Top 5 Gifts I've Given Myself

I have a question for you. Are you planning on gifting yourself anything this holiday season? If not, what in the world? Unacceptable. Which is why I'm going to share with you in this episode my top favorite gifts that I've given to myself in hopes that I inspire you to put yourself at the top of your Christmas list. 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. How's everyone doing? I hope for those of you in the States, you had an incredible Thanksgiving. I cannot believe it is almost December. We are about to wrap year. How crazy is that. I mean, I want to celebrate. You all have been in my world for a while, and you know I love celebrating. I think it's the secret to an extraordinary life. This is why I have decided to host a virtual party. I want to be the first holiday party on your calendar this year. I'm calling it a red hot holiday party, because my intention for this party is that we get together and not only celebrate our year, because I believe that the more you celebrate, the more life gives you to celebrate. But I also want to share with you how I am personally creating the holiday of my dreams this year. I want us all to trade in being a hot mess with being hot, in the best way.

When I think of being hot, I mean vibrant, passionate, full of to be joie de vivre, intentional, competent, excited, and so I'm going to be sharing with you all exactly how I am doing that for this holiday season. But a really beautiful thing. What I'll be sharing with you is applicable throughout your year. Specifically, what I'm going to be covering during this party is sharing with you how I am prioritizing and scheduling things in my calendar to maximize connection, not only with other people, but with myself. 

Also, I'm going to give you my framework around how I decide what's a yes and what's a no. Then finally, we're going to be talking about holiday shopping, hostessing and traveling during the holidays and how I think about all of this.

This is going to be such a fun party, but it's also going to be life changing, and I would love for you to come and join us. You can head over to schoolofselfimage.com/party and read all about it, find out all of the details, and I hope to see you there. Also, I have something else to share. I have been receiving some messages on social media as well as my team from women saying, "Hey, can I join your membership? I don't want to wait until next year. I want to gift myself this membership for Christmas." Not only did these messages spark the idea for today's podcast episode, but it also caused me to get on a meeting with my team. We had originally said that we were not going to open membership until 2023. We wanted to basically slow things down in December so that we can enjoy the holidays.

We're still going to enjoy the holidays, but we have decided to open the membership for enrollment for just a few days. So if you have been curious about what we do within the School of Self-Image, if you've been wanting to join us within the membership, if you are wanting to make a commitment to yourself at the end of the year versus waiting until the beginning, which is what a lot of people do, this is your opportunity. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join. I want to give you a challenge. If you have been thinking about this membership and you're on the fence, what a lot of people do, especially during this time of the year, at the end of the year, is they'll say things to themselves, like, "I'm just going to wait until the beginning of the year. I'm going to start my new year off right. I don't have time right now. It's a busy season."

They put themselves on hold until some future date. Our brain can justify that. Our brain's like, "Yeah, that feels true. I would rather wait until the first of the year to get started. It feels like a fresh start." But I want you all to see what that does to your self-image. It keeps confirming the story that you have about yourself, that you are a woman who continues to wait until "one day when," that you continue to put your life on hold. Maybe it's confirming a self-image of a woman who doesn't have enough time for herself. So simply by making the decision to join now and not later, you are already starting to create evidence for a new story about yourself. You're starting to create new evidence for thoughts that are going to fuel you, that are going to help you achieve extraordinary things in your life.

Because let's face it, you don't achieve extraordinary things with thoughts like, "I'll just wait until the first of the year. I don't really have enough time. It's a busy season." Those are the kinds of thoughts that keep you small and keep you stuck. If you want to not only join the membership and gain access to life-changing tools, but you also want to join to prove to yourself that you are going to do it different, this is the best time to take action on that, so come join us. Not only do we have so much fun within the membership, but we are also achieving extraordinary things by focusing on the one thing that determines everything in our lives, and that is our self-image..

Okay, so let's dive into today's topic. I'm going to be sharing my top five gifts that I've given to myself. I am such a big advocate of women gifting to themselves, especially this time of the year when we are so busy giving to everybody else. We make sure that all the kids are taken care of and the in-laws and the friends and the grandparents and the husband and the spouse, the partner. We are making sure that there's the gingerbread house and the sugar cookies and that everybody is getting what they want. I just want to ask you, where are you on that list? Years ago, I decided that I was going to stop waiting for Santa and his elves to get me what I wanted because I was perpetually disappointed and I made myself a priority every single Christmas. I really enjoy giving to myself.

I don't think sacrificing and withholding from yourself is a noble act or that it makes you a good person. I think it just makes you miserable. I think it makes you frustrated and resentful and exhausted, and nothing good comes from that state of being, and yet that's what we've been programmed to do to ourselves as women, and it needs to stop. So my first challenge to you is that you promise me that you're going to gift yourself something this holiday season, that you're going to be at the top of your own Christmas list. Now, I have given myself some pretty incredible things, material goods, but I was sitting here this morning thinking about the best things that I've ever given myself, my favorite gifts that I've ever gifted to myself. I was also thinking about what I want to gift myself this holiday season, and it wasn't anything material, and so I'm going to share it with you along with the other four things that I have given myself that have had such a big impact on my life.

Favorite gift number one that I've given to myself is travel. One of the three pillars that we talk about within the School of Self-Image is your environment. We are always elevating our environments to allow us to have access to different ideas and thoughts and possibilities that don't exist in our current environment. That at the core has been what travel has offered me, access to different thoughts, different ways of living, different ideas, different views of the world, and even different ways of doing life. For example, it was in France that I had a wake up call and realized that I didn't want to hustle my way through life, that I wanted to embrace joie de vivre, that I wanted to figure out how to combine my ambition with a sense of ease.

I don't know that I could have accessed that desire had I not been exposed to it. But the moment I was in Paris and experiencing that way of life, of enjoying a two-hour lunch, of slowing down, of appreciating where you are, of working to live, not living to work. It was also in France that I discovered that true pleasure was the secret to weight loss. Again, I don't think I could have accessed that information that ended up having such a huge impact on my life had I not gifted myself with travel. Beyond the shift that it's had in my thinking and my way of life, it's just the memories that I will have forever. No one can take them away. I may lose material things, but my memories, those are with me forever, and to me, that is priceless.

This year, I've decided to gift my family with a trip to Aspen. That's where we're going for the holidays. 

I know that the memories that we make on that trip will be way more valuable than any item that I could ever buy them. That's my first top gift that I've given myself. The other gift that I've given myself that has had such a huge impact on my life is the gift of style. Now, you may be thinking that I am referring to a lot of clothes, and that is not the case here. What I'm referring to is the gift of self-exploration for the purpose of self-expression. The journey of style has been so much deeper than it may seem. When I talk about this, people immediately think it's just frivolous. It's like, "Oh, we're going to learn how to shop. We're going to learn what colors to wear." That is a small part of a style journey.

But beyond that, style requires that you spend time really thinking about questions like, "What do I love? Who am I? What are my dreams? How do I want to be known? How do I want to be perceived? How do I want to feel?" Taking the time to answer those questions and to get to know myself and then begin to use that data to inform how I show up has had such a huge return on investment, and here's why. Number one, I started to feel better about myself. Because let's face it, ladies, it's hard to feel great about yourself when you're sitting around in your jammies all day eating Cheetos, which was a version of what I was doing. It's hard to feel good about yourself when you know deep down that you're not showing up as the best version of you. It's hard to feel good about yourself when you don't even know who self really is.

You've been a version of you that other people have expected you to be and you haven't taken the time to figure out who you really, really are. Believe it or not, a true style journey will give that to you, because before you can express something intentionally, you have to know who you are that's wanting to be expressed. So gifting myself with the time, the patience, the curiosity, and the knowledge to get to know who I really am and what I really want to express in terms of my style has had huge rewards. It's impacted my business and ways that I'm sure I will share with you in the future. It's impacted my ability to have a positive influence on other people's lives, but most importantly, it's impacted my self-image. And as you know, if you've listened to this podcast for any length of time, that is impacting everything else.

The gift of style has been a huge gift that I've given myself. You're probably already seeing a theme here. These aren't just one-off small gifts. These are big gifts that I have given myself over time. If you think about the gift of travel, it's been many trips that I've gifted to myself that's had a cumulative effect on my life. The same goes for style. That wasn't a one and done. It's an ongoing journey of self-discovery. The same goes for the next gift that I'm going to share with you. This is a gift that I like to think of gifting to my future self. What we often do is we get so caught up in the moment and we can be impulsive and we like immediate gratification and we sacrifice the future of our future self for the pleasure of our present self. It's about finding the balance because listen, y'all, I love taking care of me now.

I love delighting myself. I love gifting myself, real things, tangible things. But if I get too caught up in just feeding the need of my present self, I often sacrifice the needs of my future self. 

So, the third gift that I have gifted to myself is the gift of wealth, and this is a gift that I feel strongly about that all women should gift to themselves. I want to see more women be wealthy, and guess what that requires? It requires that you create a wealthy self-image, which means that you're going to have to unravel a lot of your limiting beliefs around money, around your ability to earn, manage, invest, grow your wealth. Money and weight have been the two hardest areas for me to overcome, and the reason being is I had such crappy thoughts about those two areas. I had so many limiting beliefs around my body, my weight, around my ability to manage food, exercise.

I had to literally recreate myself anew to allow for a new reality with my weight, and the same with money. Someone asked me recently, "Was it harder to get over your weight issue or your money issues?" That was such a good question. I had to really think about it, because at the time when I was in the midst of my weight struggles, I just thought that was impossible to get over. I literally woke up one day and said, "This is going to be my life, worrying about, thinking about, being obsessed about what I'm going to eat, my weight, my clothes." But now that I'm on the other side and I have a completely new self-image, I don't think about that at all. But I do remember at the time that was super hard. But I would have to say that money has probably been even harder, and maybe that's because I grew up in a poor environment.

I didn't grow up with a weight problem. That started to happen in my late teens, and so I had less years of thinking really bad thoughts about my body and food and weight as I did about money. The money beliefs were even more deeply ingrained, and just when I think I'm over my money drama, something else gets triggered, so it's like this ongoing journey. However, years ago I made a commitment to be a wealthy woman and I started to think about that version of me. Who was she compared to who I was at the time? I've had to literally let parts of myself die to allow room in my self-image and therefore my life for wealth, and I am so grateful that I've gifted myself with that work. What I can tell you is that no matter what you do for a living, no matter where you came from, no matter what your bank account balance says right now, you have the ability to be a wealthy woman.

How do I know this? Because I've helped many women do it by changing their self-image. In fact, within the School of Self-Image membership, when you join as an annual member, you get access to the Wealthy Woman course where I break down the logistics and the spiritual aspect of creating wealth. Just so you all know, if you're in the membership and you are an annual member, you are going to be invited to a brand new class that I'm going to be doing within the Wealthy Woman course and it's called How to Be Wealthy During a Recession. I am so excited about this class. My goal is that when you apply what you learn within the Wealthy Woman course plus this class, you're going to make back your investment plus some. But I'm teaching this class because I've had many of my members as well as friends ask me my thoughts about the recession.

Some of y'all are worried and if you listen to the news, you will be. Have you noticed, if it's not the recession, it's something else? It's like the news is designed to make us worry, which is why I don't listen to it. I recommend that you limit your news time as much as possible, because wealthy people are not using their brains to consume the news and freak them out. Do you know what they're using their brains for? To create wealth, and that's been the ultimate gift of gifting myself with wealth, learning how to think and be a wealthy woman first, learning how to tune in to myself instead of plugging into the world, deciding on purpose what I want to believe about money, my ability to earn it, manage it and grow it. Learning where to invest and just learning what wealthy people do with their money.

It's been such a gift that I've given to myself and I love knowing that I'm taking care of my future self, which sometimes means giving up something in the present for a long-term gain. I can't remember if I mentioned it on the podcast, maybe, but I know I've told some of my members, but I've decided to go on a six-month shopping detox. Actually, I did mention it in last week's podcast, I just remembered. Yeah, because I was talking about wanting what you already have. But this shopping detox, just to be clear, is me not purchasing anything that goes into my closet. Basically no clothing, no accessories, no shoes, no hats, no belts, no purses, no socks, nothing that goes into my closet. I will still be buying some beauty products if I need them. I will always invest in coaching and growing my brain, always, and I'll be investing in my travel and my business. But shopping in terms of clothing and those types of items, I'm going six months without doing that. I don't know that I've ever done this in my entire life.

As I mentioned in last week's podcast, part of it is me wanting to just take a pause and appreciate what I already have. Another part, however, is me being self-disciplined with my money and I want to pat myself on the back because I've come a long way with my money and I am fairly disciplined with my money. I don't spend more than I make. In fact, I save a lot of money. I invest a lot of money. But I was noticing last year that I was spending more than usual on clothing and I was starting to feel burdened by it, and so I decided just to take a pause and to investigate like what's going on, and I'll probably do a whole podcast just on this topic alone. However, I'm enjoying knowing that by doing that, I'm going to have resources to invest in either a financial asset or my brain, in terms of maybe taking a program or hiring a coach, which always has a great return on investment.

I'm feeling a lot of pride of just knowing that I'm gifting my future self with wealth. When I see that great pair of shoes on sale and my brain tries to tell me that I'm missing out if I don't buy it, knowing that I'm taking care of my future self, knowing that I'm growing my wealth, that is so much more rewarding. That pleasure outweighs the short-term pain of saying "no" to a pair of shoes. Because listen, y'all, I know there's shoes in my future. I'm excited to take the six months just to see what I really want, what I need to get rid of. Anyway, that's a whole different story. But can you see how when you start to think of these actions that you take as a gift to your future, how you are less inclined to give in to the temptation of immediate gratification?

Now that doesn't mean it won't be a little uncomfortable, because it will. But remind yourself of how amazing you're going to feel six months from now, a year from now, two years from now, five years from now, when you've made decisions that that version of you in the future is so grateful to the you today for making. That leads me to my fourth favorite gift that I've ever given to myself, and I cannot imagine my life right now had I not gifted myself with this. I was thinking about this the other day actually. I was trying to imagine a version of a life where I had not given myself what I'm about to share with you, and it was scary. I can tell you this, I wouldn't be recording this podcast. I wouldn't be in the relationships that I'm in. I wouldn't have the friends that I have. I wouldn't be the version that I am today, and I bet you know what I'm talking about. Did you guess it? The gift of coaching.

Now, I know some of y'all are probably thinking, yeah, Tania, you're saying that because that's what you do, that's what you sell. Do you know why I sell it? Because I know how valuable it is. It makes it so easy to sell. I know that what I do and what I teach changes lives and I believe in it so much, I just continue to invest in it. I don't care how big someone becomes in your brain, how successful you think they are. We all have our own blind spots. We all have our triggers, our limitations. With the right coach in your corner, you can fast track beyond those things, because of coaching, things that maybe I would've struggled with four years or maybe, who knows, maybe I would maybe even still be struggling with them because I want to have access to these tools. But with coaching, I can work through them so much more quickly.

Then the skills that I gain by doing this work, I can just take with me into the next version of myself. I can see a direct correlation between the amount of not only money, but time that I have invested in coaching with my level of wealth and health, which is why I just continue to invest in it because I know it works. But it only works if you work it. You can't just pay somebody some money and get results. You have to commit and show up and do the work. But when you do that, I promise you all, you're going to amaze yourself with what you're capable of. You're going to amaze yourself with possibilities that you don't even know are available to you right now because you haven't had the right people in your corner seeing you at your greatest, seeing you as extraordinary.

When you start to surround yourself with those types of people, your life begins to expand in crazy, beautiful ways. Yeah, coaching, one of the greatest gifts that I have ever given to myself. If you've never gifted yourself with it, I'm going to challenge you to, whether it's with me or someone else. What really matters is that you see yourself as valuable enough to invest the time and resources into developing you. Okay, we're down to the final gift that I have gifted myself. This is something that I've been gifting myself with for a long time. However, there are levels of gifting, right? Like what you gift your coworker is probably going to be very different than what you gift your spouse or your child.

Basically I have been gifting myself at a coworker level, like little gifts here and there and it's added up in beautiful ways. 

However, when I sat down with myself a few weeks ago and I thought about what I wanted to gift myself with this holiday season, as I said earlier, it wasn't material at all. What I wanted to give myself with, with a devout focus, with a passionate commitment, with an unwavering wanting of the very best for myself, of wanting to see myself at my most vibrant, at my most alive, at my healthiest. I knew that what I really wanted to gift myself with this holiday season is the gift of wellness. I'm not going to wait until January 1st to do this. The reason why is because when you do that, you are just perpetuating that self-image of someone who just keeps putting herself off until later.

You keep saying to yourself that today isn't important enough. "I'm going to keep delaying my health, my joy, my happiness, until one day when." I just refuse to do that, and I also want to be feeling my very best when I enter into the new year, so I can kickstart 2023 from a place of power, vitality and excitement, not dragging myself across the finish line, feeling sluggish and knowing that I didn't really take care of myself in a way that honors who I really am. So this entire month I am focused on my wellness because I want next year to continue upon that journey. And guess what? I am devoting the entire month of December within the membership to this topic. I'm going to be sharing my behind the scenes of my wellness journey. I'm going to be sharing with you how to reverse engineer your holiday for your ultimate wellness.

We're going to be looking at everything that's getting in the way between you and your most healthy version. It is going to be a powerful month of you and me and this community deciding to put ourselves at the front of our list. It's going to be a commitment to taking care of ourselves because here's what I want you all to know, no matter what you want, taking care of yourself is a requirement. I won't have it any other way. Of course, you can go after what you want and you can make all the money, you can lose all the weight, you can find the love of your life. But if you're not taking care of you, if your wellness is not a priority, then what have you really gained? If you are exhausted and burnt out and miserable, who cares that you've created those results? As someone who's done that to myself before, I just don't want to accept that any longer.

I know that the best way to create what it is that I want is to take care of what I have. At the front of that list is me, taking care of me. So I would love to invite you all to join me on a December wellness journey. If you know deep down that this is the month when you over-indulge, overeat, overspend, over-commit, over-shame yourself, and you want to do it differently and you want to end this year with a bang so that you can start 2023 out on a powerful note, come join us within the membership. It truly is a gift that you can give yourself that will have huge returns, and the doors are open for a limited time. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/join and join us. If you want to join in on the class that I'll be teaching in the coming, I think, in the next week or so, we'll send you all that information once you join. But if you want to be a part of that, make sure you join as an annual member, commit to yourself for an entire year.

I promise you, if you do this work, you will be unrecognizable one year from now. I would love for you to be my next after story. So come join us within the membership and don't forget to gift yourself this holiday season. What do you really want? I would love to hear. Come find me on Instagram at tonyaleigh and let me know. Have a beautiful, beautiful week, everyone, and I hope to see you at the holiday party. Don't forget about that schoolofselfimage.com/party. But if I don't see you there, I will see you on the next podcast. Cheers. Hey, have you grabbed your free copy of the School of Self-Image Manifesto. It's 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.