The Monthly Reset

C. S. Lewis said, "You can't go back and change the beginning, but you can start where you are and change the ending." This episode is all about learning from the past and creating your future on purpose, and a powerful way to do that, my friends, is through the monthly reset, and I'm sharing with you how I do it in today's episode. 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 dear friends. Welcome back to the podcast. I am so proud of myself right now. It is 8:15 in the morning, and I have already had a very rigorous workout. I am sipping my coffee and recording this podcast all before 9:00.

This is a new routine for me, and I'm going to admit that it's not easy. My body and brain were trying to convince me to stay in bed this morning, but I listened to that little inner voice of my future, that future me who wants to get things done, who wants to feel amazing, who wants to get stronger, who wants to take care of herself. I listened to her this morning, and she's the one that was like, "Girl, get out of the bed and let's go," and so here we are. This work is about mindfulness, it's about intentionality, it's about focus, and it's about discipline. One of the things that I've heard a lot of members within the School of Self-Image say is, "Sometimes I just want to reset."

"I feel like I've gone asleep at the wheel of my life, I've gotten off course," and sometimes it can feel as if you are so far down the wrong path, that it's going to be impossible to get back or to go where you want to go, and I'm here to tell you it is never too late, never. I don't care how far off track you think you are, how far gone you think you are, how many failures you've had, how terrible you feel, it is never too late. I have often told clients that every moment is a chance for a you-turn, and the way I like to spell it is Y-O-U. Back to you, back to what you want, back to how you want to feel, back to who you want to be. Every moment is a chance to do that, and the more you-turns you can make in your life, the more quickly you're going to get back to who you want to be and what you want to do.

Now, within the School of Self-Image, one of the main reasons why members get such extraordinary results is that they are living with this intentionality every single day, and we do it through a practice that I call the Daily 5, and there's a journal. So for those of you in the membership who are new to the membership, make sure on your member dashboard, on that very first page, that you download that journal, and I walk you through this in the Self-Image Method, which is also on that page. And listen, if you're not in the membership, what in the world? Here's my promise to you, you will not find a membership of this quality at this value out there, not that I'm aware of. We offer so much support to our members, everything from monthly classes to monthly coaching calls, to all of the resources that are within the School of Self-Image, and it's such a unique approach.

It is beyond just mindset work. Mindset work is the core of everything that we do because your thoughts really do become things, but we use a modality of the Self-Image Method to show you how you change through these five steps, and we do it through three areas. We do it through style, how you show up because that's just reinforcing how you see yourself. We also do it through environment. I don't think we talk about this enough.

You change your environment, you change your life, and so we curate environments for our own evolution, for our own self-image transformation. And so when we focus on those two pillars, it automatically elevates your mindset, but we also do a lot of mindset work within the membership because your brain is your most valuable asset. In fact, I went to the doctor yesterday for my annual physical, and it's like a five-hour process, and the majority of my day was spent on my brain health. Now, I'm talking about the quality of my actual brain, but that impacts how well you think. It impacts your focus, it impacts your attention, and at the end of the day, I will always, always, always invest in my brain, in my mind.

It's the greatest investment you will ever make. It is way more valuable than your 401(k), it is way more valuable than even your house, because when you have your brain, you can build those things, but without your brain, without a mind that is intentional, that is focused, that is disciplined, you're going to struggle in life. That's why I believe so passionately about this work. And I have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of testimonials at this point, talking about the value of self-image work, because how you see yourself is impacting everything. Every area of your life, if you were to look at it, is a direct reflection of how you see yourself.

If you see yourself as overwhelmed, you probably have a lot of evidence for it, right? If you see yourself as someone who struggles financially, you probably have a lot of evidence for it, but when you start changing how you see yourself, you will start creating new evidence. That's just the way it works. I had a new member reach out to me on Instagram a few days ago, and she was telling me that she's done a lot of personal development work, and yet, she still felt stuck, which I think a lot of us can relate to, but she was telling me that she went through the Self-Image Method, which is one of the initial courses that you go through when you join the School of Self-image, and she was like, "All I did is I went through that course." It's like five steps, did the workbook, and she's been doing her Daily 5 journal every single morning, and she was like, "I cannot believe how different I feel, how I'm showing up differently," and she said, "I can already see things changing outside of me."

This is what happens when you wake up. This is what happens when you become intentional. This is what happens when you start listening to the future you, and not the past you. This is what happens when you show up and you expand your self-image, which is why this work is so powerful. I cannot imagine my life without this work.

I really can't, because just like you all, I face challenges all of the time, and especially as you begin to set bigger, extraordinary goals, the more challenges you're going to have, but those challenges are not there for you to back away from. They're not there for you to shrink and shy away from. They are there to expose the next version of you. They are there to grow you, and it breaks my heart when I see so many people turn their back to the challenges. Sometimes they'll think to themselves, "Something's gone wrong. I shouldn't be experiencing this."

I'm like, "Oh, no. You should." And extraordinary life will come with extraordinary challenges, but with this work, you will know exactly how to overcome them. So if you're someone who feels stuck, or you feel like you just keep repeating the same patterns over and over and over again, if you feel like you are struggling to reach your goals or you have a big goal, and you know that you need to do some deep inner work to be able to evolve into the kind of woman that can actually create that goal, come and join us within the School of Self-Image. We are closing down the doors for enrollment on February the 1st, which I think for you, when you listen to this, will be one day after this is released, and this work will change your life in the most beautiful ways.

And here's the best part. I saw an Instagram quote yesterday, and it said something around the lines of, "Invest in things that no one can ever take away," and I thought that was such a powerful quote, because this work, no one can take away from you, and you will have it forever because it becomes a part of you. It becomes how you operate in the world. And so if you are ready to do this work, let's go. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join.

Now, as a member, there are many perks, and one of them is a new edition that we have just added into the membership for this year, because my goal is to help 5,000 women create their after stories, and so me and my team are always getting together and talking about members, and what we're hearing and the feedback, and always asking the question, "What kind of support can we add to help members get results?" And so one of the ideas that we came up with is something that I have just naturally done for many years, and I like to call it a monthly reset. And this is where I can do those you-turns intentionally every single month. And for members, if you go to your Daily 5 journal, we have added the monthly review for you, that we will be walking you through at these end-of-month workshops every single month. It is going to be a beautiful opportunity for you to step out of your life for a minute and really think on your life.

In business, it's often said that you have to take the time out to work on your business and not just in your business in order for your business to grow, because if you're not mindful, you will get so inundated with the day-to-day to-dos, that you're just being busy and getting things done, but you're not taking a step back and strategically saying, "Wait, are we going in the right direction? Do I like this? Is it necessary? How do I need to change? What needs to change on the team?"

And the same applies to life. It is so important that we step out of our life and look on our life, and look on ourselves so that we can make sure that we're heading in the right direction, that we have the tools and resources that we need, and that we are living purposefully, that we're living with intention, and that's why the monthly reset can be so, so powerful. It is that time that you set aside for yourself to really look on the previous month and learn from it, and to look forward at the next 30 days and be decisive about what you want to create and intentional about how you're going to create it, because what often happens is that we'll have a bad day, and we won't clean up that energy, and so it just spills into the next day, and so it starts building this big snowball effect of energy that's moving in the opposite direction of where you want to go, and so those days become months and those months become years, and those years become decades, that we can get stuck into patterns that don't serve us. But imagine not only living your day intentionally but every month, having a monthly reset where you're like, "Okay, maybe this month didn't go the way I'd want it. Let me figure out why."

"Let me release this month. Let me change my thoughts about how this month went so I don't carry that same energy into the next month." So I just went through the entire extraordinary month portion of the Daily 5 workbook, and it was so incredibly powerful. One of the things that we ask is that you celebrate your wins, and look at why you won, because it just didn't happen, you created that. Oftentimes, we are so busy running from one thing to the next, one day to the next, one month to the next, that we don't even stop and really celebrate all of the things that we did do, all of our accomplishments, all of our successes, all of our wins.

And there's something powerful about doing that because when you do it consciously, you are building evidence of, "I am a successful woman. I'm a woman who gets things done. I'm a woman who creates her life on purpose," and we want to build evidence for that, but if you're going so fast and not recognizing it, you may not even realize that you have evidence for the very thing that you're wanting to become. The other reason why that is so important is that you can begin to dissect, "Why did I have that win? Who was I being, because I want to be more of that?"

But the other thing that we ask you to do is also to look at how you didn't show up the way you wanted to, how you didn't follow through, what you failed at, and we always do it through a lens of curiosity, and fascination, and love for ourselves. This is never a tool to be used to beat yourself up, because we do that enough already, but it's a tool to help you learn and to help you grow. So for example, I'm going to give you one of my, what I consider to be fails. I have committed this year to being ahead of schedule with work. And when you have the deliverables on your plate that I have, it can feel very challenging, especially if you've been used to working in a way that's last minute.

Now, I have a schedule. I follow my schedule, but I've set my schedule up so that the Wednesday before a podcast comes out, I'm recording it, and I want to be ahead of schedule. In fact, I told my team, I'm like, "I want to be 60 days out from whatever is due," but this month did not go that way. In fact, a better way to say that is, "I did not go that way. I did not create that result for myself."

And so then, I get to look at why, so that I can improve, so that I can get better. When I look at the thoughts in my head, I've had thoughts like, "There's a lot on my plate. I'll get ahead next month." Is this sounding familiar? "I'll start tomorrow."

We all know where our brain goes, and so with this realization, I realize, "Oh, this is just a pattern. This is my self-image." I have a self-image of a woman who always gets it done, and I always get it done at the very last minute. And so you can see how that self-image keeps perpetuating these results, and so I want to practice the self-image of, "I'm a woman who gets things done ahead of time. In fact, 60 days ahead of time."

So what do I need to believe about myself in order to create that result? Well, I need to believe that I'm a woman who gets things done ahead of time, that I schedule out far enough to give me that space. I need to believe in things like this extra space is going to allow me to be so much more creative, it's going to support the team, and so I just brain dumped all of these thoughts that I need to be practicing to help me create that result. And so I can look at why I created the current result, and then I can look ahead at the next 30 days and be very intentional with how I think and how I schedule so that I am a woman who gets things done ahead of time. This is the power of the reset, the monthly reset. You learn and you grow from it.

And there's something powerful about 30 days as well, because a year out, even though we do have an extraordinary goal for the year within the membership, I love to bring that extraordinary goal back to 30 days. Let's just focus on the next 30 days. What is a goal that you are committed to creating, reaching, accomplishing over the next 30 days, because that's enough amount of time that your brain's like, "Oh, that feels doable. It's just 30 days."? And then that 30 days, we back it up to just a day.

What can I do today that's going to help me create that 30-day goal? And so you can imagine the power of doing this month after month after month. Think about what you will create within a year. Think about the weight you can lose. Think about the strength you can gain.

Think about the money you can save, or the debt that you can pay off, or the money that you can earn. Think about how you can grow your business. Think about the relationships that you can create, because we all have different goals, and they literally happen one moment at a time. Every single moment, you're either moving more towards your goal or further away from it. And so being intentional with our days, and then resetting every single month, checking in with ourselves to see, "Are we on track?"

"Are we off track? If we're off track, why?" It becomes this fun game that you're playing. It becomes this fun experiment. And listen, I've been doing this work for, gosh, over 15 years. And as I just showed you, there are months I don't achieve my goals, that I don't show up the way I want to show up.

This is not about being perfect at all. As long as we're human, we're going to have those months and those days where we're off, where things didn't go as expected, where we don't show up in a way that makes us proud. That's just part of being a human, and yet, we beat ourselves up over it. I'm just inviting you to stop beating yourself up over it, and instead, learn from it. Reset. Start again.

Every moment is truly a blank slate, yet, we bring all of our old baggage into this moment, and so it feels like we are just weighed down, when that's just the thoughts that you've been thinking, that you're bringing into this current moment. These monthly resets are simply an invitation for you to learn, for you to wake up, and then release and let go, "What's not serving you? Let's not bring that into the next month. Let's practice letting it go," whether it's a thought, a habit. Sometimes we want to let go of people and things that are weighing us down.

And this is what we do in that monthly reset. We get very, very clear on where we've been and why we went there, where we want to go, and how we're going to get there, and then what we need to let go of, what we need to bring into support us, and then it's all about that practice throughout the month. If you're someone who feels like you need a reset, it's going to require that you stop for a moment. Take a step back, and look at where you are and why you're here, and then from that place, it's about you deciding where you want to go and who you need to be to get there, and what you need to get there, and then the practice becomes letting go of what's not serving you, bringing in what does, and then practicing that over and over. The monthly reset is so powerful, you all.

I invite you all to set aside time at the end of every month to do your own monthly reset, and you can shape it however you want. I love to get my Daily 5 Journal out, which has the monthly reset in it. It's called Your Extraordinary Month, but you can consider it a monthly reset, and I love to spend about 30 minutes, sometimes a little more, just thinking about my life, and the past 30 days of my life, and then fast-forwarding 30 days from now and deciding where I want to be one month from now, and then doing that deep thinking work of who I need to be and the patterns that need to be broken, and the habits I need to practice. And usually, it's just one. I believe in the power of one, one goal for the month, one habit for the month, and one thought for the month that you're going to practice.

A lot of us are trying to do too much at once, and we've become so overwhelmed. Within the membership, I focus on one, because I know one is powerful because if you can focus on one thing, that one thing will help you create results, and by focusing on that one thing, it spills into other things. And so this monthly reset is an opportunity for you to think about that one goal that you have for the month. The other thing that I do as well is I anticipate my obstacles. And this is in that workbook, you all, so if you're in the membership, check that part out.

But I believe in looking forward and asking myself, "What potential obstacles might I encounter for this month?," and I plan for them ahead of time. So, for example, I already know that the obstacle that I am going to encounter is my own brain, the thoughts of, "You've got too much on your plate, I'll get it done tomorrow," and the way I'm overcoming that, number one, is I'm already expecting those thoughts, and so I'm reminding myself, "No. Tonya, remember, you are a woman who gets things done ahead of time," and then I'm creating my schedule differently because I do follow my schedule. Again, it just so happens that I've created a schedule where I'm getting things done at the last minute, but I'm already looking at my schedule and batching podcasts next month, which will allow me to get ahead of the curve, and I'm doing this with a lot of different projects. And so by practicing that new thought and creating that new schedule, I am going to be creating evidence over the next month of, "I am a woman who gets things done ahead of time," and I tell you this because if it wasn't for the monthly reset, I wouldn't be doing this.

I'd still be on the hamster wheel. So commit to doing your own monthly reset. And again, if you want support around this if you want to get access to the process that we use within the membership, come and join us. The doors are closing very soon, depending on when you're listening to this, but we would love to have you inside this extraordinary community and support you in creating your after-story. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join, and I'll see you inside.

Have a beautiful week, my friends, and I'll talk to you in the next episode. Cheers. Hey, are you ready to transform your self-image but lack direction and support? If so, I'd like to invite you to join the School of Self-Image. This is an exclusive monthly membership, where you'll create your own powerful before and after story.

Through weekly classes and coaching, you'll learn powerful techniques on how to elevate the quality of your mindset, style, and surroundings to change how you see yourself and create extraordinary results in your life. Head over to schoolofselfimage.com/join to learn more.