Self Gratitude

I bet that you have heard about the power of gratitude and maybe even you're great at being grateful for other people and the things in your life, but how good are you at having self-gratitude? That is what we're talking about on today's episode, so let's dive in. Oh, wait, one more thing I forgot to mention. I am hosting a holiday party. It's called Your Extraordinary Holidays. I'm going to be sharing how you can create a holiday that is truly fulfilling and feels extraordinary in all of the ways. All you need to do is go to schoolofselfimage.com/holiday and register. It's free and we always, always have fun. I can't wait to see you there.

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. How are you doing? If you are listening to this the day it comes out, it means you are listening the day before Thanksgiving here in the U.S., which means that I am at my parents' house about to chow down on some good Southern cooking. My Mom always goes out for Thanksgiving. I'm so grateful for so many things. I am grateful for my parents. I'm grateful for my family, my friends. I'm so grateful for my health. I am grateful for trees. I don't know what's happened, but this year I have become obsessed with trees. I cannot get enough of the trees here in Charlotte. They are stunning. Sometimes I just want to get in the car and ride around and look at all the beautiful trees and the yards, but there's so many things that I'm grateful for. I'm grateful for you. The fact that you tune in and listen to this podcast means the world to me.

I don't ever want to take that for granted. I see it as an honor. So many of you email me and message me, just saying how this podcast has changed your life, and that's why I do it. I love sharing this work. I love sharing what has really helped me to better my own life, but equally, you've blessed me in so many ways, and so I feel like it's a two-way street. If you are grateful for me, I just want you to know I am so grateful for you. I am grateful for The School of Self-Image community. The women in that membership are truly extraordinary, and the energy that they bring, the stories, the inspiration and the support, the friendship, it's so delicious to be a part of. I am grateful for my team because you don't do these kinds of things alone. It takes a village truly, and so I'm so grateful for everybody that has supported my vision with The School of Self-Image.

You know who I'm also grateful for? In the famous words of Snoop Dogg, "I want to thank me." In 2018 I think it was, Snoop Dogg received his star at The Hollywood Walk of Fame, and as most people do, when you stand up to receive an award, you recognize the people that helped you get there, which is a beautiful thing because, again, we do not do this alone. Do you ever hear someone thank themselves? Maybe you think that's too conceited, too arrogant. "How dare someone get up and thank themselves," but who got them there? Ultimately, they did, and yet people often don't give themselves credit. We undermine our own success and achievements. We like to say, "Oh, well, it was just luck. It was accident. I didn't really work that hard."

We don't give ourselves credit for all of the things that we're doing well and right in our lives. Then, we wonder why we don't feel good about ourselves. We wonder why we don't have self-esteem. We wonder why we lack confidence. Well, Snoop Dogg has confidence in spades, and I loved what he said at his speech. After he thanked everybody else, here's what he said. "I want to thank me for believing in me. I want to thank me for doing all of this hard work. I want to thank me for having no days off. I want to thank me for never quitting. I want to thank me for always being a giver and trying to give more than I receive. I want to thank me for trying to do more right than wrong. I want to thank me for being me at all times. Snoop Dogg, you a bad Mother******."

Now, that is not how I would have ended my speech, but that was not my speech, that was his, and I appreciated the essence of it because, again, I think we don't thank ourselves enough. We had our SOSI South event at the beginning of November, and I had so many of you who were there who came up to me throughout the weekend, some of you with tears in your eyes just thanking me, saying, "You know what, Tonya? You've changed my life." Y'all know what I said. "No, you changed your life. I offer guidance. I offer coaching. I offered new perspectives and new ideas, but ultimately, you did the work, not me. You did that." Are you thanking yourself? Are you giving yourself high fives? Are you coming to you the way you came to me with tears in your eyes being like, "Thank you, you did it?"

"You did this girl. Thank you for showing up and doing the work to make our lives better." I appreciate when people thank me, and I thank people all of the time who have supported me, but I never want to leave myself out of my own gratitude list. At first, when I started doing this, this was uncomfortable. In fact, I did a podcast, one of my early podcasts was all about thanking yourself at Thanksgiving. I remember when I wrote that how that was a practice that I wanted to start. Now, every Thanksgiving, it is an annual tradition that I sit down with myself intentionally and thank myself for my accomplishments of what I've done, of who I am, and give myself the spotlight for a moment, for nobody other than myself to really see myself. See myself through the lens of gratitude.

I suggest that you do the same. It feels good. It might be uncomfortable. It might be awkward at first because anytime you've done something for the first time, it usually is, and especially if it's something done from a place of so much love and compassion for ourselves because often that's not how we operate. We are so used to being our own worst critic, our own worst enemy, of being perfectionist and making our love very conditional towards ourselves. We must perform a certain way in order to be treated a certain way by ourselves, but I love this practice because it forces you to look at, what are all of the ways that you're doing amazing? What are all of the ways that you have shown up for yourself this year? What have you done this year that has improved your life?

There are many different ways that you can do this practice. One of the ways that I personally love to do it is a three-part self-gratitude. What this looks like is I spend time thanking my past self. I like to think about key moments in my past that I am so grateful for myself for doing the thing, making the decision. For example, I am so grateful for 2020 when I moved to Denver. It was a life-changing moment, and I was so afraid. I was so scared, and that's usually what happens when you make big changes, but I am so thankful for that version of me that did that for myself.

I am so thankful for that young woman who was in her early 30s who decided to take a leap of faith and start a coaching business, who was so scared, who was leaving a very secure job as a nurse, but something in her knew deep down that this was what she was meant to do. She betted on herself, and she's been doing this work for, what, 15 years now. It's so crazy, and I'm thankful for her. I want you to think about your past self and see yourself throughout the years. Maybe it's the you when you were five or 10, or in high school or college, young adulthood, but think about those key moments and decisions that you've made that you are now so grateful for. Spend some time thanking that version of yourself.

I also love thanking my present self, the version of me that I am today. I love to think about what I'm proud of, of who I am, the traits that I have, how I am with people, the qualities that have helped me create the life that I have. I love to spend time just thanking myself for those things. I'm thankful that I'm giving and I'm loving and I truly want everybody to win. I am so grateful that I have patience. I'm so grateful. There's so many qualities that I have that I'm grateful for. I'm funny. I love how I'm doing my list with you all. I had not planned to do this, but it just gives you some examples.

I also love to appreciate my abilities, things that I've learned how to do that maybe once were very difficult, for example, doing this podcast. I remember when I did my very first podcast, which by the way, I'm thankful for the version of my who was willing to suck at it because if you go back and listen to my early podcasts, you're going to see that I've come a long way. I'm thanking my past self for that, but I'm also appreciating my present self who now has a new ability to speak without reading a script, who trusts herself more, who always shows up, who produces this podcast week after week. I'm so grateful for my ability to do that.

Here's a difficult one for many of us, but I'm going to really encourage you to do this. What a lot of us women struggle with is our body image. We spend so much time nit-picking ourselves apart, hating on our thighs, our cellulite, our whatever. I'm going to encourage you to spend some time having so much gratitude for your body. I want you to really focus on the parts of yourself that you do love physically, and then appreciate your body, what it allows you to do, how it supports you every day. Spend some intentional time in body gratitude. Another prompt that I like to use for my present day self is I'm high-fiving myself for.

When you think about this year, what do you want to high five yourself for? What are the accomplishments that you have achieved? Or maybe the obstacles that you overcame, the decisions that you made this year that right now you want to high five your present day self over? Then, the third part of the self-gratitude process is to thank your future self. Now, this one's really fun. This is where you go into your future and you get a glimpse of your future self and the choices that she made and who she's become. This is where you just get to use your imagination. Our imaginations are powerful. Our imaginations are what we end up living into, and so imagining on purpose, imagining what you want is a very, very powerful skill set.

For this, I want you to go into the future and get a glimpse of your future self, and I recommend that you go three years out. That is a good time frame. It doesn't feel too far away, but it's not too close that you feel like, "Oh, I can't become that in such a short timeframe." Go to that version of you three years from now, who has accomplished some of your big goals, and get an idea of what you imagine she had to overcome, who she had to become, some of the steps that she took, some of the decisions that she made, and begin then to thank her ahead of time.

It is a super powerful and fun exercise, and this is what I love to do every Thanksgiving. I will be doing this tomorrow as the turkey is in the oven and we are getting ready for our Thanksgiving lunch. This is what I'm going to be setting aside time to do because we of all people deserve our own recognition, our own love, and our own gratitude because without us, the life that we know doesn't exist. Yeah, life exists, but not our life, and so in the famous words of Snoop Dogg, "I want to thank me." Have a beautiful week, everyone, and for those of you in the U.S., happy Thanksgiving. Cheers.

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.