Ep #216: A Holiday Gift to Last a Lifetime

I love to give gifts. It’s one of my favorite things about this Holiday season. And I have been thinking for weeks about a gift that I could share with this community, The Art School Podcast audience community. And I’ve found one.

I’m very excited to share it with you and so, without further ado, I hope you enjoy this episode.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I am sending you my very best this Holiday season, no matter what you’re celebrating. My family and I are preparing to celebrate Christmas this year, and then also first though, there will be a celebration of life.

My beloved grandfather, my grandpa Robert Wilhelm, or Grandpa Wilhelm, or Grandpa Bob, as we called him, passed away last week. And it has already been a time of reflection for me. And I also have had the opportunity to write his obituary, both more the short-form one that appears in the paper, and then another one that we will just share among the family at the prayer service.

And it actually was wonderful that I was already contemplating this gift that I had for you because my grandfather’s legacy was definitely one of love. That is the shared inheritance of all of his 11 children. And I’m one of many, many grandchildren and great-grandchildren. And the love that he and my Grandma Catherine shared and just what emanated from him as a beautiful man, a beautiful human.

So, I was already contemplating this gift that I want to share with you today when I heard the news of his passing. And as I reflected upon my grandfather’s life and saw how he really lived what I’m going to share with you, it just deepened my conviction that this is what I’m meant to share with you. This is what I’m meant to share with you at this time.

So, here is the gift. They are words actually from epic artist David Bowie. And he’s reflecting on his own life, and he said, “I’ve had an incredible life. I’d love to do it again.”

So, my friends, I’m envisioning that, somehow, we’re able to gather in person and we’re sitting around a circle and having this conversation with ourselves and amongst one another, big-hearted, open-hearted, deep human beings exploring what this means to them. What would it mean to, at the end of your life, own that statement from your bones, at a deep cellular level?

“I’ve had an incredible life. I’d love to do it again.” This is what I’m thinking about as we’re closing out the year and as I’m thinking ahead to next year, and also, God willing, the years and years to come, what does that mean for me?

And in this episode, my friends, I cannot improve upon that for a coach with me. I just want to invite you to take those beautiful words and then into your own reflection and into your own contemplation and to think about, as you look back, what would you love to do again? And what have you learned from what perhaps you didn’t love? And what will you do differently going forward?

One of my favorite coaching exercises – and I’ve heard from Art School alum that it’s one of their favorites as well, is when we do the 90-year-old-self exercise. And that simply means you imagine your 90-year-old self. You put yourself in your shoes as a 90-year-old.

And what I want to invite you to do today is that you do that and consider trying on these words as your 90-year-old self, looking back over the horizon of your life. “I’ve had an incredible life. I’d love to do it again.”

I know my grandfather could have owned those words. His was a full life, lived in great love. In these past several days, I keep thinking of words from my friend and colleague Maggie Reyes, who is a love and marriage coach, because she often says, “How you love is how you live.”

And my grandfather lived deeply and fully because that’s also how he loved. If I have a coach with me for today, it’s to consider this. Having that as a vision for your life, to be able to say, “I’ve had an incredible life. I’d love to do it again,” what would that look like in terms not only of your work. Yes, that’s such an important aspect of it.

But also the other places where you invest yourself, where you invest your precious time and life breath and love? What does it look like to love to do it again in terms of your relationships, exploring your interests, allowing yourself to be curious, allowing yourself failure, allowing yourself the pursuit of what it means to love your own process and your relationship to life and work?

So, my gift for you was to share those words and also I’m sharing that my prayer, my intention, my hope for you is that you embrace that this is absolutely what is available to you, to live your life in such a way that you would love to do it all again?

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I am pausing the podcast for just a few episodes so that I can sink into this time of year, The Holidays, the celebration of life, and be fully present with my loved ones.

I want to thank you so much for listening to and sharing The Art School Podcast this past year and years before. I do hope it’s made a meaningful difference in your life, helped you to move the needle, and has supported you in making your dreams a reality.

Those words from David Bowie, “I’ve had an incredible life. I’d love to do it again,” really that is the core, the heart, and the soul of the work that we do in the Art School programs.

And I would love to do that work with you. We will be back after this short Holiday break with so many exciting offerings, so stay tuned, be sure you’re signed up for my newsletter, www.leahcb.com because I can’t wait to share with you what’s coming in the New Year.

Thank you again for being part of this audience, which is really a community to me. And I look forward to supporting you in the New Year. If you would like to have my personal support and the support of the Art School community in creating that incredible life, please do reach out to us, support@leahcb.com and tell me, I would love to know, what is your vision for that life that you love so much that you’d do it all over again?

To close, here’s something else I’ve been thinking about along these lines; getting really specific about the small immediate things that I love. Because as Annie Dillard said, “The way we live our days is the way we live our lives.”

So, I have been making lists the last few months, a lot of lists. Very simple ones, just listing things I love. I know this sounds an awful lot like a gratitude list, but this portal into approaching it, for me, yes it is gratitude, and it makes it come alive. It keeps it fresh and new in a way that I know I’m engaging those cultivation muscles in my heart and in my mind and it’s not just a perfunctory list.

So, I’ve been thinking about things that I really do love. I have loved spending time with my kids this season. I have loved watching my boys play basketball and seeing them get the hang of it, watching them with their friends.

We just had so many children over at our house the past few days, sledding, for sleepovers, going roller-skating. I love that our house is a place that children love to be. I hope that’s warm and joyful. I hope it’s a place for good memories for our kids, but also for their friends. I love that.

I love looking out the window and seeing kids sledding. I love hearing them laughing and playing ping-pong in the basement. I love when they hang out around the kitchen counter. I’ve loved going to The Nutcracker with my daughter Blaise. I love this age where she loves to dance around the living room.

I have loved my writing time these last few months, just these delicious, wild romps in the imagination. I feel like an ancient, and also from my childhood love of story is roaring to life again. I mean, it’s always been there, but there is something even deeper and more powerful about it this time.

I have loved my times painting in my art journal. I have loved the experimentation that I’m doing. I love my courage too and the fact that not a lot seems to be turning out, quote unquote finished right now. And yet, I feel a quickening and a deepening. I feel a connection to something still underground and rising. And I love that.

I have been loving cold showers, three-minute cold showers. I am loving my cozy robe. I’m loving the thought of my mom’s Belgian waffles on Christmas morning.

I love the fireplace. I love watching the snow fall. I love the dance class that I’ve been going to.

So, you see here, I mean, if you’re familiar with Esther Hicks and Abraham, rampage of appreciation, it’s not just to list the things. It’s to really mean it, say what you mean and mean what you say when you’re making these lists of things that you love.

I do think this is one way to approach creating that incredible life, that you’d love to live all over again. That’s what I want for you, my friends, and I can’t wait to have you tell me about it someday. Have a beautiful few weeks, everyone, and I so look forward to being with you in 2023.