Graceful Thinking

You’ve probably heard that thoughts become things, right? And so, if you know about this concept and you happen to have some negative thoughts, it may freak you out a little bit. You may start to think things like, “Oh my goodness, I’m going to attract terrible things into my life because I have a negative thought.”

But in today’s episode, I want to challenge you to reconsider that whole concept. Because what I can tell you is that I’ve created a beautiful life with a crazy brain. And it’s all because of what I call graceful thinking.

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.

Hi, beautiful friends. How are you? I am doing fantastic, in case you were wondering. I just hung up from our weekly team meeting and I am beyond excited. We are working on something behind the scenes that feels so aligned, so me, and so what I was put on this planet to do. And I’m going to be sharing it with you all very soon.

But here’s the thing. Even as excited as I am, my brain is going a little crazy. I’m hearing thoughts in my brain that say things like, “This isn’t going to work. No one’s ever done this before in the way that you are wanting to do it. You are, for sure, going to fail. You’re, for sure, going to lose everything.” Like, all of this stuff that happens in our brains, but not many people talk about it.

We see all of these successful people creating their dreams and they never talk about all of the limiting beliefs that happen in their brain in the process of creating what it is that they want. So, for me, I just want to have open conversations around the mindset of success, whatever success looks like for you, so that you can understand that part of it is you’re going to be freaked out and you’re going to have some crazy thoughts in your head every single day.

But do you know what else I want you to know? Personally, I have created a fabulous business; what I consider to be a very successful business. I’ve created wonderful friendships. I’ve created health. I’ve created a great relationship with myself, all while having a messed-up brain.

And I hope this is the best news ever for you. Because I feel like when we get into the world of personal development and we learn that thoughts become things, we get freaked out and we can use our thoughts against us. And I see this happen with my clients.

When they start to learn the power of their thinking and the power of attraction, they start to get freaked out any time they have a negative thought. They’ll tell me things like, “I’m afraid to send out a negative vibe into the world because I’m going to attract that.”

And here’s a little secret I want to offer you. Because I have negative thoughts in my brain every single day. But the difference now versus years ago when I wasn’t creating the results that I wanted in my life is that I no longer fight them, I don’t entertain them. I laugh at them.

And because of that, my energy around them is very light. It’s almost very funny. And so, I want you to understand, when we talk about vibration, when we talk about energy, what we’re talking about is a frequency. And what I believe causes so much incongruence between where we are and where we want to be is not the negative thinking. It’s our resistance to the negative thinking.

Because the moment you stop resisting it, you are in a place of less resistance. You are at a higher frequency. And I call this graceful thinking. It is a mindset that has changed my life in the most beautiful ways. It’s helped me relax. It’s helped me to show up in a more authentic way. It’s helped me to be kind to myself. And I want to offer you some tips on how you can practice graceful thinking in your life.

I was actually with my daughter last night and I was dropping her off at her apartment. We sat in the car for a bit. And she was reading a quote to me. And I can’t remember exactly how it was worded, but something along the lines of, “When you are whole, the world will come to you.”

And she asked me, she was like, “Mom, what do you think it means to be whole?” And I was like, “That’s actually a really good question.” And what came up for me is that being whole is just being present with what is.

And I was sharing with her, I’m like, I think being whole, ii think we can misinterpret it, to think being whole means we’re always happy, we’re always on top of the world. But that’s just not life.

I was coaching a client in my membership community not too long ago and she was talking about her future self. And she described her future self as someone who’s always happy, always confident, always has it together. She was basically describing this picture of perfection that doesn’t align with being a human being.

And what I shared with her is that when I envision my future self, I envision the future me that’s created what it is that I want to create and embodying the energy of that version. Now, when I think about that version, what I know is that she’s not happy all of the time. What I know is that she still has crazy thoughts in her head because she’s still human. But she’s just better at feeling it and understanding it and not letting it stop her.

Back to my conversation with my daughter, what I told her, based on what I’ve learned from Abraham Hicks, Abraham talks about the vortex. The vortex is that place when you are in such alignment, things just start showing up in your world. And I feel like being whole is being willing to be out of the vortex and not fighting it, not making it mean anything other than you’re human. And also knowing, being out of the vortex is a beautiful thing. Because when you’re out of the vortex, you’re getting more and more clarity around what you do want. You’re gathering data for your desires.

And I see this all of the time, you all. I see it in you. You all fight being out of the vortex because you bought into this idea that you’re supposed to be happy all of the time and that you may attract negative things if you have a negative thought. But it’s not the thought itself that is causing the attraction. It’s the energy.

So, this explains why I’ve been able to, for example, create a successful business with a crazy brain. Because I can have a negative thought such as, “This isn’t going to work. You’re for sure going to fail.” And I can relax around it. I can laugh at it. I can be kind to myself, even in spite of it.

So, this is actually a higher-level concept, but I hope you can really get it. because when you get it, I promise you, it changes your life. But what I’ve come to understand is that it’s not the initial thought that creates your reality, that creates the energy. It is your response to that thought.

And a lot of times, what you’re doing is you’re having a negative thought and then you’re adding negative thinking on top of that. So, for example, let’s say you want to lose weight and you have this thought, “It’s just not possible for me.” And then, you beat yourself up for having the thought, “It’s not possible for me.” Or you create a lot of anxiety around that thought by thinking, “Oh my god, it’s true, I can’t lose weight. It’s not possible for me.” And so, you just add layer upon layer of resistance.

But what I’ve trained my brain to do is not add the extra resistance, but to simply have a light high-vibe response to my negative thinking. And this is what I call the graceful mindset. This is graceful thinking. So, let me give you the three steps of graceful thinking that I practice every single day.

So, the first step is allowing. Now, what a lot of you do is the moment you have a negative thought, you want to fight it. you want to hurry up and change it. And coaching my clients, many times, they’ll come to the calls and they’ll say, “Just help me feel better immediately. Let’s change this thought. I don’t want to attract bad things into my life because I’m having negative thinking.”

Ad any time someone’s in a hurry, any time someone wants to change something really quickly, it tells me it’s coming from a fear-based place and it’s full of resistance. For me, I’m willing to have negative crazy thoughts in my brain. I’m willing to have negative emotion. None of it scares me anymore. And so, I just allow it. and there’s such an ease and a calmness and a sense of grace that occurs when you are in a state of allowing, you’re not fighting with your own brain.

So, let’s play around with a real-life example of what this could look like in your life. So, let’s just say you have a goal this year to make $100,000. And the moment you are honest about what you want and you decide this is a goal that you’re going to commit to, your brain will for sure say something like, “That’s not going to work.”

Now, in that moment, what man people do if they’re not aware is that they think that thought and they believe it and it makes them feel terrible. And so, they want to get rid of the thought. There’s a lot of resistance, “Let me hurry up and change it.”

But when you’re in a state of allowing and you have the thought, “This isn’t going to work.” You simply notice it, and you might say something to yourself like, “Isn’t that fascinating, that my brain just went there? My brain is just doing what a human brain does. My brain is just scared, bless her heart. I love my brain anyway. I’m not going to fight this thought. I’m going to allow it. I am not my thoughts.” I also love to say, “My brain is so cute when she’s afraid.”

And you can tell, that kind of approach, you just relax around all of the negative thinking. There’s not the drama. There’s not the resistance. There’s not the fighting. And within that space, you just relax. And all of a sudden, life becomes enjoyable again. You can enjoy your life with negative thoughts floating around your brain. And I think that’s the best news ever because you’re going to have negative thoughts. It’s part of being a human.

So, if you’re in a hurry to change your thinking, it tells me you’re not allowing it. You’re not just being with it. You think that you need to hurry up and change it so that you can create what you want. But what I’m offering you is that by hurrying up to change it, you’re staying stuck in that state of resistance.

And remember, life is responding to your energy. And any time there’s a lot of resistance in your energy, you’re going to be pushing away the things that you want and so, I want you to play around this week with just noticing how it feels to allow, to find your brain fascinating, to watch yourself thinking, and to love yourself through it.

And that leads me to step number two of graceful thinking, and that is forgiveness, forgiving yourself for having crazy thoughts. A lot of you are beating yourself up for your own thinking. It’s like beating up a child that just doesn’t know any better.

Your brain is just doing what your brain is designed to do. And if you want to manage your brain well, you can’t be in a fight with your brain. You can’t have a lot of resistance around your brain. The way to change something is to first accept it as it is.

And for me, forgiveness is one of the most beautiful tools that I’ve given myself. When I have a crazy thought, it’s like, “I forgive my brain for doing that. I forgive myself for being human.” There’s so much grace in that way of being with yourself. And so, allow for the negative thinking, forgive yourself for the negative thinking.

And then and only then can we move to the third step, which is to shift it, to shift your thinking ever so slightly to a more empowering thought, to something that feels a little bit better. But I don’t want you to be in a hurry to get there. Remember, if you’re in a hurry, it means you’re in resistance.

And what we’re really after is releasing the resistance. It’s not even about the thinking. It’s about the energy. And so, once you’ve relaxed around your negative thoughts and you’ve forgiven yourself for being a human being, then you can move into shifting your thinking to something that feels a little bit better.

And so, for me, when I have the crazy thoughts of, “Well this might not work,” I immediately went to, “But what if it does?” Isn’t that fun to consider? When my brain told me, “You’re probably going to fail,” I immediately went to, “But what if I don’t?”

And what if it’s okay to fail? What if failing could be a beautiful thing? I like to think that everything that shows up in my life is my teacher, the successes and the failures, the highs and the lows. And I want to be open to all of it. I don’t want to resist life any longer because let me tell you all, I spent years resisting life, and when I say that, what I really mean is I spent years resisting my own brain.

And so, for me, graceful thinking has been the secret sauce to living a beautiful life and allowing myself to be so imperfectly human, and still create amazing results in my life.

I feel like many of you think that you have to be perfect to create what it is that you want. But I want to be like the poster child for imperfect success. I want to be an example that you can be so imperfect and have a crazy brain and have negative thinking and still create results in your life. And I will tell you, this is the secret, to not resist the crazy brain, to not resist what life is handing you, but to practice graceful thinking, allowing your thoughts, forgiving yourself for your thoughts, and then shifting them.

No big deal. It can be as simple as that because, again, life is not responding to your thoughts. Life is responding to your energy. And so, the moment that you lighten up around your negative thinking, the moment you can laugh at yourself and your crazy brain, the moment you can be kinder to yourself and allow, the higher your frequency is going to be. So, practice graceful thinking, you all. I’m telling you, it is such a gamechanger.

It is time for a J’adore, the part of the show where I get to share something that I love with you. And today’s J’adore is a little bit different because it’s not something I own. But I find that this part of the show is about sharing things that I come across that inspire me, that have great design or beautiful art, or things that just catch my attention or make me smile, or make me dream even bigger.

So, this might be a long J’adore, but bear with me because I think maybe at the end of this, we can have a conversation around cars, which is what this J’adore is all about.

So, here’s a really quick story about me. I’ve always had this story that I’m not a car person. I love looking at beautiful cars. In fact, when I’ve been to Monaco and I see all of the crazy sports cars, like Ferraris and Bugattis and all of these $300,000, $400,000 cars, I’m impressed. But it’s never been something that I was like, “Oh, that’s something that I want.”

However, I’ve been driving this old Jeep Grand Cherokee for eight years. It’s paid off. It’s been a good car for the mountains. But I find myself, all of a sudden, having this desire for a new car. And what’s crazy is that once you have a desire, all of a sudden, you start paying attention. You start noticing different cars and the ones that speak to you.

And so, when I was in Like Tahoe a couple of weeks ago, there was this beautiful Range Rover sitting outside of where we were staying. It was white with a white interior. And suddenly, I was like, “This is my car.” But it turns out, it’s really hard to find this car. And I finally found one in Denver. It had just arrived. And so, I run to the dealership because I want to test drive it, I want to look at it, and I was ready to buy this car, only to find out that they had sold it the day before.

Now, initially I had this little pang of disappointment. But then I realized, everything is happening for us. And I instantly realized that’s not my car. Now, it may still be a Range Rover. But maybe it’s not. And I just happened to be in an Audi dealership where the guy was just like, “Why don’t you just test drive our Q8?” And I said okay.

And the Q8 is an SUV. And just for any of you that are wondering, I love SUVs. I love sitting up high. And especially since I’m in Colorado, so driving in the snow, I just love the feel of an SUV. And so, initially I was like, “Okay, whatever, I’ll give it a spin.” But when I was walking to the one that he was going to put me in, I glanced to my right and I saw one that’s called the SQ8.

And I thought it was such a beautiful car. And I said, “Why don’t we test drive this one?” And he said, “Well, I don’t know if you’ll appreciate it.” And I was like, what? He was like, “Yeah, it’s got a V8 motor, 500 horsepower.” I’m like, “Oh, that’s the one I want to drive.”

And I think I wanted to drive it just because I didn’t appreciate him telling me that I wouldn’t appreciate it. And so, he went and got the keys and we got in the car. And I cranked it up and I heard the roar of a big engine. And you guys, as I’m saying this, I can’t even believe I’m talking this way.

You would think now that I’m such a car aficionado and that I love cars. But up until that point, I had never really given myself the space to appreciate a beautiful car. And so, we get in the car and we go for a test drive.

And let me tell you, when I hit the gas and I accelerated and that thing took off and got to 60 miles per hour in less than three seconds, I was like, “Whoa. Now I sort of get it.” It made me want to be on the autobahn in Europe, jut to go as fast as I wanted to go.

But then I started to look around at how the car is made and the design, like the electronics on this car compared to the Range Rover, there’s no comparison. Even the way it drives is no comparison. I think the look of the Range Rover is beautiful and very sexy. But the Audi is what my friend calls a refined luxury.

What he said is that you have to really know cars to appreciate this car. He was like, “Any car lover that sees you in this is going to know what you’re driving.” And so, it really caused me to take a step back and ask this question – and I think this is a great question for all of you whenever you’re considering buying anything – if no one was to ever see it, would I buy it?

How many times have you purchased things because you thought it was a status symbol? You thought other people would have a perception of you because you’re carrying this thing or driving this thing or living in this thing? When in fact, if that was not something that was important to you, you may find that you would choose something completely different.

If you truly just focused on what you loved, what feels good for you and not worry about what the world is going to think, it may change your spending habits. It may change what you buy and what you don’t buy.

And the older I get and the more wise I become, I want to choose things just because I love them, with no regard if anybody else loves it or not. So, for me, I’m left with this decision between the Range Rover and the Audi SQ8. And right now, I have to say, I am leaning towards the SQ8. But I’m not in a hurry. I’m willing to drive my Jeep until the right car shows up. But I really do appreciate good design.

And so, if you’re someone that’s in the market for an SUV, you may be like me and maybe you’ve never even considered the Audi, but I would challenge you to go out there and give it a little spin. And if you can get into an SQ8 and experience a V8 engine with 500 horsepower, give yourself that gift. Because fast and powerful cars are not just for men. They can be for women too.

And I feel like when the guy told me that, at the Audi factory, where they design these cars, that they have more female engineers than any other car company. And the women are the ones that designed the sound of the muffler. Did I just say that right? You know, the sound that makes that growl when you crank the car up.

And they were a big part of designing the inside, the interior interface. It made me fall in love with this car even more because I feel like we women, we understand the power of design and aesthetics. And don’t underestimate us because we can also appreciate a quality car.

I will keep you guys posted with my car adventure, but until then, have a beautiful week and I will see you in the next episode. Cheers.

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.