My Secret Productivity Hack

People will sometimes ask me, "Tonya, how do you get so much done?" And they expect me to talk about my schedule and the support I have. Listen, those two things are key, but that's not my real secret. In fact, without what I'm about to share with you, none of that would work efficiently. So in this episode, I'm peeling back the curtains and sharing with you my secret productivity hack.

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

Hello, my beautiful friends. What an interesting week it has been. I'm still in an Airbnb waiting for my furniture to arrive. No one seems to know where my furniture is, and I'm living out of a suitcase wearing the same few outfits over and over and making it work. You know what? When life throws you lemons, we make limoncello. That's what we're doing around here. Equally, I've been having so much fun. I just got back from Miami. I met my friend Brooke down there, and we played pickleball all day, every day. I am addicted to the sport. We were both laughing at how we just can't get enough. In fact, we had a flight out on Monday. And our flight was I think like 10:15 so we had to be at the airport at like 8:30. And the day before we were like, "Can we get a game of pickleball in the morning?" So we got up, I swear it was dark outside. We're up trying to find coffee heading to the pickleball courts, and we were playing pickleball when the sun was coming up. It was the best. So much fun.

One of the things I'm loving about being back on the East Coast is that some of my favorite places are such a quick plane ride away. I can get to the Caribbean, I can get to New York, I can get to Miami, to DC. I do think I'm an East Coast girl y'all. I really do. So it feels really good to be back. I just wish I had my things. But even without my things, I'm so happy. It's been interesting living out of a suitcase. And you realize how few things you actually need to get through life and to enjoy life and sometimes more things cause you to be overwhelmed. So I'm just enjoying my little suitcase with my few outfits. And equally, I'm excited for my furniture and belongings to arrive so we can get settled into the townhouse that we're going to be living in while we build our house.

So that's an update. Also when you're listening to this, it'll be the last day that you can join the School of Self-Image before we close the doors. What in the world if you have not joined yet. Seriously, come on. Let's create your after story. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join, read all about it and get into that membership. I've had so many new members reach out to me and just share they're mind blown at how much value is within the membership. And it's almost like one of those things you need to experience it to really appreciate it. And so come join us for a month. And if you don't like it, you can leave. But if you're like the majority of members, you're going to want to stay for a long time because it's powerful. You're going to create such incredible results in your life. So again, head to schoolofselfimage.com/join.

So today I want to share with you my secret productivity hack. Someone asked me recently how I am managing running a company, building a house, moving to a new city, and all of the other things that I'm up to. And I realize it's not what a lot of people think. Now, of course, I manage my brain, I schedule and I have help. I don't ever want to admit that I'm doing this all on my own because I'm not. But what has gotten me to this point and how I am able to get so much done is the one thing that we don't really associate with productivity, and yet it is everything. And since it is now the month of November, and this is the month of Valentine's Day, when we often think about relationships and love, this is about loving ourselves. And that is my secret productivity hack self love. I want to break it down to you why that is.

So let's think about what does it mean to love oneself? It really boils down to two things, the thoughts that you have about yourself and then how you treat yourself. A lot of us are thinking thoughts about ourselves that are slowing us down and helping us to be less productive. Let's think about what some of these thoughts are. One of them is, "I am not good enough." When you have that thought and you're thinking about all of the things that you want to create and do and experience, but you're thinking a thought that is so far from being loving, notice how it feels and notice how you show up when you are thinking this about yourself.

 Chances are, you procrastinate because you're going to prove to yourself and gather evidence for what you believe to be true. So if you think you're not good enough, you're going to show up in ways to prove that to yourself.

Another thought that I hear a lot, and I think it's very unkind and very unloving, and the thought is, "I am behind." And I know there are so many of you listening to this podcast, you're sitting around thinking this. Imagine a child learning to walk. Let's say for example that maybe, just maybe, they are developmentally delayed according to what the experts say. So maybe the experts say they should be walking and they're two months behind. And you as the parent are looking at the child and just constantly reminding them, "You're behind. You're behind. You're behind." And then they start internalizing that and thinking, "I'm behind, so therefore I must not be good enough. Something's wrong with me." And it just becomes a spiral.

When that child is on his or her own path, when they are meant to walk, they will walk. They're not going to walk faster by people screaming at them, telling them how behind they are. If anything, that will delay them even more. Because when we are screaming at ourselves, when we are beating ourselves up, we are turning on our sympathetic nervous system. And when that is on, it's so difficult to access creativity. It's so difficult to be focused and to get things done. When your sympathetic system is turned on, you want to freeze, fight or flee, and it's usually a response out of fear.

Nothing we want is found in the space of fear. So we need to stop scaring ourselves. To me, that's the opposite of love. When you are scaring yourself unnecessarily, when you're pressuring yourself, when you're telling yourself that you're behind, it's so unloving and it actually slows down your productivity. So what I love to tell myself is, "Girl, you are right on time. There is no hurry. You've got this. I love you. You are right where you're supposed to be." And speaking to myself in such a way calms me down, it opens my heart, it opens my creativity. And from that place, I'm able to be so productive.

Now, I haven't always been like this. This has been years of training my brain to energetically reside in a different place most of the time. The more I love myself, the more I speak lovingly to myself, the more I'm able to get done. So for those of you who are wanting to be productive... And I think most humans do. We like getting things done. We like feeling that sense of accomplishment. We like checking things off. It feels good. But the way we go about doing it's like we are putting the brake on the car of our life. We're slowing ourselves down. And a lot of times we think, "Oh, the answer is to be harder on ourselves and to beat ourselves up to motivate us to get going." But notice how that often does the exact opposite. It rarely works. And when it does work, it's like the horse that you've beaten into submission. 

He or she may behave, may do what you want for a while, but eventually that horse is going to bug you off. Underneath that horse's spirit is still there.

And that's what it's like with ourselves. We can beat ourselves up. We might submit, but eventually it's like that inner wild child's going to come out. But when we treat ourselves lovingly, when we speak kindly to ourselves, then we can get on board with what we really want. And that's when we can get so much more done and blow our minds with what we're capable of achieving. Not through self-loathing, but through self-love and self encouragement and self-respect. That is how you achieve extraordinary things. That is how you become more productive.

So self-love is how you speak to yourself. And how you speak to yourself can either speed you up, make you more productive, help you accomplish more and enjoy the process more, or it can slow you down and cause you to hate the process. But there's also how we treat ourselves. What I've noticed is that the more I take care of myself, which to me is part of self-love, the more energy I have and therefore the more productive I am. I know the tendency to put self-care on the back burner. I think this is especially true for moms and entrepreneurs. We're like, we're going to take care of our babies and our business, and if there's time left over, we may consider ourselves. But have you noticed that there's rarely time? There's always something to do. Whatever you've made a priority, it might not be babies and business, it might be something else that you have made more important than your own care.

And so what happens is that you focus on that thing and suddenly you wake up one day and you're like, "Wow, I've gained weight. I feel terrible. My skin is breaking out. I'm exhausted. I'm angry. I'm irritable." And it's because you didn't make you a priority. And eventually what ends up happening is that you don't have the energy. You don't have the productivity that you once had. And things start to slow down. And so what we often do is we're like, "Okay, I need to buckle down and work harder." And then on top of that, a lot of times what happens is you begin to speak to yourself very unkindly on top of not taking care of yourself. All of that just drains your energy more and more. So you'll notice that you're not as productive. And the answer is not to buckle down and add more to your calendar, it's actually to do the exact opposite. And it's to take a step back and make you a priority again, taking care of yourself.

This is the number one reason why I chose energized as my word of the year, because I know the tendency y'all keep thinking, "Oh, I can do that tomorrow." In fact, I have committed to having a habit this year of walking a minimum of a mile every single day. That's my minimum. I want to have days where I'm doing way more than just a mile. But knowing that I'm walking a mile every day is telling my brain, "Hey, you're a priority." Because I was getting into this habit of when I had a busy week like this week... And have you noticed that a lot of weeks are busy? 

But I would put going to the gym, getting out and walking on the back burner and tell myself, "I'll do it tomorrow." And I would get to the gym three times a week, but when I think about the woman I want to be, she's active every single day, not just three times a week. And she makes it a priority.

And I started to think to myself, "Listen, if I can't walk a mile every single day, then I've created a life that I need to look at, that I need to assess and reexamine." And the truth is, it takes what? 15 minutes to walk a mile. If I don't have 15 minutes to take care of myself, what am I doing? I also know when I'm taking care of myself, I feel better not only physically but emotionally. I love thinking of myself in a way of I'm a woman who respects myself and loves myself enough to make me a priority. And then that energy is felt throughout my world. And I show up better. I show up more powerfully. I show up stronger. I show up more excited. And then that helps me to become more productive.

And not only the productivity piece, but it's also an energetic piece. I find that I don't have to work as hard because like attracts like. So as I'm showing up with more energy and I'm showing up in a state of self-love and self-respect, the world is mirroring that back to me with chance encounters and different opportunities and new clients. It's just the way the world works. So I find I don't have to work as hard, which is crazy. But that's not what the brain tells us. The brain's like, "You better get to work. Work harder. You can take care of yourself later." And that actually keeps you from creating the results that you really want.

One of the big concepts that I really want you to grasp is that you must be an energetic match for what you want. So when you think about your extraordinary goal, that's a term that we use within the School of Self-Image, so it's a big goal that you are excited to create but it's going to demand a whole different version of you, which is the purpose of it, right? Helps you grow. But when you think about you having achieved that, who is that version of you? Is she stressed? Is she beating herself up? Is she telling herself how she's not good enough? Is she telling herself that she's behind? Is she putting off going to work out? Is she eating crap? Is she staying up until 2:00 in the morning and having to wake up at 6:00 tired and exhausted? I'm guessing not.

And so to be a match for that in which you want, you must practice being who you think you'll be then. And that is why love, especially self-love, is the answer. Because when I think about all of our future selves, what they all have in common is that they love themselves madly. They don't beat themselves up when they fell, they grabbed themselves by the hand and they're like, "Darling, that's part of the process. I'm so proud of you. Let's go. You are doing it." They don't pressure themselves to hurry up. They're behind, but they're like, "Oh, honey, you are right on time. Take a deep breath. Enjoy this journey." They don't tell themselves that they're not good enough. 

They tell themselves, "You know what, baby? You got it all within you, everything you need. You are extraordinary. You're beautiful. You're capable. You are it. Now go out there and show the world what you've got. More importantly, show yourself who you really are."

Our future selves are not telling us that we don't have time to go for a walk and that we can do it tomorrow. Do you know what they're saying? They're saying, "Oh darling, today is your day. You get up and you go love yourself enough to honor your word and to take care of you. And trust that everything's going to fall into place." Our future selves aren't afraid of money and not having enough because they do. So they're not pressuring themselves to work more, work harder, work faster, hustle, hustle, hustle. They're like, "Oh, there is enough. Take a breath and get into that energy of abundance. Because in that energy of abundance, you are a match for more abundance." And you have to trust that. And that's what our future selves, they're telling us. Trust it. You got to be that version of you in the future to attract that future into your life.

And so our future selves, they are wanting us to slow down, love ourselves more, take care of ourselves better, because they know that in that energy, we will be able to, number one, be more productive, enjoy the process more, and to be a match for what we deeply, deeply want. And that my friends is my secret productivity hack. And it's my hack to an extraordinary life in general. I know it may sound woo-woo to say self-love is the answer, but it's true. It's the answer to everything. Have a gorgeous, gorgeous week, everyone.

Once again, the doors are closing to the School of Self-Image today. So if you want to step in and create your after story from a place of love and abundance and joy, come and join us. Go to schoolofselfimage.com/join and I cannot wait to see you inside. Cheers.

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