Elevate Your Self-Image With These 4 Daily Steps

Here's the truth. Your self-image is deciding what you tolerate, what you go after, and how you show up long before you even realize it. But here's the good news, you don't have to overhaul your life overnight. Just four simple daily steps can start to elevate your self-image and the woman that you are becoming. Welcome to the School of Self-Image where our motto is simple. Elevate your self image, elevate your life. I'm Tonya Leigh, your hostess, and I'll guide you to become the woman who doesn't just dream bigger. She lives bigger. Let's dive in.

The Power of Self-Image

Hey there, I'm Tonya Leigh and welcome back to my channel. The other morning I woke up and I caught myself in what I call my default mode. Here's what happened. I ended up grabbing my phone before I even knew it, and next thing I know, I'm scrolling through emails in my pajamas, here's a mess and already reacting to the world. And I thought, is this really how I want to start my day? Is this the next version of myself and how she shows up for her morning? And that moment reminded me of something. Her self-image isn't shaped in these big dramatic ways. It's shaped in the small daily choices.

One of the things that I always say, and I know for sure to be true is that a well-lived life is nothing more than a collection of well-lived days. So instead of getting caught up in what you think needs to happen next week, next month, or even next year, I want to challenge you to bring it back to today. Decide who you want to be, decide how that version of you shows up and live each day with intention. And when you do, I promise you, you're going to see your life dramatically change. And that's exactly what we're talking about in this episode.

Step One: Check In With Your Setting

I want to share four daily steps that will elevate your self image starting right now. Step number one is doing what I call checking in with your setting. I want you to think about it. How often do you wake up and check in with how am I feeling today? Because if you're like most people, we just wake up and we feel a certain way, but we don't even understand, number one, what we're feeling or why we're feeling and we just continue throughout our day without being intentional. You see, all of us have a default setting, and if that default setting serves you great, keep it. But many times it doesn't. If you're waking up day after day, feeling hopeless or feeling frustrated or feeling maybe insecure or feeling a sense of lack or scarcity, what is happening is that that feeling state is showing up and how you walk throughout your day at showing up in the behaviors that you engage with, and that's ultimately creating your results.

And so it's so important for you to pause and notice, where am I set right? Am I anxious? Am I neutral? Am I inspired? And here's what's really important. You need to do this from a place of so much love and compassion. What I don't want you to do is to start judging yourself for being a human. Because as human beings, we have very human emotions and we're not always supposed to be happy. We're not always supposed to be high vibe. But you know what? We are supposed to be aware because awareness gives you a choice. You can decide, do I want to keep this? Is it serving me? And if not, you can adjust it. So step number one is actually very simple. All you need to do is just check in with yourself. What's my setting right now? Now, once you've done that, you can move to step two where you are going to name today's vibe.

Step Two: Name Today’s Vibe

What I want you to do is to decide on purpose how you want to feel and show up today. Pick a vibe word. Do you want to feel radiant, confident, bold, playful, elegant. One of the things that I do is I like to think about what's on my agenda for today? What are all of the things that I have committed to doing? And then I like to reverse engineer it. Well, how does that version of me feel? How does that version of me think? How does that version of me show up? And I love to anchor it in something tangible, right? I love to anchor it in actions that are actually going to help me to feed and nourish that vibe that I have decided on purpose that I want to embody for the day.

So even right now, ask yourself, what is the vibe that I want to embody today? Claim it because you don't have to keep living and being a certain way. You have autonomy, you have choice. You get to decide who you are no matter what is happening in the outside world. So claim it, decide it, and then practice being it. And then that takes me to step number three. Step number three is you need to start clearing the contradictions.

Step Three: Clear the Contradictions

You need to begin to edit your life of what doesn't serve that vibe. What ends up happening is that you say, okay, today I'm going to feel confident that is my vibe. And then all of a sudden you're going to have all of these thoughts come up. Maybe the thought is who are you to be confident? You're never confident, you don't trust yourself, you don't have what it takes. And I love to tell clients this is a good thing. This is just showing you where your work is.

This is showing you what you need to change in order to embody this energy that's going to help you create the results that you want. Contradictions aren't just in your thoughts. There are things around you right now that are contradictory to how you want to feel and who you want to be. So let's say for example, you're like, my vibe today is I am organized. That's who I want to be. But then you look around and there's clutter everywhere that is contradicting that state that you want to embody. So when you begin to organize your space, and it could just be a little area in your office, what are you doing? You're telling yourself, this is who I'm choosing to be. This is who I am. Or let's say you've chosen the word energetic, that's your vibe of the day, but you look around and there are things all around you that are draining your energy.

It might be the foods that you're eating. It could be the clutter, it could be the conversations that you're having. It could be that you keep procrastinating on going for that daily walk or showing up for the gym and your workouts. The moment that you take an action to prove to yourself, this is who I am, this is who I'm choosing to be for the day. What happens is you begin to collect evidence to prove to yourself that you are true to your word, that you are claiming a certain state of being. And you do that over and over and day after day, all of a sudden you have a completely different image of yourself. And that's why this work is so powerful. So that is step number three is you want to clear the contradictions, everything from your thoughts to your habits, to the things that surround you.

Step Four: Practice Being Her

And then step number four is actually very simple, and I want you to consider that it can be super fun. And that is just to practice being her. You don't want to just name it, you want to live it, you want to embody it. So you've assessed your setting, you have claimed your vibe of the day, your clearing contradictions, and now it's practicing showing up as that version of you in different areas of your life. This is when women I find to be so hard on themselves. They show up and practice a totally new way of being, and they don't get it right the first time or the second time, and suddenly they start beating themselves up and they start running the story of this just isn't who I am. And the reason why they think that is they just haven't practiced it enough. If you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, I always say, you get really good at what you practice.

Like anything new, like anything, you're just starting. It is going to take time. Think about a toddler learning to walk. How many times did they fall down? Many. I have a daughter. I remember when she was learning to walk, I was always afraid. I'm like, is she going to hurt herself? But she would fall down and guess what? She would get right back up and she would try again and again and again until one day she was just a walker. It's just what she did. Now she doesn't have to think about it, she just walks. Her desire to walk was greater than her fear of failure. And so over time, it's just who she became. I even think about learning to drive a car. I don't know if you remember how awkward it was trying to remember. I grew up driving a stick shift, so there was an added layer of complexity to that.

But just trying to remember the gear shift and the signs outside of and the pedals and which foot went on, what pedal. And it seems so complex and difficult, but over time I just practiced it so much to now I can get in a car and not really even have to think that much. It's just intuitive. It's just I know how to drive. And I share that with you because I want you to realize that that is what change is like if you fall down, that is a part of the process. It doesn't mean give up. It means to get up and keep practicing until one day. It's just who you are. And so this work is a day by day basis, a view, checking in with your setting with you, naming your vibe with you, clearing the contradictions, and then just practicing over and over and over again.

These four steps may seem so simple. You may be thinking, yeah, this is just what you do, but do you really get honest with yourself? Do you check in with yourself? Do you have an awareness about your state, or do you just think that's who you are? And there's no changing it? Because I'm here to tell you that you can change your state of being. And then are you deciding on purpose who you want to be? That is a decision that you get to make. I love, especially in the hardest situations, to ask myself, who do I want to be right now? Because if I'm not aware, if I don't check in with my setting, I'm just going to revert back to an old state of being that's probably reactive. That doesn't help me get the result that I want. So I love knowing that we get to decide.

And then are you clearing out the contradictions? Are you looking into your own brain and looking at the thoughts that oppose who you want to be? And then shifting them little by little until how you think is aligned with who you want to be? Are you changing up your environment to make it so much easier for that you to emerge? And then are you practicing being her? Are you showing up day after day with this intention of this is who I'm becoming, and also embracing the fact that you're going to fail. That is part of the process. What if you fell in love with failure? What if you weren't afraid of it? What if you knew that every failure was just getting you closer to the result that you want to have? And that is the work. It's not these big grand gestures that create change.

What I know to be true from my years of reinventing myself and supporting women in doing the same. It's that change comes from how you live each moment of each day. And this is exactly what the members of the School of Self-image do every single day, and it's why they get such extraordinary results. They go through The Self-Image Method, which includes our curated day journal practice, to bring that awareness to their lives, to bring that intentionality, to give them the tools to be able to practice new ways of being in the world, which in turn help them create new, it becomes their way of life. It's our way of life. It's how we love to move through the world. And I'm so excited because for the first time ever, The Self-Image Method is available outside of the membership. Women have been asking for it. And so now it's yours. If you're ready to elevate your self-image and practice this alongside me, you can go to schoolofselfimage.com/method and let's get started.

I'm telling you, this is such a beautiful way to live your daily life. And remember, when you elevate your self-image, you elevate everything else. Thank you so much for tuning in, and I cannot wait to see you in next week's episode. Cheers.