Regulation is the New Discipline

Something has become so clear to me, especially in the world we're living in. Emotional regulation is the new discipline because let's face it, we're living in a world that demands instant reactions, and it seems like there's divisiveness everywhere. And if you're not careful, you will spend your energy trying to control the world, where your real superpower is in learning how to emotionally manage yourself, 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.

Hey friends, how are you feeling? I want to start this episode out with us all doing a check-in. Just take a deep breath and see how you're feeling, and let's do it on a scale of zero to 10. Zero being I just want to go back to bed and wait for another day, 10 being the best you have ever felt. Where are you on the scale right now? I'm going to give myself a solid nine, not quite a 10, but I am feeling really good, and I'm feeling good because of a lot of the work that I've been doing on myself over the last months.

These have not been easy months. If I looked outside of me, I would have all of the reasons to be a two or a three. My dad is very, very sick. We've had some business issues. It just seems like I've had one obstacle after another, and yet here I am feeling like a nine today. And the secret is that I've learned to regulate my nervous system. I told my team the other day, I'm like, regulation is the new discipline because we are living in some wild times. A lot of the conversations that I'm having with people these days are around fear the future, which, if you are having that, make sure you listen to last week's episode.

There's a lot of people that are just feeling the heaviness of the world, and they're looking outside of them as a mirror of how they should feel. And if you're not pointing your attention in the right direction, chances are your brain is focused on all of the things that you should be worried about. It's focusing on all of the things that cause you anxiety, and this is why we have to manage ourselves, and this is why ladies self-image is so important. I have said many, many times on this podcast I am are the two most powerful words you will ever speak. And if you've been feeling anxiety, if you've been feeling overwhelmed and you keep repeating, I am overwhelmed, I am anxious, I am this, I am that you are telling your brain to look for all of the things that confirm this belief, the reticular activating system, that part of your brain that sifts through all of the data is constantly working for you.

How do you want to see yourself as a woman right now? What is the energy that you want to be in? How do you want to see yourself in terms of how you see your capabilities, how you see yourself in your ability to handle whatever is on your plate right now? How do you want to see yourself as it relates to your future? How do you want to see the world? It is all up to you. You get to decide, and if you don't decide on purpose, if you don't take ownership of that, you are going to have a very dysregulated nervous system. Now let's talk about why the nervous system is so important in the first place. When I think of someone's self-image, I see a state of being, and that state of being is a result of a collection of thoughts that you have that create a collection of feelings.

And when you've been thinking things for so long and feeling a certain way for so long, it creates a certain state. And there are certain states that you can be in that will allow for flow, creativity, that will open you up to new opportunities, to new possibilities that don't exist in other states. And this is why the work that we do within the school of self-image is so incredibly important. If you are someone who has been struggling to reach certain goals, if you're someone who has been shrinking under pressure, if you're someone who has been following all the formulas, you've been doing it right on paper and yet you're still having a hard time getting to the next level, I can guarantee you self-image is a part of that. Here's how I know. First of all, I've been teaching self-image for 15 years. It is the number one thing that, when I finally understood and focused on, has allowed me to create the greatest results in my life.

It's allowed me to build a very beautiful business. It's allowed me to lose weight, to keep it off. It's allowed me to create great relationships, and yet I still hit up on my self-image edges, and I see all of my clients do it as well. And it's all normal. Nothing has gone wrong. But the other day, I sat down with myself because I've had a business goal for about two years now, and I've been working really hard towards this goal, and I haven't reached it yet. And I was thinking about why that is. What's going on? Now, first of all, just know when I set goals, I set really big goals. There are many times that I don't reach my goals within the timeframe that I originally thought because I set such big goals. I love big goals because they cause me to think in a completely new way.

I literally have to create a new person in order to hit these goals, and I realized with the goal that I had set around my business, I had not changed. I was just trying to get there with more action, not more alignment. And when I realized that the other day, I was like, of course, I haven't hit that goal yet. I'm not the woman who's ready to hit that goal. I'm not comfortable with that goal yet. There are a lot of things that need to be done before I hit that goal. I need to expand my self-image to be able to hold that goal. I need to regulate my nervous system so that that goal is not so uncomfortable. Here's how you know when your self-image is aligned when you actually end up creating the thing, it's like, of course. Of course, this was going to happen.

I knew this was going to happen. It's no shock to me. It's like the first time I made a million dollars in a year. I had been practicing being that woman for so long that when my accountant called me up to be like, congratulations. I mean, it was a fun moment, but it wasn't a huge shock. I was like, yeah, I've been practicing being her for a long time. And so I say all of this, and I'm going to get to why regulation is the new discipline. It's all tied together because your nervous system is a reflection of your self-image. They're tied together, they go hand in hand. But if you have been hitting up against obstacles, if you feel like you are taking a lot of action, but you're just hitting up against walls that you cannot overcome, that is an indicator that you need to look at your self-image.

There is something within you, subconsciously, that is not a match for it, that is on some level energetically holding you back from reaching it. When you figure out what that is and you expand beyond it, the results will come. And the reason they're going to come is because you are going to let go of the subconscious blocks that you don't even know exists yet, but they're there, that stand between where you are and where you want to be. This is the work that we do inside the School of Self-Image membership. I share my process with members all of the time, and they always say, "I appreciate you being so open," because every time I set a new goal, especially the bigger it is, I have to go through this process of identifying what's holding me back. What in my subconscious is afraid of the thing that I want to create?

What part of me is not yet ready? Once I understand what that is, then I can do something about it. And again, time and time again, I see women come into this membership who have struggled for years. When they start doing this work, their businesses start growing, they start losing the weight, they start attracting opportunities. It's so fun to see what happens when a woman elevates her self-image. She's happier, she's healthier, she has a better relationship, she's more vibrant, she's more full of joy, more confident, and life just responds to a woman like that differently than the versions of us who are full of fear and doubt and anxiety. So if this is the work that you know deep down you need to do, if you have been following the formulas, if you've been doing everything right and yet it still isn't working and you know it's time to do it differently, it's time for something that is much deeper than just action alone.

Come and join us inside the School of Self-Image. We are open right now for enrollment. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join, and I cannot wait to see you inside. I cannot wait to support you, and I cannot wait for you to see yourself in a completely new way and how the world responds differently. Now, one of the big things that we focus on within the membership is emotional mastery. The goal is to be a woman who is emotionally mature, who knows how to regulate herself, who knows how to respond with power, with confidence, and with intention. Most of the world does not operate this way, and this is actually why I was inspired to do this episode. I was on a flight recently, and it wasn't the flight that got hit by lightning, in case you heard that story. This is a whole different flight.

But I was on this flight, and there was a child sitting in his mother's lap, and the child was kicking the back of this woman's chair that was in front of them. Now, listen, that is so annoying. I get it a hundred percent, I get it. But the way this woman handled it was just evidence of how dysregulated a lot of adults are walking around being right now. She didn't turn around to the mom and say, "Hey, can you please get your child to stop kicking my seat?" She just turned around and lost it, completely lost it on this mother. And it made me realize that a lot of us are just walking around as children in adult bodies.

We are having emotional temper tantrums. We are living in a state of fight or flight. If we're not in fight or flight, we're in freeze or fawn, and we are trying to control the external world in order to feel better. If the child wouldn't kick my seat, if my children just behaved the way I wanted them to, if my business just did what I needed it to do, if my team members just did what I needed them to do, if my body would just do what I wanted it to do.

If we have all of these conditions on what needs to happen in order for us to feel emotionally stable, well, we can all see that that doesn't work out because the world is going to keep on worlding. The world is going to keep on having amazing things and difficult things. It's going to have amazing people and difficult people. It's just the way the world is, and so if our emotional state is tied to the world being a certain way, we are going to expend so much energy trying to manage something that is unmanageable. We cannot manage the world, and so this emotional regulation that I'm talking about, being the new discipline, means shifting your focus from external control to internal regulation. Now, there are many different practices to do this, and if I've learned anything from 15-plus years of coaching women, we all have different modes of operation that work better for us.

Some of my clients are very cognitive. They love to go into their heads and work things out there. Some of my clients are very somatic. They love going into their bodies. I don't think there is one right way to emotionally regulate. I think we all have to find our way. In the membership, we offer many different tools, and some tools speak better for some women than the others. And I think that's because we're also unique. If someone is selling you one way to emotionally regulate yourself, they do not understand human psychology because we all are biochemically different. We are all unique individuals. So this is about you becoming aware first of all, of what are you even feeling? It's hard to emotionally regulate when you are shut down, where you're not even feeling, where you're just reacting to the world without taking a pause and checking in.

What are you feeling in terms of your emotional state? It's going to be one word. And then how are you feeling that in your body? What are the physical sensations? Are you feeling a tight chest? Are you having a clenched jaw, shallow breathing? Just learning to be present with yourself. Nothing's gone wrong. You're just a human being having very normal human responses to life. And so if you want to have regulation, if you want to be disciplined in regulating yourself, you have to be willing to stay with yourself, to be with yourself, to be curious about what am I even feeling right now? And then it's about calming yourself down. I love to think of this as being a mother to myself, mothering myself. I think about the scared little girl within me because that's what's going on. Just the scared little girl within me, or maybe the frustrated little girl, or the angry little girl.

What does she need right now? She doesn't need to be berated. She doesn't need to be told to just be quiet, to suck it up. She wants to be acknowledged and heard, and to know that there's an adult in the room, and you get to be that adult for yourself. She may need a hug. She may need some deep breaths. She may need a different perspective. She may need to have her fears challenged of like, huh? So you're telling yourself that this will never work out. Could it be that that's the reason why you're feeling anxious? Let's sit down and look at all of the reasons why it may work out. Let's look at who you need to become so it does work out. When you start becoming this person for yourself, you will be amazed at what you're capable of. However, if you are used to having a big emotion and shutting down, and we shut down in so many different ways, some people shut down by eating.

Some people shut down by shopping. Some people react instead of feeling the emotion that they create arguments, they create divisiveness. If you're not willing to feel your emotions, you will never be emotionally regulated. I think about those years when I struggled with my weight. It was a very normal occurrence for me to step on a scale, see that I gained a couple of pounds, and literally have an emotional breakdown like a toddler, and what would I want to do? Instead of feeling the big emotions, I'd be like, "I can't do this." And I would go and eat. It was just a perpetual cycle that I was in, and it was a result of me not emotionally regulating myself, like soothing myself in those moments, learning to question those feelings. Why were they there in the first place? What were they trying to reveal to me?

So when you don't emotionally regulate, you just end up recreating patterns over and over again. And it's crazy to think all of this comes from the unwillingness just to feel energy moving in your body because that's what an emotion is. That's all it is but when we are freaking ourselves out with the nightmares in our own minds that we are envisioning about our futures, when we are feeling these feelings as a result of all of the negativity within our own brain, and we're not even questioning them, we walk around wanting to feel better, but we think the answer is to control the world. If the kid would just stop kicking my seat, if my husband would just behave the way I wanted him to, if my business would just grow the way I wanted it to grow, if all of that happened, then I could feel better.

But until then, I'm going to make myself miserable. I'm going to create so much anxiety within my body and dysregulate myself so that I don't think clearly, so that I shut down, so that I contract, and hope that that helps me create what I want. Can you all see how crazy that is? It's not the way it works, but the moment you decide to take that control inward and be like, you know what? I'm going to decide how I'm going to show up. I am going to self-soothe. I am going to calm myself down. I'm not going to wait for the world to change; I'm going to be the one that changes. That's when miracles happen. Let me share another reason why regulation is the new discipline. Whenever I am speaking to entrepreneurs, in fact, I just had a big talk with a group of entrepreneurs not too long ago, and they were asking me my secret to success.

Everybody wants the formula. Everybody wants the little tricks, the how can I have overnight success? Well, let me tell you the real secret, and it is regulating your nervous system. Here's what I mean. Regulation helps you create expanded capacity. When you are growing a business, when you are leading a team, when you are a leader of a community, you are going to inevitably hit up against a lot of obstacles. You're going to be dealing with a lot of different energies. And if you don't have the capacity to hold all of that, you are going to, again, subconsciously push it away. You're going to shut down, and you're going to limit yourself as to what you are capable of doing. But when we learn to regulate our emotional responses, when we expand our window of tolerance for discomfort and challenges and complexity, that's when we increase our capacity to handle more and not only our personal lives, but our professional lives as well.

If every time an obstacle occurs or a conflict arises and your first instinct is to fight or flee, or to fawn or to freeze, you are limiting yourself from future possibilities. Let me give you a real-life example that happened recently. I had to fire someone from my team. Now, there was a time in my life where that one decision would have crippled me. The thought of firing someone was so inconceivable. Being a people pleaser, being someone that hates conflict, that's the old me. Now, the new me I'm like, bring it. This is what we do. Now, I don't enjoy it. I don't like it. It's someone's livelihood, but if it's not a fit, it's not a fit. But I realized I had to grow into this person, and it required that I constantly soothe myself, manage and regulate my own nervous system to allow for these bigger, more expansive versions of me.

Because think about it, if that one decision caused me to shrink, I would avoid it. It would've cost me money. It would've cost me energy. It would've cost my team time. It would've just slowed everything down. So I have literally had to create a more expansive nervous system to be able to hold this bigger vision and make all of the tough decisions that come along with it. And this is why if you want an expansive life, you have to increase your capacity to feel, which means you need to learn how to regulate your nervous system. That's why regulation is the new discipline, because when you can regulate your nervous system and you don't freak out when you have that ability to just take a pause, go in, take some breaths, calm yourself down, remind yourself, I'm safe in this moment. Let me look at what's really happening.

Let me separate out the fact from the fiction because it's the fiction 99.9% of the time that's causing us to live in this state of panic, that's causing us so much anxiety. It's our fear of the future. It's the fear of what could happen, and we're running these visions in our mind of the worst-case scenarios. We're freaking ourselves out, and then we're letting that dictate our lives. You can understand why it's so hard to live a big, expansive life if you don't have the skill set of learning how to regulate your nervous system. Again, this is a lot of the work that we do in the membership because a new you is really a new nervous system. It's you with expanded capacity to feel and not contract. It's a new you with an expanded awareness of what's really going on. It's a new you that understands that you not the outside world is creating how you feel, and you taking back ownership and taking charge of that internal regulation that is going to be the key to your freedom, my friends.

So if you are ready to feel more free, if you're ready to feel more expansive, if you're just ready to feel better, more alive, more excited about your life, come and join us. I promise you, best decision you'll make this year. You can head over to schoolofselfimage.com/join. Read all about the membership. I hope to see you inside, and I hope to 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.