Unshakeable Faith in Your Future

I want you to think about how your life would look different if you really had Unshakeable faith in your future. You see, faith just isn't a nice idea. It is the foundation that shapes your actions, your mindset, and your ability to keep moving forward even when life feels uncertain. So if you've been struggling to trust that the good things are coming, this episode is for you. 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, hello, my friends. How are you doing? I'm doing great. I am so excited about this episode. I'm so excited about this week. In case you haven't heard, I am hosting a workshop on Saturday, first time I think I've ever done a workshop on a weekend, and it's all about being Unshakeable, having that steadiness, that inner calm, that inner knowing that you're going to be okay. And not only are you going to be okay, you are going to rise and you are going to thrive. And I think I'm especially excited about this workshop because of who I have become over the last six months. I have been going through a period of shedding even more. And I thought I was done with this you all. Not completely done, but I thought I was over the hurdle because I've shed a lot in my life. But about six months ago I realized, oh no girl, we're just getting started. There's still many more layers that you need to look at, these subconscious patterns that we all have that can hold us back. And I have been working through them and I feel like I'm on the other side of that growth spurt, I guess you could call it. And so I just know I am bringing a whole new me to this workshop.

And I am going to be sharing with you all how to be Unshakeable in your life because if you don't learn how to steady yourself, if you don't learn how to emotionally regulate yourself, if you don't learn how to expand to be able to hold your dreams and all that comes with the process of creating them, you're going to live a small life. And none of us are here to live a small life. Everybody that listens to this podcast has a vision, a version of life that you want for yourself and that is a beautiful, beautiful thing. And yet maybe you've been running up against obstacles and you don't know to overcome them. You find yourself falling back into old patterns. You find yourself maybe self-sabotaging, wanting to shut down. If you are feeling any of this right now, if you are feeling unsteady, if you're feeling full of worry and fear almost to the point of feeling paralyzed, this workshop is for you. You can head to schoolofselfimage.com/workshop, get yourself signed up. You will leave at this workshop with strategies, tools, but more than anything, you're going to leave with a shift in your self-image. A shift in looking at your life and what's possible for you in a whole new way. So go get yourself signed up. Schoolofselfimage.com/workshop.

Now I, on the other side of my most recent reinvention am so excited about the future. And the way I like to describe this feeling that I have is I have Unshakeable faith in my future and I want to talk with you about what that looks like because most of the conversations that I'm having these days are with people who are very afraid of the future. They're afraid that they're businesses aren't going to grow. They're afraid that they're never going to find the love of their life. They're afraid that the money is going to run out. They are afraid of the economy, they're afraid of the political environment, they're afraid of the unknown. And I'm over here feeling excited but or and ... Let me just add, I was not feeling this way six months ago and that's why again, I'm so excited about the upcoming workshop. I'm so excited about the me that I'm bringing to this because I had to go through that to understand the process so that I could then teach you.

But I've been doing this work for over 15 years. I've gone through seasons of self-doubt, seasons of fear, and then I've come through them on the other side feeling more confident and more excited than ever. And it's me being in those, I guess you could call it darker places that make me enjoy where I am now even more. And so if you're feeling like you are in that dark place, understand that's the contrast. It's trying to guide you, it's trying to show you what you want, it's trying to show you what you want more of, what you want less of. And you will not appreciate being on the other side without this experience. So let's not fight it. Let's not resist it. Let's relax into it and learn from it. So let's talk about Unshakeable faith in the future. Let's start with defining what does faith even mean? And faith is believing in something you cannot yet see. It's knowing that the future holds something good, even if you don't have proof right now. Now if you work from the vantage point of I'll believe it when I see it, then you are energetically holding yourself back. Because think about it, there are things that currently exist that at one point didn't exist. Someone had to believe in it in order to create it.

I live by the thought of I will see it when I believe it, and I have so much evidence of that in my life. Everything that I'm currently living right now is a result of me believing in something before I could yet see it. Believing in my future, having faith in my future before it actually materialized. But the way we often operate is we let our minds run on default. If you don't manage your mind, where does your mind take you? Probably to the worst case scenarios, probably to past evidence that doesn't support you. Probably to the scary stories that you are running in your mind. And it makes sense. Your mind's trying to protect you so it's like, "Hey, listen, let's warn her of all of the things that could go wrong so that she will be protected so she will protect herself." But that is not how you create. That is not how you shift your energy to be able to show up in life in order to create the things that you want.

More than ever. We need to have faith in our futures because faith acts as an anchor during uncertainty. When life feels shaky, faith is what can keep you grounded. Faith can also fuel motivation and resilience because without faith, think about it. Every obstacle just feels final. This is it. This isn't working out for me. And when you have those types of beliefs of running subconsciously, you give up too soon, you contract, you procrastinate, you don't show up, and you end up becoming this self-fulfilling prophecy. But when you have faith, every challenge just becomes a stepping stone. You look at challenges differently. Challenges become something that are meant to grow you, to make you stronger. And sometimes the challenge may be a redirection. Maybe how you're trying to get to where you're trying to get isn't the way for you, and it's not to give up on where you want to go, but maybe that's not the direction that you need to be going to get there.

I want you to think about it like this. When you have Unshakeable faith in your future, that means you have Unshakeable faith in the direction that you are taking your life. And a great analogy is if you think about you are going to go pick up someone you love from the airport. Now, can you imagine sitting around before you even leave the house to go pick them up thinking about, but what if this happens? What if I get in a wreck? What if you there's a roadblock? No. You just get in the car and you start driving having faith that you are going to get there. And even if you encounter a roadblock, even if there is traffic and you get there later than you anticipated, you still have faith that you are going to make it to the airport to pick up your loved one. That's the kind of Unshakeable faith I'm talking about. It may be full of challenges, you may have some setbacks, but deep down anchoring in, I am going to believe so hard in myself and my future that I am going to get there one way or the other.

Now, when it comes to creating Unshakeable faith, there is what I call reactive living versus proactive living. Reactive living is when you sit around and you're waiting for life to prove that it's safe and that it's working for you. And just because of the way our brains are wired, the brain is wired to look for things to be afraid of, to worry about and so you'll never feel safe. You'll never really feel Unshakeable. However, if you operate from proactive living, you are creating safety through your faith, you're creating safety within yourself so that you can have that feeling of being Unshakeable.

Imagine navigating your career or relationships without any faith in the outcome. It would be exhausting. But the moment you have faith, you have faith of like, I'm going to find the person. I don't know how or when, but I know what I want for my life. I know what I am deserving of. I know the kind of life I want to live, and I cannot wait to have that kind of person join me on this adventure of life. That kind of faith is exciting. It makes the bad dates not so bad. You're like, "Oh, I guess that wasn't the one, but there is one out there for me." Let's go find him or her. Even with your career. If you think about really believing in a future, believing in a job that is for you that you're excited about, when you get that first or second or even third rejection letter, if you have Unshakeable faith, you don't make that mean something's wrong with me. You don't make that mean this is never going to work. You simply make that mean, oh, that's just not the one, but there is a job out there for me.

So when it comes to Unshakeable faith in your future, I've been thinking about this a lot. You need to have three types of faith. And the first is faith in your future, believing in your vision. It's not just hoping for the best, but choosing thoughts that make your future feel exciting and aligned. And what I love to tell clients is listen, none of us know what's going to happen in the future. We have no idea what is going to happen in the future. It has always been and it always will be uncertain. That is called the mystery of life. However, in this moment, you get to decide what you want to think and believe about your future. Now, the number one mistake that I see people make is that they look to the past for what they should believe about the future. Now, I want you to think about this. The future that you are wanting to create does not yet exist. And I'm going to guess that there are things in that future that you maybe have never experienced. So you are going to have to think in new ways. You're going to have to feel in ways that you've never felt. You're going to probably have to do things that you've never done. And so the past is not where you should be going for what you should be thinking about your future.

Do you know where you should go? Your imagination. As I said earlier, look around. Everything that surrounds you right now was just a thought at one point. Someone had the imagination to think about it and to believe in it and to bring it into fruition. This is why visualizing is one of my main tools that I use for creating my life on purpose. I've been doing this for 15 years, but I will tell you over the last year especially, I have gone deep into visualizing. I've had to cut off the outside noise and the world that's trying to program me as to how I should think and feel and decide on purpose what do I want to believe about my future? What do I want to imagine into being? And practice believing in that on a daily basis even when I can't see it yet.

And do you know why I love doing this? Because it's exciting and it's fun. It is not fun, my friends, to sit around dreading your day. It's not fun to sit around dreading your future and being afraid of it. It's going to happen no matter what. So why not get excited about it? Why not take back imaginative control as to what you want to think and believe about your future because that is going to affect how you show up, the actions that you take, and you are more likely to create that future if you are believing in it ,if you're having Unshakeable faith in it.The people without faith give up the people without faith live small lives, and that is not you and that not us.

So right now, I want you to think about what are three beliefs that you can believe right now because we don't want to set you up for failure by you trying to believe something that your brain cannot get on board with. This is why I teach the thought ladder within the membership. We inch our way up to the thoughts that we truly want to believe. But from where you are right now, what are three beliefs that you can believe about your future that serve you? One of my favorite beliefs is I love to believe that the best is yet to come and I am prepared to receive it with an open heart. I also love to believe that my future is full of meaningful experiences and connections. I love to believe that the future is mine to create. These are the kinds of beliefs that keep me excited and have me experiencing that Unshakeable faith in my future. It's something that I create from within, not from without. All right. So that's the first type of faith that you have to have is Unshakeable faith in your future.

Now, the next one is very important, and that is you need to have Unshakeable faith in yourself. I'm going to repeat that. You have to have Unshakeable faith in yourself because if you don't believe in you, no amount of planning will make your vision come true. I'm about to give y'all some tough love. This is the kind of love I give myself all the time and thank goodness for it. But the reason why so many people feel anxious about their futures is that they don't believe in themselves. They don't have faith in themselves. These are people that are always saying they're going to do one thing but do another. They're breaking promises with themselves. They're not showing up. And so they don't trust themselves. How can you have faith in something that you don't trust? Do you know the beauty of having Unshakeable faith in yourself is that you stop being afraid of the future? You're willing to take more risks because you have this belief no matter what, I've got me. No matter what I know, I can figure it out no matter what, I believe in myself and I trust myself that whatever comes my way, I have Unshakeable faith in me.

And you know what is possible when you feel that way about yourself? Do you know how you will walk through this world when you have the self-image of a woman who has her own back? Or when you have the self-image of a woman who believes in herself when everybody else around her is telling her she's delusional. When everyone around her is telling her, who do you think you are? And she's over there thinking, you know what, I'm going to show you?. I'm going to show all of y'all who I am. That's the kind of Unshakeable faith I want us all to have in ourselves because at the end of the day, we come into this world with us and we leave with us. That is the most important relationship you will ever have.

And if you don't have faith in yourself, what else are you going to have faith in? It's hard to have faith in life when you don't have faith within yourself. Lately, I've been having so much fun believing in a version of me that doesn't yet exist. Believing in the future me who has created the future that I am excited to create, who is where I want to be. I'm having so much fun having faith in me today, who's going to get me there and having faith in her that she's going to guide me. A lot of the work that we do within the membership is future focused. It is tapping into that future self and her wisdom, allowing her to run the show versus the scared small versions of ourselves. Imagine what your life will be like when you really embody the energy and the self-image of a woman who has her own back, who stays true to herself.

And even when she doesn't, she never beats herself up. She never leaves herself. She sits around with herself, figures it out so that she can move forward. That kind of energy you all, it makes you unstoppable. It makes you magnetic. It makes you rise when everybody else is shrinking. Those are the kinds of women we need right now more than ever. Women who have faith in themselves. And yeah, they're going to be people that talk about you. They're going to be people that tell you that you are too full of yourself. Well, who else are you supposed to be full of? There are going to be people that tell you that you are so delusional, especially if your dreams are big. The bigger your dreams, the more delusional people will think you are. But you know what that tells me? That they are living in a very shaky world. They are looking at life through the lens of what is versus what can be, and practicing believing in that. So anytime someone comes along who is believing in a vision bigger than what they can see, they frame that as delusion versus creation because that creation is believing in things that you cannot yet see. That's what creativity is all about. And guess what? Your life is your greatest form of art.

Now, if you want to start having Unshakeable faith in yourself, there's a few things you're going to need to do. Number one, you're going to have to stop listening to everybody else and what they think is possible for you and what they think of you, because everybody's going to have different opinions. Some people are going to think you're amazing, other people are going to think you're awful. That's just the nature of people. You have to go within and decide for yourself, this is how I want to think about myself. This is what I want to believe about myself. And then you need to start collecting small wins, even the tiniest ones that prove to yourself, this is who I'm becoming. This is who I am. And finally, stop breaking promises to yourself. Don't set yourself up for failure. If you know you're not going to follow through on something, just don't make that promise. Make promises to yourself that you know that you'll follow through with. Stretch yourself a little bit and make the promises bigger day by day, week by week. But you have to prove to yourself, I've got me. I trust me. Because how are you going to have faith in something that you don't trust?

Let's go back to my airport analogy. I want you to imagine that you are the one being picked up and you're also the one picking yourself up. Now, imagine, okay, the first time you don't show up to pick yourself up for the airport. So the other you is just like, "Okay. I'll grab an Uber." But the next time you come to the airport and this person, you tells yourself, I'll pick you up, and you don't get picked up by yourself, you start to lose faith in that person. You start to doubt, are they really going to pick me up? They keep saying they're going to pick me up, and they never do. And yet that's how so many of us are living with ourselves, not trusting ourselves. So if you want to have Unshakeable faith in your future, it's going to require that you have Unshakeable faith in yourself. And you can start by keeping the promises to yourself. Creating those small wins that tell yourself, Hey, I've got me. I've got me. No matter what. Then you won't be so afraid of the future.

Now, the final faith you need to have to have Unshakeable faith in your future is you need to have faith in the process. This is about trusting the journey. Faith in the process means understanding that every experience, good or bad is just a part of your evolution. Life is not going to be amazing all of the time. It's not meant to be. We don't get better. We don't become stronger when life is easy. It's about trusting that the seemingly messy uncomfortable steps are leading to something worthwhile, something meaningful, something wonderful. I think about recently I had what felt like a huge step back in the business. I talked about this behind the scenes this past month. But we had been working on a big project that just went south. It was not my best moment. And it would've been very easy to get discouraged to become so frustrated, to give up. But I've done this work so long, I was like, oh no, this is just part of the process and it's going to make me such a better leader. I learned so much, and already things are so much better. The team is stronger. I feel like the membership is better than it's ever been. It's just so much good has come out of that very difficult obstacle, and that's what faith in the process looks like.

Within the School of Self-Image, I teach the self-image method, and that's our process that we use day in and day out to joyfully reinvent ourselves and our lives. And one of the things that I really drive home to members is that when you fall in love with the process, this work becomes so much easier. And not only does it become easier, it becomes so much more fun, but we want the outcome. We want to be in that future already, but all we ever have is right now. That's all we ever have. Now, I love imagining my future. I love creating my future, but it's created in the here and now and the here and now is a result of how you're showing up. And to me that is the process.

And so when you know deep down that you can trust the process, that you can have faith in it and you have faith in yourself, and you have faith in your future, you will amaze yourself with what you end up creating. It's when we doubt our future, when we doubt ourselves and we doubt the process, that's when we don't show up. That's when we don't take the risk. That's when we keep ourselves so small. And not only that, we create a dysregulated nervous system, and that's the secret to all of this work. The connection between faith and a calm body is huge because you can't think your way into faith if your body feels threatened.

And that's the work that we're going to be doing at the upcoming workshop. We're going to learn how to literally calm our nervous systems down and step into that Unshakeable energy, that energy of you moving, speaking, living, and acting like your future self. That future you that had the audacity to believe in her future, to believe in herself, to trust the process, to create what it is that she wanted to create. That is what we're stepping into. So come and join us. Go to schoolofselfimage.com/workshop. I cannot wait to see you there. And I forgot to mention, as soon as you join, you are going to get instant access to my Unshakeable walking visualization. Whenever I'm experiencing doubt about my future, whenever I'm feeling that unsteadiness within myself when my brain feels very clouded, I love to pop in this visualization. It's about 20 minutes long. I love to go on a walk and I love to remind myself of who I really am. And I'm telling you all it will shift your state, and when you shift your state, you shift your entire life. So go grab that walking visualization, go listen to it today. Start to tap into that energy, and then just imagine what we're going to do at the workshop. We're going to have so much fun. I cannot wait to see you there. Saturday, May 17th, again, schoolofselfimage.com/workshop.

And I want you to remember, your future is shaped by the faith that you practice today. So let's end with you thinking about what is one belief that you're going to choose to hold onto right now? Practice it, feel it, show up and provide evidence for it. And you do that over and over. Day after day, you're going to amaze yourself with what is possible.

Have a beautiful week, my friends, and I cannot wait to see you all at the workshop, and I'll see you in next week's episode. Cheers.

Hey, before you go, let me ask you a question. When was the last time you felt truly grounded? Not because everything around you was calm, but because you were. If you are tired of anxiety, the noise, the emotional whiplash of trying to stay steady in a world that's constantly pulling you in every direction, I want to invite you to something different. Unshakeable is more than a workshop. It's a reset, a reclamation, a reminder of the woman you've always been beneath the noise. If you're ready to stop letting the outside world shake your inner world, if you are craving clarity, confidence, and emotional freedom, if you are ready to anchor into a deeper kind of strength, the kind no one can take from you, then Unshakeable is your next step. Join me not to hustle harder or fix yourself, but to rise in a new way, to be rooted, to feel radiant, to feel resilient, not in spite of the chaos, but because of who you choose to be within it. You can go to schoolofselfimage.com/workshop, and I look forward to seeing you on May 17th.