The Dos and Don'ts of a Charmed Life

Neale Donald Walsch wrote, "You can live a charmed life by causing others to live a charmed life. That is, be the source of charm, of charming moments and experiences, in the life of another. Be everyone else's Lucky Charm! Make all who you touch today feel lucky that you crossed their path. Do this for a week and watch things change. Do it for a month and you'll be a different person." In this episode of the podcast, we are talking about the dos and don'ts of a charmed life. 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. Welcome back to another episode of the podcast. My parents just left yesterday. They were here for the weekend to celebrate Mother's Day, and I always love spending time with them. And then one of Fonz's good friends from LA came in last night and he's going to be here for a few days. We've had a full house, which I love. It's so much fun. Fonz and I are getting ready to play in our very first pickleball tournament, and he has taken this very seriously. He is demanding that I train every single morning. He's like, "Let's get up. Let's stretch. Let's do some cardio." I just find it so amusing. I'm like, "Babe, it's pickleball. We're going to be just fine."

But we're both competitive. We both want to win. I will definitely let you know how that goes. We play this coming weekend. It'll be our first tournament. Other than that, I've just been enjoying the little things. Truly, it's the little things in my everyday life that delights me greatly. Walking around Charlotte this time of the year and seeing these beautiful trees, I have no words. My family, and probably you are sick of hearing me talk about the trees, but they're just so stunningly intoxicating and beautiful and all different types. I can't even describe it. You have to come just to see the trees.

It's the blue skies and the song that I hear and the smile of my family and friends. It's like these little things that we often overlook, but make life so beautiful, so delightful. And yet often in our attempt to go after extraordinary things, which you also know I love to do, we can forget to look around at the extraordinary things in the ordinary. And not only that, we can begin to look at the things that take us away from a charmed life. What is a charmed life? I've been thinking about this topic a lot. I've been studying it. I've been going through my own life history and excavating the lessons that have led me to live what many people call a charmed life.

If you look up what the definition is, it means a life protected by difficulties. Other definitions say a life that seems to have a magical lucky quality. Now, for the record, I don't believe in a life without difficulty. I believe we need difficulties to give us contrast, to teach us lessons, to guide us, to strengthen us. When I think about my life, I don't think of it as, oh, I've lived a life without difficulty. Not at all. I encounter difficulties all of the time, and yet I still feel like I live a charmed life. Why is this even important? Why would you even want to live a charmed life? Well, maybe you don't, but I find that the majority of people do.

We want to transcend the ordinary and the mundane. We want to feel alive. We want to feel magic. We want to feel the expansion of what can be. And to me, that's what charm is. Charm means the power of giving delight or arousing admiration to achieve something as if by magic. When I think of being in alignment, when I think of being in flow, when I think of attracting things into my life, there is a charming quality to it. There is this effortlessness of showing up in the fullest expression of you and having that come back to you because the world will always mirror back to you your self-image, how you see yourself, your energy, your state of being.

That's just how it works. As I said, I've been studying this a lot because I am devoting the entire theme of SOSI South, which is our annual event that we're going to be hosting this year in New Orleans. We're talking about charm, and I've realized it comes down to three things that you need to learn how to charm in order to live a charming life. We're going to be diving deep into these at this event. We're going to be doing exercises. I want every participant that comes to leave changed in the deepest way and they take that magic back home with them.

You're going to learn how to use charm to better the relationship with yourself, to create beautiful and healthy relationships with others, to maybe grow your business, to grow your wealth, to expand your joy, to come alive. If you want to dive into this topic deeper with me in person with the most extraordinary group of charming women that you'll ever meet, come join us at SOSI South. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/south. But this isn't just a weekend conference. This is a luxury retreat where we learn during the day and then we practice at night and we have parties and dinners.

It's just one of the most incredible events that you could attend. I've had women tell me many times, they've been to many events, they've never been to one like this. We would love to have you. Go check it out, schoolofselfimage.com/south, and get your ticket. They're almost gone. When it comes to charm, there are three ways that I want you to think about this, three things you need to learn to charm in order to live a magical life. The first is you need to learn to charm yourself. That's the most important because you're with you all of the time. Do you give yourself great delight?

Do you enjoy your own company? Because if you don't master that, you're not going to be able to master the next two. That's the foundation. The second thing that you need to learn to charm is others. Like it or not, we're around people all of the time, and the way you interact with them will either bring you great joy and great delight or great misery and great pain. I have an entire program within the School of Self-Image membership for VIP members called Charm the Room. In this program, I shared the exact principles that I used to go from being awkward and anxious and literally just afraid of people in social situations.

I was weird. I was the kind of person that would run to the bathroom and hang out there because I just didn't know how to be with other people. It was like a two layered process for me. It was learning how to charm myself, but also in doing that, learning how to be with other people and engage. And now you can put me around anyone and I feel totally at home, totally comfortable. I've had people tell me, "oh my God, you're so great to talk with. I feel like I can share anything with you. You're so engaging." It really just boils down to learning the art of charm. Listen, if y'all could have seen me before, you'd realize anybody can learn this.

It's not rocket science. It is about emotional intelligence. It is about empathy. It is about caring for other people, and that's something that we can all learn and practice 100%. The third thing that you need to learn to charm if you want to live a charmed life is charming life itself. And to me, this is how you interact with day-to-day happenings when things don't go your way, when you're annoyed, when you are not getting there fast enough. How do you interact with life itself? When people say to me, "Tonya, you live such a charmed life," what they don't see is the internal perspective that I have shifted to that allows for you to think such a thing, because I didn't grow up in privilege.

I wasn't born with a silver spoon in my mouth. I've had to work very hard and diligently to be the woman I am today and to create the life that I am currently living. I think sometimes people think, oh, a charmed life is a rich life. And yeah, it is, but I'm not talking about rich in money. I have friends. I have people I know that have way more money than me, who live in bigger houses than I live in, who drive better cars, who I don't feel like have a charmed life the way I do because it's an internal thing. It's literally seeing the world through rose colored glasses. Some people will poo-poo that comment and they're like, "Oh, you need to see reality."

But what is reality, my friends? Are you seeing reality? Because the way I look at it, everything is possible out there for you to see. What are you plugging into? I just love to plug into the things that give me power, that give me strength, that give me optimism, that give me excitement and joy and love and unplug from the things that don't. Yeah, maybe I am looking at the world through rose colored glasses, but it's better than looking at the world through the dark ones. I thought it would be fun to give you some dos and don'ts of a charmed life. Years ago I wrote an article and let's see, the name of it is 50 Ways to Live A Charmed Life.

I've been talking about this for a long time, but today, I just want to give you some updated tips on the dos and don'ts of living a charmed life. If you want to live a charmed life, do use your China. Don't save it for the silver anniversary. Don't save it for the special occasion. Use it often. If you want to live a charmed life, you don't save your best for someday when. You use your best every single day. I want you to think about what that tells yourself and what that tells the universe. When I look at this through the self-image lens, using your best often, maybe even daily, comes from an abundant mindset.

Because what I have found is a lot of people don't use their best because they're in such lack and scarcity and they're afraid, "Oh, if I use it, I might mess it up, so I'm going to save it." There's so much lack and scarcity in that. By using your best every single day, you're telling yourself that you are an abundant woman, that every day is the special occasion that you deserve to experience the best that you can offer yourself. And that is a powerful way to see yourself. Now, if we want to think about a charming life, using your best is telling life, "Hey, I appreciate my best. I'm going to use it. You can trust me with more."

Living a charmed life is going to ask that you use your best, you use your China, not tomorrow, but today. The second do of a charmed life is to give without expectations. You can wake up every morning asking the universe, "What are you going to do for me today? What are you going to give me today?" Or you can wake up and you can say, "What can I give today? How can I make the world a better place today? What can I offer? How can I serve someone?" Now, I just want you to think about those two different approaches and which one do you think is going to lead to a charmed life. This is how we create everyday magic.

I love what my friend Joe Polish says. He says, life gives to the giver and takes from the taker. I love to give without expectations. Because a lot of times when we do give, it's because we are wanting something in return. It can be used as a manipulative tool. I'm going to give you something, but you better give something in return. I think that just sets you up to not enjoy the giving process. It sets you up to be disappointed. I love to give on purpose. I love to give without expecting anything in return. Doing that has allowed me to enjoy being generous. It's allowed me to enjoy serving and trusting the process.

Because life is like a boomerang. Whatever you're throwing out is coming back. But a lot of times we're throwing things out in a certain way, and we think that the way we throw it out is the way it's going to come back. We're looking in that direction hoping it's going to come from that source. I don't think of it that way, even in my business. I just know if I show up and I offer value and I over-deliver and I really care about my clients and I serve and I look for how I can make it better, if I look how I can serve better, I trust that that will come back. I don't know how. I don't expect it to come from the person maybe I'm giving it to.

I just trust in the laws of the universe. I can just show up and give and enjoy the delights of giving and trust that it's going to come back in some way, at some point. Don't know when, don't know how, don't know where, but it always has. Sometimes I've been shocked as to how it comes back. But even expecting it to come back is an expectation, and often that can lead to disappointment, especially if it's not coming back when you think it should or how it should. I just love giving and just dropping the expectation and giving just because it fills good to give. It feels good to be of service. It feels good to be generous.

It feels good to offer when you are doing it in truth and integrity, not you're doing it because you think you should or it's an obligation. That's not living a charmed life, but when you really want to be generous, you give without expectations. The third do of living a charmed life is do wear the dress, and not just on the weekends, but every day. Now, I say wear the dress, whatever your version of the dress is. What I mean by this is get dressed. You will find me dressed up almost every single day. Why? Because I feel good. I love the way I feel when I am dressed up. And when I feel good, I have that magnetic power.

And that's the way it works. You're attracting who you are, so I'm feeling good. I'm attracting more things to feel good about. It's hard to attract your dream life when you're not dressing for it. But of course, sometimes people will say, "But what will people think if I'm over here dressed up every single day and nobody else is?" Who cares? You're doing this for you, not for them. Live to impress yourself. That's another way to live a charmed life. But do wear the dress. The other do of living a charmed life is do make plans. One of the most charming women that I knew when I worked as a nurse was named Carolyn.

I've talked about Carolyn before I think on the podcast, but Carolyn loved people and people loved Carolyn. Everybody wanted to be around her all of the time. She was so infectious. One of the things that Carolyn always had going on was plans. She always had something planned, whether it was a vacation with her family or dinners on the weekend. Carolyn always had something on the books, and it gave her an excitement. It gave her something to look forward to all of the time. I think about her a lot.

I know for me personally, and it's very rare that it happens now, but if I ever have a moment in my life where I don't have something on my calendar, I don't have a date planned with a girlfriend or a weekend away or a trip or something, life can start to feel very dull. It's very important that we plan our lives and we plan for things that are exciting, that we have something on the calendar that we are looking forward to. It doesn't have to be something expensive. It doesn't have to be something over the top. It could just be a weekly date with your spouse or with a girlfriend. It could be a weekend outing to one of your favorite spots, but it's something that you have to look forward to.

Because again, it just creates an excitement. It creates some magic in the ordinary when you have planned for something to look forward to. Another thing to do if you want to live a charmed life is to unplug from the unattractive. When I looked up the synonym of charm, it was unattractiveness. I think about that word unattractive, it's things that you are not attracted to or you don't want to be attracted to. The reason why a lot of you are suffering, the reason why a lot of you may feel like life is just mundane and heavy and ordinary is because that is the energy that you're plugging into every single day.

You're turning on the news, you're opening your phone, you're reading about the heavy and the unattractiveness of the world. And listen, I don't deny that it's there, but I want you to ask yourself this question, what good is it doing you and the world to constantly plug into it? Because my experience has been you're not out there advocating, you're not out there doing something about it. You're just feeling bad, which just adds to the bad feeling of the world. Anytime I plug into the news, even if it's for a few days, I start to feel icky. I start to feel heavy. I start to feel unattractive because my energy is repelling the things that I want to attract.

If you don't want to live a charmed life, do plug into the news, things on social media that's heavy and burdensome. But if you want to live a charmed life, unplug. You get to decide where you place your energy and your attention and your focus. It's all out there. Every day there are things to celebrate, there are beautiful things that are happening, and there are also terrible things that are happening. Which one do you want to plug into, and which one do you think is actually going to make the world a better place? If you want to live a charmed life, don't be a complainer. This is something we're actually working on within the membership this month.

We are working on being the complaint-free woman and members are having huge ahas and epiphanies around this topic. Here's what you need to know, charm and complaining don't go together. They repel each other. If you want to live a charmed life, don't complain or at least limit your complaining, because listen, we're all human and our brains love to complain. It's something fun for them to do, but it has a negative impact on our lives when we live in constant complaint mode. Because when you're complaining, you're not living in the magic of life, you're not living in the possibility, you're living in the I don't want this, this is wrong part of life.

Wherever you place your attention and your focus is going to be all that you experience and see. You can see how complaining does not lead to a charmed life. Whenever I encounter something that doesn't sit well with me that I don't like, I look at, what can I do about it? If I can't do anything about it, I need to accept it. But if I can do something about it, I need to do something about it instead of sitting around and complaining. I used to love to complain, though. I remember sitting around and complaining about how tired I felt. And in the meantime, I wasn't doing anything to get rid of my fatigue.

I was just sitting around thinking thoughts that made me even more tired instead of getting up and stretching, instead of going to the doctor and figuring out why am I so tired. I just sat there and complained about it. This is what we often do in our lives, and then we wonder why we aren't getting ahead, why we feel stuck. If you eliminated even 50% of your complaining, you're going to see your life get dramatically better. If you want to live a charmed life, don't be a complainer. If you want to live a charmed life, don't be so easily annoyed and so easily offended. This is a big one in this day and age.

It seems like everybody is so easily offended and everybody's walking on eggshells around everybody. There's no magic in that. One of the things that I am so grateful for, and I think I learned this from my father, he would always say, "Babe, just water off a duck's back." I watched my dad, it took so much to rattle him. It took so much to offend him. In fact, I don't know that I've ever seen my dad offended, because I think he understands that what's really offensive are the thoughts in our own heads. And that's not to say you should never be offended. I'm not saying that, but so easily offended by the smallest things.

I had an amazing lady email us recently, and she was so annoyed that we had sent her an email. It wasn't a bad email. It was an email inviting her to something, and she was so annoyed by it. I was so fascinated that she was so annoyed by an email. I thought to myself, if she's annoyed by an email, like what else is she annoyed by in her life? It would never occur to me to be annoyed by an email. Now, if I didn't want to receive it, I could kindly just reply and say, "Hey, listen, please take me off this list. Best of luck to you all." But to be annoyed, I just think there are much bigger... If I'm going to be annoyed about something, it's going to be something big.

I just don't want to waste my energy being annoyed at things that don't really matter. Now, at the end of the day, you get to decide what matters to you. If an email matters that much, okay, but I want you just to take a step back and ask yourself, how is this serving me? Is this helping me make my life better, my interaction with the world, with other people? Is this making my life better? Is this adding magic into my life, or is it am I caught in a cycle that I just keep repeating? Because at some point, you're going to have to transcend those old patterns and those old ways of thinking and showing up to get to the next version of you.

I've just noticed in my own life, the more I've worked on not being so easily offended and annoyed, my life just keeps getting better and better. Because trust me, there is always something to be annoyed about. There is something to be offended by if you're looking for that. But I'm always looking for, what's good about this? What can I learn from this? What's good about this person? How are they trying to do a good job? And because I'm looking for that, I'm seeing it everywhere, but a lot of times that's not what you're looking for. We always experience the world through our own filters, which is why living a charmed life is about replacing a lot of those filters.

Because if you believe that the world's out to get you, if you believe that people are taking advantage of you, if you think you can't trust people, if you think that it's going to take too long, if you think that you're not good enough, whatever it is, you're going to look for things to fuel those beliefs, so even an email can be triggering to you. And that's why I love doing this work around self-image, because when you begin to see yourself differently, you begin to have that reflected back to you in the world, and you begin to show up differently and you start creating very different results. If you want to live a charmed life, then watch your spelling.

Here's what I mean. Watch the words you speak. You think about spelling, it's like spell, to put a spell on yourself, to put a spell on other people. The words you speak are powerful. They carry a vibration. They carry an energy, and that energy is either expanding you or contracting you. Pay attention to the words you speak to yourself, to other people, and to the world at large. When you wake up in the morning, what are your first words to your day? Is it, "Ugh, another day," or is it, "Ah, another day, yes?" Even the way you speak words matter. Are you speaking possibility? Are you speaking love and optimism and joy and excitement, or are you speaking the opposite?

What kind of spell are you placing on yourself and your life through the words that you choose? It's important to think about. And then finally for this list, there's many other ways to live a charmed life, but for you today, if you want to live a charmed life, don't be in a hurry. When I think about someone living a charmed life, there's an ease. There's a slowness. There is a sauntering of a pace that says, everything I want is in this moment. A lot of times we're in such a hurry because we think over there is better than here. And because that is a belief that we often carry with us, even when we get there, we still think over there is better than here.

We're chasing this delusion. We're chasing this thing that can never be caught because it can't be experienced if you're carrying a belief that here's never enough. I get that sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you're like, "But Tonya, I got to change this situation fast, or I'm afraid of what's going to happen." I hear you, and you may feel the pressure of making that change. But I want you to ask yourself this, is putting the pressure on you speeding you up or slowing you down? Historically speaking from my own experience, the faster I try to go, the slower I become. Now, ironically, on the flip side, when I slow down is often when I speed up.

My grandmother when I was growing up would often say to me, "Hold your horses." It's a very Southern saying. But what she meant by that was slow down. Mind where you are. Take this in. Don't be in such a rush, because often that's when mistakes are made. And even now, Fonz will sometimes see me rushing through something and he says to me, You better slow down. Because if you don't, you're going to make a mistake," and then inevitably, I do. It's like, "Told you so." But even me now knowing this, I find myself wanting to hurry and finish or get to the next thing. Inevitably, when I do that, I don't have as good of a result as when I slow down.

The beauty of slowing down is not only do you often speed up because you're not putting that pressure on yourself and putting yourself in fight or flight where you can't think and be creative and problem solve, but the other beautiful thing about slowing down is that you begin to realize that life can only be as beautiful as you make this moment. The more you slow down and really take in the beauty of now, take in the possibility of now, take in what's right about now, you will notice that you begin to feel better. And as you begin to feel better, guess what? You show up in a more charming way. And as you show up in a more charming way, you begin to magnetize your future to you.

I wish for us all to have our version of a charmed life, whatever that looks like for you. If you want to dive deep into figuring that out and creating a plan to live your charmed life, come and join us at SOSI South. I promise you, you will not regret it. You can head to schoolofselfimage.com/south. Read all about it. I hope to see you there, and I certainly hope to see you on the next episode. Have a beautiful week, everyone. Cheers. 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.