How to Make the Next Six Months Your Best Yet

What if you decided, I mean, really decided that the next six months we're going to be your best ever? Not because you hustle harder, but because you shift how you see yourself, what you expect, and how you show up. This isn't about just doing more. It's about becoming more of you, and that's what we're talking about on today's 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, friends. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Can you believe it is already halfway through 2025? It's so hard to believe. I feel like we just started and it's January and yet, we are already halfway through the year. It's crazy how time is flying. And I genuinely want to know how are you feeling about the first part of the year Are you excited about the results? Are you excited about where you're going or are you feeling a little bit discouraged? Maybe you're feeling a little bit behind, feeling like you need a reset. Well, if the latter feels more like you, you're not alone. I had to do a reset last month. Something was off. This ever happen to you? I just felt like my energy was off. I was maybe heading in a direction I didn't want to go, and so I just stopped and I asked myself, "If you were to commit to making the next six months your best ever, what would have to change?"

And so that actually inspired not only today's episode, but it also inspired the focus of the School of Self-Image membership for the month of June, which is a mid-year reset. I'm going to be running members through the exact process that I went through and I did it a month ago and I can already feel and see the results of doing this work because here's what often happens, and just see if this feels true to you. It feels like the new year is a promise of what's to come. It feels like a blank canvas, even though if you think about it, it's just any other day. But we give it so much weight of like, "Oh, my God, it's a new year, new you, new start." And so we begin with usually some excitement. Coming off the holidays, it's the new year, it's like, "Oh, I'm going to achieve this. This is my focus for the year. This is what I'm excited about. I'm ready to start fresh."

And that energy typically lasts less than a month. And then we start hitting up against the obstacles because when you are creating, when you are growing, especially when you have big goals, you are going to have obstacles. I've never met anyone who had big goals that just seamlessly and effortlessly achieve them. If that were the case, so many of us would go after and achieve big goals, but it's not. There are going to be obstacles. And so what ends up usually happening is you start hitting up against those obstacles and you start being discouraged and you start cheating on your goals a little bit. Maybe you think, "Oh, this isn't the goal for me. I need to choose a different goal." Or you just give up on your goals altogether and you just wrap it up in the context of "this is just my life. Nothing's going to change. This is just how it is." And I am a big believer, and that is why the majority of people don't reach their goals. They give up too soon.

And number two, they focus on the action. They don't focus on who do I need to become to actually achieve that goal? Because that's the real secret. The real secret is you being an energetic match for what it is you want, to be aligned with what you want, because if you don't, you're just always fighting against yourself. So as I was saying, I was feeling off about a month ago. And it really became clear that I wasn't really excited about the first part of my year and the way it had gone. I had made some hires that didn't work out. I've had to fire people. It was just one of those tough beginnings of a year. And so I realized for me, I needed a reset. I needed to take a step back, re-examine, re-decide, re-commit, and more importantly, I needed to look at, and it's probably what you need to look at as well, I needed to look at my energy. I really needed to think about where I want to go and how I need to change to get there.

Now, I'm not talking about action. Action is secondary. I'm talking about who I've got to become. I'm talking about the energetic shifts. I'm talking about the expansion. I'm talking about creating capacity to hold more, and that's some deep, deep work, and that's what we're going to be working on within the membership this month. In fact, we have opened the doors. If you feel like you need a mid-year reset, this is the month to join. We are going to be resetting. We are going to re-decide. We are going to re-commit. And we are going to get super clear on the self-image that you need to step into to guarantee that the next six months are your best ever. So if this is something you feel like you need right now, if you're not happy with how the last six months went and you do not want to continue in the patterns, you don't want to continue in this feeling state that you're in and you are ready for some things to shift, come and join us. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join and let's do a mid-year reset together.

Now, I want to give you some general tips and ideas as to how to make your next six months your best ever. But as I was saying, this is about so much more than just setting some goals and saying, "I'm going to go for it." This is some deep work and this is what we're going to be doing in the membership. When I did this a month ago, I uncovered stuff that it became so clear to me as to why I had struggled the first six months of the year or the first five months when I did it. I was like, "Oh." Once you see it, you can unsee it. And so much has shifted in just a short amount of time. This is why energy is so important. We can accomplish so much more in so much less time than we realize when we focus on energy. And we're going to be talking about that in the membership this month. We're going to be talking about collapsing time. And I really feel like I did that this month.

Let me give you an example. First of all, I have had probably 10 members reach out to me and say, "what's going on with you? Your energy is so different." They were on a couple of calls that I did, and they were like, "We can just sense things are changing." So the world is feeling it because it's shifted within me. So that's just one little example, but here's something fun that happened this month that I wasn't expecting, but it was a result of doing this work. So here's what happened. I had hired a social media manager because I have been running the story for the longest time that I don't really like social media and I'm too busy for it. So my genius idea was, well, let me hire someone to do it for me.

And turns out that was not the best move. It became very clear early on that this was not going to work out because when people try to speak on my behalf, it never feels like me. And so I'll go onto my own social media and be like, "Oh, don't like that. That's not what I would've said. That's not how I would've said it." And I was trying to train her, but I realized I'm like, "Listen, Tanya, you need to put your big girl panties on and you need to step into this role and you need to stop having such split energy around it because part of me was telling myself that I don't want to be on social media. I don't want to publicize everything. And it was almost, if I just call it out, it was like this air of superiority of "I'm too good for social media," which usually my brain goes to, "I'm not good enough", but for this, it was like, "Oh, I'm too good to be on social media." I know. It's ridiculous because I'm not at all.

It was just my brain's way of trying to justify me not doing it. And then you add on, "Oh, you're too busy." Again, just another justification to make me feel good about my decision to not spend a lot of time on social media. When I did this work, however, I discovered that's not at all what it's about. What it was really about was me playing small, me hiding, me not being visible. And guess what? The last time I checked, it's really hard to spread your work. It's really hard to connect with more and more amazing women when you're over here hiding and then you're dressing it up in an excuse of, "Oh, I'm just too busy" or "I'm too good for that." No, you're just a little wimp. You're just hiding. That's what I had to tell myself.

And so talk about an energetic shift. As soon as I let her go, I was like, "Okay, we are done with this. We are so done with it, Tonya Leigh. You're stepping into this role and you're going to step into it like you've never stepped into it before. You're going to figure out how to do it in a way that you enjoy. You're going to get over whatever subconscious fears you have that are holding you back and you are going to just take yourself to the next level." It really came down to a decision. So it was probably two days after I let her go and I had done this work. I was in the car driving to my parents' house. Actually, Fonz was driving. I was in the passenger seat doing some work, and I was like, "Okay, it's time. It's time that you really own this part of your business and your life." Because the truth is, you all, I love social media. I really do. I love going on there and connecting with women, learning from them, being inspired by them. I enjoy it.

So to tell myself I don't enjoy it is a lie. Now, I don't like it when it takes over my life, but with everything, you get to decide how you do it. And so getting back to my story, I'm in the car and I just thought to myself, "What would be something fun to post right now?" And the other thing I didn't tell you, I left this part out, but the other thing with social media is in my brain has always been so complex and this is what the brain does. And listen, I've been teaching this stuff for years. It still happens to me. This is what the brain does. It tries to convince you of how complex, how hard, how difficult something is. When in reality, it's not that difficult. It's just you sharing from your heart. Stop trying to be perfect. Stop trying to impress. Just share what's true for you.

And so I opened up my phone and I found this clip of me walking out my door and I had on my headphones and my running shoes. I was going out for a walk and Fonz had filmed it. And so I was like, "Well, let me use this." And I thought to myself, "What would be fun to post about?" And so I got this idea. The caption is "If I woke up tomorrow and decided to reinvent myself, here's what I would do" and listed 27 things that I would do. Didn't think anything of this post. I put some cool music with it and I posted, and as I'm riding to my parents' house, I keep looking because I like to interact. When people comment, I like to interact, and all of a sudden, comment after comment, like after like. It just starts blowing up and I'm like, "Oh my God, this is crazy. This has never happened to me." I've never gone viral that way. And to make a long story, hopefully a little shorter, that one post led to me getting 20,000 new followers.

Now, keep in mind, I don't think I grew 20,000 followers all of last year, the entire year. I kept saying, "We need to grow my account." Didn't grow past that. I did it in two weeks because that post, the algorithm's still picking it up and putting it in front of people. And I was like, "Oh, my God." That is an example of an energetic shift, an energetic shift of, "Okay, this is what I'm stepping into. I'm just going to stop being this and I'm going to start being that." And that's the kind of energy I want you all to be thinking about as you're thinking about how to create your best six months ever. It's not going to be more action that's going to get you there. It is going to be a complete energetic expansion. It's going to be you deciding to step into a whole new role.

In fact, within the membership this month, I'm calling it the summer of reinvention, the next month's topic, I think July is going to be so good. I can't tell you what it is yet, but it's going to be so good. But it's around the same idea of you stepping into a new character, into a new you. And it really does come down to just one decision. And usually, those decisions come after you just getting fed up with yourself. Truly. You're like, "I can see how I'm holding myself back. I'm so tired of breaking promises to myself. I'm so tired of putting up with other people's BS. I'm so tired of not having boundaries and being a people pleaser. I'm so tired of playing small. I'm so tired of being broke." Whatever it is, you just get tired and you own it. You decide this is on me and stop blaming everybody else because that's what our brain wants to do because it makes it feel a little better, a little bit more palatable.

But the moment you're like, "No. I've created this and I'm ready to create something else and I am ready to step into the version who can create that for herself," that's when your life becomes magical. So it's time to actually get into some tips. I feel like I've given you some things to think about, but I want to give you some specific tips of how to have your best six months ever. Number one, decide what best means for you, because most people never define success. They just know they feel like crap. They know they're not happy. They know they're not fulfilled and they want to feel better, but they don't take the time to define what does that even look like for me? Ask yourself, "If I woke up six months from now and said, 'This was my best season yet,' what would have made it so?" This is the clarity that your brain craves to build a new reality.

If you don't tell your brain what to create, it is going to be confused. It's just like my social media example. I had never told my brain, "Hey, listen, let's get on board. This is what we're doing." I was living in, "Oh, I don't really want to do this and I'm going to hire someone else and hopefully they'll figure it out for me and this is too hard, this is too confusing." And so the brain's like, "All right, that's what you're asking for. It's what we'll give you."

But the moment I told my brain, "Hey, listen, you and me, we're going to be our own social media manager. We're going to have fun with this. We're going to figure out a process and a system so it doesn't take over your life. You're going to stop trying to get it perfect. You're just going to share. You're going to share what you feel like sharing. You are going to connect, you are going to have fun." Then my brain was like, "Oh, okay. That's what we're doing. That's what's up. All right." And then the brain gets on board with you. So you need to define what best looks and feels like for you.

And then as I was saying, and I'll just mention it again, you need to think about your self-image. This is the part that most people leave out and it's why creating is so difficult. You cannot out perform your self-image. Okay, so let's go back to my example that I just gave you. If my self-image is of a woman who doesn't like social media, who struggles with social media, and those are subconscious beliefs, every time I go to post, I'm going to feel probably a lot of frustration, a lot of doubt, a lot of maybe imposter syndrome. I'm going to be feeling all of those things deep down because I'm trying to take an action outside of how I see myself. But the moment I decide my self-image is going to be that of a woman who crushes social media, who understands social media, who enjoys social media, and then I start showing up every day to provide evidence for that, all of a sudden now I'm operating within a self-image that supports what it is that I want.

You have to elevate your energetic set point before you take action. That's why two days before I posted, I really was pumping myself up. I'm like, "Listen, this is what we're doing. This is who you are now. This is who you are now, so let's start showing up as her." So you need to get clear. Once you've defined what best looks like for you, you need to define, "Okay, now who do I need to become to create that best six months ever?" So that's the second point.

The third one is stop giving CPR to your past. Okay? I don't care how the last six months have been. I mean, that's not true. If you've had a hard time, of course I care, but I don't care in the sense of it doesn't define what the next six months can be. And we can sit around and we can talk about why you had a bad six months. We can talk about all of the things that went wrong. We can sit around and massage your problems, but that is not going to help you create your best six months ever. It's like learn the lesson, thank the last six months for teaching you those lessons, and now what? Let's reset. Let's redefine, let's recommit. I was around someone the other day and every time I'm around her, all she wants to do is talk about her past and her problems as if that's going to be what gets her out of it.

Now, there is a time in our lives where we need to do that. When we've been through trauma, when we are processing grief, that's a different situation. Those are times that warrant us sitting around and really giving ourselves the grace and the space to process. But for a lot of people, it just becomes a habit. A habit of just sitting around and talking about your problems. And remember what you focus on grows, so if you sit around and talk about your problems, guess what's growing in your experience? Your problems, because that's all you're seeing. That's all you're experiencing because you are indulging in them.

Start talking about your future, start talking about possibilities. Start talking about where you're going, what you're excited about, what you're grateful for, and you will find that your next six months are going to explode with possibility, with experiences, with opportunities, but you have to stop giving CPR to your past. So the last six months they're done. It only exists now in your head. The last six months is just a story in your head now. Do you want to sit around and keep talking about how bad it's been or do you want to thank it, figure out what it taught you and let's move on to creating your next six months?

The other thing I want you to think about is the concept of collapsing time. Now you collapse time through decision and embodiment. I want you to ask yourself this question, if you had to achieve something in the next six months that maybe your brain has convinced you is going to take you a year, maybe even two years, but if you had to do it in the next six months, what would have to change? How would you have to change? It's such a fun question, and this is something we're going to be talking about a lot in the membership. There are ways to collapse time and achieve things in so much less time than you realize, but it comes down to your being-ness, not necessarily the actions that you're taking. When you expand your self-image, you immediately expand what's possible for you. When you expand your self-image, you are expanding your capacity, you are expanding your decision making process, you're expanding the opportunities that are available to you, and when you do that, then you're able to collapse time and actually create so much more in so much less time.

The other thing is you need to rehearse your future. One of the things that I have been doing on repeat, more now than I ever have in my whole personal development journey, is visualization. Really visualizing, rehearsing her, feeling her, way before I'm in the actual future that I'm rehearsing. Because the future doesn't exist just like the past doesn't exist. All that ever exists is right now, and so by rehearsing the future me that I'm stepping into, I'm bringing that energy, that presence, that essence into the now, and it is that energy and essence that informs how I show up, what I say yes to, what I say no to, what I'm available for, what I'm unavailable for. Life is always happening right now in this moment. Who are you being in this moment and is it a match for who you say you want to be? Is it a match for what you say you want? If not, bring it back to this moment. Visualize her, feel her. I want you to flood your brain with images of success.

I often joke that I brainwashed myself into success. Seriously. Even way back in the day when I was a single mama working as a critical care nurse, I remember just flooding my brain with images of me getting fit, of me being different, of me living in different places, of me traveling, of me doing all of the things that I'm doing now. I wasn't back then, but I flooded my brain with those images. I remember I used to do this thing, because I spent a lot of time in the car driving to and from work and I would have interviews. I would talk to myself. I'd pretend someone was interviewing me. And I would answer the interview questions as if I were being interviewed by Oprah. I was telling my brain what to create. I was telling my brain, "Hey, this is where we're going." Even though I was so far from being her. I was so far from that place.

And I didn't even have the lingo for it then, I just knew it felt good to give myself permission to dream that way. It felt good to see a different possibility for me. It felt good to put myself in that energy of what was possible, even though it was just me talking to myself in the car. This is called neuro sculpting. It's not just woo woo stuff. It is scientifically based. And so I want you to begin to feel what it would feel like to be where you want to be and then start speaking like her, walking like her, dressing like her, making decisions like her, going to places that you think she would go.

I remember going to luxury hotels to work. I couldn't afford them at the time, but I knew my future self could and she would be hanging out there. So I would go sit in the lobby and just surround myself with that energy, that energy of abundance, that energy of a future that I hoped to create one day. And I am telling you all, that works. Energy is everything. I was placing myself in an environment that mirrored back to me how I wanted to think and feel about myself and what I wanted to experience. And so rehearse your future until she feels so familiar and then until your environment is reflecting her back to you.

The last thing that I want you to do to make this your best six months ever is just decide that it will be. Make that decision right now. The next six months are going to be my best six months ever. Tell yourself that every single day up until December 31st, the best six months ever, because what you're doing is you're telling your reticular activating system, that part of your brain that filters through all of the data, all of the inputs, you're telling it what to deliver to you. And this is why we need to think on purpose. This is why we need to be intentional about where we let our attention go, what we allow into our minds, because that is creating our experience.

And so when you tell your brain, "Hey, listen, first of all, this is what the best six months looks like for me, and I've already decided that this will be my best six months ever," you are telling your brain what to go out there and create for you. You're telling it what to look for, you're telling it what to notice, you're telling it the evidence to provide to you. And when you start looking for good things, you're going to see them everywhere. When you start looking for things to be grateful for, when you start looking for how you have always and always will be good enough, when you start looking for opportunities, when you start looking for reasons why you are such an incredible human being, your brain will start delivering that to you. So just decide. Let's all decide right now we are about to create our best six months ever.

And if you want to dive deeper into this work, if you want me to lead you through my process, come join us within the School of Self-Image for this month. You can go to www.schoolofselfimage.com/join, and I cannot wait to see you inside. As I said earlier, I'm calling this our season of reinvention. So we're going to have some fun this month and the months to come. So come and join us. All right, my friends, have a beautiful rest of your week and I will see you on next week's episode. Cheers.

Hey, are you ready to transform your self-image but lack direction and support? If so, I'd like to invite you to join the School of Self-Image. This is an exclusive monthly membership where you'll create your own powerful before and after story. Through weekly classes and coaching, you'll learn powerful techniques on how to elevate the quality of your mindset, style, and surroundings to change how you see yourself and create extraordinary results in your life. Head over to www.schoolofselfimage.com/join to learn more.