Love Notes: Collection One

What is happening, my friends? You may have already noticed that the quality of this episode is a little bit different than my others. And that is because I am traveling and I forgot to pack my podcast mic; first time I’ve ever done that. But the show must always go on and, when you’re resourceful, you figure things out. So, my workaround is that I’m actually recording this off of my phone. But I do hope that you will enjoy this collection of love notes that I’ve created for you.

Bonjour, and welcome to The French Kiss Life Podcast, where personal development meets style. I’m Tonya Leigh, certified master life coach and the hostess of this party, where we explore how to live artfully and well. Each week, I’ll be sharing inspiring stories, practical tips, and timeless wisdom on how to elevate the quality of your everyday and celebrate along the way. Let’s dive into today’s episode.

A Glamorous Life. When you think of glamour, what comes to mind? Contrary to popular belief, glamour is not all about fashion and makeup. Glamour is an energy of mystery and grace, transcending the ordinary, taking us on a beautiful journey into enchantment.

What I’ve come to learn about glamour is that it’s all about seeing yourself and the world through the eyes of charm. So, if you want to live a more glamorous life, here are 10 ways to do it.

Number one, decide on the life you desire to live and create it for yourself. Each day, work to upgrade your mindset, your style, and your surroundings.

Number two, have an air of mystery. My rule of thumb, share only when you have something valuable to offer.

Number three, invest in the details of your life. It’s truly the little things that feel the most glamorous.

Number four, create a sacred garden. Glamorous ladies have struggles too. So, invite beloved friends and strong mentors into your life where you can openly share your life in a safe space.

Number five, edit your life. A mistake many people make in striving for a more glamorous life is packing it with excess. Glamour is magnified within simplicity.

Number six, dress the part. Glamour is so much more than style. However, wearing sweatpants every day will never lead to a life of glamour.

Number seven, cultivate your calm. There’s nothing glamorous about being stressed out and overwhelmed. Breathe in, breathe out, and manage your mind.

Number eight, fall in love. The root of glamour is romanticism. A woman in love with her life and herself is alluring and intoxicating.

Number nine, cultivate your mind. Indulge your mind in the arts, culture, music, anything that inspires and expands your intellectual growth.

Number 10, don’t obsess over your looks. While it’s important to present yourself in a way that feels good to you, it’s not glamorous to obsess over it.

At the end of the day, glamour is a feeling that you cultivate from within and express it into everything you do. So, tell me, how do you intend to add more glamour into your life?

Chasing Versus Attracting. Most people chase what they desire. They come at their goals from a place of scarcity, lack, and not enoughness. But like a wild animal being chased, the things you desire will run from you.

Instead of chasing your desires and your dreams, the secret is to create the feeling of already having them. And then, they will chase you. To create what you want, you must align with what you want energetically. You must become a match for it. Feel the feelings of having your desires now. Live as if your prayers have already been answered.

This is my number one secret to more ease because things begin to flow in your life. You’ll get inspired ideas. The right people will show up. You’ll receive an unexpected opportunity. You’ll begin to draw unto you that which you desire.

This process is so much more fun than feeling miserable and delaying what you’re really after, which is a feeling, until you’ve reached your goal. So, decide what you want, feel the feelings of already having it, follow up with inspired actions, relax, and then receive.

Enjoying Your Life. For years, I tried to improve my life by forcing, hustling, pressuring, and stressing. Every day felt like a constant battle to overcome. It wasn’t working.

I finally understood that to get somewhere, you must bring the energy of where it is you want to go into the life you have now. So, I started a simple practice of celebrating life every single day; the little and the big things.

I made an effort to enjoy the mundane; dancing in the kitchen while cooking dinner, paying attention to the sunrise and the sunsets. What happened is that life started serving me up more things to appreciate and celebrate because I was unknowingly asking the universe to send me more.

Most people are trying to get peace through struggle. They’re trying to get love through hate and fear. They’re trying to get abundance through scarcity. You can’t partake in the buffet of life when you’re on the floor looking at the crumbs. Look up. Look for the good. Look for possibility. Look for abundance. Look for how you’re being blessed in this moment. Celebrate it.

The quickest shortcut to improving your life is to deeply appreciate and enjoy the life you have today. The same goes for your body, your job, your relationships, all of it. For any area that you want to improve, appreciate and enjoy what you have right now.

Enoughness. Most of our problems and suffering is from not enoughness. Not enough time, not enough love, not enough money. It’s not good enough. I’m not good enough.

Everything that I coach women around is born out of not enoughness. And when you’re in that state, I really want you to think about how you feel. I know for me, when I’m in a state of not enoughness, I’m anxious. I’m worried. I’m full of scarcity. I’m full of lack. I’m not a match for everything that I want.

Have you ever noticed that when you’re in a state of not enoughness, you create more not enoughness? Who determines what is enough? So many of you are saying “I’ll feel enough when I’ve lost the weight, when I’m making more money, when I’ve found that dream guy, when I have the dream job, when I have it all together.”

The truth is, there is enough. You are enough. And there will always be enough. Our job is to do the internal work of getting into a state of enoughness. And I know from experience that this is difficult because we train our minds for not enoughness. And we have a lot of evidence for it.

The brain will always try to tell you that your stuff isn’t good enough. When you buy into that BS, you will pay attention to any negative activity that reinforces it. You may have thousands of amazing reviews, but that one review will trigger you. It’s all that you’ll see. I know because I’ve been there.

So, you have to make the decision that whatever you do is always enough, that you are always enough. And from that place, you will be a match for so much more. That is your mantra to practice this week, this month, this year, as long as you need to practice it to really get into a state of enoughness so that you can feel it. Let’s all practice living in a state of enoughness.

Other People’s Opinions. People are going to have opinions about what you should wear, what you should post, what you should do, what you should think, how you should feel, the government, money, how you should run your business, how you should raise your kids.

People have opinions about everything. And everyone has a right to his or her own opinion. But you need to decide your own and make sure you like them.

Just yesterday, someone had an opinion about how I should feel about the day’s current affairs, “You should be worried,” he said. I thanked him for his opinion and then decided for myself if that was true for me. It wasn’t.

My opinion is that worry doesn’t serve me, so I’m choosing faith and action because what I think and do today will depict the results that I have when this current season has passed. My opinion is also that it’s okay to be calm right now. So, I’m choosing it.

In a world full of opinions, you need to make sure that you like your own. Be mindful of your opinions and ask yourself if you like them. Or, are they opinions that you’ve adopted from others? The beauty of opinions is that you can change them.

Protecting Your Peace. 2020 has been a year that has really shaken us up. And I think it’s going to be in such a beautiful way. I’m actually excited about what is going to come out of this time. But right now, it seems as if we’re all just in it.

But I want you to know that to be an effective mother, woman, daughter, worker, wife, leader, entrepreneur, business owner, fill in the blank, you have to take care of your mental health. And part of that is protecting your peace. So, I want to share with you a few of the things that I have done over the past few months that have helped me tremendously.

I limit my social media. Right now, because the collective energy is one of a lot of anxiety and stress, chances are you’re going to open up your feed and you’re going to experience that from other people. I want to protect my peace by being mindful of what I allow into my space. So, for that reason, I’m limiting my social media.

I’m also limiting the peace stealers in my life. These are the people that typically have no boundaries. They are the people that love to complain. These are the people that always seem to be in a crisis. These are the people that are always asking you to help and they expect it. I want to love these people. But sometimes, you have to love them from afar.

And then finally, engage in peaceful activities. Now, this is going to look different for all of us. For me personally, it’s listening to certain types of music. It’s my meditation practice. It’s taking time to go on long walks in nature, amongst the trees. Sometimes it’s dancing in my living room. But what are peaceful activities that you can engage in?

Ask yourself this too; if I were already there, if I’d already created this thing, if I were on the other side of this, how would I be feeling? What would I be thinking? And then practice feeling and thinking that way now.

I want you to protect your peace. I want you to notice what is stealing your peace. I want you to notice what activities you’re engaging in that’s taking you away from your peace. I want you to notice who you’re hanging out with that makes it so much harder to find your peace. Your peace is important. So, do the work to protect it.

The Energy You Bring. Your energy is your responsibility. Take it seriously. Your energy is powerful. You have the power to lift, inspire, and support. Or you have the power to demean, criticize, and judge. I find this to be a great responsibility.

Just like I never walk into a room and punch someone in the face, I don’t want to energetically abuse others either. At the end of the day, everyone is responsible for how they feel. But what if we used this knowledge to make the world a better place? What if you took great responsibility for the energy that you bring into the world? What if you learned the valuable skill to process your hurt, anger, frustration and resentment so that you’re not spewing it out into the world?

What if you took emotional accountability and committed to being a positive force in every room you enter? What if you are the woman that people often say, “She made my day brighter?”

This is my commitment. This is my intention. This is my responsibility. Of all of the things that you can be today, what will you choose?

The Fear of Dying. I’ve been coaching my heart out over the last few months about people’s fear of dying. One of the fears that I’m hearing a lot is, “I could die or my family could die.” And you know what? Yes, you could. And you will eventually.

We are all going to die. It’s a fact of life. And there are no guarantees as to when that’s going to happen. But right now, do you know what you do have? A life. One that wants to be fully lived.

I know we have a pandemic happening right now. But before this global crisis, we have had over 100,000 people die in the world every single day, young and old. While it can be disturbing to realize that we could die today, we still have a life right now. Are you fully living it?

While we all get to choose what we think and focus on, personally, I don’t want to waste my one precious life focusing on its ending. That time will come. And when it does, I want it to find me laughing, loving, crying, and embracing this one life that I’ve been blessed with. I don’t want to be afraid of the inevitable. I want to be willing to die so that I can fully live.

The Words You Speak. Hafiz said, “The words you speak become the house you live in.” You can use your words to inspire you, to align you with your dreams, to make you feel better. Or you can use your words against yourself.

When you are mindful of the thoughts you think, and from those thoughts the words you speak, you can create an extraordinary life. But what most people do is they look around at their current reality and they speak words that match that reality.

But your current reality was created from your past and the words you spoke in the past. So, if you want to change your circumstances, your current reality, you’re going to have to speak at a level of the reality of that of which you want to create.

The way to decide the words you speak is to ask yourself, did these words inspire me? Do the motivate me? Do they align with the woman I want to be? Are these words that I’m speaking in the future?

I’ve had to be more intentional by cutting out a number of phrases from my own life. Phrases such as, “This is hard. I’m overwhelmed. I’m struggling. I can’t afford it. I don’t know how. I’m confused.” My future self would never utter these words. So, why would I speak them?

I want you to pay attention to the words you speak and ask yourself, do they belong in my future? If not, don’t speak them.

What’s the Hurry? I love to ask my clients, what’s the hurry? It’s always because they think life will be better over there when they have more money, they have the perfect guy, they have a different job, they’ve lost the weight, they have more clients, the house is completely organized, the kids are well-behaved.

This illusion creates a life that you’re always rushing through to get to the next thing. But have you ever noticed, over there is only as good as here? In other words, there’s no happy ending to a miserable journey. Here’s why. Wherever you go, there you are.

So, if your belief system is that life is better over there, you will always be chasing over there. I know that over there will only be as good as here, so I focus on enjoying and creating my life as I want it to be today.

I love creating my life from a place of joy and enoughness. I love to leisurely hustle, not because I think life is better over there, but because it’s fun to create, grow, and evolve.

I like to live as if my prayers have already been answered, making me a match for what I want. So, the next time you’re in a rush, ask yourself, what’s the hurry? And notice how you believe that life is better over there. Then take a deep breath and commit to enjoying this day, this moment.

For over 10 years, I have been writing love notes to this community. I’ve shared some of them in emails. Others I’ve posted on social media. But today is just a very small collection of these love notes that I have written in hopes to inspire you to live a most extraordinary life.

Your Self-Definition. Let’s talk about your self-definition, how you see yourself, and therefore how you define yourself. If you define yourself as overwhelmed, you’ll create more overwhelm.

If you define yourself as a bad manager of money, you’ll manage your money poorly. If you define yourself as a struggling business owner, you’ll create struggle in your business. If you define yourself as overweight, you’ll continue to create being overweight.

The mistake we often make is to try and change our results so that we can change our definition. But that’s not how it works. You will always come back to what you believe about yourself. You must change your self-definition first and then the world around you will begin to change as well.

You get to decide how you define yourself. Don’t define yourself based on the past. I want you to go into the future, to the version of yourself that has created what you desire and figure out how she defines herself.

Curious as to how you define yourself currently? Well, just pay attention to your I-am statements. They are creating your entire life. What is one I-am statement that you want to practice believing about yourself? And practice it until you believe it. And then, you will create the evidence for it. But remember, your self-definition always comes first.

If you enjoyed this episode and you want to dive even deeper into the French Kiss Lifestyle, let’s start with a makeover; a mindset makeover. You can download my free training, The Three Mindset Makeovers Every Woman Needs, by visiting frenchkisslife.com/mindset. Because, after all, mindset is the new black.