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Before I discovered personal development and the art of using my brain for me instead of against me, I used to wake up every morning thinking about what went wrong the day before.

How to curate your days ahead of time based on who you want to be and how you want to show up.Sound familiar?

This behavior is completely natural to us as humans. However, approaching your day with this energy is not going to make the next day better than the last.

What I want to discuss today is really a deep dive into the concept of living from your future. When you can start pre-deciding your day, deciding who you want to be and how you want to show up ahead of time, and curating your life around that, that’s when everything changes and your world opens up.

Tune in this week to discover how you might be unconsciously setting yourself up for an unpleasant day, and what you can do to start pre-deciding how you’re going to show up instead. To help guide you in this process, I’m sharing the ways I approach my day, allowing me to find the pleasure in everything that life throws my way.

We had an amazing response to the Week of Calm that we did a little while ago, and because I want to help as many people as possible navigate this crazy time with elegance and grace, I’ve decided to leave it open for the time being. So, if you need a little more calm in your life, come join us.

What You Will Discover:

  • Why pre-deciding my day brings so much ease and peace to my life.
  • How I take action to create a mood for my day from the very beginning.
  • The ways that we unconsciously set ourselves up to have a bad day, before the day has even begun.
  • Why curating your external environment is a powerful tool in influencing the actions that you want to take.
  • The importance of considering who you want to be before deciding what you want to do.
  • Which aspects of my day I pre-decide, and how I hold myself accountable and stick to those decisions.

 

Featured on the Show:

Episode Transcript:

“You are actually pre-paving your future experiences constantly. You are continually projecting your expectations into your future experiences,” by Esther Hicks.

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. What a gorgeous day. I’m just so amazed at how beautiful today is. Take a look around right now. I want you to do this with me. Take a look around and find the beauty wherever you are. Because I promise you, it’s always there. The question is, are you looking for it?

As Rumi says, what you seek is seeking you. And so, if you seek all of the things that you think are wrong with your life, that’s all you’re going to ever see. But if you start seeking the things that you want to see, you will find them every single time.

And that’s a great segue into today’s topic on the podcast. I want to talk about pre-deciding your day. This is a powerful tool that I have been using for years to help me create results in my life.

Now, back in the day, before I knew about personal development, before I knew how to use my brain for me instead of against me, my days went something like this. I would wake up thinking about yesterday, and usually not thinking well of yesterday, feeling the same negative emotions which drove me to do the same things that were not supportive of the future that I wanted for myself.

It literally felt like Groundhog Day. Nothing ever changed because I kept thinking at the same level and feeling at the same level as the day before. And then, I discovered personal development and realized that we can create our lives, versus reacting to our lives and trying to fix ourselves.

Are you with me? Can I get an amen? Because I know some of y’all are trying to fix yourself. And let me tell you, you are not broken. You never have been, It’s the thought that you are broken that keeps you in this cycle of reacting to your life.

But when you start to pre-decide, it’s so powerful because it moves you out of that reactive energy and into the creative energy, where you start to create new things, new results, new opportunities.

Pre-deciding your day is about deciding in advance how you want your day to feel. And then, it’s all about imagining what you want versus reacting to what you don’t want. And it requires mental planning. You can’t be lazy with your mind. Which is what often happens.

We just don’t even look into our brains to see what we’re thinking. So, therefore, we never really change how we’re feeling because all of your feelings are created by the thoughts in your head. And what I love about pre-deciding as well is it allows you to align with the feeling that you want first, and then take action from that place.

Now, with that said, sometimes I will take an action to help me create the feeling that I want. For example, every morning, when I wake up, I turn on music. And that music helps to create a mood for myself; a mood for the day. Our environment is so powerful. And music is a part of my environment. It’s how I curate an environment that allows me to create the feelings that I want in my day.

Another example is choosing my clothing. I think clothes are an incredible personal development tool that helps you create the feeling that you’re after. You can choose an outfit that makes you feel more confident. You can choose an outfit that makes you feel beautiful. You can choose an outfit that makes you want to be more productive. Deciding on what you will wear to create the feeling that you want is a powerful tool in helping you take the actions that you want to take.

So, let’s talk about pre-deciding our day. The first thing that I do is, the night before, I start thinking about my next day. I look at my calendar. I see what I’ve planned for myself. I imagine and visualize the version of me tomorrow that is showing up fully in her life.

Now, listen, it does not matter what happened on that day. It doesn’t matter if you ate a whole bag of Doritos or Cheetos, like I used to do. It doesn’t matter if you lost it and screamed at your kids. It doesn’t matter if you didn’t go to the gym. It doesn’t matter whatever you did on that day because that’s what happens.

We look at our day and we start telling ourselves terrible stories about ourselves that causes us to go to bed feeling horrible, and most likely we wake up the next day feeling terrible and creating the same mess over and over again. And so, I love to go to bed really celebrating my day.

I love to look at what went well and right. I love to look for what I’m grateful for. I love to think about what is abundant in my life. And I love to generate that feeling that’s going to set me up for the next day.

There is no upside to beating ourselves up; none. One of the first things that I tell my clients when they come into my programs, I’m like, “Listen, this is where the self-beatings end.” Because there’s no upside to it. It does not serve you on any level.

Now, we can look at things that we want to improve upon from a place of love and respect for ourselves. I think about, like, a mother; a mother who wants the best for her child is not going to let her child run wild in the streets. She’s also not going to beat her child up.

She’s simply going to guide her child and offer so much love and compassion to that child and try to understand the child so that she can help the child. and that’s how we need to be with ourselves. We need to be that loving mother.

So, pre-deciding your day starts the night before. You want to really think about how you want to feel tomorrow instead of beating yourself up for what happened today. And you can also celebrate your day to help you get out of that energy of self-criticism and looking for what’s going wrong in your life.

So, when I wake up, what I love to do is, number one, turn on music, as I said earlier. I think music is a great way to create an atmosphere that enhances our moods. I make my coffee. I grab my journal. And then, I think about who I want to be for the day. Not what I want to do. That comes later.

Like, who do I want to be today? If I can make it up in my brain – which you can – and I could imagine the biggest, boldest, most audacious version of me, how would she show up today?

Then I ask myself, what do I need to think to create that version of myself? What are my thoughts that I’m going to nurture for the day to help me feel the way I want to feel for the day? And that’s a great question to ask yourself every single morning. Like, how do I want to feel today? Who do I want to be today?

And then it’s about reverse-engineering it. Because then you can ask yourself, “Okay, so what do I need to think to create that feeling?” And then you can ask yourself, what do I need to do to be that version of me today and to feel the way I want to feel today?

I love to pre-decide my overall vibe for the day, how I want to feel, how I want to feel in conversations. So, imagine that you know there’s a difficult conversation to be had today. How do you want to feel in that? And then, what do you need to think to feel that way?

Because what we often do is we show up in a difficult conversation and we’re reactive. We’re full of fear. We’re full of anxiety. We’re full of panic. And that energy is sensed. And usually, when you create something from that energy, it’s just going to give you more of the same.

But when you really think about the conversation and you imagine yourself in that conversation feeling confident, feeling loving, feeling strong, feeling worthy, however you want to feel, and you imagine it and you rehearse it in your brain ahead of time, you pre-decide it, it is going to change your language. It’s going to change your energy in the conversation. And therefore, it’s going to change how that conversation turns out.

I love to pre-decide how I want to feel in my home. And then, what do I need to do to create that feeling? I love to pre-decide how I want to feel about my body, my health, my money, my work, my relationships, all of it.

So, instead of showing up in my life and reacting to what is, I love to be creative and think about what can be and come from that place. This is very much like – I think it was episode 185, maybe, where I talk about living from your future. This is another way to think about that same concept.

Again, it’s a very creative way to live versus reacting to your life. I also pre-decide my actions. This is really big. So, what that looks like for me is I pre-decide what I’m going to eat for the day. And this is big because I used to struggle so much with food and my weight and my body.

And when I think back to that time, I was very reactive. I would feel a negative emotion and I would just reach for food so I would stop feeling it. But when you pre-decide what you’re going to eat and you stick to that decision, what ends up happening is you have a negative emotion still – because guess what, you’re human. It’s normal – but you learn to process your emotions.

You learn to deal with your emotions instead of using food as a crutch. Which is such a terrible crutch, right, because it doesn’t solve the real issue. The real issue is why you’re overeating.

And so, for me, just pre-deciding my food ahead of time, I take all of that drama out. And now I eat so simply, you know, with the exception occasionally when I go out to dinner and meet up with friends, and then I give myself some slack. But I just want to keep my decisions so simple because we only have so much mental energy.

And I just don’t want to be wasting my energy thinking about food and what I’m going to eat. And so, I just have a very simple regimen when it comes to my eating. And it’s pre-decided, so I don’t even have to think about it.

I also pre-decide what’s on my calendar. I talk about this in many of my programs, the importance of breaking your goals down and putting it on a calendar, and then being the kind of woman who shows up for what you say is important. And so, again, there’s no decisions to be made in my day because they’ve already been decided maybe a week or a month ago. Now, it’s just about me deciding to show up for my calendar.

I also pre-decide my life policies. This goes back to the red velvet rope policy around what you allow into your life. What is a clear yes and a clear no? And so, it just makes life so much easier in the decision-making process.

When things come up, I’m like, “No, that’s not part of my policy. That’s not what I tolerate. That is a no.” And then sometimes it’s a clear yes. But it’s pre-decided what my personal policies are for my life.

I also pre-decide things like what time I’m going to go to bed. A couple of nights ago, I was out with some friends and it was around 9:30. We’d had dinner. And, of course my friends being who they are, I love them dearly, but they were like, “Let’s do something else. Let’s go to this little place down the street.”

And I was like, “I love you guys, but that’s a no.” Because I had made a promise to myself. I had pre-decided my bedtime. And so, instead of reacting to the request, I honored myself. I honored the decision that I had made earlier that I wanted to be in bed at a decent time because I had a big day the next day.

So, you can see how that decision set me up to have a good day the next day because I had pre-decided and I had honored my decision. I also pre-decide how I’m going to feel about my decisions.

I tell clients often, I’m like, “Listen, the most important decision is the decision after the decision.” Meaning how you’re going to feel about the decision. Because what a lot of us do is we make a decision and then we doubt our decisions. We want to back out of our decisions.

We think, “Wait, maybe I should do this instead.” And so, we live this wishy-washy life and we feel like we don’t get a lot of momentum because we don’t have our own back when it comes to our decisions.

And I saw that tendency in myself and I realized what it was costing me. It was costing me moving forward in my life because I had so much doubt around my own decision-making process. And so, finally, I was like, “Listen, Tonya Leigh, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to make a decision and then you’re going to decide how you’re going to feel about it.”

And I always want to trust myself. I always want to believe that was the decision that I was supposed to make, and I have my own back on that decision. So that’s pre-decided. It is pre-decided that when I decide something, I’m not going to doubt myself. Instead, I’m going to trust myself and have my own back so that I can continue to move forward.

So, here’s what I want you to do. I want you to practice this concept of pre-deciding your day. And the tendency is to wait until tomorrow. But I want you to start right now. I just want you to stop and ask yourself, how do I want to feel for the rest of the day?

And then, I want you to imagine the version of you that steps into that character and suddenly feels whatever it is that you want to feel. And I just want you to give yourself a minute to visualize that version of you. Maybe you want to feel abundant, happy, excited, passionate, joyful, confident, powerful, whatever it is.

And just imagine that for the rest of the day, that is who you are. And then, I want you to imagine, what are you thinking to feel that way? What do you need to do the rest of the day to support how you want to feel?

Now, one of the things that I know for sure that’s going to happen when you start pre-deciding your day is that you’re going to feel that awkward in-between. And I talk about this in a podcast. But it’s that awkward in-between of breaking up with the old self, so that you can become the new self.

The brain loves familiarity. And so, the moment you start practicing this, don’t be surprised if your brain is not saying, “This isn’t who you are. Who do you think you are? You’re such a fake. You’re pretending.” That’s what the brain does because the brain just wants to take the easy route. And unfortunately, the easy route is often the hard route for our lives.

So, when that happens, just know, nothing has gone wrong. That’s just your brain doing what your brain does. But like anything, you get good at whatever you practice. So, if you practice pre-deciding your vibe, pre-deciding who you want to be, pre-deciding what you’re going to do, you are going to get really good at it.

And in those moments when you are in a funk or you’re having a bad day, because you’re a human – totally normal – you’ll move through that so much quicker because you’ll realize that you are just one decision away from shifting your state, shifting your energy, and therefore shifting your life.

And it all comes down to pre-deciding. So, who do you want to be today? How do you want to feel? How do you want to show up? Take the time to plan this out. It is worth the extra effort on the fronted for what it produces on the backend.

It is time for a Community Spotlight. This is the part of the show where I get to highlight one of you who has benefitted from the French Kiss Lifestyle. And today’s spotlight is on Natalie. She left a five-star review on iTunes that reads, “This is too good to be free.”

Here’s what she said, “I cannot believe how long it’s taken me to write this review. Tonya has been in my life for quite some time. It all started when I accidentally caught her telling a story on another podcast. Chills ran through my spine as she described her Parisian awakening. I knew exactly what she meant and she spoke to that small spark within me that believed in the same ideals; beauty, love, and mindset.

Here we are, and I continue to devour her content. I have created tangible results with every investment, including weight loss, the courage to start my own business, improve relationships, and so much pleasure. The cherry on top is that I always have Tonya in my corner with this podcast. The content she puts out is gold and I totally feel like I should be charged a coaching fee for it. Thank you, Tonya, for seeing the light out of your own pain and creating a vision, and life that so many of us have benefitted from. XOXO.”

Natalie, my friend, thank you so much for that beautiful review. And you know what, if you want to pay me, you can pay to forward by sharing this podcast with your family and friends. And if you’re listening and you enjoy this podcast, leave me a review. And thank you in advance.

Who’s ready for a J’adore? The part of the show where I get to share something that I love with you. And I am a big believer in surrounding yourself with luxury. I love beautiful things unapologetically. I love things that feel good, that smell good, that taste good. I love things that really touch upon my senses. And that definitely plays out in my bedroom space.

I want us all to have bedrooms that are like our safe havens. They are our cradle, so to speak. They’re our refuge. It’s the place that we go to sleep, to rejuvenate, to relax. And so, that comes down to many different aspects. It’s the décor. It’s your mattress. It’s your sheets.

And it’s also your pillows. I have searched low and high, far and near for a pillow that I deem good enough to sleep on. I’ve tried so many pillows. And I came across one actually on Amazon. And I’m like, “I’m going to give this one a try.” And it has turned out to be, by far, my favorite pillow. And let me tell you why.

So, the pillow is by a company called Coop. And the particular pillow that I love is their Eden version. And it comes with this fill. It’s a gel-infused memory foam. So, the pillow is stuffed, and then they give you extra stuffing in case you like a more firm pillow. Or you can take it out to customize it to fit what you like.

And I will tell you, it is the most comfortable pillow I have ever used. And the memory foam that they use in GREENGUARD certified. It’s safe, high quality, hypoallergenic. It’s adjustable. It’s breathable.

But again, I have tried so many pillows. And I don’t know about you all but sometimes I wake up with kinks in my neck, that I’m like, “Where did this come from?” And it takes me like 48 hours to work it out.

I will tell you, since I got these pillows, I’ve not had one kink. I sleep like a little baby. It is such a good pillow. So, if you are on the search for a dreamy pillow, head over to frenchkisslife.com/coop and you can check out the pillow that lets me sleep like a little baby.

Have a beautiful week, everyone. I love you and I cannot wait to see you in the next episode.

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.

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