485: How to Enjoy Your Life More
School of Self-Image
Tonya Leigh
4.8 • 1.2K Ratings
🗓️ 18 March 2026
⏱️ 16 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For a weekly dose of small but powerful shifts that elevate your self-image and your life, subscribe to my newsletter, The Edit. https://schoolofselfimage.com/edit
Twenty years ago, in my former life as a critical care nurse, I was standing at the nurses' station at 5AM thinking, "Is this it? Is this what my life is going to feel like?"
My life wasn't terrible. I had people I loved, a roof over my head, and a career that mattered. But I wasn't enjoying any of it. I was enduring it.
Looking back, I realized I was in a completely conditional relationship with my own life. And that's what we're talking about today – because I think so many women are doing exactly what I was doing: postponing the enjoyment of their own lives.
Here's what we cover:
• Why so many women are in a conditional relationship with their lives – and what it quietly costs them
• Why challenges aren't proof that life is off track, but part of the texture of a meaningful life
• The shift from chasing "there" to making here the destination
• How small daily choices can take you from enduring your life to actively engaging with it
• The self-image shift that helps you become the woman who enjoys her life now, not someday
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | I want to take you back to about 20 years ago. I'm working 12-hour night shifts in an ICU, |
| 0:07.3 | so there's fluorescent lights, beeping monitors, hanging out in hunter green scrubs, the kind of |
| 0:13.7 | environment that doesn't necessarily scream joie de vivre. And I remember one night, somewhere |
| 0:19.0 | around 5 a.m., standing at the nurse's station, thinking, |
| 0:23.5 | is this it? Is this what my life is going to feel like, just getting through it? And here's |
| 0:31.2 | what's interesting. It was not that my life was terrible. I had people that I loved. I had a roof over my head. I had a career |
| 0:39.2 | that mattered, but I wasn't enjoying any of it. I was enduring it. I was in survival mode. I was |
| 0:47.6 | waiting for some future version of my life to finally be one worth enjoying. I told myself things like when I lose the weight, |
| 0:56.3 | I'll finally enjoy getting dressed, or when I have a better schedule, I will enjoy my weekends, |
| 1:01.9 | or when I have more money, I will finally enjoy my life. It was always win, win, when. And then |
| 1:09.5 | something shifted. I don't even remember the exact moment, |
| 1:13.6 | but I started to realize that I was in a completely conditional relationship with my own life. |
| 1:20.4 | I was saying, I will love you when you change. And my life was just sitting there like, |
| 1:26.3 | okay, I guess we're both just waiting then. |
| 1:29.4 | That realization changed everything. And I can tell you sitting here almost 20 years later that the |
| 1:36.3 | woman I am today and the life that I have today all started with a decision. I made it under |
| 1:43.7 | fluorescent lights at five in the morning. I decided to |
| 1:47.5 | stop waiting to enjoy my life. And that is what we're talking about today, because I think that |
| 1:53.6 | most women are doing exactly what I was doing. They are postponing the enjoyment of their own |
| 1:59.7 | lives, and they don't even realize it. |
| 2:02.7 | So let's dive in. |
| 2:05.7 | Welcome to the School of Self-image, where our motto is simple. |
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