[Summer Series] Even Elegant Women Get Pissed Off

Welcome to the summer podcast series, a special time where I'm revisiting some of my very first podcast episodes. And in this one, we're going to go all the way back to episode one, where I was a little awkward, a little weird, and very passionate about calling out the personal development world. It is a mix of nostalgia, a bit of a rant, and a reminder of how much we can evolve. 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, dear friends, and welcome to our very first episode of the summer podcast series. Now, if you're just tuning in and you have no idea what I'm talking about, I announced last week that I am taking a break from podcasting over the summer, and it's not a full-on break because obviously I'm recording this, but what we're going to be doing is bringing back episodes from the past and me revisiting them through a new lens as the woman I am today.

So, every episode's going to have a little intro from me, and then we're going to dive right in. Another thing that I did was create a very extensive podcast guide for you all. So often, I have women email me or DM me saying, "Hey, do you have a podcast around this topic or that topic?" And with almost 500 episodes, I have a podcast just about on every topic you can imagine. And so I created this guide just to help you figure out what podcast you may want to revisit over the summer and beyond. So if you go to schoolofselfimage.com/guide, you can get your free copy. Now, today's episode is a very special one because it was my very first episode that I ever recorded. And I will tell you, it is very rare for me to go back and listen to my podcast, but to prepare for today, I did. And let me tell you, it is cringeworthy to me.

Oh my God, you guys, I am listening to myself and I'm like, first of all, you sound completely different. And I also didn't know what I was doing. I was so nervous to press record and then publish. And basically my first podcasts were me just reading my blog posts. And so they're very boring actually, and they are not my best work. And I'm really excited to share it with you and here's why. I think it's really important that we see where people came from. People tune in today, and they're like, "Oh my gosh, you just know how to talk and do a podcast." You don't realize I've been doing this for over a decade. Almost 500 episodes later, yeah, I've gotten at it. And even still, there are some days when I'm like, "Gosh. I don't know what to say. I don't know how to say it."

It's all part of the journey. But this first one, she's a doozy. But let me tell you something. I am so proud of that version of me who was willing to just do it. To be imperfect for people to think whatever they thought, to just put her work in the world, because I knew I had something important to share. I was so excited about my message. And I look back at that version of me and I'm like, "Girl, you did it. You did it week after week. You did not let perfectionism stop you. You didn't let people's thoughts and criticism stop you. You have been showing up consistently for 15 years." And I could not be more proud of that version of me. And what I want you all to know is that the compound effect is real. The compound effect basically says the seemingly small tasks that you do day in and day out don't feel like a lot in the moment, but they add up to create momentum and a compound effect later on.

And so if you're listening to this and maybe you're thinking about starting your first podcast or publishing your first book or starting your first business or whatever it might be, it's normal for you to be nervous and for it not to be perfect, but you just need to get started. Get your work out into the world knowing that once it's out there, you can make it better. You can refine. You're going to get better because you're going to learn so much. What feels so hard right now will eventually feel easy. Like for me today, recording a podcast is relatively easy. I just know how to express myself. I know how to put my thoughts together in a way that I didn't know how to back then. And that has come through not only experience, but repetition. You get good at what you practice. And so I hope you all listening to my cringeworthy, very first podcast inspires you.

I hope it gives you that permission slip to go out there and do your work, put your work out there, let people experience it. And more than anything, allow yourself to experiment and play and to get it wrong sometimes and to get it right sometimes, but always stay true to yourself by putting yourself out there. I really believe that so much of women's lack of fulfillment is a result of them holding themselves back. They have things they want to say, they want to share, things they want to do, and they're so worried about what everybody else thinks that they end up being out of integrity with themselves. And the way to begin that alignment with yourself and your dreams and your desires is to take action, to go do that thing that you've been saying that you want to do, even if it's uncomfortable, even if it's not perfect.

Now, this particular episode is called Even Elegant Women Get Pissed Off, and it's actually a rant about self-help. I've been in the self-help industry for what, 15 years now, and I have a very unique perspective that has not changed a lot since I wrote this and then recorded this episode. The self-help industry is a very interesting one in that it often promotes that we need to go harder, faster, be better, constantly improving, and it can create this constant feeling of lack and not enoughness. I will tell you that my life became dramatically better and more exciting, more meaningful when I stopped chasing happiness, when I stopped chasing constant improvement, and I just started enjoying my everyday life more. Savoring my life. Now, my life has improved. I have improved as a result of that. But I have seen so many people in this industry get caught up with certain mentors and coaches, and they can spend a lifetime constantly focused on how they're not where they want to be.

They can spend a lifetime journaling every single thought. And this comes from someone who journals every single day. I think journaling is powerful. It is a tool for awareness. But when you begin to use journaling and need one more course, one more formula before you'll go out there and live your best life, you have now used coaching and personal development as a way to hide versus a tool to help you be your best self. Are you all with me? It's like the person's like, "I need to take that one more certification before I can go and coach people." It's like the person who's saying, "I need to find that diet plan. That next diet's going to be the one that's going to fix everything." And we're constantly chasing and we're never allowing ourselves to enjoy our lives right now. And what I tell my clients all of the time, I'm like, "Listen, the reason why you want anything is because you're after a feeling."

Think about it. You're after a feeling, and things outside of you don't create your feelings. You create your feelings based on how you think, based on where you place your attention and your focus, and based on your actions. Like how you show up in your life can either solidify the feeling you want or take you further away. I view personal development as a tool. A tool to help us navigate those hard times, a tool for awareness, a tool for discovery. But when you begin to become addicted to those tools and you spend more time reading about having a happy life versus going out there and actually living a happy life, that's when you need to take a step back and you need to really examine what's driving this. And having done this work for 15 years, I know that one of the number one beliefs that drives this behavior is that I'm not enough.

I'm not enough will constantly have you seeking things that prove to yourself that you're not enough. And one of the reasons why I think the School of Self-Image members get such incredible results is that we approach this totally differently. I am a big believer in going to the end and figuring out what your sweet spot is and then having the tools to live that in your day-to-day life. When I think about my future self, she's not sitting around reading about personal development. She may have a book or two that she turns to that inspires her, but she's living it, she's practicing it, she's taking action on what she's learning. She's not using personal development as a way to numb, as a way to avoid, as a way to escape. She's using it as a tool to make her life better. And so even to this day, I get pissed off sometimes when I think about how the personal development industry has made us feel like we're not enough. Because I believe you are incredibly whole and enough as you are right now.

And then the question is, now what? And that's what I love helping women work on within the School of Self-Image. When you believe you are a hundred percent whole, when you believe that you are enough, what do you want then? How do you want to curate your days? How do you want to spend your time? What do you want to create? Who do you want to become? What do you want to experience? And doing it from a place of enoughness, not from a place of lack. So that's what this episode is about, you all. So you're getting that pleasure of hearing my very first episode, where the sound quality is awful, I'm figuring it out. And I'm so glad I took my own advice and instead of sitting around for years thinking about how to create a podcast and taking multiple courses and waiting until I had perfect circumstances, I just sat down, recorded a podcast, and pressed publish. And that was almost 500 episodes ago. So enjoy, my friends, and I will see you on next week's episode.

Hi. This is Tonya Leigh and you are listening to Frenchie Friday: Even Elegant Women Get Pissed Off. A rant about self-help. The purpose of life, after all, is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for new and richer experience. Eleanor Roosevelt. Yesterday, someone asked me, "What's pissing you off these days?" Out of my mouth? Flew these words. The whole self-help industry. And believe me, once a woman's truth has been spoken, you can take it back. I realize that as a master life coach, this personal confession may backfire. So before my rant gets underway, let me preface it with this. Number one, personal development paired with Paris inspired me to shed 75 pounds and change my life trajectory. Number two, it's not about right or wrong, it's about what feels good. And number three, I have been a witness to significant life changes through the programs I offer.

Those three points are as much a part of my truth as what I will now tell you about why personal development hasn't been sitting well with me these days. For more than five years, I've had one foot in the personal development world and one in the world where my desires, passions, and absolute loves are nurtured, such as travel, culture, style, food, and wine, and of course, Paris. A potential dark world. The self-help world constantly encourages people to be better, work harder, and make six figures. No. Scratch that. You'd better be looking for seven figures. Make vision boards, set goals, journal about everything, and through it all, be empowered. The self-help world promotes a culture of people who spend more time in front of their computer screens trying to build empires rather than cultivating well-lived and meaningful lives.

It asks women to read another how to live life book rather than encouraging life to be truly lived. It tells us to take another business course before going out there and sharing our gifts with the world. In other words, go bigger, improve more, and do more. And for heaven's sake, don't relax or you're playing small. What is the result of all of these steps? It leaves people feeling broken with diminished self-worth and a constant need to be better. When did enlightenment become so dark?

A French-kissed world. Okay. Let's talk about a world where I prefer to have both feet in. It's filled with ease, simplicity, elegance, and beauty. It reminds me to slow down, savor life, and stop always trying to be better. It encourages me to know that I'm enough. I want to throw dinner parties in this world, get off the internet, connect with real people, read juicy novels, watch great indie films, and have great sex and romance. In a hurried and heavy society, this world is my go-to for lightness and joy.

Confessions of a former addict. When I discovered coaching, I felt like I had found the holy grail. The whole your thoughts create your reality stuff really had me going. While I believed that awareness of your beliefs is an important part of designing a life you love, I also believe that it can be a slippery slope. For me, I started spending most of my precious life in my head, examining and journaling every painful thought. Exhausting. Being a 24/7 detective of your mind will drive the most elegant woman to madness. As a French friend said to me, Americans are driving themselves crazy trying to be happy. While I loved the more empowering beliefs that I was cultivating, I was also exhausted from the constant self-investigation. So I'm just going to say it. Personal development is a modern-day addiction.

So what's the solution? I can only share what has worked for me. But when I stopped trying to become a gazillionaire, a Zen Buddhist, or anything that the self-help world tried to make me believe that I should be, I began to breathe deeper. When I began to focus on what I truly value, ease, beauty, connection, love, and inspiration, life became a whole lot more fun. By designing my life around my values, I discovered more passions. Fashion, glamour, incredible dinners, divine chocolate paired with red wine, interesting people, time and nature, tantalizing conversations, travel and culture. And of course, Paris. Action is the most important part of change.

In wanting to have both feet in the world I desired, rather than reading or being told how to live, I have exchanged self-help books for fascinating biographies. The classics and the occasional Chiclet. Stopped signing up for teleseminars and chose to meet up with girlfriends over coffee or a champagne. Stopped analyzing every thought and just reach for something that feels a bit better or not. Stopped caring that I wasn't in self-help guru cliques and filled my own space with diverse and eccentric people from all over the world and all walks of life. Instead of taking yet another business course, I hired a chief operations officer who knows business.

Please understand I absolutely adore mentoring women through my different programs, but I'm realizing partly through testimonials from clients that my programs are unique and adored because in a world that's telling women to go harder and faster, I actually encourage women to slow down and enjoy life. And what have I found? Well, through ease, simplicity, and elegance, they have created lives and bodies that they love. For example, Slim, Chic, and Savvy is a French-inspired lifestyle program that has changed the lives and bodies of hundreds of women. It is about so much more than strategy and offers fun challenges that require women to actually go out in the world and really live the philosophy. I have a society of fabulous women who want to indulge in life and live with more ease, awareness, and self-expression.

We travel to exotic locations, eat beautiful meals together, and engage in interesting conversations about desires, style, business, money, sex, food, and love. It's like Sex in the City, only better because it's real. Change definitely happens. Weight loss, new business, authenticity, increased revenue, love with others as well as yourself, and many others. But it's based on ease and elegance. I mean, what's a million dollars in the bank if you're working 80 hours a week and have no time to live? And what's being a size two if you're never able to go out to dinner without fear of blowing it? I believe you can have whatever you want, but true luxury is when the journey to the dream is as beautiful as the dream itself. Enjoying life to the fullest today, not tomorrow after you finally found the formula or read another how-to book. And a complete side note, I seriously doubt that Coco Chanel attended weekend seminars on how to find your passion or walked across hot coals in front of thousands of people.

However, I do believe she would've been a fabulous member of my society, but I'm biased. The best personal development in the world is experiencing life, not reading about it. What I do know is that tasting a fine champagne can open a woman's eyes to the power of indulgence. Wearing a fabulous dress and cultivating the attitude to go with it can be a game-changer. Paris can shift a woman's perspective when she sees an entire culture that thrives on pleasure. Signing off the internet for an entire weekend and engaging in real life can lead to absolute bliss and wonderful discoveries. Choosing a path of ease will lead to more true luxury. And yes, darling, I do believe lipstick is a mood enhancer, which I experience each time I paint my lips with a beautiful color.

By curating beautiful experiences for women in everyday life, I offer them an opportunity to play in the world, to lighten up, to relax, to not be so serious, to have fun. And that's when their worlds explode with opportunity and joie de vivre. If you feel like you're in need of a little self-help detox, then welcome to my world, where I'll be talking about it all. Beauty, style, culture, home, food, travel. And yes, I'll be sprinkling it with a little attitude adjustment suggestions. Everything in moderation, right? But I'll never, ever speak to you like you're broken because you're not. You're fabulous, and don't be fooled into thinking otherwise. With all of that said, I am taking a strong stand for more ease, beauty, and elegance in a chaotic and vulgar world. When your soul needs more lightness and fun paired with deep depth about this experience of life, I'm your lady. Life's too short, don't you think? With a sincere heart.

Hey, before you go, I want to let you know that if you've loved this episode and you want more support in curating your self-image, I've created something just for you. It's a free podcast guide to help you find the episodes that meet you exactly where you are, whether you're craving elegant success, vibrant wellbeing, magnetic presence, or stylish living. Or maybe you just want to deepen your understanding of the core concepts of self-image work. It's all in the guide. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/guide and grab your copy now. Your next breakthrough might just be one episode away.