5 Ways I Handle Distraction

How much time do you think you lose to distraction each day? Well, according to research, the average person loses nearly four hours daily to interruptions and recovery time, but here's the good news. Distraction isn't something that happens to us. It's something that we can learn to manage. And I've been practicing five ways to stay focused in my life that has allowed me to create results that the old me that was very scattered could have never created. And today, I'm sharing them with you in this 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, hello, my friends. Welcome back to the podcast. We are approaching the holidays. I hope you all are excited. I hope you are really holding the highest and best intentions for you to have the most extraordinary year that you've ever, ever had. I am so excited about 2025 and I'm also extremely grateful for 2024 and all of the lessons learned, all of the goals achieved, and the failures that I've had along the way because it's the failures that teach us the most, and I've had my fair share this year. And all of it, I am constantly blown away by the power of self-image work. This work has carried me throughout some of the most difficult times and it's helped me to create the most amazing times because at the end of the day, your self-image is influencing every area of your life.

And I've had people want to argue with me about this and I'm like, "You can argue all you want," but when I lead them through the self-image cycle and show them how it is self-image that's impacting your life, they start to get it and they start to see the patterns that they have created in their lives because of their own self-image. Some people like to argue that it's very self-centered, and at the end of the day, we are at the center of our experience, yet we are sharing this experience with many, many others. And what I have found in my own self-image journey is that the deeper I go into my own self-image work, the less I focus on self. I think that is the actualization of our own humanity is that when we have done the work on ourselves, that we're able to get out of ourselves.

Every day in the membership, I get to see the results of this work. One of the things that we have is a before and after channel in Slack and it's where all of the before and after stories are submitted to the team for us to celebrate, and you all, it's incredible to see women who have been stuck sometimes for years, stuck in jobs they hated, stuck in a body that they didn't enjoy, stuck in relationships that were not serving them. And when they start to do this work, they're able to move out of that stuck state and began to create what it is that they want simply by changing how they see themselves.

You will always work to prove yourself true subconsciously. Whatever you're looking for, that's what you will see, so when it comes to our self-image work, notice what you are looking for. How often do you just default to thoughts like, "This will never work for me. I'm not good enough. I don't have what it takes. I'm not smart enough. I'm always putting things on hold. I'm always waiting till later"? These are what looks like observations, but at the end of the day, it's commands to your brain as to what to look for. So I want you all to challenge yourself to begin to look for new things. And that's why the self-image method is so powerful because I lead you through the process of how to create your own before and after by looking for new things, looking for new possibilities, looking for new thoughts, looking for a new identity actually because your identity is what you're always going to seek to prove true.

Anyway, I share that with you because if this is work that you are called to do, if this is something that you want to spend time working on, if you have been someone who's tried to create results, but you find yourself constantly disappointing yourself, you make two steps forward and it feels like you go three steps back. If you're looking around at other people and seeing them succeed and you're not, this is the most powerful work that you will ever, ever invest in. And I've had many of you reach out to me recently and I don't know if it's because of the energy of the world or what's going on, but so many of you have reached out on Instagram and Facebook and said, "Hey, when can I get into the membership? I know now is the time for me to really focus on this." So I want to let you all know that we have opened the doors for the last time this year and we're doing something that we haven't done before. We are going to be offering a payment plan for an annual membership.

Let me tell you why this is such a great investment and why it is such a great opportunity. As an annual member, you get access to three of my most popular courses that isn't offered to monthly members. Unless you've been in the membership for a whole year, then you get access to it. But those courses are the Wealthy Woman. I walk you through how to create a wealthy self-image. And I don't just stay in the spiritual realm or the self-image realm. I also talk you through how to think about your numbers, how to look at where you're spending and what needs to be adjusted. We talk about how wealthy people think about money differently than people that struggle with money. And I've been on both ends of the spectrum, so I have a very good understanding of this.

And I've had women who have joined the Wealthy Woman who have increased their net worth by $250,000 within a couple of years. I've had women who have finally paid off a debt. But more than anything, and I think this is the greatest gift from the Wealthy Woman, I've seen client after client claim that they finally feel at peace with their money. And I think that's what we're all after. We don't want sleepless nights of worried about how we're going to pay our bills or if something's going to fall through the crack and we're going to lose it all. We don't want to spend our precious life worried about money, so that is one of the programs that you get as an annual member.

The other program that you get is the Slim Self-image. The two areas that I've struggled the most within my life is around money and my weight, hence why I created these two programs to share the process of how I overcame that and went on to create a wealthy self-image, as well as a slim one. And this is what I call inside out weight loss. This is learning how to think and live as a slim woman. And when I say slim, what I really mean is a woman who has learned to let go of what is weighing her down from the heavy emotional baggage, to the heavy limiting beliefs that she holds about herself, to maybe the self-loathing that she's been living with for years. And when you do that, what emerges is your most healthy and vivacious self.

And then finally, you get access to Charm the Room. Charm the Room is a program that I created after struggling for years with social anxiety and learning how to feel confident and connected in any social situation. You can put me in the trailer park or you can put me in a penthouse and I feel at home. I feel like I can navigate those spaces because I've learned how to be at home with myself. So this is a really powerful course just to learn how to be able to socially navigate the world and stay connected to yourself. And when you do that, it's so much easier to connect with others.

Now, there's a lot more that you get with the annual membership. One of the things that you will receive when you join is every year, at the end of the year, we do a big workshop where we get very clear on our next year. And that is such an important part of living an intentional and I think beautiful life, is you deciding ahead of time what you want your life to look and feel like, and then embodying the self-image of the woman who has created that for herself. And that workshop is coming up in December, so when you join as an annual member now, you'll get access to that workshop.

On top of that, we are making some really beautiful and elevated and big changes to the membership that are going to be unveiled at the beginning of 2025, so you will be able to be a part of that exciting evolution of the School of Self-Image. We are going to have so much fun next year. I promise you, you are not going to regret this decision, so come and join us. Go to schoolofselfimage.com/join and let's do this. I'm truly looking forward to supporting you all.

All right. Today, we are talking about a very hot topic, my friends, and that is distractions. How often are you distracted from doing meaningful work? How often are you distracted from doing the things that you say are very important to you, yet you find your mind wanting to take you to different things?

Attention in this day and age is our most valuable commodity, yet it's something that we do not guard often enough. And I know how hard this is. In fact, ironically, when I was starting to record this podcast, my daughter who is here visiting, she's leaving actually. Today is her flight. She comes into my office and I had to kindly ask her to leave so I could finish this and close the door. And as soon as she did that and I started recording, then my contractor for my house pulls up and he needed to ask me a question. I thought to myself, this podcast could not be at a more perfect time for me because it just reminds me of how difficult it is and equally how important it is that we handle this part of our lives. We are losing so much time. We are losing so many results because we are not managing our minds and our calendars appropriately.

Now, when it comes to distractions, the number one thing that has helped me the most is a process that I teach within the School of Self-Image, and it's something that when you join, you get immediate access to and it's called the Dream Atelier. And I share with you the exact process that I use to break big dreams down and accomplish them 30 days at a time. And the number one thing that you have to learn to manage is not your calendar, not your children, not your boss, not anything outside of you. 90% of distraction is your own mind, 90%. It's not the outside world. You can say it's your email. It's your text going off. It's people knocking on the door. But if you really watch yourself, that is such a small minority to what's really, really going on.

Now, before I share with you the five ways that I handle distraction, I want to talk about the real cost. What I'm about to share with you should really inspire you to make it a priority to learn how to deal with distractions. Because I remember when I discovered this, it really stopped me in my tracks and I realized this is what separates truly successful people from those who constantly struggle. Now, at the end of the day, it all boils down to mindset because our mindset is creating the ability to be distracted or not be distracted. But I want you to think about this question, what could you do with 1,500 hours? And the reason why I asked that question is that that is how much time that is lost to distraction and the recovery time that you have to also factor in. So when you get distracted, it takes time to get refocused and back into the project. But research shows that about 1,500 hours is what we lose to distraction every single year. Think about it. That is 62 days lost to distraction.

Now, that's a general number and may be more for some and less for others, but generally speaking, that's a lot of time. And I want you to think about what you would do with 1,500 extra hours. Think about it. You could write, let's just say being conservative, three books if those books took you 500 hours each. Some people will say, you can write a rough draft of a book in 100 hours, but let's just say three books. Or you could create an entire year's worth of content. You could probably become fluent in the language. You could learn how to play an instrument. You could start a profitable side business. You could maybe start a new career. Think about that time if you wanted to apply it to transforming your health or maybe you want to use it to improve your relationships.

Imagine dedicating 30 minutes a day to really sitting down with your partner and having meaningful connection or think about spending that time being so present with your kids. Think about how you could use that time to improve your self-image through mindset work, through the work that we do around environmental design, and even through your style. You could create a podcast with 500 episodes, an online course. You could start a whole movement that could impact your community in a positive way. There is so much that you could do with 1,500 hours and I want you to think about that.

If I could hand you 1,500 hours, what would you choose to do with it? I'm not saying always because I don't like to speak in extremes, but oftentimes, when women tell me that they don't have enough time, that's not the case. They're just so distracted and it feels really hard to get momentum and traction in their lives because they are going from one thing to another and not focusing fully. And I know because I have been there. I've been that person. So the question isn't whether you have the time. The question is what are you going to do to reclaim it?

So I'm going to share with you how I personally handle distractions. And it's up to all of us to find what works for us, but what I'm going to speak about is in generalities and I think it can be applied to all of us. But the first thing that I do to deal with distractions is that I plan. This is often an overlooked concept, but what I have found, when I look back at my life and all those years where I didn't plan well, I would sit down or I would start my day and I wouldn't even know what to really focus on. I knew I wanted to improve. I knew I wanted to change my health. I knew I wanted to grow my business. I knew I wanted to make changes, but I had not planned how I was going to do it.

So when you don't give your mind direction, it's going to go for what's a quick hit of dopamine, and that might be turning on the TV. This day and age, it often has to do with our phone, just picking up and scrolling because our brain wants to be busy, but you have to tell it what to be busy on. And planning well takes time and that's often why a lot of people don't do it. They're like, "I don't have time to sit down and really plan through what I'm going to do. I just got to get to work." But doing that work on the front end saves you so much time on the back end, and it's why within the School of Self-Image, one of the things that we have instituted this year is that we have a monthly planning workshop. And women have told me that this workshop has helped them to consistently create results month after month after month because they are setting aside time each month to look at strategically what it is that they plan to accomplish over the next month and how they are going to do it.

So sitting down and planning, it takes time and it's often difficult because it requires that you make decisions and sometimes we're afraid of making decisions. We're afraid of making the wrong decision. We want to make the right one. So we slow ourselves down on that decision-making process. But the more decisions you make, the more momentum you get going in your life. So that is the first thing that I do. I plan my weeks. I plan my days. I plan my year because I know that I am so much more likely to be distracted if I don't know what my brain should be focused on in the first place. That's number one.

Number two, I break down my plan into actionable results. What does this look like? Let's say for example, my plan is I need to create a class. That is a big project. That's not a little one-off. So I need to make some decisions, right? I need to decide what is this class going to be about? I then need to create an outline for the class. I need to create a workbook for the class. I need to film the class. I need to send the class to my video editor to edit the video. All of these are little tasks that must be done in order for me to live out my plan.

And this is where I made a mistake for many years and I was always shocked. I'm doing all this stuff and I've got these plans, but I'm just not getting the momentum because I would sit down and I'd be like, "Okay. You got to work on the class." And my brain would be like, "Okay. But what are we doing?" And I'd be like, "I don't know. We got to work on this class." And when I learned to really break things down into actionable results, then I was able to really get momentum and the less distracted I became. So I would sit down and be like, "Okay. I have 30 minutes to decide what this class is going to be about. Within 30 minutes, you got to get it done."

That's the other, and this is a little bonus tip, but I have found that it's harder to be distracted when you don't give yourself the time to be distracted. If I give myself a whole day to choose what class I'm going to teach on, then that's a whole day that I have the luxury of being distracted. But if I only give myself 30 minutes, I don't have the space to get distracted. Of course I'm going to be tempted to, but I know, oh, I need to get this done. My team's waiting on it. So maybe shrink your timelines a little bit, so that it forces you not to have the luxury of being distracted. That's step number two.

Step number three is I then schedule those results. I schedule when I am going to do certain things. Now, I used to be very militant and I would actually schedule in my calendar. Especially early on when I started doing this process, I would schedule between 8:00 and 10:00, I'm going to produce a podcast. Now, because I've done this for so long, I don't have to be as militant. I put it in a sauna and I know, okay, tomorrow, I have to do a podcast. I've got a coaching call. I need to create the slides for the upcoming style experience class. So I know when I sit down, I've got a whole day to get these projects done. So I don't have to schedule in my calendar the way I used to. Now, what I do do is I schedule my off time. I scheduled my self-care time, so that I then know I've got to work those tasks around what is a priority for me. That's number three. You have to schedule.

And then comes the harder part of distractions. Distractions are an emotional response to your life. Distractions are 90% mental. It's not stuffs happening to you. It's your allowing your focus and attention to go to other things in that moment as an escape to what you're supposed to be working on. That is 90% of distractions. And y'all know I'm telling the truth. How many times have you said, "Okay. Today, I'm going to clean out my closet." And you get in there and you might get 15 minutes in and all of a sudden, you're like, "Oh, I need to go call my mother," or, "Oh, my gosh, I need to go look at something on Amazon." All of a sudden, your focus is wanting to be put elsewhere because that kind of attention and energy and getting something done, it takes effort. It takes you staying focused on something for a certain amount of time. And in this day and age, that is very difficult to do. We have such limited attention spans and that's why you have to train yourself to do it.

I love the idea of work sessions and then break sessions. And typically mine is 45 minutes of focus, deep work, and then a 15-minute break. And I know during that 15 minutes, anything that I'm tempted to be distracted with, I can do in that 15-minute break. But 45 minutes, I am focused. I am head down working on the task that I committed to. So step number four of managing my distraction is managing my mind, managing my emotional responses. Whenever I am tempted to be distracted, and trust me, I am. And there are certain seasons where it seems like it's more and often I've noticed that those are the seasons where I'm tired, where I've put a lot on my plate. That's ironically when I want to be distracted the most, but I have to really learn to understand why I'm being distracted, what I'm trying to escape from.

It's different every time. Sometimes it's me being afraid of not doing it perfectly. Sometimes it's me just wanting some relief in that moment. But I've noticed that when I seek relief in the moment, it often ends up causing so much pressure later. So I'm not really creating relief in my life. It's just a temporary escape from an emotion. So I like to ask myself like, "What am I feeling in this exact moment? Am I feeling anxiety? Am I feeling dread? Am I feeling discouraged? What is the feeling?" And then I like to look at why am I feeling this way? And it's always going to be a thought in my head. This isn't going to be good enough. This is never going to end. It's just a lot of thoughts that's creating the feeling.

I also like to ask myself, what am I trying to avoid by getting distracted? That's a really good question. What am I trying to avoid? Maybe I'm trying to avoid vulnerability. Maybe I'm trying to avoid failure. Maybe I'm trying to avoid humiliation. But there's always an underlying reason as to why we are getting distracted. And then I like to say, how would I be showing up right now if I wasn't feeling this way? That's a really good question. If I wasn't feeling the fear of humiliation or the fear of vulnerability, how would I be showing up? What'd I be doing right now?

The flip side of this is once I go through this process, and again, I've been doing this so long, I can do it pretty quickly in my mind. I ask myself, what do I want to be feeling right now? What is the feeling that's going to cause me to continue with this task at hand? Now, sometimes I just want to put this out there. Sometimes distraction is not when you're working on a project. Sometimes that distraction's when you're sitting around with your loved ones. You're all sitting there and we've seen this in a restaurant. Everybody's at the restaurant. Everybody's on their phones. They're being distracted. It's like, "What are we avoiding right here? What do we need to feel in order to put our phones away and be present with each other? What do we need to shift in terms of our desire in this moment?"

And then it's really helpful to examine the cost. What will I regret if I continue to be distracted? What opportunities am I missing from being distracted? What's the real price of avoiding this emotion? Who else is going to be impacted if I continue to be distracted in my life? And what would I tell someone I love in this situation? You really love someone and you see them constantly being distracted and avoiding doing the very things that's going to make their lives better. What would you tell them in this situation? Also, it's useful to ask, am I using distraction to numb something that's important, that wants to be acknowledged, that wants to be seen? It's very, very helpful. Those are questions.

Now, I want to offer you some thoughts that have helped me to stay focused, that have inspired me. Some of these thoughts are what I call pain-avoidant thoughts and some are pleasure-seeking thoughts because studies have shown that we'll do more to avoid pain than we will to seek pleasure. So sometimes we have to remind ourselves things like, "I'm never going to get this day back. Future you is watching and counting on your focus, Tonya. Get it together. Time is the only truly non-renewable resource. Your life is happening right now. Not when you're ready. If you think about purpose and impact, you can think about someone needs what only I can create. My focus is my gift to the world. Each focused moment compounds into extraordinary results."

I also like to remind myself that I can do hard things. I also remind myself that growth is what happens in moments of resistance and also the relief of distraction is temporary, but regret is permanent. In terms of my personal power, I like to remind myself that I'm stronger than my urges, that I get to choose my response to every trigger, that my attention is mine to direct. I am the author of my story. And here's a really good one, every focused moment is a vote for who I'm becoming. That is step number four of how I manage my distractions.

Step number five is environmental design. I think it's very important that we set ourselves up for success. It's very important that we design our surroundings in a way that encourages the desired behaviors that we want to have. And again, this is going to look different for all of us, but when I'm working, my phone is in the other room. I don't want the temptation of picking up my phone and scrolling because if it's right here in front of me in that moment when I want that temporary relief, I am going to be very tempted to pick it up. So I just put it in the other room where it's not even a temptation. I also love to alert my family as to when I am in my creative hole, do not disturb. Now, today my daughter, I didn't tell her and she came walking right in. But typically, my family knows like, "Tonya's in her office with the door closed. We don't bother her. She is in deep work." And they all honor that and it just allows me the space to be creative and to get into that deep focus.

I find it very helpful to have a timer on my computer that does my 45-minute deep focus sessions. So I know, "Hey, listen, you got 45 minutes to complete this task." It becomes sort of a fun challenging game, but it also reminds my brain, "Hey, listen, at the end of this, you get a break, so you can go do something fun." You can go play a game of backgammon with Fonz if he's around. You can go for a walk. You can get up and stretch. If you want to scroll Instagram, that's when you can do it. But it really serves as both a motivator to get things done, as well as something to look forward to with my break.

In the morning, I love to set myself up for success with my environment by setting up my workspace. For me, that means a little bit of soft jazz in the background. I work better with music, lighting a candle, making sure I have my water here to drink, making sure that my desk is clean because a clean desk represents a clean mind. So I don't have the distraction of looking around and seeing a lot of stuff on my desk. So think about how you can set up your environment to have less distractions. Now, if you're not working at a desk and maybe you realize, you know what? I'm usually distracted when I'm with my family, the same process applies. Maybe leave your phone behind. If you're going to dinner, leave it at home. I love doing that like, "Oops, I forgot my phone." Now, I get to be completely present with you.

Maybe it is turning on some music in the background, so you can connect with your spouse, but the same concept applies. No matter if you are wanting to be less distracted with people or in your work, it's all the same thing. Environmental design for me as well means reminding myself of my commitments for the day. And the way I do that is I have a sauna pulled up in the corner of my desktop, so I can see here are the things. It's a constant feedback of, "Here's what we're doing. Here's what we're doing. Stay focused, Tonya." So think about what it is you want to achieve. Think about your goal for the year and how can you set up your environment to support you in being successful, in being less distracted.

Now, let's talk really quickly about what to do when you are distracted? When you give into the urge and you pick up your phone or however you love to distract yourself, listen, success is built on a mountain of failures. And we learn so much more from our failures than we often do from our successes. So when it happens, rule number one is don't beat yourself up. You're still human. We're also human. We're going to be distracted. This is not about being perfect. It's about having awareness. And the more you can catch yourself when you're being distracted and learn from those moments, the better you're going to get at being less distracted.

So if you find yourself distracted in the middle of the moment, you can do what I call a You-turn, Y-O-U, back to you and your commitments, your desires, who you want to be. And you can also learn, what was I trying to avoid here? What am I maybe afraid of? What am I telling myself that's causing me to want to escape this moment with some cheap dopamine? And those moments can teach you so, so much, but you can't learn if you're beating yourself up, so let's just take that off the table. That's not an option. Those moments are meant to teach you. They're meant to grow you and they're meant to help you become less distracted.

So that my friends are the five ways that I handle distraction. I hope that you can take away at least one thing from this episode that can serve you. Maybe you realize, "I need to plan better or I need to practice scheduling results." Or maybe for you, you want to focus on setting up your environment for less distractions. Just choose one thing and start practicing it because all of these little things do add up. So with that said, I hope you all have a distraction-free week. And listen, if you want to dive deep into this work and seriously amaze yourself with what is possible and what you're capable of over the next year, this is the last time you can join the School of Self-Image membership this year. And we have so many exciting changes coming in during this time is going to be so fun for you because you're going to get to see our before and our after, which is coming really, really soon. And you get to see this work really demonstrated in the school and how we are elevating our own image as a business. So come and join us.

You can join as an annual member with a payment plan. We haven't done this before, so it's going to be super fun. So head over to schoolofselfimage.com/join and let's do this. I cannot wait to see you inside. Have a beautiful, beautiful week, my friends, and I'll see you in the next episode. Cheers.