be available to all of my email subscribers. And here’s what I can promise you; it’s going to be something that you look forward to consuming every single week.

Have a gorgeous, gorgeous week, everybody. And take me up on this challenge. And I would love it if you reach out to me on Instagram and let me know, what are your three words that you want to curate your social media feed around? And hopefully, I will remain in that list. And if not, I respect that too.

But my intention is to always feed myself and my community with love and truth and inspiration and beauty. So, if that is part of what you want to be on your feed, that’s what I plan on giving you. Cheers, everyone. I’ll see you soon.

Hey, have you grabbed your free copy of the School of Self-Image Manifesto? If not, what in the world? Head over to schoolofselfimage.com/manifesto and get a copy that teaches you how to think and show up in the areas of mindset, style, and surroundings so that you can transform your self-image.