Speak from Your Future

I have a question for you. How much of your time do you spend speaking from your future? If you’re curious what I’m talking about, this episode is for you, 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, gorgeous friends. What is happening? I am here in Denver with my mom and dad and my niece, who flew into town to spend the week with me. And it has been so lovely just hanging out on the sofa, watching TV. My mom is in the kitchen cooking breakfast, lunch, and dinner, as most Southern mommas do, and just relaxing.

And when I haven’t been relaxing, I have been welcoming in all of the new members to the School of Self-Image. I am so excited for you all. Your world is about to be rocked in the best of ways.

This morning, I was journaling, as I do most mornings. And I was specifically doing some future-self journaling. And I had this realization that, if I were to examine how much of my mental energy goes to my past, my present, and my future, I would say that most of my thoughts, most of my time is spent in my future while also appreciating my present.

But it’s not just spent in a future that is not designed. Because I’m sure many of you listening think about your future in a way that terrifies you and scares you. And listen, I know what that’s like. I have done some future catastrophizing – is that the word? Well, we’re going to go with it anyway – in my head.

I don’t do it that often any longer because I’ve realized it doesn’t work. It doesn’t protect you. It doesn’t make your future better. If anything, it keeps you in a state of fight-or-flight where it’s almost impossible to show up and be the person that can create the future that you want.

And so, in this episode, I want to talk with you all about speaking from your future. Now, if you are in the School of Self-Image membership, there is a whole class that I taught on this topic. Go back, listen to that class because I go into deeper detail. But in this episode, I simply want to introduce this concept to you, so that you can begin to practice it in your life.

One of the things that I’ve noticed is that the bolder I am in committing to and speaking from my future, the better results I’m creating. At the Business Image Mastermind, one of the things that we all had to go around and do is make bold declarations and bold promises.

I’ve noticed in looking at very successful people, this is one of the things that they do. They don’t tell you, “I hope this is going to work out. I think we can do it.” They’re like, “Listen, here’s what we’re doing. This is what we’re committing to. This is where we’re going.” And their commitment and their energy of their boldness is what drives their bold actions that helps them create bold results.

When people are talking, I pay attention to their language. I pay attention to what they are saying. And just by doing that, I can tell you so much about what their future is going to look like.

I pay attention to the language of my members within the School of Self-Image, and I notice that some of them, if not many of them, when they first come into the membership, they spend a lot of time talking about their past and talking about their present through their filter that is not serving them.

In his book, The Magic of Thinking Big, David Schwartz says, “Build castles. Don’t dig graves.” And many of us are digging our own grave with the words we speak. We are not building castles of our future. Instead, we’re either speaking in such a way that we just keep recreating what is, or we are literally building graves for ourselves, digging graves.

We talk about how bad our health is. We talk about how we’re not enough. We talk about all the things we don’t want, and that is where we’re sending our energy. Your energy flows where your attention goes. And your energy is impacting how you show up and the actions that you take.

The words you speak matter. And I spend a lot of time speaking about my future and speaking from my future. I like to go to my future and think about that version of me, and what is she saying in this moment? What words is she using? What stories is she telling?

The words you speak matter. Are you speaking from your past, or are you speaking from your future?

When I teach this concept, I will get some pushback. And the pushback sounds something like this “How can I speak about something that hasn’t happened yet? I don’t know if it’s going to happen.” And so, when you think that way, you continuously speak from where you are and where you’ve been, and you keep recreating that.

I am always speaking from my future. In fact, I made a bold promise at the Business Image Mastermind about the last launch that I did. And guess what? We reached that goal. I made my promise. Why? Because I spoke it with such conviction.

And I go deep into this practice. I don’t’ just speak it I visualize it. I visualize all the women whose lives are going to be impacted by this work. I visualize the before and after stories that we’re going to get. I think about the messages that I’ll get on Instagram telling me how this work is changing their lives.

I go deep into this practice. But the first step is me saying, “Hey, here’s what we’re doing.” And then I speak it and I feel it and I commit to it, and then I go all in on it. And in that process, you all, I become it before it’s ever even happened.

Florence Shinn says, “Faith knows it has already happened, and then acts accordingly.” And that is something we can train ourselves to do. But in order to do that, you have to first of all know, “What is the future that I want?” I get to create it any way that I want it. I get to literally make it up in my head and then it’s about speaking from that place and letting your words change you. Because that is what happens.

Your speech transforms your self-image because your self-image is just a collection of the stories and the thoughts that you have about yourself. It’s how you see yourself. And you will always work to prove yourself true.

And so, when you’re speaking from the past and you’re speaking from the present, that is shaping your identity. And your behavior will be a result of your identity, how you see yourself, how you think about yourself.

We are always working subconsciously to be consistent. We want or words, our behaviors, and our language, and our feelings to be consistent with one another. So, when you start speaking boldly from your future, it is going to demand a different version of you to show up. It’s going to demand new behaviors. It’s going to demand new states of being.

And you do that over and over, day in and day out, not only will you be able to create your future on purpose, but it will change you. Let me give you a practical example of how this works.

Years ago, I decided I was going to run a marathon. I had never been a runner. In fact, I think at that point, the furthest I had ever run was like five miles. But I announced it to everyone. I made a bold promise, “I’m going to run the Disney Marathon.”

Now, think about what happened in that moment. My brain was like, “Holy crap, she just told the world what she’s about to do. So, we either have to get onboard, or we’re going to look like a fool.”

So, by me speaking that from my future, something that I was going to do a year from now, it demanded that I change my identity into a runner. And so, speaking that bold promise, speaking from my future changed me. It shaped what I thought. It shaped my behaviors. I had to start practicing. I had to start running every single day. It changed what I fueled my body with.

And then, the day came when I ran a marathon. But I had already spoken it into existence. And that’s the thing I want to say, but I don’t know if it’s going to happen. You act like you don’t have a choice, like it’s not within your control.

What if it’s all within your control? What if you’re creating all of it? And if you look at your life, you already do this, somewhat. You may say, “Hey, I’m going on vacation next month.” You’re speaking from your future. And that declaration, that promise you make to yourself, it requires that you show up in a certain way. It requires that you plan, it requires that you make that come true.

You tell your kids, “Hey, I’m going to pick you up this afternoon,” we could easily argue we don’t know if that’s going to happen. But it demands that you live within that identity. You want to be a mom or a dad who picks your kid up from school, and so you do it.

We’re just playing the same game at a much bigger level. The other thing that happens when you are speaking from your future is that you are asking your reticular activating system - this is the part of your brain that filters through all of the data that’s coming at us constantly - you’re asking it to filter through all of that to find matches for the words that you are using.

So let’s say for example, you want to speak from the future of I am a woman that makes a million dollars a year. And you speak it with commitment and conviction. You don’t know how it’s going to happen, and you don’t need to know how. But you’re like, here’s what we’re doing, this is who I am.

And you say that, and you recite it to yourself day in and day out, and all of a sudden, you’re going to start to notice things around you. Maybe a certain person shows up, maybe a piece of information drops in your lap, maybe an idea comes out of nowhere because you are programming your brain what to look for.

A lot of you all have programmed your brain to look for things that don’t serve you because you’re going around speaking from your past and your present. “I’m overweight, I’m overwhelmed, I don’t have enough, I’m not good enough, things never work out for me, I never complete things, why doesn’t this work out for me?” Your brain’s like, here you go, here you go, here’s all the evidence for all of that.

But when you start to speak from your future on purpose, you are asking your brain to be your ally and not your enemy. And your brain is always going to look for what you ask it to look for. If you ask your brain for all of the reasons why your life is not good, it will tell you all of the reasons.

You can also ask your brain, how is my life amazing right now? And your brain will say, well, you got up this morning, you can walk, you’re healthy, you’ve got beautiful children, you have a job, you’ve got a house. See how this works?

And so when you start speaking from your future, you will be able to access opportunities, possibilities, ideas, people that were always around you. They were always there. You just were not aligned with them. You were not a match for them because of the words you were using in your head and out loud.

So imagine, instead of walking around and thinking about your past relationships and how they haven’t worked, and now you’re telling yourself, “There’s just no good men left in the world, I can’t have even one good date,” instead of that, what if you woke up and you were like, “I am such a catch, and the man of my dreams is on his way. I don’t have to worry about it, he’s coming. There are so many men to love.”

I love that one. My daughter said that to a friend of mine who was in the dating world for a while. There’s so many men to love. But it’s true. But you can equally say there aren’t any good men. But if you want to attract a man into your life, why would you ever say that?

You are speaking in opposition of that that you want. So think about all the things you could be saying from your future. For those of you who want to get in the best shape of your life, instead of walking around and talking about how tired you are and how you never are able to do it and you always let yourself down and you always disappoint yourself, all of the stuff from the past, what if you woke up every single day and you just kept reciting, “I’m getting into the best shape of my life?”

When you meet up with friends at dinner or at lunch, you tell them, “Hey, guess what? I’m getting in the best shape of my life. It’s happening.” Those words would change you because remember, you are going to work to be consistent with your identity. And if you say it enough, it becomes your identity.

Now, you may have that voice in the back of your head, the little Debbie downer that lives within all of us that’s like, “Yeah right, I’ve heard you say that before. It’s never happened before.” You have to recognize that voice. That’s just the same voice that just kept talking about how tired you were and how you were never going to get in shape.

It’s just rebutting you trying to change your words, change your speech, and it takes effort. This is not easy work, which is why a lot of people don’t do it. It’s way easier in the moment just to sit around and complain about where you are and not do anything about it, but it comes at a long-term cost.

So if that voice comes up, you just have to recognize that is the part of me that wants to keep me where I am. And you have to say to that part of you, “No listen, this is what’s up, we are getting in the best shape of our lives.” And if you keep reciting it and committing to it, I promise you, that one statement speaking from your future will change you. It will demand a new version of you.

And we can apply this to everything. When it comes to money, instead of walking around saying, “I just don’t have enough money,” getting together with your friends to talk about the gas prices and inflation and the stock market and how bad it’s doing and scaring yourself into scarcity, no.

Speak from your future no matter what the stock market is doing, no matter inflation, no matter gas prices, no matter even what’s in my bank account. I am abundant. I feel it. I focus on what is abundant in my life, not what is lacking. I focus on my blessings, my health. I focus on what I can do. I focus on the roof over my head and the food on my table.

And it’s just getting better and better. I know how to manage my money. I’m excited for more money to flow my way. I’m excited to add value to the world. I am abundant. Can you see the difference?

And just notice how those statements call for different versions of you. One calls forth the scared, scarce version. And remember, our identities shape our behaviors, and our behaviors are creating our results. And so if you are speaking from your past and present from a state of fear and you’re calling forth that version of you, it’s going to shape your behaviors.

How do you act with money when you’re afraid? We really do become self-fulfilling prophecies. Versus when you’re speaking from your future and that is demanding an abundant version of you that shows up abundantly. And that shapes your behaviors, and those behaviors lead to very different results.

When it comes to your businesses, instead of talking about how bad the last launch was, instead of talking about how you don’t know how to hire, or you don’t have a great team, or you don’t have the right support, talk from your future, how you are building a world-class business, and support is on its way, and you are learning and growing, and failure is just part of the process, and you’re willing to fail as many times as it takes because you know that success is waiting for you. It is there.

It’s just waiting for you to speak it into reality, to speak it into existence. Imagine waking up every day talking about how much you love your business and how it’s growing and the impact it’s having in the world, how that would change your identity.

You would begin to see yourself as an extraordinary CEO. And that vision of yourself, that self-image of yourself will cause you to show up in powerful and bold ways that would lead to powerful and bold results. That is what I’m talking about when I talk about speaking from your future.

So I want you all to pay attention. How much of your talk with your friends, with your family, with your spouse, with your children, how much of it is based on the past, how much of it is about the present, and maybe not in a way that is driving you to your future?

Maybe you’re talking about the present in a very negative way. Or if you do spend time in the future, it’s very negative. It’s very worrisome and anxiety-producing.

Listen, the words you speak matter. And you are the one speaking them. You have control over what you say and the words you use. Speak them on purpose and spend more time speaking from your future in an exciting, powerful, and bold way.

Have a beautiful week everyone. I will see you in next week’s episode. 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.