The 10-Minute Shift You Must Make Before the New Year

Reframe: From Fixing to Designing

Most women go into the new year trying to fix themselves. We want to fix our bodies, our habits. We want to fix our homes. We want to fix our lives. But what if the breakthrough that you’re craving doesn’t come from fixing what’s wrong, but from designing what’s possible? In fact, what if the next version of you isn’t created through pressure, but through vision? Well, give me 10 minutes and I’ll share the shift that will make your entire year feel different. Let’s dive in.

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.

Hey friends, welcome to this episode. I want to start out by encouraging you to think about the feeling that you get when you are scrolling through a magazine that you love. Maybe it’s Vogue or ELLE, Architectural Digest or Real Simple, but the images stop you in your tracks. It’s the colors, the headlines, the intention. There’s this energetic rightness about it, a sense of creativity.

The Trap of Self-Repair Culture

Now, I want you to ask yourself, when was the last time you looked at your own life that way, as something beautiful that you’re designing instead of something broken that you’re trying to repair? Because most women, and I was one of them, we’ve been conditioned to approach our lives and ourselves in what I call self-repair culture. We wake up every day scanning for flaws, looking for what’s wrong. Maybe it’s the weight we think we need to lose or the habits that we should fix or the kitchen we need to organize, or maybe it’s the career that you think you should have built by now, or the mistakes that you still beat yourself up over.

The lens is always what’s wrong, what needs to be fixed, and where am I not enough. And listen, I lived there for many years. Every January, I’d make the longest, harshest list of everything wrong with me that I needed to fix. I needed to be more disciplined, more organized, more productive. I needed to be thinner, richer, better, different. And year after year, despite all that effort, nothing really ever truly changed because when you come from lack, you just create more lack. When you come from shame, you create more shame. When you treat your life like a repair project, you stay stuck in repair mode. So here is the shift that I want you to make for your next year.

The Wabi-Sabi Shift

Stop repairing your life and start designing it. It’s the opposite of perfectionism. It’s the opposite of shame. It’s the opposite of self-repair culture. Instead, it’s design and design energy feels different. It’s intentional, it’s creative, it’s future focus. It’s rooted in desire versus deficiency, which brings me to one of my favorite philosophies. It’s called Wabi-Sabi. Wabi-sabi is finding beauty and imperfection and the worn, the weathered, the real. It’s the crack in the ceramic bowl that makes it more interesting. It’s the patina on an old silver platter. It’s the linen shirt that wrinkles and somehow becomes even more elegant.

You see, the Japanese don’t hide imperfections. Instead, they illuminate them. They practice repairing cracks with gold. The crack becomes the feature. The flaw becomes the art and the history becomes the beauty of it all. And this is a Wabi-Sabi shift. Your imperfections are not liabilities. They are the texture of your life. They are the gold in your story.

Think of an editor crafting a January issue. She’s not sitting there thinking, “What was wrong with last year’s issue? What do we need to fix?” No. I imagine that instead she’s thinking, “What’s the vibe here? What’s the vision? What’s the story we want to tell? What do we want the readers to feel?” And from that vision, she curates, she selects, she decides, she shapes the story, and she understands something very essential. The most compelling stories are not the perfect ones. They’re the ones that have depth and truth and soul.

Become the Editor-in-Chief of Your Life

I want you to think of your life as the most important magazine you will ever produce. Think about it. Every day is a page. Every month is a feature. Every year is an issue. And you, yes, you. You are the Editor-in-Chief. Let me show you why this matters. Let’s say you want to improve your health next year. When you’re in repair mode, your thoughts sound like, “I need to lose weight. I need to stop snacking. I need to finally get more disciplined. I need to fix this body.” And that energy, how does it feel? I know for me it feels heavy and shame-filled and I feel contracted. But when you’re in design mode, your question shift. You begin to ask yourself things like, “What does vibrant health look like for me this year? What feels life-giving? What do I want to feature in my body’s story? What would feel nourishing and supportive and alive?”

And for you, maybe it’s morning walks. Maybe it’s cooking meals that feel beautiful and nourishing. Maybe it’s dancing in your kitchen. Maybe it’s deep rest or maybe it’s finally checking that thing that you’ve been ignoring. Same area of your life, but a totally different vibration. This right here is exactly why I created Live Like an Editor. I was so tired of seeing women approach their new year from a place of needing to fix themselves, of seeing themselves as broken, because I know the truth. The truth is you are amazing as you are and you get to design your life on purpose.

This will be our sixth year hosting it, and it has become a true fan favorite. Every year, women tell me things like, “This workshop did more for me in five days than years of personal development.” Or they’ll tell me, “I finally stopped fixing myself and I started to design a life that feels like mine.” It’s powerful because we change the lens. We stop looking through the lens of I need to fix myself and we start looking through the lens of I get to design myself. We change the lens from shame to vision, from perfection to embracing your Wabi-Sabi beauty.

Over five days, you will create the magazine of you for the new year, and we do exactly what an editor does. We set the vision, we create the aesthetic. We clarify your non-negotiables. We decide what gets featured and what gets cut. We shape the story of your year with intention, and we embrace the Wabi-Sabi life, the cracks, the texture, the gold, all of it to create the next edition of the magazine of you. Women often come into this workshop feeling very overwhelmed, burdened by a long list of what they think is wrong, but they leave seeing themselves as powerful, creating their lives instead of fixing them, expanding what’s possible instead of shrinking from past mistakes. They learn to celebrate instead of criticize. One woman told me that she finally felt like the main character in her own life. This is what it feels like to design your life versus fix your life.

Your Cover Story Starts Now

So what I want you to do right now today before anything else is I want you to ask yourself this question. If I am the Editor-in-Chief of my life, which you are, what will your cover story be for next year’s issue and the magazine of you?

I want you to approach this not through the lens of what you think needs to be fixed, but from the lens of what’s possible. I want you to think about the energy that you want to feel. I want you to think about the vision of what’s possible and allow yourself to dream for a moment. Write it down. Let yourself design without shame. And if you want to go deeper, if you want to experience the shift from the inside out, join me for Live Like An Editor. It’s happening on January the 12th through the 16th.

When you join, you’re going to receive a gorgeous workbook to accompany our five days together. You’re also going to receive morning audio lessons that you can listen to on the go, as well as five daily live sessions where you’ll also have replays in case you can’t make it live. But most importantly, you’re going to get a transformative design process that will help you shape your entire year. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/editor to join us.

Now, remember this, as you start your new year, this is so, so important. You and your life are not a repair project, okay? What you are is a masterpiece in the making, and I cannot wait to see what you design next. Have a beautiful week, my friends, and I will see you in next week’s episode. Cheers.