My 2024 WOTY

For the past 10 years, I have chosen a word of the year, and in this episode I'm revealing what it is for 2024. And by the way, I looked up the word flitter, and it is indeed a word. Wondering what I'm talking about? Well, tune into this episode. 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, my friends. How are you all doing in the second week of the year? Are you still excited? Are you ready? I want us to keep the intensity up the entire year because I know that feeling when you start a new year to have all of these dreams and these goals and they start to just flitter. Is that a word? Flitter away. I make up words. I'm going to have to look that one up to see if it actually exists. I know flutter exists.

But anyway, we don't want our goals and dreams to flitter, we want to keep them at the forefront all year long. And one of the ways that I do this is by choosing a word of the year. I've been doing this for 10 years, and it's such a powerful process. In fact, if you're in the membership, this is what we're doing the whole month. We are getting very intentional about our Word of the year. And there is a gorgeous workbook where I walk you through how to figure out what your word is. And if you're not a member, we are open for enrollment right now. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join. Get yourself in the membership.

I am holding the intention that every single member creates her after story. And you'll learn more about the after story process when you join. I take you through the self-image method where you get really clear on what you want to create this year and, more importantly, who you must become. And that's what the word of the year is all about.

One of the biggest mistakes that we make when we set goals is that we set a goal and we just start taking a lot of action. And then the action starts to become harder and harder, and we find ourselves self-sabotaging and having a lot of inaction and feeling really disappointed in ourselves. And it's because of one thing. And this is the secret to everything. You have to become someone differently to consistently do things differently in order to have different results. It's called the Be, Do, Have Model.

Most of us start with what we want to have, then we start doing things hoping that that'll help us become the person. But when you are acting out of alignment with your self-image, who you're being, it makes the action so much harder and it makes it so much harder to create results, which is why I love starting the year out with intentionality and choosing one word, just one that is going to guide you throughout the entire year.

And so I'm going to be sharing my word of the year in this episode and all of the drama that I had around choosing my word of the year this year. I've had a lot of mind drama recently. It's so fascinating to watch. But usually, I find it very easy to pick my word of the year. It's very obvious. Last year, my word was energized. And I just knew. It felt right. I knew it. I didn't have to think on it a lot, it just came to me, and I'm like, "That's it." This year, I struggled with choosing a word of the year. At one point, I thought my word was going to be power because if you listen to last week's episode, I talked about how I've abdicated my power in a couple areas of my life. But I tried that on and it didn't feel right. It's like trying on an outfit that looks great on the mannequin, but then when I put it on, I'm like, "This word doesn't feel right for me."

Then I played around with other words such as integrity. I have been rereading Martha Beck's book, Integrity. It's so good. I highly recommend it. And yet that word didn't feel right either because, for the most part, I do attempt to live my life in integrity. Do I do it 100% of the time? No. But it didn't feel like it was strong enough for me. And so I was just wrestling with what is my word? Where are you? And then finally, I just decided I'm not going to pressure myself, I'm just going to trust that the word's going to come to me, and I let it go.

And as I was sitting at a luncheon for the Good Friends, which is an amazing organization here in Charlotte that gives back to the community, especially to women in need, I had my word come to me. And it came to me through another woman who was the president of this organization. And she was standing on stage in front of over 1,000 women delivering her talk about the organization, her passion behind it. And I realized this woman was embodying an energy that I found so beautiful and powerful and full of integrity and full of poise and full of compassion and empathy. And I was like, "Oh, this woman just revealed my word of the year to me." My word of the year for 2024 is royal. I want to embody a royal woman.

Now, when you think of the word royal, what comes to mind? If you're like most people, your mind instantly goes to the royal family. Maybe you think about King Charles or his mother who is no longer with us, but Queen Elizabeth. You think about Kate, you think about William and Harry and Megan. You think about the royals. And there's always a lot of drama with the royal family. And I think that's why I initially had resistance to it because I'm like, "There are a lot of things about the royal family I don't want to embody." And so I had to do a little research before I decided that this was going to be my word of the year. But when I started to look at what it means to really be royal and how this word could support me for the year and what this word means to me, it became super clear that this is my word of the year.

When I looked up this word, one of the first things that came up is containing royal blood or status. And I think about it, these people were just born into it. They're just born with royal blood, and there's so much meaning that is given to that. And we can put these people on a pedestal and we can start to exalt them and lower ourselves. And I've done that many times in my life around people that I put on these pedestals and I looked up to and I thought, oh my God, they're so much better than me because they have this or they've accomplished that. And I'm just done with that. I've seen too many people in those places and their fall from grace to only realize that we are all such human beings. And I don't want to put myself above anyone ever because, again, you're going to fall from that eventually because we're human. But I do want to see myself as someone of status. I want you to see yourself as someone of status because so often we discount ourselves, we shrink ourselves, we put ourselves down, we place other people above us. And when you're embodying royal energy, you would never do that.

And I think that was why I had resistance to the word, because initially I was like, "Oh, that's going to be me placing myself above people, which I never want to do." But when I redefined it for myself, this is about my relationship with me. This is about me having sovereignty with myself. And when I think about my kingdom, it's my home, it's my community, it's the world around me and how I want to interact with that because I believe that a true royal wants to take care of the people around them. It's not the kind of royalty of off with their heads and let them eat cake. That's never the kind of royal I want to be. I want to always lead with integrity, which is why I chose this word, because it took all of the other words that I was trying on, but they didn't quite fit because it was like there's more to this that I need to step into this year.

Integrity, power, I'm going to be talking about this in one of the bonus calls this week for members. I'm recording this way ahead of time, but I think it's going to be happening tomorrow by the time you're listening to this. But I'm going to be sharing with you all how I abdicated my power and my business. And I'm going to be pulling back the curtains as to why I did it, and then the decision that I made to step back into that royal energy of getting my power back and all of the drama that I've gone through with that decision and the fear that I've had to confront. But the result of that has been so huge. If you're a member, make sure you either attended live so you can ask me questions or definitely watch that replay because it's going to be raw and vulnerable. But I know so many of you are going to be able to relate to this, maybe not in business, but in other areas of your life. And so this royal energy is going to support me in doing more and more of that.

The other quality that I've already mentioned, but when I think about being royal, there is integrity. Royals adhere. Well, they should. Not all of them do this, but when I think about the kind of royal that I want to be, you adhere to moral principles and a code of ethics in your behavior and your leadership. You align your actions and your words and your beliefs and your values with an internal sense of moral consistency. And that includes a lot of different things. You can see how this word royal covers more than just one energy, which is why I chose it, because I need something to support me in a vast array of things this year, especially when I think about the business decisions that I've made and how I'm stepping up in my business in a way that I haven't done in a long time. And so when I think about integrity, I think about being authentic, being true to yourself, not trying to be who other people want you to be and shape-shifting depending on who you're around. I also think about, we've already mentioned ethics, but making sure that you are in integrity by doing what you think is morally right.

Being royal and living with integrity also for me means admitting your mistakes, owning up to them without excuses because we are all human. We are going to make mistakes. We are going to get it wrong sometimes. But the biggest mistake is in pretending you didn't make one and trying to gaslight people into thinking you didn't make a mistake or trying to ignore the mistake and just hope it goes away. And I just want to be the kind of person who easily admits it and deals with the consequences and is willing to say, "You know what? I got that wrong. I acted in a way that is not how I want to act. I didn't treat you well. I screwed up. I didn't follow through." Whatever it is, because again, we're all going to make mistakes.

I think sometimes we think of a royal and we're like, "Oh, it's the personification of perfectionism," but no one's perfect. We are so human dealing with our own traumas, dealing with our own belief systems, dealing with our own fears and insecurities. And to me, what makes a person royal is when they have the courage to own that and to admit their shortcomings, to admit their wrongdoings, to admit their mistakes. And I'm going to use that as a guiding principle this year. Now, hopefully I won't make as many mistakes if I'm living within integrity and I am showing up in a more powerful energy, but inevitably it's going to happen.

A lot of our mistakes that we feel so much shame around is because we were so afraid. We were afraid of what people were going to think. We were afraid of hurting people's feelings. We were afraid to have the honest conversation. By leading with this energy, my hope is that I don't have as many of those mistakes that I need to apologize for. And as I talked about last week in Crafting Your Character, I'm going to fall. I'm going to make mistakes. We all will. But I think this royal energy will help us to deal with it in such a more graceful and maybe vulnerable way. But the outcome of that will be so much better than not admitting our mistakes and pretending that things didn't happen and trying to ignore our humanness, which is what it is, it's just ignoring and trying to pretend we're not human.

One of the traits that the woman who was on stage that revealed my word of the year to me showed me that I want more of this year is generosity. I want to be even more generous. I think about truly abundant people. And if you think about the royals, they are abundant in so many ways. They're just born into abundance. And that level of abundance, when you're truly feeling abundant, you have so much more to give.

And I already feel like I'm a generous person. I'm the first to pick up a bill when we are out to dinner. I love to buy people gifts. I love to give more than sometimes I think I can. I'm like, "Let's see if we can give more." But I want to do it in a bigger way this year, and I don't yet know what that's going to look like. I was talking to my team about it the other day. I'm like, "Huh, how can we give more?" I had such a good feeling. I made a donation for this organization, and it felt so good to share the blessings. And sometimes giving doesn't have to be financial. It's giving of time, it's giving of support, it's giving of your energy.

And I'm excited to see how this unveils this year for me because when I was looking at her on stage, that's what I was admiring was the impact that her leadership and this organization has impacted the lives of so many people. It's just spreading and sharing the abundance with others. And I don't know, it was interesting. I was just like, "Oh my God, this is what I'm being called into doing more of this year and being more of in this new royal energy."

Now, I don't believe in giving when you're doing it to get rid of guilt or to impress other people. I think that is the energy in which a lot of people sometimes give ,and then they start to feel resentful and it doesn't feel good. I want to make sure that my giving is in integrity. It's something that I really want to do, I'm really excited about. And I know there are so many opportunities out there that I don't even yet know what they are that allow me to give more.

I'm really excited to see what this desire shows me this year. I'm excited to see what opportunities are out there. And I just know just with the way the universe works, you put this out there and it will be revealed to you. If this is an intention, I will be shown what the way is. And so that is super exciting and another reason why this word feels so good to me for this year.

And then the last thing that I'm going to say about this word as it relates to my relationship with myself is up leveling how I treat myself. One of my other favorite workshops that we run each year is called The Royal Treatment. And I want to take that workshop work to the next level in refining how I speak to myself, how I feed myself, how I move my body, how I dress my body. I want to up level my care of myself because when you see yourself as royal, when you see yourself as someone of status, when you see yourself as someone of value and worthy, you treat yourself very differently. And for me, this is going to be a lot of refining the little things. Because I've done a lot of work in this area. I've gone from being very insecure and feeling like everybody was better than me to now I just know that's not true. But it's about taking my self-care to the next level.

And so yes, my friends, my word of the year is royal. And I love hearing about your words of the year. I love hearing about the energies that you are excited to embody that will help you reach your goals. Because when I think about my goals for this year, especially my extraordinary goal, this word is supportive of that. My extraordinary goal this year is around leadership and my business and my team, and so I want to be a really royal leader. And I also want to see everyone around me as stepping into that royal energy of being in integrity, being decisive, giving, admitting mistakes, just living in that integrity. And so I'm really excited for how my energy is going to impact my team, my community, my family. Because that's the ultimate goal of your word of the year is that it has a positive impact not only on your life but of the lives around you.

And so, yeah, that's my word of the year. And I want to hear about yours. If you're on Instagram, come find me @schoolofselfimage and share with me your word of the year. And if you are not in the membership, what in the world? We are open right now. Step inside and let's create your after story. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join. And I would love to see you inside. Have a beautiful week, my friends. And I will see you in next week's episode. 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.