Why Most Self-Help Advice is Keeping You Stuck

Have you ever felt like you're doing all the right things, you are reading the books, taking the courses, applying the strategies, and yet somehow you're still stuck? Well, you're not alone and the reason might not be what you think. Today we are talking about how self-help when approached the wrong way can actually hold you back and what to do instead. 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, beautiful friends. How are you doing? How are you feeling? I hope your answer to that question is amazing. I just said goodbye to my team. They came in for our one-day quarterly retreat and it's always good getting together in person. I mean, I'm so grateful for technology and the fact that we can live all across the world and work together, but there is nothing like in-person meetings. The energy is different and it's just a great way to reset and make plans, which we are doing.

I am really looking at my business and my whole life through the lens of essentialism this year, doing less but better. Really focusing and looking at where we can have the biggest impact and really thinking about what are we currently doing that doesn't need to be done. It's not adding a lot of value, and where can we look to add more value that will help our members move along and create results faster? So it's always good to get together and have those kinds of discussions.

And I feel like that's a great segue into what I want to talk about today, and that is why self-help might be keeping you stuck. And the reason why I am recording this episode is because I had a woman reach out to me recently on Instagram, she left me a DM, and she had joined the membership about four months prior to her reaching out to me. And she confessed to me that she has been a coach for over a decade and so she's been deeply immersed in the world of self-help and personal growth and transformation. And she said to me that she felt like she had been doing all of the right things. She'd read the books, taken the programs, she's done so much thought work. She knows the strategies, and yet she confessed that she felt really stuck.

But within a few months of being in the membership, she told me that things are shifting and I really got curious as to why. And so I just responded and said, "I'm really great grateful to hear that and what is different this time? What changed for you? I want to hear about the progress and why you think that is." And it really touched me and it inspired this episode. And so I hope that her wisdom might be exactly what you need to hear. If you're someone who's been in the personal development space and you're still thinking, "I just don't feel great, I feel like some things out of alignment, I feel like I'm not making progress," I hope that this episode will give you some tools and some perspective shifts to help you get unstuck.

So the first thing she told me was that she has felt this pressure to go bigger in the personal development space. And specifically I think when you're a coach, you look around and you see all of these coaches talking about make your next six figures and grow to seven figures. And it can be very easy to forget why you started in the first place and to begin to focus more on profit than people.

Now listen, profit's important when you're running a business, I'm not going to sit here and say it's not. And I am all for everybody having the money and the abundance that they are wanting in their lives. But when you are just chasing money or you're chasing other people's versions of bigness, of success, you can start to feel out of sorts. You can start to feel that misalignment. I've definitely been there in the past. I've talked about it in the membership at length, and I've even done a couple of podcasts about how I got out of my sweet spot. I started to pay more attention to the external world and what people were saying I should be focused on. I probably put my faith in people that their version of success was different than mine.

Now I'm not here to bash anyone, everybody gets to have their own version. But I know I am happiest when I am focused on certain things. But in the personal development space, in the self-help space, there is this pressure to go bigger. Now here's the thing, I do believe in constant expansion. I think we are most fulfilled when we are growing, we're learning, we're creating. I think that's what we are here to do as humans. But if you're trying to expand into things that aren't for you, that really don't align with your values, that don't really light you up, it can feel very, very empty.

And so when we redid the membership this past year, well, we just launched it at the beginning of the year, the new membership, but I made some tweaks to the Self-Image Method. One of them being, we used to call it extraordinary goal. And I think that word, really, it painted a picture for women that made them think that their goal had to be big as in, "Oh gosh, I need to go out there and make a million dollars" or, "I need to write a New York Times Bestseller," extraordinary the way they were translating it. I could see how it was taking them away from their truth.

And what I told them is, "What's extraordinary for you is what's out of the ordinary for you." And even still that word I could tell was causing women to not, it was getting in the way of them finding their goals that would light them up, and so we changed it to signature goal. Your signature goal is that goal that does expand you, it does grow you, and it's exciting. It's not a pressure to go after other people's version of success, but it is a goal that is so in alignment with who you are, with your truest self, with your values. And that's why with the Self-Image Method, one of the first things that we do is we take members through a deep exploration of their vision and their values.

I just went into Circle right before I came on to record this episode. Circle is our new community platform and I am loving it. It's so good, so elegant. But anyway, that's a different topic. But I saw a woman post in there that she had just gone through the Self-Image Method and she's like, "It shook me in the best of ways." She could see how she has been going after things that were never meant for her. And she was able to get a lot of clarity around what she really wants without the noise of the world. The pressure to be her, not necessarily to go bigger as in what the world thinks is bigger, but what is bigger for her. And so I want you to think about for you, what does expansion look like for you? What would feel deeply fulfilling on your terms? Because when your growth is aligned with your truth, it stops feeling like pressure and starts feeling like a privilege, it starts feeling like something you're actually excited to wake up and work on, to work towards.

Now, the other thing that this lady told me that reached out to me is that, and this makes total sense, especially if you're a coach or if you've been someone who is really into personal development and self-help, you can start obsessing and overthinking every thought. And she told me, "I was obsessing about every thought I had. Is this a good vibration? Is this a bad vibration? What am I attracting? Am I manifesting something negative?" And honestly, when she was sharing that with me, I got it because I've been there. Because we're told our thoughts create our reality. And because we, none want to create anything terrible, we can become super obsessed with our thinking.

But the reality is a negative thought is harmless if you don't obsess over it, if you don't indulge in it. I mean, it's just a thought. We have so many thoughts in our heads every single day. And I will say in the beginning of my personal development journey, there was a lot of shedding, there was a lot of awareness to be had. I didn't even know what I was thinking at the time. And so I did spend a lot of time with my own mind looking at what is the root of all of these feelings that I'm having? I do think there's a point in every woman's journey where we know the root is a negative thought. We don't have to go back and figure out where it came from. We don't have to obsess over it. And for me, I'm just at a point now where it's like, oh, there goes my silly brain.

Just that one thought about a negative thought lightens my spirit. I feel less resistance to it, and I'm able to move into my sweet spot. Not by obsessing and overthinking about the thought, but just by noticing. When it comes to thinking, you have the thought and then you have the thinking about the thought. And I think when you're in self-help, you can spend a lot of time in those two things, thinking about the thought, which can create a lot of anxiety and can make it feel as if you are in the silo of your own mind and you forget that there's this big world outside of you.

And so part of my process is journaling. Every morning I do love to check in with myself. I love to be intentional. I love to peek into my mind and be like, oh, what are we thinking today? You like it? And then redirecting, how do I want to show up today? What do I want to be thinking today? What do I want to believe about myself today? Who do I want to be in this day? And then I set that intention and then I get on with my day. I just get on with my day. And throughout the day if I notice negative thoughts coming up, I'm like, oh, there goes my silly brain. What did we commit to this morning? I simply refocus my attention on what I want to create, feel, and experience more of.

And so, if you've been feeling stuck with self-help, I want you to know this, you don't have to be a full-time detective of your mind because your brain's always going to offer you thoughts. Some will be useful. Some won't be. But you get to decide which ones to engage with. You don't have to sit down with a journal every time you have a negative thought and try to unravel it. It just keeps you focused on what you don't want to be focused on. You can simply redirect your focus, redirect your thinking, and move on with your day.

Lesson number three that she told me, and this is a big one, is that she had been in what we call constant consumption mode. She had spent years consuming, reading books, taking courses, constantly learning, but she wasn't creating at the level of her consumption. She was over consuming and under creating. And this can happen a lot, especially if your work is in personal development. You can think, oh my God, there's so much to know. I mean, things are changing. We are learning new science. We're learning more about the brain. And so you want to keep up with everything. And so you feel like you have to constantly be consuming. And then on top of that with a business, you're like, oh my gosh, there's so many tools to learn and so many things to figure out.

But if you're just consuming and not putting what you learn into practice, all you have is a lot of unrealized knowledge. And that's one of the reasons why within the membership we created the Self-Image Studio. The Self-Image Studio is where you bring your goals to life 30 days at a time. We have a high emphasis on action, which sometimes goes against what they tell you to focus on within personal development. They're like, just focus on your thoughts and everything else will take care of itself. And there is some truth to that. But I will say there have been times I've been sitting around thinking beautiful thoughts and not taking action on them, just sitting there thinking about them.

So one of the things that we teach within the School of Self-Image is the self-image cycle. And I teach it in a very interesting way where you get to enter the cycle at any point, but I tell members you have to complete the cycle. So the cycle basically is, I think, I feel, I do in evidence. And that cycle is confirming your self-image, which if you've listened to this podcast, self-image is influencing every area of your life. And so we have been traditionally taught that we need to enter through thought level. But, I am encouraging you to consider you can enter through any part of the self-image cycle. And so if you're like me, I love taking action. I always have. And I realized early on that the reason why I struggled with just action alone is because I didn't complete the cycle. I was just taking action to get a result, not to confirm what I wanted to believe about myself.

And that's what makes it so different within the School of Self-Image is that we take action, but we do it to provide evidence which then changes how we think about ourselves, which then shifts how we're feeling. And you just start spinning that cycle in a completely new way. And the Self-Image Studio is a way to sit down with yourself every month and learn your lessons and then make a plan for how you're going to get an action, what you need to think, what you need to feel. But for that reason, she told me that she has been creating so many more results in just three months of being in the membership. She finally feels like she is not stuck by following our process. She said she went from a self-image of a woman who never completes things to a woman who is creating her life on purpose.

So it's not just about doing more, it's about taking action that reinforces the self-image that you desire. Because when you expand your self-image, your actions, your behaviors, everything else is just going to follow suit. But sometimes just getting yourself in motion, going out there and taking action to prove to yourself that this is who I'm choosing to be will begin to get you unstuck. Sitting at home, journaling what's in your brain may not be working. In fact, if that's what you've been doing and you still feel stuck, try something new, try something else.

I think about Martha Beck. I can't remember which book it was. I think it was Steering by Starlight. And she says, some people need to stop doing and start talking. And for some people that is true. And that's the thing, in personal development, we're all so unique. We're on different paths. We have different levels of experience. And so for some people, you do need to stop taking action and you need to start talking, you need to start looking at what's going on within yourself. But for other people, it's time to stop talking and start doing. It's time to stop obsessing over every thought, trying to figure out where it came from and start taking some action. Because to me, action when taken from the energy of I am taking this as a devotion to who I'm choosing to be, I'm taking this action as a declaration of this is who I'm becoming, that is the kind of action that will change your life, and then the results just follow.

Okay. The other thing that she told me, and I have seen this in my own life, I see it in a lot of people's lives, and it's why self-help can feel so exhausting, it's because you are taking action from the belief that you need to be fixed. Okay, I'm going to repeat that. You're taking the action from the belief that you need to be fixed. And that belief, it will keep you stuck. Because no matter how much you've achieved, it will never be enough. There's always another level. Another book to read. Another problem to solve. But when you let go of the idea that you're broken, everything will change. You will start taking action from a place of expansion instead of lack, and you will start to feel lighter, more natural, more like you, more joyful.

One of the key messages I drill into our members, and it's at the root of their self-image, is that they are whole and amazing and wonderful. Now what? Now what do you want to do? If you really believe that about yourself, if you really thought that you were a loving, expansive, joyful woman who was completely whole and had nothing to prove to anyone, what would you want to be doing with your life? Where would you be focused? How would you be walking through your day? How would you treat yourself? Because here's the thing, as long as you think I am broken, nothing outside of you will fix that.

I remember losing the weight that I thought would make me the most happy. I starved myself, literally and when I got to that weight I was miserable. And I was like, hold up, this is not in my plan. This is not what I thought this was going to feel like. Because it was never about the weight. It was this belief that I was broken. And so I thought the weight loss could fix me, but I still held onto that belief. That belief didn't change, I just had a smaller body thinking the same thing. And so at the core of this work is you seeing yourself as someone again who is whole 100%, you are worthy. Now what do you want to do?

She told me that since she joined that she has been so excited to wake up in the morning and grab her curated day journal because now she's seeing herself as this creation, not this thing that she needs to fix. But she's really seeing herself as a masterpiece and she's the artist. And isn't that the point, you all? Shouldn't personal growth be inspiring, not exhausting? Shouldn't it feel like an invitation and not an obligation? Shouldn't it make you feel lighter, not heavier? So if personal development feels like a chore, it's time to change your approach. And that approach really is about seeing yourself as this amazing human on this incredible journey where sometimes we fill, sometimes we get it wrong, sometimes we have the most crazy thoughts in our head, and we are always 100% worthy and whole.

And when you approach your personal growth from that vantage point, it really does become a joyful endeavor. You begin to fall in love with the process. A lot of times people enter into self-help and personal development because they're trying to get to an ultimate outcome. And so they're constantly reminding themselves that they're not there yet. Then therefore, something must be wrong with them. Of course, I'm broken. And they just spiral in a direction that's so far from where their soul wants to go. And then they get frustrated because they aren't there yet because energetically they are so misaligned from where they want to be and they just give up.

But what if you fell in love with the process? What if you woke up every day excited to discover more about you? And yeah, part of that discovery is some of the crazy things that may be in your brain, obviously we're all humans. But it's also discovering more about what you love, what interests you, what feels the lighter, what feels like you, and moving more in that direction. To me, that is what we're all here to do. That's what I want the School of Self-Image to be all about, this beautiful invitation to get to know the true you, the you came here to be.

And then finally, one of the things that she shared, and I think this one is huge, is that she confessed that she had never been a part of a personal development program where there was such an emphasis on environment. She had been trying to change by staying in the same environment. Now, can you do that? 100% it just takes a lot more effort and it's a lot harder. And I tell members all of the time, I'm like, "Listen, if you can place yourself in environments that speed up your own reinvention, that help you create and feel how you want to feel faster, why not do it?" But there are people that would disagree with me on this, and I understand the thinking behind it because nothing outside of you creates how you feel. It's always thoughts in your head. But I also know from my daughter struggling with mold illness years ago, that your environment can heal you or it can make you sick. And I think that's not just physically, I think it's emotionally as well.

At the School of Self-Image, we use our environment as a tool for our own reinvention because your surroundings can either reinforce a self-image that you desire or keep you stuck in an old identity. And that's why we focus a lot on curating our surroundings to align with how we want to feel, the future that we want. Now, that doesn't mean big fancy houses or big fancy cars, or it doesn't mean anything. It's what you decide it is. For some people it's about simplifying everything because they want to see themselves as a woman who really savers and appreciates a simple life. For some people, it's about getting back out into nature because their soul has missed that and it's craved that, and they want to see themselves as someone who is very connected to nature.

It doesn't look one specific way, and I think sometimes that's why my teaching is misinterpreted. It's about understanding how your environment is shaping you. It's about understanding how your environment feels and then making those tiny tweaks because the reality is your environment is not a reflection of your worth. I think about when I was living in that little trailer all those years ago, I was 100% worthy. 100% worthy. And as I got older, I began to see the people I was hanging out with, the places that I was going, how I was dressing, what I was reading, all of the stuff around me was confirming a story I had about myself. And so when I started to up-level my environment, the story that I had about myself began to change as well.

But you have to do them together. If you're just making your environment look pretty, but you're not doing it to reinforce how you want to see yourself, you're just going to have a pretty environment, you're going to be miserable. It's why just losing weight without changing your mindset, it's just maybe a miserable you in a smaller body. They go hand in hand, which is why it's so important that you complete the self-image cycle. When you do something to elevate your environment, what is that providing evidence for? Who is that showing to yourself that you're becoming? And then what new thoughts and beliefs does that spark about yourself and how does that make you feel? And then what do you want to do as a result of that? And we just spin that cycle in a new direction and we get you unstuck.

So as we wrap up this episode, here's what I want you to take away from this conversation. You are not broken. You don't need fixing. You are already whole and fabulous. And the reality is you don't need to prove yourself to anyone. All you need to do is really fall in love with you. Do things that help you become more of who you want to be. Do things that align with your soul. And so what if personal development felt like an invitation instead of something that you have to do? What if your actions weren't about fixing yourself, but about expressing the most vibrant version of you? And what if your environment and your habits and your choices reflected the self-image that you're stepping into, not the one you're trying to escape?

So the real question isn't, what do I need to fix? It's what do I want to create? What is next for me? What am I excited to step into? Now listen, it's going to be scary, and that's where the mindset work comes in, because anytime you are breaking up with an old identity, it is going to be very uncomfortable. But listen, we can do hard things, can't we? I know you can't. You've probably done it so many times. And so what I'm doing is I'm asking you to do the hard thing of becoming the most radiant and vibrant version of you. And when you start living from that energy, everything changes.

So if this episode resonated with you, take a screenshot and share it with me on Instagram. You can tag me at Tonya Leigh, and I would love to hear your biggest takeaway. Have you ever felt stuck in self-help? Do you feel like you're constantly consuming but not creating? Have you approached your personal development journey from the mindset that you need to be fixed, and so that next book is going to be the one or that next program's going to be it? News alert, you're not broken. Go into any of these programs that you are considering with the mindset of, "I'm going to use these to enhance my already whole and worthy self." And when you do that, you will be amazed at not only how fun it might become, but at who you become in the process.

All right, my friends, I hope you have a beautiful week and I will see you on next week's episode. Cheers.