Put Down the Journal. Put On the Outfit.

The Self-Image Cycle

Within the School of Self-Image, I teach something called the Self-Image Cycle, and it goes like this. You have a thought about yourself, because that’s what self-image is, how you think about yourself. And that thought creates a feeling, a vibration in your body. And that feeling either drives certain behavior or it doesn’t. And that behavior confirms back to yourself who you believe yourself to be. So let me give you an example. Let’s say that you wake up tomorrow morning and your first thought of the day is, “I’m behind,” and the day hasn’t even started yet. That thought produces a feeling. So for this example, let’s just say the feeling is overwhelmed. So I want you to think about it. When you’re overwhelmed, how do you show up? How productive are you? How do you take your time or how do you make time for the things that are actually important to you?

If you’re like me, you may find yourself procrastinating or working on things that really don’t move the needle that much, also known as busy work. Or maybe you add more to your plate, more than you can even handle. But here’s what’s happening at the subconscious level. What you’re really doing is gathering all of this evidence for your original belief, “I’m behind,” because that’s how the mind works. Our thoughts and beliefs are commands. So you confirm to yourself, “See, I told you. I’m behind.” You are a woman who doesn’t have time for what she says is important and around and around the cycle goes.

Welcome to the School of Self-Image, where our motto is simple, elevate your self-image, elevate your life. I’m Tonya Leigh, your hostess, and I’ll guide you to become the woman who doesn’t just dream bigger. She lives bigger. Let’s dive in.

Most personal development teaches you to enter this cycle at the thought. Change your thinking, change your life. And listen, there is truth to that. Your thoughts matter. They are at the core of everything. They are literally shaping and designing your entire life, but I’ve come to learn that the cycle has many more entry points. You can enter through your thoughts. You can enter through cultivating a feeling on purpose. Have you ever listened to a certain song and all of a sudden you’re feeling a certain way? You get to create feelings that way as well. Or we can use one of the most underused tools, which is through your behavior first. Now, one could argue that before every action, you have a thought, and that’s probably true, but we often aren’t conscious of that. For example, yesterday, I did not want to go to the gym, but I decided I’m going anyway and I went.

Breaking the Cycle Through Action

I’m going anyway is a thought, but I wasn’t even conscious of it. I just went. And as I walked through the door, my brain was literally saying, “I don’t want to be here.” And I simply ignored that thought and just kept walking. The point here is that we don’t have to micro-analyze every thought. We simply can get into motion, take action in the pursuit of creating evidence for a new self-image. Now, with all of that said, for this episode, I want to convince you that one of the most immediately available actions that you can take every single morning is something that you do every single day, and that is get dressed. Now, this is not just me talking. There’s actually science on this, and I love this study because it’s just so clean. Researchers at Northwestern University did this experiment years back. And what they did is they handed people a white coat.

A white coat, that’s it. Half of the participants were told it was a doctor’s coat. The other half were told the exact same coat was a painter’s coat. Same coat, different story. So the people who believed that they were wearing a doctor’s coat actually performed measurably better on tests of focus and attention than the people who thought they were wearing a painter’s coat. Again, it’s the same coat. Different identity, different results. They call it enclothed cognition, which is just a fancy way of saying that what you wear is talking to your brain. It’s not just decoration, it is instruction. It is telling your body and your nervous system who you are right now, not who you’re trying to become someday, who you are in this body on this day walking in this life, which means when you put on the outfit of the woman that you’ve been writing about, your body starts being her first.

Stop Waiting to Become Her

The feelings shift and then the thoughts catch up. You don’t have to think your way into her. You can simply dress your way into her. I want to tell you a story because this is one that taught me everything that I need to know about what I’m speaking about today. So many years ago, I’m talking, let’s go back two decades. When I was extremely overweight and I was extremely unhappy with my life, I had a story I was telling myself every single day. My body doesn’t deserve beautiful clothes yet. I need to wait until I lose the weight. Have you ever told yourself that one? I need to trim down first. This doesn’t look good on me. And those weren’t opinions. Those were instructions. I was giving myself daily instructions about who I was allowed to be in the meantime. And the meantime is where I lived for years.

Now, at some point, I caught myself in this pattern. I saw what I was doing. I saw the woman that I was becoming by waiting, and I didn’t like it. And so I made a decision that I think literally saved my life. Although I did not know it at the time, I went out and I bought one dress, one simple black dress. Not the dress for the woman I was going to be in 20 pounds, the dress for the woman I was right now. A dress that I could put on to go out to dinner, a dress I could put on to run errands, something elegant, something that fit the body I had on that day. And I joke that that little black dress brought me out of a hole I had been digging for myself for years because it was about more than the dress.

Living From Desire, Not Mood

It was a sign that I mattered, not 20 pounds later, but right now. It was a sign that I’m not a woman who waits any longer. It was a sign of my future, not my past. And here’s what I want you to hear, because this is the part that most people miss. I had been writing about her for years. I had pages and pages of her in journals. I knew exactly who she was, but I thought I had to wait until I had lost 20 pounds to be her. But it was that dress that finally let her come forward because the page is where she was hypothetical. The dress is where she started to feel real to me. Now, I have another example from last week, because I want you to know this is not just something that I did once, but it’s something that I continue to practice. I still do this to this day.

Last week, I was in a mood, a funk. You know the kind, where you’re not exactly sad, you just feel off. Those are the days that we can often describe. They just feel heavy. And I did what I’ve always done. I picked up my journal and I started writing, and nothing was shifting for me. And I kept writing and still nothing. And finally, I caught myself and I literally said out loud, “All right, girl. We are going to put down the pen and we are going to go put on the outfit,” which inspired today’s episode. I was like, “Let’s go shower. Let’s go put on the energy, not just write about the energy, and literally put it on. And let’s see if that helps.” And let me tell you, it did immediately. Because when I came back and I looked in the mirror, there was concrete evidence of the woman I was choosing to be that day, not the woman in the mood, but the woman in her desires.

And that is the line that I want you to remember from this whole episode, whether it applies to clothes or something else. I want you to practice living your life based on your desires, not your mood, because your mood is going to fluctuate. One day you’re going to feel like it, the next day, you’re not. The day after that, who knows? But your desires, if you pay attention to them, are consistent. They’re always tugging at you. They’re always pointing you to the same woman, to the same dreams. And we have to take little micro-actions towards her every single day. Not because we’re forcing ourselves into her, but because we are practicing her. We are women who live from our futures. We’re not living from our moods. So I want to bring this all home. There is a woman you have been writing about, maybe for years.

The Shift: Become Her Now

You know what she wears. You know how she carries herself. You know the dinners she goes to. You know how she walks into a room. You know the way she says her opinion at the table without softening it first. You’ve written about her so many times you could probably find her blindfolded, and she is still waiting for you to put the pen down. Not because the journal is wrong. The journal told you who she was. The journal is sacred. The journal is how you found her, but the journal cannot become her for you. You become her by living as her in small, ordinary, completely doable ways on a regular Tuesday. And one of the most concrete, most immediately available ways to do that is by getting dressed for her, because there is a woman in your vision right now, and the way she shows up in her daily life, the way she gets dressed.

And if you can begin to take these little tiny actions that she’s already taking, one day you’re going to look in the mirror and say, “Oh my God, I’m finally her.” And listen, if you’re listening to this and you’re thinking, “But Tonya, I have no idea who this woman is,” then maybe you need to journal. You need to spend time with yourself asking yourself the tough questions. And while you’re doing it, you can still get dressed with intention. Decide how you want to feel today and then dress accordingly because style matters. And I’m not talking about trends. I’m not talking about fashion or designer clothes. I’m talking about the true meaning of style at its very core, which is your essence and how you express it. Here’s what I want you to do this week. I want you to walk into your closet once, on purpose with nowhere fancy to go.

And I want you to pull out the outfit that you’ve been saving for a day that deserves it. The dress with the tags maybe still on it. The shoes that you keep saying are too much. Maybe it’s the blouse that’s been hanging in there forever, waiting for the right occasion. Your life is the occasion. So put it on for no reason on a regular day with nowhere to go. And listen, it might feel a little uncomfortable. It might feel a little bit like a costume. You might look in the mirror and think, “Who do I think I am?” I want you to keep it on anyway because that discomfort is not a sign that it’s not you. That discomfort is a sign that’s a part of you that hasn’t gotten any practice yet. And the only way she gets practice is if you put her on.

You are going to walk differently. Your voice is going to change a little. The way you stand in your kitchen is going to be different. You won’t have to think about it. You won’t have to journal about it. The more you do this, you’re going to learn that she’ll just come forward because you finally got dressed for her. Now, before I let you go, I want you to remember one thing. The journal is not the problem. The journal is beautiful. As I said earlier, it is sacred. It’s where you first meet her, but she’s not on the page anymore. She’s in your closet. She’s in your daily actions just waiting for you to dress like her and to show up like her. So put down the journal, put on the outfit and go live the life that you’ve been writing about.

Now, if you like this episode, please press that like button, leave me a comment and hit subscribe. And I will see you in next week’s episode. Cheers.