What 500 Episodes Taught Me (and What’s Next)

500 episodes. I can’t believe I’ve recorded 500 episodes of this podcast, and that’s what we’re talking about during Poolside Confessions today. I want to celebrate number one, and I also want to confess some of the lessons that I’ve learned from showing up consistently for a long time. In fact, I went back and looked and I saw that my first podcast was published on August the 8th, 2014. I have been showing up consistently week after week for 12 years and I’ve learned a lot of lessons along the way. In fact, this morning over coffee, I pulled out my journal and I wrote all of these lessons down for you. So let’s just get into it, shall we?

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.

Lesson One: Consistency Creates the Results

Lesson number one is consistency creates a body of work before a result. When I started this, I didn’t know if anyone was listening. I didn’t know the impact that it would have. All I had was a vision and a hunger to share all of the things that I was loving and that was changing my life. By doing that week after week after week, I suddenly had created a body of work and that’s when I started to experience the results of the consistency and it reminds me of something that I teach to my members and that is the power of the Compound Effect.

The Compound Effect states that the seemingly insignificant things that we do consistently add up to create big results over time. I believe that we live in a culture of overnight success and quick wins and we can easily give up when we don’t see the results happening immediately.

But, what I can offer you is that when you’re devoted, when you’re devoted to your dreams, to your vision, that devotion should create a consistency in you. And while you may not see the results immediately, what I know is that if you continuously show up week after week, day by day, whatever it looks like for you, eventually you are going to experience the Compound Effect of all of that effort. So that’s lesson number one.

Lesson Two: Your Voice Is Built Through Practice

Lesson number two is your voice is not found. It develops through practice. I think so many of us can stop ourselves because we think we’re not great at speaking. We are not great at writing. We’re not great at expressing ourselves and we act as if it’s a special gene that someone is blessed with. And the truth is it’s something that you get good at through practice. You are able to refine your tone, you’re able to refine your ideas, you’re able to refine your delivery and over time it doesn’t take as much effort because you just practiced it so much.

I think back to when I first started. My very first podcast, probably the first, I don’t know, year, was just me reading my blog post. That was it. Everything about my delivery, my voice, it has all changed. Now I have notes, but I’ve lived in my message long enough. I’ve talked about it long enough. I’ve practiced it long enough that I can just now speak off of the cuff, but that wasn’t how it was initially.

I had to develop that skill. I had to develop my voice and I fear that not enough people give themselves the grace to be a human, to be a little messy, to mess it up, to learn and to grow. But that’s what is going to create the result that you’re after. It’s the consistency and allowing yourself the grace to develop as a human being.

Lesson Three: Show Up Before You Feel Ready

Lesson number three, don’t wait until you’re ready. Listen, the brain is going to try to keep you in the familiar. The brain doesn’t want to be judged. The brain doesn’t want to be seen as incapable or not smart. And so it’s always going to try to tell you that you’re not ready. You need to go do another course. You need to wait for better equipment. You need to wait until you have really refined the idea and that waiting is just you prolonging the agony because you’re never going to feel ready.

Do you know when you’re going to feel ready when you’re doing it? And even then, your brain’s going to be telling you that you’re not ready, but over time you build confidence. Over time, you create the readiness because you showed up for it. So don’t wait until you feel ready. Show up and be ready for whatever presents itself to you.

You may be surprised. A new opportunity may fall into your lap. You may meet new people. You may be able to grow your business, but you’ll never be able to do that if you’re sitting around waiting to feel ready, because again, the brain is always going to tell you that you’re not ready.

Now the other side of that is waiting to be inspired, waiting to be motivated, waiting to have the perfect words. There have been weeks where I have felt so unmotivated. I have not felt inspired and yet I showed up. And to me, that’s being a professional. That’s you overcoming your own resistance and through overcoming your own resistance, you are building such a positive self-image of, I’m a woman who shows up even when I don’t feel ready, even when I’m not inspired, even when I’m not in a mood. I remember recording this podcast when my daughter was so, so sick.

In fact, I remember being in Mexico, she was at a clinic for almost a month and I brought my podcast mic and I’m like, I’ve committed to doing this and so I’m showing up for it. I was an emotional wreck behind the scenes, but it was in that wreckage that I was still having epiphanies and aha’s and learning things and that’s what I was sharing during that time. Don’t wait until you feel ready. Show up for what you say it is that you want.

Lesson Four: The Work Changes Who You Become

Number four is the work changes you. Something happens when you practice that consistency, that devotion to your dreams. It is building a self-image of, I am a woman who shows up. I’m a woman who takes her dreams seriously. I’m a woman who’s committed to her dreams. I’m a woman who follows through. I’m a woman who has value to share.

I’m a woman who’s building something. And that again, has such a positive impact on your self-concept that then feeds into how you show up in your relationships, how you show up with your body and your health. And so the work itself changes you. But not only that, when I was showing up for my podcast episodes, I was refining what I believed in. I was learning, I was growing, I was getting better. And so all of that has helped me really grow as a woman. So it’s not even about the episodes, it’s about how those episodes have grown me.

The next one is really important because I do feel like, especially for any of you all who have been doing any type of content creation for a long time, you can start to feel burnt out and repetitive, right? You’re like, “I need new ideas. I need fresh content.” And I feel like that puts such pressure on ourselves that we forget the work that we fell in love with.

Lesson Five: The Power of Repetition

And so the lesson is repetition is actually needed. Don’t be afraid to repeat ideas because people hear things differently during different seasons of their lives. They may hear a message one time, but it didn’t hit. But when you say it two or three more times, they actually begin to hear it, feel it, and integrate it. If you go back and listen to my podcast, I say the same similar things over and over. I just present them in new ways. I have new stories to demonstrate them, but they’re the same concepts over and over and over. So don’t be afraid of repetition.

Lesson Six: Let Yourself Evolve

The next lesson, you must let yourself evolve publicly. And this one is so hard because with 500 episodes, people have seen my journey as a woman. You’ve seen me go through relationships, my appearance changed, you’ve seen my style change, you’ve heard my voice change.

You’ve been with me some of you during very difficult seasons. You’ve watched my body of work evolve. And that can be very hard because it can feel very vulnerable because for whatever reason, I feel like humans think they’re never allowed to change, that if they change, they are somehow untrue to themselves. And I don’t see it that way at all. I think that we are here to evolve. I celebrate a woman when she comes out and she’s like, “You know what? I have outgrown this. I have fulfilled this mission. I am ready to evolve to the next level,” because I’m like, that’s why we are here. So don’t be afraid to evolve publicly and proudly.

Lesson Seven: Your Work Becomes Your Legacy

The next lesson is very similar to the last one and that is, I’ve discovered that my podcast is basically an archive of my own becoming and I’m so grateful that I have created that. I realized that my grandkids can one day go back and literally week after week witness their grandmother’s journey of becoming. I realized that young girls, maybe their moms listen to this podcast and one day maybe they’ll stumble upon it and they’ll be able to witness what a woman’s becoming is like because you can see where I was, the lessons I was learning, what I was being challenged with, what I was growing into. And I think that is such a beautiful thing and I’m so glad that I’ve created that because it’s going to last long after I’m gone. There will be a record there of my own becoming.

Lesson Eight: Be Devoted, Not Attached

The next lesson is be devoted while also being detached. This is a big one because I see this so often when I’m coaching clients, they are so attached to the outcome and when the outcome isn’t happening fast enough or the way they thought it was supposed to, they become very discouraged.

But I will tell you with this podcast, and with all of my social media, my business, I am very detached from the metrics. Now in a business, of course, you need to follow the metrics, you need to make course corrections. But especially with the podcast, I’ve never been into the numbers. In fact, I remember when we hit a million downloads, I didn’t know it until like six months after when my podcast team reached out and they were like, “Did you realize you just hit a million downloads like six months ago?” And I was like, “No, I had no idea.” But I believe that has been what has allowed me to be devoted because my devotion has always been to my vision, to my dreams, to adding value, to hopefully making a woman’s life better. And so if I get too involved in the metrics and they’re not trending the way I think they’re supposed to, it can get me out of that devoted state.

And so, yeah, I’ve never really paid attention to how many listeners or downloads we had. I did just find out that we have well over 10 million downloads now, which is amazing. I’m so excited about that, but I’m more concerned with the woman that DMs me and says, “I’ve been listening to your podcast and it’s changed my life, because I believe in the Butterfly Effect. I believe that by her life changing that that’s going to have a positive impact on her kids, on her spouse, on her coworkers. And it just is an effect that just keeps on giving. It’s like the Compound Effect socially, right? The little things that you don’t even realize are happening behind the scenes are creating this huge positive impact in the world. And that’s what I am most interested in. That’s what I’m most excited about.

So learning to be devoted while also being detached is going to be such an amazing skill that you have when it comes to your dreams because sometimes the numbers won’t trend in your favor and that’s oftentimes when a woman gives up, but when you stay consistent, eventually the world and the universe is going to mirror that back to you.

Lesson Nine: Create More, Overthink Less

Number nine, the more you create, the less precious you become. I say this because I realized I was so precious when I first started out. I felt like I could be so easily ruined. One bad podcast was going to be the demise of me and my business. I treated myself like this fragile little thing and I wanted everything to be so perfect and creativity has really killed that. Creativity just asks you to show up. We know that creativity is messy. It is chaotic sometimes and you stop viewing yourself as some little precious little entity that can be easily broken and you start to see yourself just as a creative being and you’re willing for it to be messy, you’re willing for it to be imperfect and you just create, you release, you learn and you move on.

Lesson Ten: Learn to Handle Criticism

Lesson number 10 might be the reason why I encourage all of you to start a podcast, a blog, anything where you have to be publicly faced because it teaches you to deal with criticism. A lot of people aren’t going after their dreams because they’re afraid of being criticized. But with over 500 episodes now, I’ve had many critics. I’ve had people that didn’t like the way I sound. I’ve had people who didn’t like my message. I’ve had people who didn’t like my delivery. I’ve had people who didn’t like my intro music. And now that I’ve recently gone to video podcasting on YouTube, I’ve had people not like what I was wearing and you just learn to deal with it. It causes you to grow a backbone.

I view criticism very differently than a lot of people. I don’t think criticism is bad. I think some criticism is there to grow you. It is rightfully received. It’s something that maybe you don’t see and you know it’s coming from a good place from someone who really likes your work and really wants to see you succeed. And that’s the kind of criticism that we need to accept and allow so that we can grow and get better.

And then there’s the kind of criticism where you just know it’s not coming from a good place. You know it has everything to do with the critic and not you. And that’s where you learn just to have that strong backbone, to be committed to your vision, to let people not like you, to be misunderstood. And as my father would always say, “It’s like water off of a duck’s back”. You stay devoted and detached and keep showing up.

Lesson Eleven: Creativity Comes From Living

Number 11 is a really important one. And for any of you who may feel like I’m running out of ideas, I’ve been doing this for so long. Again, I keep feeling like I’m saying the same things in the same ways. What I have learned from doing 500 podcast episodes is that the creativity is in the living.

Oftentimes, when we’re feeling that way, we want to buckle down and really sit at home with our brain and try to figure out what to say. And I have always been someone when I’m in that place, I just go out and live. I go to a different function. I go meet new people. I get exposed to new ideas and I pay attention to my life. I pay attention to the conversations that I’m having, the challenges that I’m hearing other people go through. I’m paying attention because your life is the creative medium. It is how you find new ideas, new sources of information. So if you’re feeling a little creatively dry, just get out, go live, pay attention, and come back and report to us what you’re learning, what you’re discovering, what you are finding out.

Lesson Twelve: The Real Reward Is Who You Become

Lesson number 12, the real reward isn’t the number, but the woman I have become by reaching it. You all, it’s never about the thing. It’s about who you must become to create the thing. It’s never about the money. It’s never about the weight loss. It’s never about the relationship. It’s never about the house. It’s like, who did you have to become to create that? And I realized in doing 500 episodes, I had to become a woman who believed she had something worthy to say, who was committed, who was consistent, who showed up even when it was hard, who showed up even when she was having self-doubt. And that impact on my self-image has spilled into every other area of my life. So yeah, it’s not about the thing, it’s about who you must become to create the thing and that is the best thing.

Lesson Thirteen: When Your Next Chapter Calls 

Lesson number 13 is the one that I’m actively in right now and that is your truest essence will eventually ask for a new expression. Here’s the thing, in 500 episodes, if I go back, I can hear the woman I was becoming. I can hear the challenges, the things I was working through, the things I was sharing, the things I was passionate about and all of that has led to where I am today. So it’s not that the work doesn’t work, it’s worked beautifully. It’s landed me here. And I can tell you, I am more relaxed than I’ve ever been. I am more joyful than I’ve ever been. I feel like I know myself more deeply than I’ve ever known myself. And so, I’m sitting here realizing there is something new coming through me, something more expansive, more true, more aligned than I’ve ever, ever experienced or created. And I’m giving myself the space to just be with that.

What’s Next

And that brings me to the final lesson and that is it’s okay to take a break. After 500 episodes, I know I’m consistent. That’s not something I need to prove to myself any longer. I also discovered that I’m probably in the top 1% of podcasters because most podcasts stop after three episodes. Think about that. After three episodes, the majority of podcasts stop. I’ve been doing this for 500 episodes. So consistency is not something that I need to prove to myself.

What I need to prove to myself right now is that it’s okay to take a break. It’s okay to step away and to celebrate and to allow this next expression to come through you. So today is going to be a pause in the podcast and that’s very hard for me to do because again, I have been doing this for 12 years. I’ve been showing up in your feed every Wednesday consistently. It’s become a part of my identity, just what I do.

And now I’m telling myself, wait, we’re going to give ourselves space to think about what’s next. How do you want to express your vision in a new way? And it may be podcasting and it’s really hard for me because I’m such a planner. I’m someone who usually knows what she’s going to be doing a year from now. I plan my life accordingly and now I’m in a space of not knowing, not having a plan. And for someone like me that is very uncomfortable, but I also know that something is happening inside of me and I’m trusting that.

I think there are seasons where planning is our best friend and I think there are seasons where we need to tear up the plan. We need to let life dance through us. We don’t need to control everything. I just have such a trust and a knowing in whatever’s going to come through me next, but I know that I need to take a step back and to give myself space to breathe and to dream.

I plan on being involved in my community and my membership. I plan on exploring social media in a new way. So if we aren’t connected on Instagram, come on over, go find me @Tonyaleigh and please say hi in the DMs. I always love connecting with the community personally. I’d love to say hi to you.

Also, I’m still going to be doing a weekly newsletter. So if you are not on our list, make sure you go to schoolofselfimage.com/edit so you can see what’s happening behind the scenes. But, more than anything, with this 500th episode, I want to say thank you. I do not take it lightly that you have allowed me to be on this journey with you. The fact that so many of you have tuned in week after week, every single Wednesday, I cannot tell you how much that means to me that you have entrusted me, that you have allowed me to share, and hopefully, I have somehow made your life more beautiful, more joyful. I’ve helped you feel more powerful in your own life because that’s my ultimate goal.

So yeah, if you’ve been listening and you’ve never left me a comment or a review or a message, I’d really appreciate it. I would love to hear from you. Let me know down below in the comments, leave me a review or just come say hi on Instagram. All right, my friends, have a beautiful week and I will see you somewhere in the near future. Take care. Cheers.