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Gifts & Strengths

S A L O N N O . 2

Salon No. 2 - Gifts & Strengthsmodern day icon

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S A L O N N O . 2

Gifts & Strengths

Hi, this is Tonya Leigh, the creator and your hostess for Become A Modern Day Icon. Welcome to salon number two, gifts and strengths. In today’s salon, you are going to learn the power of your personal struggles and how to turn them into your greatest asset, five ways to spot your unique personal gifts, why leveraging your gifts is key to your success, how to understand the direction the universe is trying to take you, the truth about success and why not knowing this could be dangerous, and finally, how to use your gifts daily to gain more clarity around your life vision. Let’s get started and dive into the salon. When you study the iconic woman, what you will see is a woman who has set out on a journey that is unique for her.

You’ll also notice that she has learned to leverage her natural gifts and strengths to support her on this adventure and that’s exactly what we’re going to be discussing today. Up until this point, every experience has shaped you and brought you more information around who you do and don’t want to be, What you do and don’t love, and what you do and don’t want to have. As I love to tell my clients, thank the contrast in life, thank the sadness as much as the happiness, thank the fear as much as the elation, because all of these things are your guideposts in showing you more of what you want and more of what you don’t want. Let’s talk about our first point, the power of your personal struggles and how to turn them into your greatest asset.

When you set out on your iconic journey, what you’re actually saying yes to you is what we call the hero’s journey. Joseph Campbell was an American psychologist and mythical teacher, and he wrote about this journey in his book The Hero with a Thousand Faces. He frames the hero, or in our case, the heroine, as those living in an ordinary world, but feel called to step into something extraordinary, into a different state of being, into an adventure. The beginning of the heroine’s journey is when she is called to step outside of the world as she has always known it and began to set out on a new path. This call to action it’s often spurred by a life event, a danger or a discovery.

It could be losing your job. It could be going through a divorce, having a baby, or maybe it’s struggling with your weight. It could be many different things, or it could just be waking up one night and realizing something is calling me, something deep is calling me and I feel the need to listen to the call. Usually this is not planned, but it’s something that’s happened that asks her to take action in her life. Of course, she has freewill to refuse it, but she knows that everything she truly wants is within the adventure that awaits her. Even though she may have some hesitancy to leave her ordinary world full of its comforts, she heeds the call to go on her heroine’s journey.

This is where she enters the next stage, the stage that often paralyzes many, and it’s the unknown. When the heroine accepts what she’s been asked of, she interested into a world she’s never experienced before, full of doubts, fears, the unknowns. This is where her strength is tested, and she’s faced with new challenges and obstacles that will help her become the stronger version of

herself. Most of the iconic women that we admire are those women who have said yes to the heroine’s journey. I want to give you a few examples. When you think of Josephine Baker, she’s one of my icons, and you look at her history. This is a woman that grew up in poverty. She was fatherless, and between the ages of eight and 10, she was out of school helping to support her family.

However, when Baker was a child, she developed a taste for the flamboyant and that would later be her call into a different world, a world outside of the poverty and the struggle and the challenge. Another great example is Sophia Loren. She also grew up in extreme poverty, living with her mother and many other relatives at her grandparents’



home, where she shared a bedroom with eight people. That was her ordinary. But at a certain point in her life, Loren was called into something extraordinary that would require her to step outside of the world she knew. These are just two examples of women who were called to leave their world and set out on an adventure. We know the results of these two women. They became iconic.

When I was creating the curriculum for this class, it caused me to reflect on my own heroine’s journey. You know, like Baker and Loren, I wasn’t born with a silver spoon in my mouth. In fact, the world I grew up in is a complete 180 degrees from the world I live in now. The only reason why this is so is because I said yes when my heart started to tell me that my best life would require that I step outside of my comfort zone and begin to head towards the unknown. Now looking back, I can see that everything, including my eating disorder, the years that I struggled with self-loathing and my weight, and you know, just the unknown around my careers, all of that was just a part of my adventure. Challenges that I had needed to overcome to become the best version of me.

Another icon that I admire is Angelina Jolie. She said, “Without pain, there would be no suffering, without suffering we would never learn from our mistakes. To make it right, pain and suffering is the key to all windows. Without it, there is no way of life.” Jolie is just another example of an iconic woman who has met many challenges in life. She has struggled with depression, drug addiction and family of origin stuff. Yet she’s a beautiful example of what an iconic journey looks like. You cannot learn, grow and gain clarity in life without the challenges, without the struggles. Consider today, regardless of where you are or what you’re experiencing, a great beginning point to your own iconic journey.

The very things you are being challenged with are meant to show you where your journey can begin. Let’s face it, it’s hard to face our struggles and challenges. It’s difficult to see a solution when we’re focused on the problem. It’s hard to see the good when it feels so bad, and yet I have found in my own life the very things that I’ve struggled with, my biggest challenges actually were the turning points where I got to turn and face, heed the call of action, and really look at what was stopping me from creating a life I love, from leaving the ordinary world and stepping into the extraordinary one. I want to invite you to

look at these struggles, to look at your challenges not as something bad, not as something to be ashamed of, not as a problem, but actually as the entry point where you will began your iconic journey.

I’m going to offer you a reframe that changed everything for me and how I looked at my challenges. This is one that I still use today when faced with a difficult situation or I feel stuck in my life. Here it is. Your iconic journey is not a challenge. It’s an adventure. Furthermore, you cannot create a new world unless you’re willing to leave the comforts of your ordinary one. Here’s what you need to know about what happens when you set out on your heroine’s journey. Number one, you’re never gonna feel ready. Number two, there is never a right time. Number three, there’s always something else that you should be doing, or at least that’s what your mind will try to convince you of. Let’s start with number one, you never feel ready.

Everything you need to do to feel ready is found within the journey itself, which is why so many people never leave the harbor. Here’s what I mean. As you set out to discover your inner strength, you’ll feel like you don’t have what it takes, but it’s within the journey itself that you will discover the skills, the mindsets, and the tools that will help you become more of who you desire to be. An example of this is that when I started my company, I didn’t have any business skills. I had no clients, and I really didn’t have a niche. All I had was a deep desire and a knowing that because of what I had been challenged with and what I’ve been through, that I really felt that I could inspire and support women.

Had I waited until I was “ready,” I’d still be working as a nurse waiting for the magic fairy to deliver my best life. However, with each inspired action that I took and continue to take, I learn and I grow. Just knowing that you don’t have to feel ready to start your iconic journey should give you some comfort and confidence to just begin. The second thing of there is never a right time, our minds are geared to protect us from danger and anything



that is outside of our comfort zone will feel like danger to our very analytical minds. This is often referred to in psychology as the reptilian brain. One of the biggest mind tricks to keep you stuck in your current reality is this belief that it’s not the right time.

I see this with women who want to participate in my programs and many of them will tell me, “You know, it’s just not the right year. I’m going to wait until next year.” The next year rolls around and they reach out to me and they say, “Nothing’s really changed in my life. I’m still finding that I want to wait another year, yet I really feel like I need to do your program.” An iconic woman does not wait for the right time. She makes the time right. When you can identify that this is just a pattern that keeps you stuck in a holding pattern, you can begin to take action despite this belief. Now, the last one that often stops women from saying yes to their iconic journey is the shoulds. We touched on this in salon number one, but I want to really readdress this because it’s super important because an iconic woman does not live a life of shoulds.

She lives a life of desires and passion. When you sense that you’re avoiding the journey because you should be focused elsewhere, it’s a beautiful indicator of how you’re probably stopping yourself in life. An example of this is a past private client who initially told me that instead of investing in herself, that she felt she should be putting money away for her child’s college. That seems like a pretty reasonable should, right? I think those of us with kids would agree. Oh, that makes sense that she should put money away for her child’s college. But here’s the thing, your best life is not lived within the shoulds. Because she had recognized that this excuse had stopped her on so many occasions from investing in herself, her dreams and her desires, she decided to do something different and follow her true desire.

What was really fascinating is that by the end of our work together, not only had she recouped her investment, but she also had earned enough money to put away for her child’s college. She would’ve never been able to do that had she not said yes to her iconic journey and left the world of the ordinary where shoulds prevail. When it comes to your iconic journey, you’ll discover that the first step is listening for the call to action, something within your world that is calling you to face it, not run from it, because you are being called to say yes to the heroine’s journey. Perhaps that call is to turn and face your health, your finances, your relationships, or your business. For me, my first call was to face my issues with eating and self-loathing.

Honestly, it would have been easier to continue that journey because it felt so comfortable, so familiar, and so part of my ordinary world. I didn’t know what life was like outside of that. Yet I knew my best life was not going to be birthed out of these patterns, so I turned and I faced that thing that held the key to my most powerful being. Most people avoid these calls. It seems too hard, too full of the unknown, that they just choose to live in the ordinary. But the iconic woman head straight into the thing that scares her the most because she knows that she is being called to embrace an adventure of a lifetime instead of the illusion of certainty. When it comes to the heroine’s journey and your call to action, it doesn’t mean that you must jump on a plane and head to some far away location.

It could mean having a baby or leaving a job or learning a new language. Remember, if it feels like something you shouldn’t be doing, you probably should. What you must understand is that there’s never a right time for the heroine’s journey. While I am a big believer in fun and ease and elegance, I’m equally a believer in that if you want to deeply feel alive and really discover your internal power, it is not going to be found within the constraints of an easy or comfortable life. In fact, it’s going to require that you say yes to the adventure of a lifetime and that adventure is simply following your heart. Where are you being called to action in your life?

As you began to say yes more and more to this call, you’ll begin to understand the internal power that you do possess and that you would never understand or

never be able to comprehend unless you give yourself permission to blaze your iconic trail. Now I want to talk about how to leverage your natural gifts and strengths because as you are discovering how powerful you truly are, it’s also important for you to recognize your personal gifts and strengths that you already possess that will



accompany you on this journey. One of the things that I see women doing to themselves is not honoring what I call their superpowers.

Because society has told you what you should and shouldn’t be, a lot of people are spending more time trying to please a culture or norm than asking themselves this one important question, who do I want to be and what gifts and strengths do I already possess to help me become more of her? For example, I worked with a mentor who once told me that I would be a stronger leader by being more of a bitch in my business, meaning get loud, get nasty, and get really controlling. I tried this out for about a week and it fell completely upstream and hard. Like most women, I have my bitchy moments, but it’s not my normal way of being in the world. I realized in that moment that one of my iconic strengths that I had denied and tried to get away from is my ability to influence people not through bitchiness, but through kindness and charm.

In fact, it’s so natural to me that I do it without even thinking. By operating within what I call my zone of iconic genius, I have been able to attract a team that is loyal and in sync with my vision. I’ve also seen this phenomena with clients. For example, I have this amazing woman that I work with who is extremely gifted. She’s an artist, charming, has the best sense of humor, and she is so passionate about culture and art. Yet during one of our first calls, her desire was that she wanted to become more articulate. When I’m coaching a woman, I always want to support her around whatever she’s been called to, but I’m also wanting to dig deeper to see if her desire is what I call true desire or a false one.

After a little bit of investigation, what I discovered is that my client didn’t feel that she could keep up in conversations around politics and she wanted to become more articulate in this topic. Every time she would attend an event and this topic would come to the table, she could just feel her body contract and tense up and immediately her mind would take her to places of I’m not good enough, I’m not articulate enough, and try to convince her that she should learn about politics. Yet whenever she would talk to me about art and culture, her entire energy would become iconic, full of passion. She didn’t miss a beat. She was just so caught up in the moment. I asked her during our session, “Do you even care about politics,” and she said to me, “Not at all.”

Then I asked her, “Why would you want to be articulate in a topic that you could care less about?” With that one question, her energy shifted. She recognized that she had been trying to be something that she really didn’t want to be. Once I gave her permission to fully own the fact that she could care less about politics, you could just sense this huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders. Like my client, I think we all at some point have worked against our

natural gifts and strengths. I know from experience it will make your iconic journey feel so much harder than it has to be. But you might be like some of my clients and have no idea what your personal gifts are, so let me offer you five ways that you can begin to spot them. Number one, think about what do people thank me for. In your life, people are thanking you.

Maybe it’s because you made them feel a certain way. Maybe it’s because you make the best lasagna in the world. Maybe it’s that whenever someone’s around you, they feel safe and they feel secure. Begin to really look at where in your life are people thanking you for showing up. The next question is what comes easily to you. This is a really interesting question because oftentimes the things that come so easy to us we do not recognize as our superpower, but I want you to begin to investigate what just comes so easy to me. Maybe you’re an incredible organizer and it’s just your natural way of being to organize your house and to keep everything in beautiful systems and organizers and all of those things that organizers do, or perhaps it’s so easy for you to be in a room full of people and feel completely comfortable.

Maybe it’s easy for you to throw an incredible dinner party. Begin to investigate the question why comes easily to you because I can guarantee you that within that is one of your superpowers. The other question that I love is what did you enjoy as a child? I believe that our childhood is a great indicator of what is meant for us as adults.



I remember when I was a child, one of the things that I love to do was entertain. I love to be on stage. I love to be performing. Over the years I let that go because I developed this complex to it didn’t feel safe to be seen. I hid that part of me, yet I realize now as an adult who’s done a lot of the work, who’s been on my heroine’s journey, that that is actually one of my superpowers.

I want you to really begin to look at what did you enjoy as a child and begin to identify what the superpower is within that. The fourth question is what are you drawn to? For me, it’s fashion, it’s style, it’s Paris, it’s personal development, it’s working with women. These are things that I’m just drawn to. There is something right now in your life that you’re being drawn to and it is trying to point you towards what superpower you already possess that will support you and creating even more of that in your life. The last question is what could you talk about all night? I love this question. I mean, there are certain topics that, like my client politics, I would fall asleep. But for you, maybe you could discuss politics all night.

I love that. I love that you love politics because I don’t, but we all have those things that we’re super passionate about, those things that light us up. When you begin to really honor that and realize that it’s not just there because, it’s there for a reason, it’s there to point out where you have unique qualities and strengths that will support you on this journey. Each woman has her own uniqueness and these questions will begin to help you access what they are for you. Now let’s talk about why leveraging your gifts is key to your success. While

your iconic journey will be far from easy, learning to leverage your personal gifts and strengths will actually breathe ease into your journey, and every woman has natural gifts and strengths.

Perhaps it’s your exotic appearance or your sense of humor. Maybe it’s because you’re super intuitive or a great problem solver, or maybe you’re an amazing cook or have a great sense of style. If you are a woman on this planet, you have gifts and strengths that will serve you on this journey as you’ll be called upon to use these traits to support you. That doesn’t mean that you also won’t be nurturing other attributes that may not come as easy to you, but when you understand what your strengths and gifts are and use them to support you, you’ll be operating in such a way that feels true and natural for you. You’ll constantly access your strengths for those challenging times.

Now, let’s look at our next point, which is how to understand the direction the universe is trying to take you. When you’re swimming in the sea of uncertainty, and trust me, when you set out on your iconic journey, it will feel very uncertain, it’s very natural to feel afraid and to feel lost. That’s why I want to offer you the most important tool to help you constantly navigate your journey. In order to do this, I want to ask you some questions. Have you ever been around a person and sensed that this person was not good for you, or maybe you’ve been around a person and knew that you needed to get to know them better? Have you ever been asked to do something and your whole body shouted no?

Have you ever seen something on TV and for some reason you just felt excited and full of joy? The reason I’m asking you these questions is because the way to navigate your iconic journey is not through your head, but through how you feel. Now, this is where it gets really tricky for many of my clients because they’ll say to me, “But it feels bad to do something out of my comfort zone.” I get it, and I also know that to become a modern day icon, you will be required to step outside of your norm to live an extraordinary life. The way to see if it’s your truth is to visualize yourself overcoming the fear and the obstacles and the challenges and seeing yourself at the end. When the vision feels good, you know you’re on the right path.

Now, when you go to the end and you see it and you’re still feeling contracted and like, “Ugh. This isn’t really what I want,” then that’s probably a sign that you don’t need to be heading in that direction. However, don’t let feeling fear or feeling whatever comes up for you when you think about the journey stop you from sauntering towards your grand vision. Again, while I am a huge believer in ease and elegance, that does not mean easy. Nothing you truly want in life will feel easy, but you can approach it with ease, which we will be discussing in a future salon.



When it comes to your iconic journey, it’s important that you are focused on who you are becoming as being just as important as the destination itself, which leads me to my next point, the truth about success and why not knowing this could be dangerous.

Most people approach success as a straight line. You start here and you end up there, but that’s not ever how the heroine’s journey actually is, and thank goodness. Because without the trials and the errors and the rejections and roadblocks and struggles, you would never become the best version of you. Success usually feels really chaotic before it feels elegant. If you start on your heroine’s journey thinking that it’s going to be this beautiful A to Z progression, you’ll most likely end up frustrated at the first roadblock you meet. But if you start out knowing that the beauty of the journey is who you get to become as a result of these challenges, you’ll be much more likely to stick with it, to be persistent, and to not give up.

Let’s talk about my final point, how to use your gifts daily to gain more clarity around your life vision. After you’ve decided to follow your desires and start your iconic journey, you’ll find that by using what comes most natural to you and being authentic and real, you’ll begin to gain more and more clarity around what it means to operate in what I call the path of ease. A personal example here is that one of my superpowers is that I’m super feminine, and I’ve been shamed of this on many occasions, and I’ve tried to tone it down in the past. In fact, I was at a networking event and a lady came up to me and said, “You’re just way too feminine,” in a very hostile type of voice. In that moment, I wanted to take my heels off, remove my lipstick and shrink away.

However, I remember what a friend of mine told me. He said, “Your superpowers are often hidden within the very thing that society has told you that you are too much of. When that happens, dial it up even more.” In that moment, I decided to expand even more into my femininity. The interesting thing is that by the end of the evening, this woman pulled me to the side and secretly wanted me to support her in harnessing the quality that she had told me I was too much just earlier in the evening. When I operate in my natural gifts and strengths, I take out one level of resistance that is within my control. In other words, I’m not fighting with myself. I can guarantee you that when you set out on your iconic journey, you’ll have enough challenges without you being one of them.

With that said, you’ll also find yourself being called to develop new strengths. But unlike my client who thought she should learn about politics to be more articulate at dinner parties, you’ll find yourself desiring to learn something that’s going to support you. One of the examples that I have is my desire of learning French. Trust me when I tell you that second languages are not one of my natural gifts and strengths. Yet remember what I said about you’ll know when you hold the final vision in your mind whether it’s your truth or not? Well, when I think about me ordering French beautifully off of a menu or reading a great French novel, I get super excited. I can just feel my whole body expand and just open up.

While it’s not easy to learn French, it’s definitely one of the skills that I want to nurture and to grow because I feel that it’s part of my bigger vision. I’m still not

yet there yet. I’m still on the heroine’s journey when it comes to learning French, but it feels amazing to learn things and gain skills that support your iconic journey. In other words, that support the woman you desire to be in the world. To wrap up today’s lesson, I want to leave you with a few thoughts. Number one, right now you’re being called to action to begin your iconic journey. How do I know this? Well, you signed up for this program, which tells me that there’s something stirring deep within you. Number two, it’s not meant to be easy, but it can be full of ease.

One of the ways to create more ease is to honor your natural gifts and talents. I want to end with my last point and that is you’ll also be required to learn new things, to expand even more into who you want to be. This week I want you to, number one, identify where you’re being called to action. Remember, it’s usually within a challenge or a struggle. The second thing I want you to do is to spend some time uncovering what your superpowers are. If you’re in doubt, refer back to the five questions that I mentioned earlier. I also want you to get super curious about what other skills and talents that you’ll need to learn to support you on your journey.



Finally, most important, remember that this was not designed to be easy or a perfect performance or anything that resembles Hollywood, meaning very predictable. What’s most important is that you don’t give up on what’s possible, that you constantly saunter towards your desires, and that you remembered to make the journey to the dream as beautiful as the dream itself, that’s all for this week. Go out there and be iconic, and I will see you on the next salon.

Gifts & Strengths - Amazon Web Services...When you think of Josephine Baker, she’s one of my...

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