Self-Care for the Mind

Do you know what your greatest asset is? I can tell you, it’s not your 401K, or your house, or your car. It is the one thing that’s creating your entire life. And in this episode, I’m going to talk about how to care for it. 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, my beautiful friends. I am on fire today. I have been meeting with my team. I have been working with my accountant. I have been planning content for some things that are coming up in September. I love running a business. I love working. I love creating. And more than anything, I love serving you all.

Recording this podcast every week is one of my favorite things to do, and just thank you for all of you who reach out on Instagram. Which, by the way, if you’re not following me on Instagram, what in the world? Go to @tonyaleigh and follow me.

But I love getting your messages telling me how certain episodes have impacted your life. I love reading the reviews that you leave on iTunes. They mean so much to me. And so, you are the reason why I do all of this. I love serving. At the core, I love doing this work to hopefully make your days a little brighter, help you be a little more confident, and to help you create your own after story, which is my ultimate goal.

I’m on a mission to help 3000 women create their after story over the next three years. That is my extraordinary goal. So, if you are in the School of Self-Image membership and you have not shared your after story with me yet, please do. It would mean the world to me.

So, today, I want to talk about how to take care of your most important asset. It is not your bank account. It is not your 401K. It is not your house. It’s not your car. Do you know what your most important asset is? It is your mind.

Everything that you have created thus far is a result of your thinking. And yet, isn’t it interesting how so few people spend time really taking care of the one thing that’s creating their entire lives?

We will spend time cleaning our house, cleaning our cars, cleaning all of the things outside of us. But what about cleaning up your mind? Research has shown that us humans think between 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day. And of those 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts that we think, 90% of them are the same thoughts that we thought yesterday, and the day before, and the day before.

And so, when you think about this, it’s fascinating. Your thoughts are creating your reality. And the way that works is what you think creates how you feel and how you feel drives what you do or what you don’t do.

So, think about it. When you’re feeling excited, what kind of action do you take? When you’re feeling discouraged, what kind of action would you take? When you’re feeling frustrated or joyful, just notice the states of being that drive certain actions.

And what creates your state of being? Your state of your thinking. And so, if we’re thinking between 60,000 and 80,000 per day and 90% of them are the same thoughts that we thought yesterday, what that means is we’re just creating the same results over and over because of our thoughts.

And this, my friend, is why you must take care of your mind. So, I thought in this episode, I would just share some of my own personal practices of how I take care of my most important asset. And there are many ways that we can do this. But hopefully, by me sharing, you’ll at least start to think about if, number one, you’re taking care of your mind, and number two, how you can take care of it better and finding the ways that work for you.

So, for me, one of the ways that I take care of my mind is through journaling. It is powerful to actually look at what you are thinking. It is helpful to think about what you think about. Do you ever do that? Do you ever just stop and say, “What am I thinking right now?”

Most people don’t, which is why most people are struggling. What they’re trying to do is fix the world so that they can feel better. When all you have to do is manage your mind effectively and just let the world be what it is. Because we can’t fix the world. We can’t control the world. But we can manage our own minds.

I like to tell my clients, my members, “You are the CEO of your mind, and you need to act as such.” Which means you’ve got to manage all of those thoughts. You have to decide which ones stay and which ones need to be fired. And it’s an ongoing daily practice.

So, for me, journaling just allows me to peek into my mind to see, what am I thinking about right now? What do I want to be thinking?

In the School of Self-Image, we have a daily practice called the Daily Three, and this is part of that journaling practice, and it doesn’t take that long. It literally can take less than five minutes. But it’s you staying aware of what’s going on in your most important asset, the asset that’s creating everything.

And so, for me, I love to journal, in the mornings especially. I love to sit down with myself and assess, how am I feeling and what am I thinking to create that feeling? Now, this journal practice for me changes over the course if my week.

If I wake up and I’m feeling good and I’m feeling positive, I don’t look into my brain as to why. I just think about, what do I want to be thinking about this project I’m working on or what I’m going to be doing today?

But if I wake up, or at any point during my day, if I start to feel a negative emotion like anxiety, fear, worry, overwhelm, frustration, I’ll just pull out my journal and I’ll look into my brain as to why I am feeling that way.

And usually, it’s thoughts like, “You’re never going to get it done. You’re going to disappoint people. It’s not going to be good enough. You don’t know how to make this work.” It’s just all of these kinds of thoughts. And those are just thoughts. They’re not reality.

But when I think them and I just let my brain just run on default, those kinds of thoughts never lead to a positive result. And this is why I love journaling so much. It is this date with myself, to get to know myself at a much deeper level.

The other thing that I do is I have a red velvet rope around my mind. So a red velvet rope is what you put up as a boundary of what you allow into your world.

When it comes to my mind, I’m very mindful of what I consume. Which is why I don’t watch the news. It does not serve me. And I’ve had many people want to argue with me and say, “But you need to stay on top of current events.” And I just trust that I will know what I’m meant to know.

But I don’t want to put stuff in my brain that is jaded facts, is people’s perspective and opinions of the facts, that often just lead to me feeling a lot of fear and a lot of anxiety and a lot of worry.

What is the upside to that? It doesn’t help me fix the issue. If anything, it causes me to constrict and shrink from life. And when the world is the scariest, that’s when we need to be our biggest. We need to bring that big, bold, beautiful energy into the world when everybody else is afraid.

I can’t do that if I’m sitting around watching the same stuff that everybody else is watching that’s making them so afraid. Also, I pay attention to what I am consuming through books, through TV, through music. Music is a big one. Music has a vibration. There is an energy behind not only the beats, but the lyrics.

And I want to put into my brain music that inspires, motivates, uplifts, is loving, is kind. And so, I’m very mindful about what I consume through music. The books I read, I want to put stuff into my brain that leads to good output. Junk in, junk out. Good in, good out.

So, I’m always consuming information that usually is aligned with my extraordinary goal. So, for example, right now, I am consuming a lot of information on business because I am wanting to make a big impact in the space of self-image. As I told you earlier, I’m on a mission to help 3000 women create their after stories.

And so, I’m reading things that will help me do that. Sometimes, for example when I’m on vacation, I read things that are fun and exciting and have nothing to do with business. But I’m very intentional on, what is the purpose of me consuming this with my mind? Is this information, is what I’m putting into my brain going to make me a better person? Is it going to help me grow? Does it feel good?

And I’m talking about really feeling good. Not feeling good as an escape from life, but does this feel good? Does it feel like it’s aligned with who I’m becoming.

And one of the things I like to ask myself often is, does this belong in my future? Whether it’s a relationship, whether it’s something I’m watching on TV, whether it’s a book that I’m reading, I’m constantly aligning my present self with my future self. And so, I imagine would my future self be consuming this with her mind? And if the answer is no, then I don’t need to be consuming it as my present-day self.

Another way that I take care of my mind is I’m very mindful about the people that I surround myself with. Now, I’ve talked about this on the podcast before, but it needs to be said again.

I understand that when you manage your mind and you know how to do it effectively – and I feel like I do and I get better every single day because I practice this all the time – but when you know how to manage your mind, you can place yourself around any type of person and decide on purpose how you want to feel around that person.

However, with that said, I don’t want to work that hard. I trust that the universe will put those people in my life at certain times to give me the lesson that I need to learn. But when I’m choosing the people that surround me, I want to choose on purpose to be around people whose thoughts and beliefs align with where I’m going and who I’m becoming.

I want to make sure that I’m around people who are putting things in my brain that will grow me, that inspire me, that make me laugh, that make me excited to be alive. Because inevitably, when we’re around people, if we’re around them long enough, we start to adopt their belief systems. We start to think at that level.

You know the saying, the people you surround yourself with, the five people on average you surround yourself with, that’s who you are. Because the outside world is always reflecting back to you who you believe yourself to be. That’s a lot of the work we do within the School of Self Image.

So, I want to place people around me that reflect back to me who I’m becoming and what I’m capable of. And that is one of the ways that I take care of my mind. I’m very mindful about the company that I keep.

Another way that I take care of my mind is through diet and exercise. This is more on a physiological level, but it also impacts me emotionally. I’ve noticed on the days when I exercise and I’m eating well, I emotionally am in a better state. It’s so much easier to think a certain way when I take care of my body.

Have you ever noticed, when you’re not eating well and you’re not moving your body, how emotionally you can just start to spiral out of control? When you’re taking care of yourself physically, of course there are things that are happening in your body on a cellular level and hormonally.

But there’s also an emotional component to this because, when you’re taking care of yourself physically, you’re giving yourself data, like “I deserve my own care. I’m taking exquisite care of myself.” And these kinds of thoughts, they become compounding. It’s so much easier to start to think positive thoughts when you’re taking care of the basics; the basics of taking care of you.

Another way that I take care of my mind is through meditation. Now, meditation is an interesting thing because the people who struggle with it the most are the ones who need it the most. And that would be me. I’ve struggled with meditating.

However, I have made it a point every single day to take two meditation breaks for five minutes where I just sit and watch my thoughts. I don’t even try to get to a quiet mind. I think the pressure of trying to have a quiet mind makes your mind way more noisy.

I just sit there for about five minutes and just watch the thoughts go by and I’m like, “That’s an interesting one. Okay…” right? And I just do that five minutes, twice a day.

I also love using my Muse headband. If you are on my email list, you get The Edit. I included the headband in the issue that came out today. Which, a little interjection if you’re not on the email list, what in the world? The Edit is so much fun. It comes out every Wednesday. We have different sections on how to create haute habits. We have a section of my diary, what’s going on in my life, the thought of the week, it’s so much fun.

So, make sure you go to schoolofselfimage.com/edit so that you don’t miss an issue. It comes out every Wednesday. And I included the headband that I use in today’s Edit.

But I love this headband because it allows me to gamify meditation, which I sort of like. It gives you biofeedback as you’re meditating, so you can see what your brain’s doing. That’s the nurse in me. I love data. I love the science behind it.

But I have found that meditation has calmed my nervous system and it just makes me so aware of how crazy my brain is. And that’s okay. That’s part of being a human. But more than anything, it’s just calmed my sympathetic nervous system down. And so, caring for my brain does include a meditation practice.

And listen, for any of you that struggle with meditation, I get it. Find a practice that works for you and don’t put pressure on yourself to do it perfectly. You can’t get it wrong. And start out with just five minutes a day of just sitting and watching your thoughts. That is as basic as meditation is, just watching yourself thinking.

Because it’s interesting, isn’t it? There’s a part of you watching all of it, and I’m always curious about, who is she? And I believe that that is our higher self; the higher self that has the ability to sort of oversee all that’s happening in our brains.

So, meditation is one of the other ways that I like to take care of my mind. And then finally – and this is a big one. And when I look at the people that I admire the most, the people that I find to be the happiest, the most successful, almost all of them have this in common. They have a coach or a mentor or a therapist that they love that’s in their corner, who’s cheering for them, who’s supporting them, who’s helping them to navigate their own mind.

And for me, I love investing in my mind through coaching and masterminds. I can now look back and see a direct correlation between the shifts that I’ve had in my life and what I’ve invested in seriously just taking care of my mind.

Having an amazing coach that can help you see how you’re limiting yourself with your own brain is such a powerful process. A lot of times, we don’t even realize that these are choices that we get to make. When you’ve been thinking about yourself in a certain way for so long and now you have a lot of evidence for it, you just think that’s who you are.

But having the right coach to come along and hold a mirror up to your mind and also offer you tools to begin to transform your beliefs, it is well worth the investment.

I seriously cannot imagine my life had I not had the courage and also the deep belief somewhere inside of me that felt like this was a worthwhile investment, even though at the time I was like, I don’t have enough money, I should be putting this money elsewhere. I am so glad I didn’t listen to that voice and that I invested in taking care of my own mind. Best investment I’ve ever made.

When you invest in your mind, number one, what you learn from that, no one can ever take it away from you. And then, when you consider that your mind is creating your entire life, your experience, how you feel, your self-image, doesn’t it make sense to invest in your greatest commodity? Something to think about.

But these are just ways that I take care of my own mind. And I’m really curious to hear from you. Find me on Instagram and let me know what practices do you have that helps you take care of your greatest commodity? Have a great week, everyone. I will see you in next week’s episode.

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.