How to Live a Rich Life

Coco Channel said, “There are people with money, and there are people who are rich.”

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, my beautiful friends. How are you? How’s your week? I am doing amazing. I’m still in Mallorca. I was in Mallorca when I recorded last week’s podcast. I am still here. It has become my new favorite place, just so you know. It’s right up there with Paris.

I’ve never been to an island that offers so much; culture, food and wine, beaches, mountains, outdoor activities. It’s insane.  It’s so, so pretty. And then, just yesterday, we had, I think it’s called a medicane come through. It’s like a Mediterranean hurricane. We got caught in it.

Fortunately, we had our umbrellas and I had on my sneakers and I was soaked by the time we go to the house. But I was able to experience my first medicane. And then tomorrow, we’re packing up and we’re flying to London, and we’ll be there for about four days I think, and then we go back to Paris, and then finally I’m going home and I’m so excited because I miss my Winston and my Blue. Yes, I’ve been Facetiming with the dogs every single day. And as much fun as this has been, I’m equally excited to go curl up in my little chalet in the mountains and rest and work on a lot of the projects that we have coming up in the near future and work on my book and just get ready to enjoy the holidays. It’s crazy that it’s almost November.

But here’s something to think about; there’s still a lot of time left in 2019, so what do you want to create this year? I want you to think about when 2020 rolls in, on Jan one, between now and then, what do you want to be celebrating.

I know that tendency this time of the year, women start saying things like, “Well, I’ll just wait until 2020. I’ll just wait until the new year.” Don’t do that to yourself. This is your one life. Every day matters. Every moment matters. So make the most of it.

So, let’s dive into the community spotlight. This is the part of the show where I get to highlight someone in the community who has benefitted from the French Kiss Lifestyle. And today’s spotlight is on Celebration Chic. Here’s what she wrote. She gave me a five-start review on iTunes called Celebration Circles.

And she says, “This podcast touched my soul. Your description of getting together with friends is exactly what we do. I’m hijacking the conversation next time to focus on what blessed bountiful lives we have. Each of my girlfriends have stories to tell of the exotic experiences, great love and amazing beauty they’ve experienced. Why do we choose to instead focus on some jerk that cuts us off in traffic, an eye-roll or sass from a teenager or the sounds hour husbands make while eating? We should be celebrating decades of loving supportive friendships.”

Well, Celebration Chic, you know I agree with you. And for anyone that’s wondering what podcast episode she’s referring to, it is 127. So if you go to frenchkisslife.com/127 you can listen to the one I did on celebration circles.

But here’s what I know; in every single moment if your life, you can be focused on what’s going well and right, or you can be focused on all of the so-called problems that we have. And I’m not saying you should not address where you’re being challenged and create a plan to do something about it, but I also know that the better you feel in your everyday life, the more you are a match for what it is that you want.

Rumi says, “What you seek is seeking you.” So when you start seeking out things to celebrate in your life, you’re going to find it everywhere. And it is a training of the mind. It is training your mind to look for what is good, for what is going right, for what there is to celebrate. And when you do that, you get really good at it.

You’ll find that your mind doesn’t want to go down the dark path of all that’s lacking and all that’s wrong and all that needs to be fixed. You’ll notice that your mind starts to look for, “Wow, it’s a beautiful day outside.” Or, “Wow, did you see the smile of that stranger? Or that act of kindness?” It’s always happening all around us all of the time, but when you are so focused on the negative, when you’re so focused on what you think is lacking, you cannot see it, you are not a match for it.

So, thank you, Celebration Chic, for that five-star review. Keep on celebrating. Spread the love, my friend. And thank you all for leaving reviews.  I will tell you that I read every single one and they mean the world to me. And every time you leave a review, it increases the likelihood that I can get the message of French Kiss Life out there to more women. So if you have not left one yet, what in the world? Head over to frenchkisslife.com/itunes and we have instructions on how you can leave a review. And maybe, just maybe, I’ll feature you in an upcoming community spotlight.

Let’s talk about how to live a rich life. One of the things that I’ve been coaching a lot around recently is money. We seem to think that if we could just have more money, then all of our problems would go away and we would be magically happier. It’s the same belief that I used to have, if I could just lose weight and get down to a size four, then suddenly life would be amazing.

And then I did that. In fact, I got down to a size two, and I was just as miserable. And so I finally realized that losing weight is not the secret to happiness. But I didn’t really believe it when it came to money. I guess because I did grow up in a trailer, I didn’t have a lot of money growing up. I thought, if I could just have more money, then life would be amazing.

And then I started working and I started making money and then I made my first six figures and then my second six figures, and then I realized, oh wait, it’s the same thing as my weight. Money does not make you happier. It just makes you more of who you are.

And so because I have been coaching women a lot around this recently, I wanted to address this because I think, at the end of the day, what we all want is to live a rich life. And that does not necessarily mean having millions of dollars in your bank account.

Now, I’m not going to sit here and tell you that having money doesn’t make certain things a lot easier. But I also know, having money does not make you happy. Things outside of you don’t create your happiness. You create your happiness from within.

I was coaching one of my Slim, Chic, and Savvy ladies recently around this and she was convinced that if she just had more money she would be happier. And it made me think of another client that I coached about a year ago, and she is worth $500 million. Not bad, right?

And you know what she said to me? She said, “I wish I didn’t have all of this money because it’s made my life so complicated. I wish I could just go back to living so simply.” And so it made me, again, realize that it’s not about the money. It is about our thinking about the money that creates how we feel about it.

And I know people who live on very little and have extraordinarily rich lives because of the way they think about it, the way they feel about it, how they utilize it. And then I know people who have lots and lots of money who are miserable.

Now, I’m not saying that you should not want money. In fact, I believe that having money is a beautiful thing. I think, as I was saying, it does make life a little easier in some areas. And I think it’s an abundant resource that we are able to create as much money as we want and as we are a match for.

So what I’m promoting in this podcast is to live a rich life in the life you have right now so that you can become a match for more riches. And as I’m going to talk about in a moment, riches come in many different ways, my friends. It’s not just through money. There are many ways that our lives are rich. And what I want for everyone in this community is to stop putting off feeling good until one day when, to stop waiting until one day when to feel rich, for example.

Because what we’re always, always, always after is a feeling. And things outside of us don’t create our feelings. We create our feelings by how we think. So if you want to live a rich life, stop waiting for the money and start living it now.

And when I think back to how I’ve gotten to where I am, there was a moment when I had a shift and I was just tired of acting like the poor girl from the trailer and I started to embody a rich woman. And that doesn’t mean that I was wearing designer handbags and going into debt and looking rich. It was training my mind to think richly, to stop focusing on lack and scarcity and fear and have faith in something bigger and greater than where I was.

And that’s what we’re going to talk about in this podcast, my friends, because true wealth is not determined by how many digits you have in the bank. It’s determined by how you feel.

So here’s how we can all begin to live a really, really rich life. So, first of all, let’s define rich. When I looked up the definition, it says having abundant possessions, having high value or quality, well-supplied or endowed.

So the first way we can start to live a rich life is to want what you already have. Really focus on wanting what you already have because we spend so much of our days thinking about and worrying about and talking about what we don’t have, what’s missing in our lives; not enough time, not enough money, not enough love, resources, good weather.

We have trained our brains to be full of scarcity and lack. And let me tell you, money does not necessarily make this go away. Again, I have coached so many women who have money and they’re still full of scarcity, full of lack. I want you to create the money from a place of abundance. I want you to create the money and the material riches from a place of enoughness because if you don’t, money is not going to make it any better.

In fact, money only makes you more of who you are. So if you’re a person full of scarcity and you happen to come upon a lot of money, you’re just going to have more scarcity. You’re going to have more fear.

If you’re more generous and you get more money, you’re just going to be more generous. Money just makes you more of who you are. So when we spend time really wanting what we already have, we start to focus on what’s abundant in our lives.

And think about it this way; I’ve, many times, thought about my life and the things that I have now, at one point I dreamed of. And if I’m not mindful, I can start focusing on what’s missing now versus what I have now that, at one time, felt like an impossibility for me. And so one of my daily practices is to live in that state of appreciation and really focusing on wanting what I already have; my daughter, my health, a place to live, to be able to travel, really good food, all of these things that we can take for granted because they’ve become part of our norm.

But if you think about it, there was a time in your life when many of those things were something you dreamed of. And so spend time wanting what you already have.

The second thing I want to encourage you to do is to really enjoy and take care of what you already have. So many times, we’re off wanting to get the next thing and the next thing and we don’t even take time to really enjoy what we already have and to take really good care of it. This is actually one of the qualities that I love about my guy, Glen.

You know, he has few things, but what he has is of the highest quality and he takes exquisite care of it. For example, we have a boat. And the amount of hours that he spends cleaning that boat, polishing that boat, taking care of that boat, I think gives him even more enjoyment of the boat.

The same goes for his dirt bike. Most guys, when they come back from a dirt biking trip, their bike is dirty and they just put it in the garage. Not Glen. He spends time cleaning it, making sure it’s pristine. The way he takes care of his house and his clothes and even me.

He really enjoys and takes care of what he has versus going out there and wanting more and more and more and more of it. But I was thinking about how this actually applies to those of us in business. We can get so caught up in wanting more clients or more people that we don’t just stop and enjoy and take care of the community we already have.

Now, you may be thinking, “But wait, Tonya, didn’t you say not too long ago that your big goal is to reach a million women in the next five years?” And the answer is, absolutely yes. But the energy in which I want to do that is not coming from, “Oh I need more, more, more, more and I need to get over there because over there my life is better,” and full of scarcity and fear and lack.

I want it to be from a place of what I have now is amazing and I’m grateful for it and wouldn’t that be nice if I could reach a million women? And I believe the way to reach the million women is to really love and appreciate all of you, the people that are already in my community. And so again, this is not about not wanting more. I want you to want whatever you want. If you want $10 million, $50 million, $100 million, whatever number that is, it’s all amazing.

I want that for you. I just know that the best way to create it is not going to be to come from lack and thinking that your life is going to be better over there when you have that. The best way to get there is to embody already having it, which is what this podcast is about; embodying having it now, embodying the riches now. And again, I think one of the ways to do that is to really enjoy and take care of what you already have.

The next thing I want to talk about is your assets because, a lot of times, when it comes to the word rich, we tie it to monetary riches, money, right, the cash. But I want you to also realize that richness comes in many different flavors and many different forms. And if we’re not mindful, we will not see all of the assets that we already have.

For example, your health, that is an incredible asset, your friendships, an amazing asset, your intellectual capital, your education, your physical assets in terms of your home and food and your clothing. There’s so many ways that our lives are rich in assets that we can sometimes fail to acknowledge because it may not necessarily be rich in money.

Another one is time. Time is one of the greatest, greatest assets. And again, I keep referring to Glen in this podcast but Glen works three days a week because he values time over money. And he is rich in time. He has four-day weekends every single week.

And what I’ve been trying to convince him is he doesn’t have to choose. He can have an abundance of time and money if that’s what he wants because I don’t believe we have to choose. I believe that whatever we believe is what we’re a match for. But Glen is abundantly rich in time. And so I want you to really think about how your life is rich. What are the assets that you currently have that makes your life so abundant and wealthy, and really begin to focus on that because it’s going to feel good, it’s going to make you feel rich. And if you want to live a rich life, you’ve got to start feeling rich now because when you feel rich, you attract more richness.

So the final way that I want to talk about today on how to live a rich life is at the core of it. And that is to practice thinking like a rich person. Because when you think like a rich person, you start to feel like a rich person. And when you feel like  rich person, you star to attract more richness into your life. Can you see the theme here?

But truly, at the core of this, it’s training your mind to think abundantly, to think like a rich person. So let me give you an example because sometimes women will say to me, “But if I were rich, I would buy all of the things.” And because they’re choosing to not buy all of the things right now – did you notice how I didn’t say they can’t? I said they’re choosing not to – they use that as a reason to feel full of lack and scarcity.

But imagine a rich person sitting in a store with all of the things around them. What would they be thinking? Not what would they be buying or doing, but what would they be thinking? They would never be thinking, “Well I can’t afford this. My life sucks. I’m broke.”

No, they would be thinking, “Oh my gosh, this stuff is beautiful. If I want it, I can buy it.” And that’s really the truth for all of us.  If you really, really want something, you figure out how to get it. And this is like such an extreme example, but I use it sometimes with my clients.

I’m like, if your child was held hostage right now and you were told that you had to come up with $10,000 in the next 24 hours, could you do it? And they’re like, yeah.

So the truth is, if you’re in that store and you really, really want to buy something, you actually really could, but you’re choosing not to. But a rich person would be just like, yeah, if I want it, I can buy it. But we think, in order to be rich, we have to buy things, and that’s not true.

In fact, it’s really, really strange that the more abundant you feel, often the less things you feel like you need to buy. Because a lot of times, we’re buying and spending out of scarcity. We don’t feel like we’re enough or that we have enough, and so we go out and try to get stuff to fill that void and it never ever works, right?

And so when you practice thinking richly, you start to feel abundant and you may find that the more abundant you feel, that you don’t necessarily want all of these things that you once thought you wanted and, if you do want them, you’re going to be more of a match for them because you’re going to be feeling more abundant.

So I want you to ask yourself, like, what would a rich person think right now? Are they walking around, talking about how broke they are? Are they sitting around thinking woe is me because I can’t afford it? Are they focusing on all the things that are lacking in their lives? No.

Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “But, Tonya, it’s easy for them. It’s easy for them to think richly because they’ve got all this stuff.” But again, just because you’ve got a lot of stuff, does not mean you’re rich, right? It really is an inside job.

And what I’m going to say to you all is to stop fighting for your misery. Stop looking for excuses to feel bad and start looking for reasons to feel amazing and abundant and rich because I want to leave you with this thought; there are over three billion people in the world who have no running water in their homes. So when you think about your life from that perspective, what you’re going to find is that it is very, very rich. Now it’s time for you to go out there and live like it.

It is time for J’adore. This is the part of the show where I get to share something that I love with you. And I don’t know if you all know this about me, but I have one big weakness of all the weaknesses, and that is skincare. I am obsessed with skincare.

I love trying new products and new gadgets and just doing whatever I can to preserve my skin as well as I can. I love taking great care of my skin. I also love saving money. It’s like a game for me.

Here’s the thing, you all; money is a game. And there are ways to invest money. There are ways to make money. There are ways to spend money in a way that feels really good. And so whenever I’m thinking about things that I love, such as skincare or travel or whatever it is, I’m always thinking about how can I maximize my dollar to get the most out of it?

So, about two years ago, maybe even less than that, I realized that I was spending a lot of money on skincare, which I’m not apologizing for, I don’t feel bad about it, but I started to ask the question, how can I still take really good care of my skin and not spend as much money? Which, a total side note on this topic, what I’ve noticed is that the more money I make, I don’t want to spend as much. It’s the craziest thing ever.

So, back to the J’adore, because you all know I can go off on tangents, so let me just get to the thing that I love that I’m excited to share with you. So when I started to ask myself, like, what are ways that I can still take great care of my skin and not spend so much money on it, one of the things that came on my radar really piqued my curiosity.

And at first, I was a little skeptical because there are certain things that I think we should not attempt to do on our own, especially when it comes to our faces. But I kept thinking about this machine and I thought, why not just try it? Because the worst thing that can happen is that I spend, I think it was $250 and I hate it. The best thing that can happen is I invest the $250 and I love it and it helps me save money on the backend.

So, I decided to buy it and I have been using it pretty consistently for a while now. And it is one of my favorite things. It is the Trophy Skin Micro Derma Abrasion- Machine. And I tend to use it once a week. Maximum I’ll go every two weeks. And I do my own micro derma abrasion.

Now, I still go and get facials, I just don’t get professional micro derma abrasions as often as I used to because I find that this machine gives me what I need so I can go longer without having to get the big guns out. And it’s amazing what this machine does.

So, first of all, it has a real diamond tip, like the ones that you would get in a professional grade micro derma. Now, any of you estheticians out there, I know you’re going to give me a hard time and tell me I shouldn’t be doing this. And I get it. It’s like if someone told me that they were going to try to give their own injections and me, as a former nurse, would be like, “What are you talking about?” But I feel good about my decision, y’all.

I really love the results that I get, and every time I do it, I’m amazed at how much skin I’m able to get off of my face. And it just feels so good. My skin feels so soft after I do a treatment. And it’s very easy to use. They walk you through the different levels of suction they use on different parts of your face. There’s a little machine on there that tells you how long to do certain parts of your face.

I will say, however, you need to be mindful of your skin type, if you have sensitivities, and if you have any, any skepticism or any kind of nervousness at all, this may not be the machine for you. But if you’re like me and you tend to be more of a DIY kind of girl, you may want to check it out. You can go to frenchkisslife.com/trophyskin and you will see the exact machine that I have.

So, I have to do another disclaimer here. I love this machine and that’s what this part of the podcast is all about, sharing things that I love. But that doesn’t mean that you will love it. And again, I feel like, as women, we have to use our own wisdom. We have to know our skin, our bodies, our brains, our capabilities. And so if you have any doubt or if you’ve had reactions in the past to any kind of micro derma procedure, this is probably not the machine for you.

But if you’re like me and you’re a pretty tough cookie when it comes to your face – don’t even know if that’s a real term, a tough cookie when it comes to your face, but you know what I’m talking about – but you want to give it a try, then again, I will tell you that I love mine and I have gotten so much use out of mine. And it’s one of my staples in my beauty regiment.

So, again, go check it out, frenchkisslife.com/trophyskin. Have a beautiful, 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 3 Mindset Makeovers Every Woman Needs by visiting www.FrenchKissLife.com/mindset – because after all, mindset is the new black.