5 Ways to Elevate Your Energy

Did you hear? We just opened the doors to the School of Self-Image. This is my monthly membership program where I get to work with women in elevating their self-image. And I just have to tell you all, I am blown away by the before and after stories that are happening within the six months that we opened the doors. It is so much fun and so life-changing.

And next month, we’re going to be focusing solely on today’s topic of the podcast, which is all about elevating your energy. I believe this is going to be our best month yet, and it’s hard to top the previous months. So, if you want to join us, head over to schoolofselfimage.com/join and I can’t wait to see you inside. Now, let’s dive into today’s episode.

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

Hello, gorgeous friends. Welcome back to another episode. And if this is your first time tuning in, welcome. It’s lovely to have you here. I just came back from a workout. And I am feeling so energized. In fact, when I think back over the past year, one of the things that I’ve noticed is my energy levels.

I’m feeling so energized. And if you’ve listened to the podcast before, you may have heard me say that last year was my best year ever. And it was also my hardest year ever because what ended up happening for me is that I had to let go of the things that were draining my energy and I had to start doing things that gave me more energy. And the result of that is I am having so much momentum in my life.

And that’s what I want for you all. I know what it feels like to be stuck and to feel low-energy and to just get through a day. And this is our one life. I want us to have the energy to create that lives that we want. Because creation is an energetic process. And if you’re low on energy, it’s hard to sometimes even get out of the bed, much less go out there and create what it is that you want.

My work is around elevating a woman’s self-image. And you can’t do that without elevating your energy because if you think about the woman you want to be, if you think about the woman who’s living your dreams, what you’re going to notice is that she is at a different energetic vibration than what you are now. It’s just the way the world works.

We have to become an energetic match for that in which we want. Because if you don’t, you will always be repelling it from you. And when I’m talking about energy, I’m talking about how we feel on a physical level and an emotional level. And if you pay attention, you’ll notice that they go hand in hand.

Have you noticed, on days when you’re feeling good physically, it’s so much easier to think higher-vibe thoughts? Likewise, on those days where you’re not feeling good physically, it’s very challenging to think high-vibe thoughts.

And so, the secret is to work on both of them and increasing and elevating both of them so that you can just feel better. And when you feel better, you look better. You show up better. And you live better.

Elevating my energy has been my soul focus this year. And in doing this work, I cannot not share it with you because honestly, I want you all to feel what it feels like to be full of vitality and passion and excitement for your life. And all of that is going to require that you increase your energy.

It’s impossible to feel those things without having an increased energy level. In fact, sometimes women will come to me and they’ll tell me they want more passion in their marriage. And when I talk with them and they describe their lifestyle and how them and their partners are showing up in the home, I’m like, “No wonder there’s no passion.”

You guys are sitting around watching Netflix, eating packaged foods, and just feeling physically terrible. Like, if you want passion in your marriage, you’re going to have to get up and get moving. You’re going to have to get your energy going.

Your energy is going to have to be a match for passion. And listen, I have been on all realms of the energetic spectrum. In fact, in total transparency, once my daughter was diagnosed with a chronic illness like five years ago, I noticed that I went from being very energetic to having low energy. And that was a part of my big year last year.

I was like, I woke up to it and was like, “Listen Tonya, if you keep going down this road, you’re not going to be happy in a year, two years, five years, 10 years. You’ve got to pick up your energy.” And so, I had to make the hard choices and let go of the energetic drainers and begin to do more things and be around more people that gave me energy.

So, on this podcast, I’m going to share with you five ways that you can begin to elevate your energy. And I’m not going to be able to go into these in detail because we just don’t have enough time for that. But if you know that this is work that you need to do and you’re feeling very low-energy, I want to invite you to join us for the month of May within the School of Self-Image.

This is going to be our soul focus. I’m going to be sharing my own personal practices of how I’m raising my energy and I’m going to be having you focus on different areas of your life that you need to really take a good look at, of what you’re giving your energy to that’s no longer serving you, how you’re showing up physically, how you are thinking that’s taking away your energy.

Because what I can tell you, the end of May, if you do this work, you’re going to feel more energized. And when you feel more energized, you get the momentum of your life going.

For example, for me right now, I just feel like the momentum is going. Because here’s the thing, you all; life can’t move through you if you are standing still. When you get moving, life will move to catch up with you. And so, if you want to create a life that you love, it’s going to require that you create the energy to allow for that life. So, let’s talk about five ways that you can elevate your energy.

The first one is at the core. And it’s the one that we often overlook because we think we have to do a lot of things to create more energy. And that is an important part of the puzzle. But if your mindset is not right, you’re going to be constantly fighting against yourself. It’s why self-image is so important. The way you see yourself is going to be ultimately what you create. And so, you need to raise the energy of your thoughts.

Think about it. if you sit around and you say things like, “Nothing every works out for me. I’m so tired. I don’t know what to do.” I just want you to notice, do those thoughts give you energy? I’m guessing not. And yet, we do that to ourselves.

We want energy but we’re thinking in opposition to energy. So, you have to pay attention to the energy of your thinking. Because thoughts become things. If you think something long enough and you feel the energy of that thought, that is ultimately going to be what you create. There’s evidence for it everywhere.

And so, are you thinking in a way that gives you energy or are you thinking in a way that takes away your energy? And if you want to go deeper into this, I’m going to be running my members through exercises and giving them tools to increase the energy of their thoughts. And so, just head over to schoolofselfimage.com/join to learn more about the membership. But pay attention to your thinking. It’s so important.

Okay, the next one is diet and exercise. Now, I know some of you may be rolling your eyes and thinking, “Oh, here we go again.” And I get it. I used to be the same way. And I think for any of you who are struggling with your weight, this can be a sticky topic.

I remember getting to a point in my weight journey of just like, “I don’t want to think about it anymore. I’m just so done with thew whole diet and exercise culture. I’m just done with thinking about what I eat and exercising.”

But I want to present this in a way that will hopefully inspire you to revisit it from a different lens. So, I had a back injury about eight years ago and up until that point, I was living a very active lifestyle. Diet for the past decade hasn’t been a big issue for me. It was in my 20s and early 30s, but I’ve done a lot of work to heal my relationship around that. So, I eat really well.

But my exercise, my fitness over the last eight years since I had my back injury had definitely declined. But I didn’t feel terrible. But when I went to a doctor this past year just to get a checkup and I saw the data when they did a body scan and they were like, “Listen, you need to put on like nine pounds of muscle. If you keep going in this direction, you may feel good right now, but think about 10 years from now, 20 years from now, how are you going to feel?”

And when I got really honest with myself, I knew that I wasn’t paying attention to my fitness. And so, that has been a big focus for me over the past year. I’ve been elevating my fitness. And it was hard in the beginning. I didn’t want to do it. Going to the gym, pushing my body, I was like, “Eurgh.” But I kept thinking about the reward of having a strong and healthy body.

And now that I’m many months into it, I’m still getting stronger. I’m still not as strong as I want to be. But what I can tell you is that I’m physically feeling like a different person. Last year, around this time, I thought I was dying. I thought, “Something for sure is wrong with me.” My energy level was low, physically. I just wasn’t feeling like I knew I could feel.

And so, I started to focus on health. Not how my body looks. Not what other people think. None of that. I was just like, I want to be the heathiest, strongest version of Tonya. And that has been my focus over the last year. And not surprisingly, I have so much energy. I’m seeping better than ever. I’m just more energetic. I feel so much more vivacious than I did last year at this time.

And now, I’m just so grateful for the Tonya a year ago who was willing to do the uncomfortable things. Because when you’ve been out of fitness for a while, it’s so much harder to get back into it. Now, fortunately, I moved every day. I would go on walks every day. I wasn’t completely sedentary. But I wasn’t, again, as fit as I knew I could be.

If you want to have more energy, you’re going to have to get your body moving and you’re going to have to eat energy-giving foods. I’m blown away by the foods that we put in our bodied, full of chemicals, that are processed, and then we wonder why we feel so bad.

I want us to be women, and men if you’re listening to this, who eat foods that give us energy and beauty and life. Fresh vegetables, organic if possible, fruits, good fats, well-sourced meats if you eat meat. I want you to think about, “Is my food giving me energy or taking it away?”

I think about what Tony Robbins says about the box life. He was like, “We are a society who wake up in a box, we eat out of a box, we get in a box to drive to work. We walk into a box. We leave the box of our office and then we go home and we turn on a box. And then, we go to sleep in a box. Living a very boxed life.”

Can you see, there’s no energy in that? We were born to move. If you think about how we were created, we were created to run and to hunt and to procreate and to have our children and to raise them and to be out in nature and move. And yet, so many people aren’t. And the result of that is we are a society of low-energy. We’ve got to eat well and move our bodies if we want to have an energetic life.

As I mentioned earlier, I just got back from the gym. I even filmed it because I’m going to be doing a behind-the-scenes for the members of the School of Self-Image so I can share with them my process and my fitness journey. But now, sitting here recording this, I just have so much energy.

I think sometimes we think, by moving more, we’re going to decrease our energy. But the exact opposite happens. You start bringing life force into your body when you move and then you top that with eating foods that give you life force energy, you just naturally have more energy. Which is why it is so important.

Get up and move today. When you’re at lunch and you’re faced with what to eat, ask yourself, what would give me energy? And choose that. And if you do that day after day, you’re going to be in a very different place 365 days from now. I will promise you that. Okay, so that was number two.

Number three is raising the energy of your intellectual consumption. So, pay attention to what you’re consuming mentally. If you want to have low energy, I highly recommend that you watch the news. Have you ever noticed the vibration of the news? It’s never, like, “Hey, listen, we have good news. This many people survived the world today.” No, it’s always doom and gloom.

What is it that they say? If it bleeds, it leads? And that’s what the news is for. It’s to alarm us. It’s to scare us. And yes, it is to inform us. But at what price are you paying to be informed all day every day with such a negative energy. So, I’m not telling you not to watch the news, but I just want to pay attention to how is it affecting your energy.

And this has been a hard year because a lot of people have been at home and scared and worried about what is happening in the world. And some of you may still be in that position. And it’s very tempting to turn on the news to check in, to see, like, should I be scared? Is there some hope at the end of the tunnel?

You have to give that to yourself. You have to give yourself the security. You have to give yourself the calm. And so, intellectual consumption is anything that you digest with your mind. So, what you watch on TV, the books you read. If you’re sitting around reading books that are reminding you of how you think you’re broken, it’s probably not giving you energy.

I cleaned up my bookshelf a long time ago, my friends. And when I look at my bookshelf it just delights me. I star smiling. It is a match for my future, not my past. And so, begin to raise the energy of your intellectual consumption. So, that’s number three.

Again, I’m not able to go into detail in a lot of these. We’re going to be covering it deeper within the membership. But if you’re not in the membership, I still want you to practice this. Practice these areas, raising the energy.

Okay, number four is raising the energy of your surroundings. The surroundings could be your home, the state of your car, where you go, and the people that you surround yourself with. This year, one of the reasons why I think my energy levels are so high is that I have intentionally put myself around energetic people.

And when I say energetic people, I don’t mean people that are bouncing off the walls. I’m talking about people that just think at a higher level. And when you bring a crazy idea to them, they’re like, “Yeah, let’s do it. Why not?” Versus the people who are like, “That won’t work. Who do you think you are?” Trust me, I’ve been around those people too. And life is too short.

I want to be around people who want to live fully and who are excited about life. Because that is contagious. So, if you’re around people that are constantly complaining and telling you how your dreams are impossible, yes, you can do the mindset work around that to continue to grow. And I work with a lot of women around this because sometimes they find it’s the people that are living in their house that are like that. And they don’t want to leave. And that is a beautiful thing.

You can still bloom in that situation. But if you find yourself putting yourself around people that you don’t even like but you still choose to be around them, there is a choice to not do that to yourself. There is also the choice to find those people who are likeminded and who are living at the higher vibe level.

But the surroundings are also, as I was saying, your home. Do you have a lot of clutter? Do you not like the color of your walls? These are all fixable things. Even for me, you know, I buy fresh flowers every week and put them in my home. Why? Because every time I look at them, they give me a little boost of energy.

I think thoughts like, “Oh my god, they’re so beautiful. I love having fresh flowers in my home.” Those thoughts feel good. Giving me that energetic boost just by looking at a vase of flowers. So, pay attention to how your surroundings are affecting your energy and start to make little micro-changes.

It might be cleaning out one drawer. It might be saying no to one lunch date where you just know you don’t even want to be at the table. But start paying attention and doing the work to raise the energy of your surroundings.

Finally, number five is to raise the energy of your style. Y’all know I had to throw some style into this podcast. But truly, when you go into your closet in the morning to choose what’s going to adorn your body all day, choose something that gives you energy. Choose an outfit that makes you feel fabulous. Choose an outfit that matches the future you, not the past you.

So, for example, it’s so easy to stay in ruts by choosing sweatpants because you’re thinking, “Well, I’m just going to be at home all day anyway. Nobody’s going to see me.” Think about what that does to your energy.

Now, if you love wearing sweatpants and they make you feel amazing and they’re cute and it fits your lifestyle, I have no problem with it. But my problem is when we’re unconscious about these choices. Now, you don’t have to wear a designer ballgown during the day, unless you want to, and then I am your biggest fan for that choice too.

I’m just asking you to be deliberate, to really think about the choices that you’re making, and are they giving you energy or are they depleting your energy? And it even shows up in our closet.

For me personally, when I put on a well-thought-out outfit, I feel better. I have more energy. Now, it’s just an outfit, just like flowers are flowers, people are people. But it’s what I think about myself and being a self-respectable woman. It is not about impressing anyone else because one outfit someone may love and someone may hate. It’s not about any of that.

I want to be a woman that impresses myself every single day. And one of the ways that I do that is by how I show up through my clothing, through my style choices. And so, these are five ways that you can begin to elevate your energy. And if you’re feeling really overwhelmed in life right now and you’re feeling stuck, don’t pressure yourself to do all of these. That’s the worst idea ever.

We just need to get the momentum moving in your life again. Choose one and make that a focus maybe over the next week or two weeks. It doesn’t matter. As long as you’re increasing your energy and getting the momentum going and beginning to move in the direction that you want your life to move.

Again, if you would like my support and you want to go deeper into this and if you want to guarantee that in 30 days you have more energy, I would love for you to join us within the School of Self-Image. The doors just opened. We’re going to be shutting them down soon. You can head over to schoolofselfimage.com/join.

And until I see you again, I love you. Thank you for tuning in. Have a beautiful and extraordinary day. 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.