Why Most Reinventions Fail Before They Begin

Most reinventions don’t fail because we’re incapable of change. They fail because before we ever even begin, we’ve already watered down what we really want. We’ve chosen goals that don’t really inspire us. And we start negotiating with all the old fears and rules that got us here. So, today I’m talking about why reinventions begin long before the action, and how to make sure yours actually has a chance to work. So, let’s dive in.

Welcome to the School of Self-Image, where our motto is simple. Elevate your self-image, elevate your life. I’m Tonya Leigh, your hostess. And I’ll guide you to become the woman who doesn’t just dream bigger; she lives bigger. Let’s dive in.

Hello, hello, friends. I am back. How are you doing? How’s your week been? I have had a fabulous week. I am feeling so good, just so excited about life, and feeling healthy and strong. In fact, I went to my annual executive physical yesterday. It’s like this five-hour process where they do all kinds of scans and go over your blood work and check your cognitive ability. It’s pretty intense. And the doctor told me that everything looks good. In fact, it looks better than it did last year. I’m seeing improvement. And I know it’s because I’ve been taking good care of myself, but it’s also because I gave myself a chance this year to reimagine my life. We can get into this pattern of being comfortable, going through the motions, checking off the boxes, living on autopilot. And then we wake up one day, and we’re like, “Wait, is this what I want?” And that was sort of where I was at the beginning of the year, which is why I chose Vivante as my Word of the Year, which means to be fully alive, to live a well-lived life.

And it caused me to take a step back and really reimagine my life. I asked myself, “Tonya, if you could reinvent one area of your life right now, what would it be?” And it became very clear to me it was my business. So, behind the scenes, I’ve been going through my own business reinvention, which is causing me to have to reinvent myself. But in this process, I’ve been thinking about the ladies in my membership. I’ve been thinking about all of the women that I’ve supported over the last almost two decades. I’ve seen many, many successful reinventions. I have seen women have the most phenomenal results. And I’ve also seen some reinventions fail. I’ve had some reinventions that have failed. I have had moments where I’m like, “This is what I want.” And I am gung-ho, and then I fizzle out.

And so, I don’t view those as failures. I view everything as data. And I do think we can learn just as much, if not more, from failures as we do from success. I like to do pre-mortems. I like to think about things failing ahead of time. And then asking myself ahead of time, why do I think those things failed? So that I can plan for those failures, potential failures, potential obstacles, roadblocks, and create a plan so that I am more likely to succeed. And so, I’ve been thinking about this concept as it relates to reinventions. Why do reinventions fail? Because women are so smart. We’re so capable. Gosh, we have created so much. We’ve built so much. We’ve supported our families. We are capable. So it’s not because we’re incapable. And so, I have been spending a lot of time thinking about this, because we’re about to start The 90-day Reinvention inside the membership in September.

And I want to set us all up for success. And so, I believe that if we can recognize why reinventions fail, we can plan for that. And because I’ve just gone through this process myself, in fact, I’m still in it, I have experienced every single one of the things that I’m about to share with you. And so, I am intimately familiar with how these things can tempt you to go back to the familiar, to the known, to what’s comfortable. And what I can promise you is that if you are inside the membership as we go through The 90-day Reinvention, and one of these comes up, I’m going to remind you that this is why most reinventions fail. And we’re going to refuse to give in to it.

Being Dishonest About What You Really Want

So, the first thing that I’ve identified is the reason why most reinventions fail is that you are not being honest about what you really, really want. Before reinvention can begin, there has to be truth. But what I know is that we can censor our desires almost immediately. We’ll tell ourselves, “Well, that’s too much. I should just be grateful. What will people think? Is this realistic at my age?” And we end up pursuing what feels permitted instead of what feels true and what feels alive. And listen, the truth can feel scary, but it also is what sets you free. You have to be willing to sit with the scary things. You have to be willing to feel the scary things in order to live a beautiful life. It’s just the way it works. But I know for me, I had to sit down and have an honest edit about what I was loving and what I wasn’t. I had to have some serious come-to-Jesus meetings with myself around what I had been doing because I thought I should be doing them.

I had to get honest about how I was not in alignment with my true essence. And listen, I don’t regret any of it. And I think this is one of the things that we do as women: we shame ourselves because we’re not perfectly aligned 24/7. And nobody is. No one is. I don’t care who you are. I don’t care how long you’ve been coaching. I don’t care how long you’ve been doing whatever you do. Part of life is getting off course. That’s how we learn to get back on course. And so, I don’t regret any of it. I’m so proud that I’ve recognized it and I was willing to have this honest conversation. Actually, it was many conversations with myself about what I really, really wanted.

And I’m going to be sharing this in the membership. In fact, I’m hosting a bonus call in September called The Honest Edit, because I’m going to be bringing all of you who are in the membership behind the scenes of this reinvention that I’ve been going through in hopes that I can share things that will help you feel like, “Oh, wait, what I’m experiencing is normal. Nothing’s gone wrong here.” And also to share with you how I’ve navigated it and continue to navigate it. But you have to be honest. If not, you’re going to build your life on a mountain of lies. You’re going to build a life that you resent, that you don’t like living when you are not being true about what you actually want. Your desires are so sacred. They are your North Star. Are you paying attention to what you want? Do you ask yourself, “Hey, what am I desiring in my life right now?” Because that’s what a reinvention is going to require: that you get honest about what you want.

Choosing Uninspiring “Should” Goals

The other reason why reinventions fail is that we choose uninspiring goals. These are the should goals. I should lose 10 pounds. I should make more money. I should get organized. I should be more productive. And the reinventions that have failed for me have fallen into this category. I’ve been in masterminds before where the primary focus was money. How much are you going to make? What’s your revenue goal? How are you going to double it? Everything it felt like came back to a number. And I want to be really clear here: I’m not against money. I like money. I like earning it. I like taking care of it. I like growing it. I’m delighted when I see my net worth go up. And I want women to have all the money that they want. But money in and of itself is not what inspires me.

And I remember being in the room and feeling like there was something wrong with me because I didn’t have this huge money goal that everybody else seemed to have and be so excited about. And so, when I said that money wasn’t my primary motivator, the response was essentially, “Well, maybe you have limiting beliefs around money. Maybe that’s scarcity. Maybe you’re afraid to want more.” And I started questioning myself. I’m like, “Maybe they’re right. Maybe I’m playing small. Maybe I should have a bigger money goal. Maybe the reason I don’t care about the number as much as everybody else seems to is because I have some belief that I need to work through.”

So, guess what? That year, I set the big-money goal. I created the should goal, and I didn’t hit it. But what was even more interesting was that I didn’t enjoy my business that year nearly as much as I normally do because of what I was focused on. It felt like suddenly everything was filtered through the number. Is this going to make us more money? Is this offer going to get us closer to the goal? Are we on track? Are we behind? Now, let me be very clear here. As a businesswoman, again, I’ve owned my business for almost 20 years. Numbers are important. You need to be on top of things. But for me, that being my sole goal, my sole focus, it’s very uninspiring. I had moved away from questions that year that actually make me feel alive in my business. Questions like, “How can we create an incredible experience for our members? What would generally change their lives? What ideas feel exciting and fresh? How do we take what we already do and make it even better? How do I create incredible experiences that change a woman’s life?”

Those kinds of questions feel way more alive for me. Give me a creative problem to solve, and I’m so excited. Give me an experience to design, and I am in. Give me an idea that doesn’t exist yet, and I’m going to want to make it happen. Those are goals that actually inspire me. And it just so happens that when I do those things, they tend to produce money. So, money becomes a beautiful result of the work. But when I personally made money itself the sole focus, I felt so disconnected from myself, from the very things that inspire me, that make me feel good at my business in the first place – and that year taught me something important.

 A goal doesn’t determine what you’re working toward; it determines what you pay attention to while you’re getting there.

That’s why this matters so much, because we can choose goals that look impressive on paper and still be completely uninspired by them. And then we start blaming ourselves, “Why can’t I stay motivated? Why am I procrastinating? Why do I need more discipline? Why am I not more excited about this?” And sometimes the answer isn’t that you’re lazy or you’re undisciplined. Sometimes you’ve simply chosen a goal that you don’t actually care about.

Now, I want to make an important distinction here. For another woman, a big money goal might be incredibly inspiring. She may say, “I want to make a million dollars because no woman in my family has ever created that kind of wealth.” Or, “I want to build a million-dollar net worth because financial freedom represents something that is deeply meaningful to me.” And if that lights her up, fantastic. Go make the money. The point is not that money goals are bad. The point is that you have to know what inspires you. The same is true with any goal. Maybe you keep saying that you want to lose 10 pounds because that feels like what you’re supposed to want. Maybe all your friends are losing weight, and you’re thinking, this is it. I should want to lose 10 pounds.

But what’s underneath that? Maybe that is the focus. Maybe that is what you want. But is that inspiring to you? If you dig deeper, what you may realize you actually want is to feel strong in your body, to love the way clothes fit. You want to choose a goal that actually inspires you. Maybe you keep thinking, “I want to make more money.” Okay. Why? Maybe make more money feels flat. But being able to take your entire family on an incredible vacation and pay for it without any stress – that excites you. Maybe that’s your goal. Maybe grow my business doesn’t inspire you, but creating a business that allows you to work four days a week, have an amazing team, and spend a month every summer somewhere beautiful. Okay, now you’re inspired.

This is why I think we have to be very careful with should goals. I should lose weight. I should grow the business. I should write a book. I should be more productive. Okay, maybe. But do you actually want the life that goal is pointing towards? Because reinvention is already going to ask something of you. It’s going to ask you to think very differently. It’s going to ask you to tolerate uncertainty. It’s going to ask you to stretch into what is very uncomfortable, beyond what is familiar. So, my thinking is if you’re going to do all of that, there should be something on the other side that genuinely pulls you forward. And sometimes the most powerful thing you can do is admit, “I don’t actually want that.” Or, “That’s not what inspires me.” It could even be, “I want something different.”

Because reinvention doesn’t need a more impressive goal. What’s impressive to the outside world. It doesn’t need a goal that you think other people think you should want. It needs a goal with more desire in it, because you’re going to need that desire to help you get up when you want to stay in bed. You’re going to need that desire when you’re afraid of what people are going to think. You’re going to need that desire when you hit a wall. Desire is important, so we want to make sure that we are choosing inspiring goals in order for your reinvention to be a success.

Demanding the “How” Before Committing to the “What” 

Let’s talk about the next reason that most reinventions fail. We require the how before we’re willing to commit to the what. This is such a sneaky one, and it can kill a reinvention before it starts. Because we think we need to know how something is going to happen before we’re allowed to fully decide that we want it. Let’s say you have a business and you think, “I would love to make $50,000 this year.” For about three seconds, you’re excited. You’re like, “Oh, my God, I’m so excited. I can’t wait to do this 90-day Reinvention.” And then your brain gets involved. “Okay, but how? Where would that money come from? I only have X number of people on my email list. I don’t think I can sell that many packages. I’ve never made $50,000 before; this is too ambitious. Maybe I should aim for $30,000.”

And now you’re not dreaming anymore; you’re just doing math in your head based on your current circumstances. Remember, reinvention is creating something new. It’s imagining something new. Something that is going to require you to become unrecognizable. And this is important, because you’re asking your current life to prove that your future life is possible. And of course it can’t. If your current circumstances already contained all the evidence for the reinvention that you want, it probably wouldn’t feel like a reinvention, right?

Maybe right now you make $20,000 in your business. Maybe you have 300 people on your list. Maybe you’ve never launched anything successfully. Maybe you don’t know the offer yet. None of that actually answers the question, “What do I want?” It only answers the question, “What have I created so far?” Those are two very different questions. And this is where a lot of women put desire and strategy into the same conversation. You say you want to make $50,000, and instead of just allowing that to be true, you immediately demand a business plan to justify it. But what if you just allowed yourself to say, “I want to make $50,000, period.” Not because you know exactly how, because you don’t yet. Not because some spreadsheet proves that it can happen. Not because you already have the audience or the offer or the connections or the plan. You just decide that this is something that you want to explore creating.

The what comes first. The how comes along the way. In fact, you probably won’t know how you’ve done it until you actually do it. But when you truly commit to the $50,000, your brain starts asking completely different questions. Instead of, “Why can’t I do this?” You start asking, “What would I need to believe in order to do this? What could I possibly sell? What problem could I solve? Who could I help? Who could I learn from? What skills do I need to develop? What have I not tried yet?” And this is where creativity begins. Because if you reduce the goal to $20,000 because $20,000 is the number that you can already explain, you will never discover the ideas that the $50,000 goal would have required you to find. And I’m not saying you slap a number on something, pretend you believe it, and magically manifest it. I’m saying stop requiring your present-day brain to already know the strategy for a future it has never created before.

Think about a meaningful reinvention that you’ve had. You probably couldn’t have explained the whole thing at the beginning. Maybe you met someone that you couldn’t have predicted, or you had an idea you didn’t have six months earlier. You learned something, you changed your mind, you tried something that didn’t work, and that led to the thing that did. The path revealed itself because you started walking toward it. This is why I think one of the most powerful sentences in reinvention is, “I don’t know how… yet.” Not, “I don’t know how, so I guess I can’t. I just don’t know how yet.” There’s so much possibility in that word. So, if you want to make $50,000 in your business, your first job isn’t to know exactly how you’re going to do it. Your first job is to be honest enough to say, “This is what I want.” Then you begin becoming the woman who can figure it out. 

Because reinvention asks you to choose the destination without yet knowing the entire map.

Using the Rules of Your Old Life to Build the New One 

Okay, let’s talk about the next reason why most reinventions fail. This is a big one, and I see it all of the time. We try to create a new life using the rules of the old one. For example, a woman will come to me, and she’ll say, “I want this next chapter of my life to feel calmer. I want more space. I want to be more present. I want to actually enjoy my life.” And then, next thing I know, she’s turned it into a whole project. She has a new morning routine, a meditation goal, her habit tracker. She has a walking goal, a bedtime routine, a stack of books that she thinks she needs to read.

And suddenly she is so stressed out trying to become a calmer person. She’s basically trying to achieve peace. And I get it, because this is what so many of us know how to do. We know how to work harder. We know how to be disciplined. We know how to make a plan and how to optimize. And listen, those things may have worked really well for you. Maybe that’s how you built a career. Maybe that’s how you raised your family. Maybe that’s how you got through some really hard seasons in your life. So, of course, when you want something new, your instinct is just to reach for the same tools.

But I want you to think about this. What if the life you want next requires something totally different from you? Because that’s what reinvention’s all about. Maybe the woman who wants more calm doesn’t need a better morning routine. Maybe she just needs to stop filling every minute of her day. Maybe she needs to sit outside with her coffee and not turn it into some kind of productivity hack. Maybe she needs to take a walk and not count her steps. Maybe she needs to let herself have an afternoon where she gets nothing accomplished.

Now, listen, I know that this can feel so uncomfortable when you’ve spent years believing that your value comes from what you get done. But that’s what reinvention is about. It’s about being willing to sit in that discomfort long enough to create a new operating system. Or maybe, let’s say you say, “I want deeper relationships.” But your old rule is, “I don’t need anybody. I can handle it myself.” So you say you want closeness, but you never ask for help. You say you want to feel supported, but you’re always the one that’s doing everything. You want intimacy, but you don’t allow yourself to be vulnerable.

And that’s what I mean when I say you’re trying to create a new life with the rules of the old one. You’ve chosen a new destination, but you’re still using the same operating system to get there. I call these Success Scripts. These are things that we have done in our lives that have created a lot of success. Maybe we’ve had a lot of success from people-pleasing. Maybe we’ve created a lot of success from working hard. Maybe we’ve created a lot of success by being strong and independent. But when we think about our inspiring goal that we’ve chosen, the chances are the Success Script that helps you create this life is not going to be what creates the next one. It’s not going to be what you need to reach that next goal. 

In fact, sometimes the very thing that helps you build one chapter can get in the way of you building the next one.

And I think that’s such an important question to ask in reinvention. “What worked for me before that may not work for me for where I want to go now?” Maybe you don’t need more effort. Maybe you don’t need another plan. Maybe you don’t need to prove anything. Maybe your reinvention is asking you to soften or to trust or to let go, or to ask for help. Or maybe it’s asking you to have more fun, to leave more space in your life. Sometimes creating a new life isn’t about adding more, believe it or not. Sometimes it’s about letting go of the rules that you no longer want to live by. So, yeah, oftentimes reinvention requires you to let go of who you’ve been in order to create the woman you must become to have your reinvention.

Waiting for External Circumstances to Grant Permission 

All right, let’s talk about the last one. The last reason why I’ve noticed most reinventions fail. And that is that we wait for the new life to give us permission to be the new woman. This one’s huge, because we think the external change has to happen first. So, for example, when I lose the weight, then I’ll be confident. Or, when I meet the right person, then I’ll be more open and romantic. Or, when the kids are older, then I’ll feel more adventurous. Or, when work settles down, I’ll have more fun. There are so many when this, then that, that I see holding women back. And without realizing it, we put our whole identity on layaway. We’re waiting for life to change before we change.

But reinvention doesn’t work that way. Let’s say a woman tells me that she wants to be more adventurous. Okay. So she imagines this future version of herself traveling more, trying new restaurants, wearing things that she normally wouldn’t wear, meeting new people, saying “yes” more, booking the trip. But right now she continues to go to the same restaurant, she wears the same thing, she takes the same route. She waits for someone to make the plans. And she keeps thinking, “One day when my life is different, then I’m going to be that woman.” I’ve done it. Have you? But how does her life become different if she keeps waiting to be her?

This is where reinvention actually gets very practical. You don’t have to book a three-week trip to Morocco today in order to be adventurous. Maybe it’s just as simple as you trying a new dish at a restaurant. Maybe it’s signing up for the class or wearing the thing that you keep saving for some imaginary occasion. Maybe it’s taking a different route home because you’ve never seen that way before. It’s the small things. But those small things start sending you evidence. “Oh, I’m someone who tries new things. I’m someone who can be spontaneous. I’m someone who creates interesting experiences for herself.” And now your identity is beginning to change before your whole life has changed.

This is the part that we get backward. We think a new circumstance is going to create a new identity. But very often it looks like this. You make some new choices, and that feeds the new identity. And then that new identity creates new circumstances. 

You start practicing the woman before you have all the proof. Now, I want to be clear, I’m not talking about pretending. This is not you walking around saying, “I am a world traveler,” when you’ve never left your hometown. It’s asking, “What would this version of me do with the life I have today?” If she’s more confident, well, how would you walk into a room differently? If she’s more stylish, what would you wear to dinner tonight? If she’s more connected, who are you going to call today? If she’s more playful, what are you going to do this weekend?

If the version you imagine in your reinvention is more healthy, well, what choices are you going to make today that give you proof of like, “Hey, this is who we’re becoming?” Because every time you make one of those choices, you are closing the gap between who you are and who you keep saying you actually want to become. And I think this is actually when reinvention gets really fun. You don’t have to wait until the finish line to be her, to enjoy her. You get to meet her today. In fact, becoming her is going to be the way you get there. So don’t wait. Who is she, the woman who’s living out your dream? The woman who’s living out your reinvention. And then the work is all about closing the gap.

Putting It All Together: My Own 90-Day Reinvention

Again, I’ve been doing this over the last three months in my business. And knowing that these are the reasons why most reinventions fail, I have been mindful of every single one of these. And I’m seeing the results now. I’m seeing how being honest with what I want allowed me to choose an inspiring goal. And then I’m seeing how committing to that goal without knowing the how yet has allowed me day after day to connect with the right people, to take the next step. And suddenly the world I had envisioned is coming to life. I’ve also seen how it’s requiring me to change. The rules that help me to create so much success are also the rules that are going to hold me back in this next reinvention. And so, just being mindful of that. I’ve been able to quickly recognize it and shift it, and begin to imagine the new rules that I want to play by.

And finally, I am living in the energy of that woman, the woman who is on the other side of her reinvention. And I started to do this at the very beginning, feeling what it was like to be her. How does she show up at work? What is she doing? What is she wearing? How is she spending her free time? What is she focused on? And slowly, I’ve been closing the gap between where I was and where I want to be. 

And so, if this is something that you know you’re being called to do, if you know you are ready for a reinvention in your own life, it only takes 90 days to get that momentum started. You can achieve so much in one season of your life. And what I know is that 90 days from now your life could look completely the same, or it could be completely unrecognizable.

And that’s what we’re doing inside the membership starting in September. And so, if you want to embark on your own 90-day reinvention and come behind the scenes of the one that I’ve been on, come and join us. You can go to https://schoolofselfimage.com/go G-O. And let’s go. Let’s do this.

Now, before I sign off, I want to give you a little heads up about what’s going on with this podcast. I am taking another break. Yes. I’m playing by new rules, my friends. I want to dedicate my time and focus over the next 90 days to the members inside the School of Self-Image. We are going to be going deep into this process. And so, that, as well as my own business reinvention, that is where I’m going to be focusing my attention. One of the things that I’ve learned as I get older that’s become even more clear to me is that you have to choose what’s a priority during different seasons of your life. And right now those two things, as well as my health, are my priorities.

And so, you will not be hearing from me for a bit, but the podcast is going to come back. I am completely reimagining it. I’m so excited for it. And so, yeah, if you want to know more about what’s going on behind the scenes, I’m going to be sharing it inside the membership. So, if I don’t see you there, I hope to see you in the not-too-distant future. 

Have a beautiful season, my friends, and I’ll see you soon. Cheers.