5 Ways Elegant Women Create Their Own Luck

Bruce Springsteen said, “When it comes to luck, you make your own.” Elegant women know this. And in this episode, I’m going to share five ways you can create your own luck.

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

What is happening, my friends? I’m feeling so fancy today because I got a new podcast mic. I feel like a legitimate podcaster now. My podcast producer told me, he’s like, “I think you need to upgrade your microphone.” And I was like, “I think you’re probably right.” Which goes to show you, you can do incredible things with what you have right now.

A lot of you are waiting for the perfect podcast setup or the perfect words to say or the perfect fill-in-the-blank to get started. And I hope, if nothing else, I can be proof that you don’t need to be perfect. You just need to show up for your dreams. And that’s actually a great segue into what I want to talk to you about today, which is how to create your luck. By the way, if you’re listening to this on the day the podcast is released, Happy St. Patrick’s Day.

One of the things that I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is, “Tonya, how did you end up here?” I seriously consider myself to be one of the luckiest women on the planet. I look around and I’m like, “What is happening?” Because for me, probably like for many of you, I didn’t grow up with a silver spoon. I had a lot of struggles early on. And even today, I still have challenges. I have hardships.

We don’t escape this life without suffering on some level. But I still feel like I am so lucky. And I’ve been thinking a lot about why that is, why am I living this life that I’m living? Why have I been able to attract such extraordinary friends and experiences into my life? How have I been able to build a company? How have I ended up in a beautiful apartment that I love? How has all of this happened? Because I think many of you believe that luck is just something that some of us have and then some of us are unlucky.

But science is showing that that’s actually not true. In fact, there’s a man by the name of Richard Wiseman who has studied luck. And what he has discovered is that luck is a result of how we choose to look at our lives.

Lucky people recognize their own good fortune and they look at life through that lens. Luck is not something that happens to you. It is something that you look for and an energy that you want to cocreate with. And how does this tie into elegance? Well, if you think about just the root meaning of elegance, it’s simplicity and effectiveness. And a lot of you are trying to create your lives through resistance and through unlucky ways of being, which no wonder life feels so hard.

It’s almost like you’re stopping the flow of life and the flow of luck into your life. And I want to give you some things to think about that you can begin to practice in your own life to generate more luck. Because Richard Wiseman actually ran people through a process and what they reported is that the people who went into this process feeling unlucky came out of it feeling like their lives were at least 40% more lucky than it was before they entered into working with him, proving you can begin to generate your own luck.

I think this is the best news ever. Can I get an amen? How many of you are ready to get lucky? Well, let’s do this.

The first way elegant women create their own luck is that they think lucky thoughts. Now, here’s where you have to get really honest with yourself. How many of you catch yourself thinking things or even saying them out loud, thoughts like, “I just can’t seem to get a break?” Or, “These things are always happening to me.” Or, “I just can’t get ahead.” Or, “I’m unlucky in love.”

Now, I want you to notice how those thoughts feel in your body. I’m assuming that they probably feel heavy. They probably don’t feel good at all. And one of the things that I want you to start associating with luck is lightness and flow. So, check in with yourself throughout the day. And if you’re feeling heavy, if you’re feeling any kind of resistant emotion, that is a beautiful opportunity for you to turn it around, and as a result, turn your luck around.

Now, this isn’t to say that bad things don’t happen. But lucky people look at these things differently. In fact, there’s a really funny quote by Darrell Royal, who was a college football player and coach. And he says, “You’ve got to think lucky. If you fall into a mudhole, check your back pocket. You might have caught a fish.”

And that’s truly how lucky people think. Someone can get into a car accident, and if you have an unlucky mindset, you may say things like, “This always happens to me. I just can’t catch a break.” Whereas a lucky person will probably think, “Well, I didn’t die. That’s amazing.” And as a result, they just keep the flow of life happening through them versus resisting it.

Because if you think about thoughts such as, “I just can’t catch a break, nothing good ever happens to me,” all of that thinking is based on the past and you resisting the past, and you telling yourself a terrible story about the past. It keeps you in the energy of your past. So, how can you live in the energy of your future and embody the woman that you need to embody to create what it is that you want to create if you’re constantly thinking unlucky thoughts based on the past?

It’s almost impossible because life is about energy, my friends. And if you’re embodying an energy which is in conflict with the energy of your dreams, of your goals, it’s going to be so hard to get there. Which is why a lot of people give up. Because they’re focused on the action versus who they’re being.

I want you to be a lucky woman and then you’ll notice that luck just starts showing up everywhere. But it’s going to require that you manage your brain and you begin to train it to be lucky. So, that’s the first thing. Elegant women create their own luck by thinking lucky thoughts.

The second way elegant women create more luck is that they live more, meaning they do more things, they try more stuff. It is really hard to attract luck if you lock yourself up in your house and you never expose yourself to more. In fact, I have a podcast called The Necessity of Exposure. I highly recommend that you listen to it. But the more you expose yourself to, the more you put yourself into life, the more you’re making yourself available to opportunities.

Here’s something that Richard Wiseman said, “Lucky people just try stuff. Unlucky people suffered from paralysis by analysis. They wouldn’t do anything until they walked through every single angle and by then, the world had moved on. They don’t gain the benefits of learning through doing. I’m a big fan of starting small, trying lots of projects, seeing what works and what doesn’t, and iterating based on feedback.” Boom. So good.

I see this so often with my clients. They’re sitting around waiting for the perfect answer. They’re sitting around waiting to feel good and waiting for the fear to be gone. They’re waiting for their dreams to come landing into their laps. And it doesn’t work that way, my friends. Your dreams are waiting for you to show up, for you to get over yourself, for you to put yourself out there and feel the terror and the discomfort and all that comes with it. And at the same time, having your own back and believing that you’re lucky enough to have whatever it is that you want.

But some of you, again, you’re just sitting around waiting; waiting to be discovered, waiting for clients to come knocking on your door, waiting for the love of your life to show up on your doorstep. And that’s what unlucky people do. They wait to be discovered and given what they want. Lucky people discover what they want and they go for it. They ask for it. They show up for it. They are living. They’re out in the world doing the things.

And they’re willing to fail. And when they do, they tell themselves a very lucky story. Something like, “That may not have worked, but I learned from that and I’m going to use that for me,” or, “That wasn’t meant to happen. Something better is awaiting me.” Versus what an unlucky person will say, “I just don’t have what it takes. I’m not good enough. Things never work out for me. I have bad luck.”

When you think those kinds of thoughts, it makes you want to go into your house and hide and shrink and play small. But luck requires that you have the courage to go out and live more, experiment more, try more things, and to be willing to fail. But if you believe in yourself and you believe in luck, I promise you one thing. You’re going to get lucky. So, live more, my friends.

The third thing that elegant women do to create their own luck is that they listen to and honor their desires. Your desire is the roadmap to your most extraordinary life. I like to think of desire as the GPS system. If you follow what you want and you have the courage to show up for it and you’re thinking like a lucky woman in the process, I can’t even begin to describe the kind of life you’re going to live. It’s beyond words.

Again, sometimes I look at my life and I’m like, “What is happening?” But I had the courage to, number one, get honest about what I wanted, and then to show up for it, to go for it. Elegant women are honest with themselves. They know what they want and what they don’t want. They don’t spend their lives in confusion and in the I-don’t-knows because as long as they don’t know and they’re not honest with themselves, their life remains stagnant. They don’t get the momentum moving.

And life can become very drab and mediocre and dull. And we’re not here to live that kind of life, which is why probably some of you are very frustrated because you know deep down that you want to live an extraordinary life, but it’s going to require that you have the courage to get honest about what you want.

And if you’ve listened to this podcast before, you know that I am a big believer in wanting what you want without apology. Lucky people don’t waste their energy sitting around arguing with their own desires. They are honest about what they want and then they are willing to let it show up in ways that maybe they can’t even imagine.

They’re not concerned about the how it’s going to happen. What they focus on is what can I do today to think like the person who’s created it, to feel like the person, to embody the person that’s already created this thing that they want or to experience? And to constantly believe in themselves and what they want enough that they just keep showing up for it. It’s sort of relentless, which I like.

Relentless people change the world. Relentless people create lives they absolutely love because they’re not willing to settle. And that leads me to the fourth thing that elegant women do to create their own luck. And that is they expect good fortune.

You can call it optimism. You can call it positive thinking. But lucky people expect good fortune. And because they expect it, they’re always looking for it. And because they’re looking for it, they’re much more likely to find it.

I like to think of life as a buffet. And everything that can be experienced is on this buffet. So, if you believe in good fortune and you see good fortune, you’re going to enjoy the taste of good fortune. But if you believe that you have bad luck, you’re going to be looking for the bad luck, and that’s going to be what you taste. It doesn’t taste too good, my friends. I’ve had that meal before. I don’t recommend it at all.

But the other thing too is I think about my own life. Because this doesn’t mean that things always work out for you. But when you’re thinking on a bigger scale and you just expect yourself to succeed, you expect to reach your goals, then what you have little setbacks and challenges, you don’t just throw in the towel and say, “Well, good things never happen to me.”

No, you just know that’s just a little bump in the road. And it’s there to teach you something. It’s there to grow you in some way. But you don’t use that as an excuse to give up, which is what unlucky people do. Instead, you use it as fuel to keep driving you forward.

When you are a lucky person – and that’s something we can all choose to be. We can decide today, which I highly recommend, that you’re lucky. You’re going to practice being a lucky woman. But when you do that and you expect good fortune, what that also gives you is more grit.

Because if you expect things to work out and you have a setback, you’re not going to give up, you’re going to persevere. You’re going to be resilient. You’re going to give things more time to work out in your favor.

But when you are unlucky because you’re thinking unlucky thoughts, that’s when sometimes you give up right before the strike of midnight right before something magical is going to happen. And so, you never get to experience the luck that is waiting for you because you’re not expecting it, which causes you to give up way too soon when it comes to your dreams and desires.

One of the things that we work on a lot within the School of Self-Image is raising our standards. And one of the standards that we all need to raise for ourselves is our expectations. Because you don’t get what you want. You get what you expect. And a lot of you are expecting bad things to happen.

And so, because that’s what you’re looking for, you’re going to see it everywhere. But for a lucky person, even when something that may be considered bad happens, they have a way of turning it into something good. They look for the positive in it.

Now, some people may say, “Well you’re just being deluded.” But you know what? I’d rather tell a good story that feels better, that drives me forward, than to tell a story that disempowers me and holds me back. They’re both stories. They’re both delusions. Which one serves you the most?

Lucky people will always tell the story of good fortune. And they’ll look for it. Even when it may seem that they’ve hit rock-bottom, they’re looking for what’s great about their life. Even when they’re in the ditch, they’re looking up at the stars. And that energy propels them forward and gets them out of crazy situations and attracts beautiful opportunities into their lives. Elegant women know this. Which is why they expect good fortune.

The final thing that I’ve discovered for myself that has helped me create so much luck is something that I never would have associated with luck. It’s sort of just naturally who I am. And I do believe that life is like a boomerang, so what you throw out comes back at you.

But it’s one of the concepts that I teach within my course called the Wealthy Woman. And I’ve just noticed the positive impact that it’s had on my life and on my clients’ lives and on my friends’ lives who have practiced this.

And it may come across as luck. But behind the scenes, what you may not see is how much we give. I feel like when you feel like you’re lucky, you sort of want to share it. When you feel lucky and like you have good fortune and you expect good fortune, if you’re truly feeling abundant, you’re going to want to give more. And the more you give, the more comes back to you.

But here’s the thing. Lucky people aren’t keeping score. They trust in the laws of the universe and they trust that they’re going to be provided for. They trust that there’s something bigger and grander that’s in charge and they’re just here to show up for that party. And because the live in a more relaxed state, they tend to be more generous.

And as they’re more generous and not keeping score and worrying about, “Well, how’s this going to come back to me?” the most incredible things begin to happen in their lives. And I will tell you, from my experience, giving more has been one of the most luck-filled activities that I’ve ever done.

I mean, think about it. I show up for this podcast every single week. Thousands upon thousands of people have downloaded this podcast. Some of them will never join one of my programs. In fact, I would say the majority of them will never join my programs. But that’s not my business.

I just want to share this with you all. I want you to take it and use it to make your life better. And if you feel drawn to work with me, I am elated. I love working with you all within my membership and my programs.

But I just expect for things to work out. And I know that I feel blessed ad I feel abundant and I just want to share that with the world, trusting that my needs will be provided for. And I will tell you, in 45 years, I’ve never gone without anything.

Now, have I had moments where I’m like, “I don’t know how I’m going to pay the bills?” Of course. But I always paid them. It always somehow worked out. And I love thinking about it because it just proves to me and gives me so much evidence that I do have good fortune. I do have a beautiful life. I have been able to get through tremendous obstacles and challenges and heartbreaks and heartaches and all that comes with this life that we’re living.

And here I am, recording a podcast for you. How amazing is that? I don’t want to hold anything back. I’ve noticed sometimes people are afraid to share. They’re afraid someone’s going to get more than them. And that, I just want you to notice, is coming from such scarcity and lack mindset, which is not the energy of luck.

Luck is all about good fortune and abundance and beauty and desire, like all the things that you want. And if you’re living in lack and scarcity and you’re withholding and you’re not giving, you’re not going to be very lucky. Elegant women know this.

Now, they’re not going to give at their own detriment. And if you think about that, we often do that because we’re trying to people please and we’re doing it for the wrong reasons. But some of you aren’t giving out of fear and scarcity. Always pay attention to the energy with which you’re doing anything. And if you’re doing something out of lack and scarcity and fear, you probably need to stop doing it because you can’t act your way out of those emotions.

It’s impossible. Clean up those emotions and then ask, what do I want to give? If I know that I have good fortune coming my way and I’m honoring all the good fortune I already have, what do I feel compelled to give right now? This is what lucky people do, and elegant women do this. Which is why they’re really good at creating their own luck.

I hope you all enjoyed this episode. I want us all right now to decide that we are lucky, and luck is awaiting us around every corner. I love waking up in the morning and saying to myself, “I wonder what amazing things are going to happen today? I’m so excited for what today is going to bring. I’m excited for what I’m going to learn, who I might potentially meet, what opportunity may come my way.” And then my job is to get out into the world and live more and think lucky thoughts and expect good fortune and to be honest about what I want. And then, to give.

Have a beautiful week, everyone. I can’t wait to see you in the next episode. Cheers.

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.