Breaking Up with Yourself

The great author Tony Morrison said, “If you want to fly, you have to give up the things that are weighing you down.” Often, those things aren’t outside of us. They are parts of ourselves, ways of being that no longer serve us. So in this episode, we’re going to talk about breaking up with yourself so that you can live a truly extraordinary life.

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.

Hello, beautiful people. What is happening in my life right now? I don’t know if you guys can hear this, but there is a cow mooing in my back yard. And I just looked outside the window and there’s like four cows that are just roaming around the yard. Welcome to Colorado.

But I have to say, it’s so beautiful just to look out of your window and see all kinds of wildlife just showing up. They’re like my other friends. And then Winston and Blue will probably for sure start barking any moment. But the show must go on when you French Kiss Life.

I have just come off the most amazing two weeks. I was in Lake Tahoe with some dear friends. And you know it’s a good vacation when you come back and your soul is sad because you miss your friends so much and your belly is hurting because you laughed so much. We had such a good time.

And then I’ve spent the last two days coaching all day, which is one of my favorite things to do. And then tomorrow, I leave for Nashville, Tennessee, back to my southern roots. So, super good times happening over here.  We have so much going on at French Kiss Life. Thank god I have an amazing team that’s keeping me on track and everything on track. But there’s just so much excitement happening.

And I was thinking before I started recording, often, the feeling comes first. And I remember about seven or eight months ago having the feeling that something is about to happen. And I couldn’t really describe it, I couldn’t put it into words. I just felt the anticipation of it and it’s happening.

We have so many incredible things planned for this year. I’m super excited for everyone in the French Kiss Life community, so stay tuned.  Speaking of community, it is time for a Community Spotlight. This is where I spotlight someone in the community who has benefitted from the French Kiss Lifestyle.

And today’s Community Spotlight is from Goggylove. I love that name, by the way. She left a five-star review on iTunes that reads, “Original, inspiring, and real. I stumbled on Tonya perhaps five years ago, maybe longer. Struggling with excess weight, endless fears, and a life that lacked elegance, I felt suffocated with excess, depression, and an overall lack of joy. Since that fateful day, we have walked through this journey of life side by side, though we have never actually met. How is that possible? Because upon entering into her artful world, you find a kindred spirit, lifelong friend, cheerleader, and an occasional caller on the BS.

She honors her past, allowing us to learn from her missteps, stays true to her southern roots and her gentle manners and inspires us to pursue our own unique version of success without judgment or criticism. Her courses are well worth the investment. I remember sitting in a fabulous hotel in LA just before attending the Grammys thinking how far this small-town southern girl had come who had encouraged and inspired me to pursue my dreams as here I was doing just that. She has reintroduced me to the fine art of living elegantly and well, loving fiercely, and growing daily. Thank you seem so inadequate but, well, Tonya, thank you.”

I just have to say thank you, Goggylove. That review meant so much to me because, I tell you all, all of the time, but I’m on this path with you. I’m figuring things out. I’m learning and growing daily, and to be in such an incredible community of likeminded women and us cheering each other on, I mean, what more could a girl ask for?

So hey, listen, if you want to be featured in an upcoming Community Spotlight, all you have to do is leave me a five-star review on iTunes or give me a shout out on Instagram or Facebook or simply email us at support@frenchkisslife.com and let us know how French Kiss Life has touched your life.

Let’s talk about breaking up. Fun topic. It actually really is, but as you know, if you’ve ever been through one, breaking up is hard. It’s uncomfortable. It is heartbreaking because you’re having to let go of the familiar.  And one of the things that I’ve seen as a coach for not only thousands of women at this point, but with myself, is that one of the hardest breakups you will ever go through is breaking up with parts of yourself that no longer serve you.

I’ll never forget that day in Paris when I decided that I wanted to live my life differently, I wanted to be different. And as exciting as that was, letting go of the old parts of myself was so difficult. It’s like if you’ve ever gone through a breakup, and I’m imagining most of you listening have. It’s that feeling of wanting to pick up the phone at 4am and text your ex-boyfriend.

It’s that feeling of longing for the familiarity, even though that relationship did not serve you. The brain will always want to take you back to the familiar. But if you’re willing to stay true to who you want to be and your dreams and where you are going and to feel the discomfort of letting go of the old self, it’s the most incredible process you will ever go through. And you’ll probably know this if you’ve gone through a heartbreak and you’ve let a person go and then, on the other side, like five or 10 years from now, you can’t even imagine being with that person because you are so different.

Well, that’s what breaking up with parts of ourselves feels like. And in coaching women for a decade now, and on top of that, coaching myself every single day, I’ve seen the common parts of ourselves that we really need to break up with in order to live an extraordinary life. And that’s what I want to talk about in this podcast.

So, here’s the first part of yourself that you need to break up with. It’s the part that’s says you are not enough. Now, I know almost everyone, if not all of us, have had this. At the core of me coaching women, this is usually the core belief that drives so many of our behaviors that don’t serve us. You walk into a room thinking, “I’m not enough,” and then you’re desperate to be validated or to be liked and then you start acting all crazy. I’ve certainly done that myself.

Or you believe you’re not enough, and so you don’t show up for that dream that you have because you’re waiting to feel enough, and yet you are the one that gets to create that belief for yourself. So, how often have you believed that you’re not enough and you’ve allowed that to stop you?

I want you to understand that that’s just a belief that you must break up with, again, if you want to live an extraordinary life. This is like the boyfriend that was verbally abusive, but it was an abuse that you understood and was known. And even though it did not serve you and support you, even though you may have broken up, you crave that familiarity.

And so, when you go out there to do extraordinary things, you’ll find yourself wanting to slip back into that belief of you’re not enough into the familiar. But you have to commit to not texting him at 4am. You have to commit not going back to that because the you in the future that is living an amazing life, she did not get there by believing that’s he wasn’t enough.

She got there by constantly, day in and day out, practicing the truth of who she was, which is she’s always been enough. She has nothing to prove and everything to give. So part number one that you need to break up with is any part of you that says you’re not enough.

The second part of you that you need to break up with to live an extraordinary life is the part of yourself that craves comfort. This is like the ex-boyfriend who just enjoyed sitting around at the house watching TV, eating mac and cheese while you wanted to go out there and go dancing or go out and be in community and be with friends. And you finally decided to let him go, but then you find yourself wanting to go back because he was comfortable. He was a known. He was a given, even though you know you wanted so much more for your life.

Well, the same goes for that part of yourself that creates that comfort because anything that you want and don’t yet have is going to require that you step out into the mystery of life, into the uncertainty and to the unknown, and that is going to be so uncomfortable. And so in order to have the courage to go out there, you’re going to have to break up with the part of yourself that’s always craving comfort.

I saw this with a client that I was coaching this morning actually. She was saying, you know, life is really good, don’t really want for much, and yet, I could sense in her energy that she’s missing that passion and that excitement. And I said to her, I said, you know what, life doesn’t have to be terrible to want to go out there and experience new things.

Like, we don’t have to wait until our life is in shambles in order to change. We get to just step more into the unknown just to experience it, to see what we are capable of. And that requires that we let go of feeling comfortable all of the time.

I remember when I, again, decided to change from the inside out. It was so uncomfortable not to reach for the Cheetos. It was so uncomfortable to put myself out there. It was so uncomfortable to dress differently, to show up differently. And yet, when I thought about the woman I wanted to be, she was willing to be uncomfortable in order to create that.

Here’s the crazy thing; I finally became that woman but because I want to constantly grow and evolve, I continuously put myself in situations where I’m going to be uncomfortable. In fact, if I’m not feeling uncomfortable on a regular basis, I know I’m being stagnant. And that’s not to say that you should live like me or be like me or that you need to be uncomfortable all of the time, I just want to challenge you, if you’re not creating the results that you want in your life, it’s probably because you are afraid of the discomfort that’s involved in creating your dreams.

So, think about what it is that you want to create. So you want make more money? Do you want to lose weight? Do you want to travel more? Do you want to meet the love of your life? Do you want to organize your house? Anything, do you want to write a book? Pick anything. And what uncomfortable things are you going to be required to do in order to create that for yourself? Because if you truly, truly want it, you’re going to have to break up with the boyfriend who likes to sit on the sofa eating mac and cheese watching, I don’t know, NFL football.  You’re going to have to break up with that part of yourself.

Okay, the third part of yourself that you’re going to need to break up with to live an extraordinary life is the part of yourself that lives in lack. This is like being with the boyfriend that, even though there’s so much money and abundance around you, he’s constantly telling you that you need to fly coach instead of business class. He’s telling you all of the reasons why you can’t financially do something. He’s constantly worried about paying the bills and he talks about money all of the time but not in a beautiful abundant way.

How often are you doing that to yourself? When you think of the you living an amazingly beautiful life, the you that’s living artfully and well, I’m sure you see the you that is full of abundance, who believes in enoughness, who creates from that state and who would never use lack as a reason why she can’t go out and live an extraordinary life.

Have you ever been in a group of people that just believe in abundance? Like, when they talk about money, it’s just like talking about the weather. It’s no big deal. They know that it’s something that you can create, that is renewable. It’s not something that you can waste or it’s something that you need to be afraid of. They’re very relaxed around it.

I had this experience when I went to Monaco for the very first time, which by the way happens to be the playground for all of the billionaires of the world. And I was just in shock. I had never seen so much wealth in one place. And I’ll never forget a conversation that I had with a gentleman there that later I found out was a billionaire.

And I asked him, I said, what is it like to have so much money? And he said, it’s so fun. And then he went on to say money is just a game. It’s just a game. And, y’all, everything within me wanted to resist that because I grew up thinking that money is serious business.  Money is hard. Money is lacking. And I also believed that to live an incredible life, I needed to have money, so I put myself in the situation where I couldn’t be relaxed around money because, if I didn’t have it, I couldn’t be happy, but to have it, it was hard and it was lacking and I wasn’t capable. And then I realized something so important; I needed to break up with that girl who believed all of the money lies that I had been taught.

I needed to break up with the girl that believed that money is lacking, that abundance is not possible. And that was one of the hardest things to break up with because I had a lot of evidence for my story. But as I started to hang out with different people, people who did believe in abundance, and I started to borrow their beliefs and practice them in my daily life, I realized that lack is simply a mindset and it’s a mindset that, like me, a lot of you were raised with.

But to create an abundant and extraordinary life, you’re going to have to break up with that part of yourself that believes in lack. And you’re going to have to go out there and create evidence for abundance and start from where you are. Look for how your life is already abundant and rich because, at the end of the day, the reason why we want money or the reason why we want anything is because of the feeling that we think that thing will give us.

And so you want to become a match for it, right? You can’t become a match for wealth if you’re over there being poor. You can’t become a match for love if you’re over there being unlovable. And so I decided I was just going to practice being an abundant woman with the very little that I had at that moment.

And that practice has attracted more and more abundance in my life, and in crazy ways. It’s not always through my business. Sometimes, it’s an invitation to go stay in an extraordinary place. Sometimes it’s a friend saying, “Hey, I’m going to buy you this.” Sometimes, it’s an unexpected check that arrives in the mail. We don’t know how it’s going to flow through us, but what I do know is that if you live in a state of lack, you will avoid it. You will cut yourself off from the energy of it. So you’ve got to break up with that part of yourself who lives in a state of lack.

Okay, the fourth part that you need to break up with – and this one’s going to be hard for some of y’all, but like is so much better when you do. And it’s the part of yourself that needs to be right. I love the Tony Robbins quote that says, “Would you rather be right or happy?”

This one is like being with the boyfriend who constantly wants to argue his points. Some of you all know what I’m talking about, constantly arguing his points, constantly needs to be right and he will fight to his death to do so.  Some of you all are doing that to yourself. And coaching clients, I see how women create so much havoc in their lives because they want to be right. They will argue with their husband about politics because they want to be right.

They will argue with their children about what class they should take because they want to be right. They will create conflict at the office because they want to be right.

I will tell you all, my life dramatically changed when I made feeling good my number one priority, which meant I had to give up being right all of the time, even though I am right a lot of times. I love it when my clients are like, you’re right, and I’m like, I know. But truly, I don’t need that anymore.

It’s okay for people to have different opinions from me. It’s okay for people to feel like they’re right and I’m wrong because what’s most important to me is how I feel. I don’t want to go through life defending myself. I don’t want to go through life with my armor and my shield being right. Who cares?

Like really, think about that. So what if someone else gets to think that they’re right and they get to feel amazing, and you get to feel amazing because you just don’t care? This is hard for some of you all. I know because I’m coaching you all of the time and I see how this one thing creates so much unnecessary drama in your life. But this is a part of yourself that I really want you to consider breaking up with.

I want you to ask yourself, if you’re someone who likes to be right, why? What is it that you’re seeking in being right? And what you’re going to find is it’s always a feeling. And here’s the best news ever; you don’t need to be right in order to create that feeling for yourself. In fact, by trying to be right all of the time, you’re most likely separating yourself from that feeling because, at the end of the day, w we just want to feel good. We want to feel better.

And so if you’re arguing all of the time and trying to be right and trying to prove your point, it often takes you further and further into negativity. But what if you gave up the need to be right? What if every time someone said something, even though in your heart you think it’s wrong, you’re like, okay, you’re right?

You still get to believe what you want to believe, but you don’t need to argue it. You don’t need to stand up for it. That doesn’t mean you’re not proactive about causes that you believe in, but you don’t have to fight with people in order to state how you feel and to believe what you believe. It’s such a more elegant and beautiful way to exist in the world.

You just get to believe what you believe and let other people believe what they believe and not fight about it. I think a great example of this is with my mother. I used to want to be right with her. And for anyone that’s ever met my mother, she has a very strong personality and very strong opinions and she is a woman who likes to be right.

In fact, I remember when I was growing up, her and my dad got into an argument about which way to a certain place was closest. And my mom so badly wanted to be right and she got into her car and she drive the distance both ways to prove to herself that she was right.

So I learned a long time ago, my mom’s not going to change and I’m going to love her just the way she is, and I get to let her be right. Now, that does not mean I don’t express my opinion to my mom, but I don’t do it in order to change her mind. I do it just to be true to herself and then I let her have her opinion and let her feel right about whatever feels right for her.

I just don’t want to argue over stupid stuff. And so many people are sitting around arguing over things that don’t even matter and it’s taking you further and further out of what I call your sweet spot; that spot where you are living in alignment with joy and love and beauty and excitement and passion, all of the emotions that will help fuel an extraordinary life.

But if you want to get there, you’ve got to break up with the part of yourself that needs to be right all the time. So here’s a little practice for you that’s really going to take you out of your comfort zone. The next time you find yourself wanting to be right, just look at the other person and say, “You’re right. You’re right.” Knowing that what you’re really saying is, “You’re right to have your own opinion and I’m going to have my own and I’m not going to get caught up in trivial arguing that takes me out of the state of being that I want to live in.”

Okay, next one, the final part of yourself that I really encourage you to break up with because, again, life is so much more fun when you do, is the part of yourself that needs to be liked. You all know who I’m talking to; probably all of us. It’s certainly been me. But this is like being with the boyfriend who is so needy, who constantly needs you to validate him, who’s constantly, like, hanging off of you saying, “Like me, like me.”

It’s not fun, and yet, this is often how, if we’re not aware, we go through the world seeking other people’s validation, seeking other people’s approval, and in the process, we avoid our own truth. We don’t show up for ourselves. We’re so busy pleasing everyone else because we need to be liked, that we’re not pleasing ourselves.

And this is a tough one, you all. I know because it’s not comfortable to get hate mail, it’s not comfortable to get negative reviews, it’s not comfortable for people to talk about you behind your back. But do you know what’s more uncomfortable? I think, at the end of our lives, knowing that we let our need to be liked steal our dreams. And that’s what needing to be liked often does.

We water down ourselves. We don’t show up as who we are here to be.  And then we conform to whatever group we’re in and we start to lose ourselves. We’re like, who are we even? We’re so busy trying to be liked that we don’t even really like ourselves. But when you really focus on liking yourself and you really do, you don’t need other people to do it for you and life becomes so much more fun. You can just show up in a room and be yourself.

And here’s the crazy thing about that; when you really like yourself, you’re so much more likable. You attract people to you because, again, it’s like that needy boyfriend. It’s like you can sense that energy when you walk into a room, you’re like, “This person needs way too much for me.”

And so the work here is to break up with that part of yourself that needs to be liked, and instead learn to like yourself. And then, when you’re in that state, you’ll be willing to go out there and do so much because you’re not afraid of someone sending you a nasty comment or hating your book. You get to like your book. And if other people don’t like it, that’s okay.

I was actually coaching a client yesterday who just started her business about 18 months ago and she’s already going to hit over six figures and she’s finally at that place because she’s putting herself out there that she’s starting to get some nasty comments. And I told her, I said, you know what, this is part of it.

I said to her, “Every negative comment or nasty thing people are saying is a chance for you to like yourself even more.” Now, what we often do is someone shows up that has so much negativity within themselves and then they use you as an escape for that, and then we match their energy by not liking ourselves and beating ourselves up.

But what I said to her, I was like, this is an opportunity. Again, every time you get that, it’s your opportunity to like yourself even more and to put more love into the world. That’s what I do. When I get a negative comment, I’m like, “Okay, god, universe, you are calling me to love even more deeply, love myself, and love others.”

And when you live in that place where you don’t need to be liked, you just get to like yourself and like other people. It’s so fun. And it’s also a hard part to break up with because I feel like, at the core, we think if we’re not liked, all of the things are going to fall apart. But if you think about the people that you really admire, they didn’t get there by trying to be liked. They got there by being true to themselves and then, as a result, we admire and respect them.

And so yeah, you’ve got to break up with that part of yourself that needs to be liked.  And again, I want you to remember, breakups are hard. We do want to go back to the familiar. We want to go back to the old times, even though they didn’t serve us, they were known, they were comfortable. But I want you to think about it like this; imagine having the courage to let go and not text the boyfriend at 4am who was verbally abusive, who wanted to sit around eating mac and cheese watching NFL, who was constantly worried about money and living in a state of lack, who needed to argue his point all of the time or was constantly clinging, needing you to like him so that you could let in the ideal soul mate of who is always supportive and loving and tells you that you are enough, that is grabbing you by the hand and saying, “Hey, babe, let’s go out for an adventure,” who is always reminding you of the abundance that’s available to you, the boyfriend who allows you to have your own opinion and he loves you anyway even if it’s different than your own, and who is so comfortable in who he is, he doesn’t need to be liked, and as a result, you just love him even more.

That’s what’s awaiting for you when you break up with these parts of yourself. And yes, the temptation is there to go back, but I want you to have the courage to keep walking away. Keep walking away until you get to that point when you look back and you’re like, “I can’t imagine ever going back to him.” That’s what this process is like.

And I need to add one more thing because I’ve seen this tendency when women realize that these parts of themselves no longer serve them, often like we do in breakups. We want to blame and feel resentment and hurt and hate and anger, but that doesn’t serve you either.

These parts of you haven’t served you and they’ve brought you to this point. You can love something and let it go. And so please promise me that you won’t beat yourself up for being human, for having these parts of yourself because we’ve all had them. And I still struggle with them. I still find myself wanting to go back to the comfort of that relationship that I know all so well. But I also know that they don’t support me. They’re not a part of my future. And so sometimes, you have to break up time and time again until you get to that point of, like, I’m never going back.

And by not going back, what you’re saying is, I’m ready for the relationship that’s full of love, that’s full of support and abundance and excitement and joy, and I promise you that is such a better relationship to be in.

Now it is time for a J’adore, the part of the show where I get to share something I love with you. Today’s J’adore is for all my ladies out there who wear hosiery, or as my grandmother called it, pantyhose.

So, years ago, I stumbled upon this little store called Wolford. And some of you may be familiar with this brand, but I’d never heard of it. And I walk in because I needed some hose for an event. And I looked at the price tag and it was, I think, like $50. And I was like, who in the world pays $50 for a pair of hose that, most likely, you’re going to pick or get a run in within the first two weeks of having them?

And the lady in there convinced me to buy them, as all good sales ladies do, and I’m so glad that I listened to her because that brand of hosiery is so luxurious and so well made. And that very first pair that I bought from them, I had for at least a year.

And you all know, that wear pantyhose, that a year is a lot. And so ever since then, I tell all of my friends, I’m like, “You have to go out and buy Wolford hosiery if you are someone that wears tights or hose.” And since, we are the tail end season of summer and we’re going to be entering fall, go ahead and get a pair, if you’re someone who wears them.

And here’s the thing that I love about Wolford is they have so many different styles for every taste, for every color, and they even specialize in any kind of undergarment.

Last year when I was there, they had a new line that was out that was super cool because I’m not one to have tattoos, but I’m thinking, wouldn’t it be fun to just pretend you have a tattoo for a day? And so they had these famous tattoo artists create hosiery with these beautiful pieces of artwork on them and so I bought a pair for my daughter and some other friends and for myself, and they’re super, super fun.

In fact, they look so good and so real that one of my friends was, like, shocked when she saw me because she thought I had gotten a tattoo on my leg. So, if you’re someone that loves hosiery, check out Wolford. They have polka dots, they have fishnets, and there’s something really sexy about a simple black dress and a pair of fishnet hose or maybe a simple hosiery with the backline seam going up the back of your leg and they last forever. Well, not forever, that’s a little bit of an exaggeration, but unlike the Hanes that I used to buy at the local department store that would literally maybe get me through a week, sometimes just a night, these hose last a really long time. So, if you want to learn more, go to frenchkisslife.com/wolford.

 

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 3 Mindset Makeovers Every Woman Needs by visiting FrenchKissLife.com/mindset – because after all, mindset is the new black.