Ep #132: The Creative Law of Increase

I have a question for you. What would you love to increase in your life? No matter your answer to that question. No matter what circumstance you find yourself in now, there is a powerful creative practice and a tool that is absolutely within your reach.

Today, we’re going to talk about that practice and tool, what I’m calling the creative law of increase. If you want a life where creative flow, joy, inner peace, strength, abundance are more the rule for you rather than the exception, I think you’ll 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 everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I am sending you all of the glorious spring vibes here from Michigan. It is a beautiful day. It has been chilly and today is this harmonious resolution to the chilliness that’s been. It’s just perfect.

I have taken Luna for a walk a couple of times between my calls today, just because I wanted to soak up the ability to do that and energize. And walking, especially in the sunshine, helps me order my thoughts and get my energy aligned for the calls. And it’s just one of my absolute favorite things about being an entrepreneur, being an artist entrepreneur, a coach entrepreneur, working for myself, is creating my own schedule.

And on top of that, trusting myself that I create my schedule, like I have blocks of time to create. I have notifications on my calendar of when I have meetings and commitments. Like, for instance, Thursdays, podcasts are always due on Thursdays. Sometimes I turn them in days early or weeks early, and other days, like this one, I’m completing it on Thursday.

But it’s like this inner trust and a peace that comes with that, from knowing I’ll get it done. And therefore, I can take a walk if that’s what’s most needed at that point.

So, I’m mentioning this. we’ll get to it. It’s on point for our topic today. There are a number of things I’m celebrating. My mom was just here this weekend. We got to see her for the first time in almost a year and celebrate Mother’s Day. And everyone, husband, children, the dog even, love it when my mom comes to visit. My dad too, but he is a farmer so he is currently planting. And he does not go anywhere during that season, other than up and down the field in his tractor.

So, it was a great weekend together, especially post-COVID. And we did a lot of gardening. I got to go with my mom over to the lake and revisited all of these amazing antique shops and boutiques and had lunch. And it just felt so good.

We got to celebrate the official release of my book, the Wild Blue Yonder last week. And thank you again for your immense support, your kind words, your celebration with me and for me. We got to go for our first family dinner out since COVID last week. So, that was amazing. And we went to a park across the street afterwards and that, again, just appreciating that even more after this last year.

And now, we’re entering into the last week of the Art School, which gets me choked up. And it is a bittersweet and so much to celebrate there. I want to especially right now give a shoutout to all of my clients, students in the Art School, past sessions and present. You are amazing. You are just beyond extraordinary.

And if the world could get a glimpse into your hearts and your minds and what happens in this community, I think the tide would rise faster for all of us because it just has grown my heart and spirit by leaps and bounds.

And as we were talking in the mastermind group, this is how the world is going to move forward. In groups like ours and our corner of the universe and this microcosm, to have people coming together and holding a space for one another and their hearts and their hopes and their dreams and their fears and their pain, and also a collective vision of our optimism and our belief in the human spirit and our willingness, even with hearts wide open, even when there are painful things happening in the world, our willingness and our desire and our commitment to holding a vision that we can create from a beautiful place, we can create beauty and meaning and love and abundance and peace in the world, and that a rising tide for one does lift all ships.

And that we can hold a space even for a vision of seemingly inconceivable things to happen, like peace. That we can hold a space for an individual who maybe is in a place where they don’t have that strong of a belief yet in their dream but something in them has brought them to this group and held within that space and within the support of the community, they are healed. They are strengthened. And also holding a space for greater really big visions for humanity, like peace, like knowing that the world needs people like us, who again, are hearts wide open, feeling everything, not looking away from anything that’s going on in the world and still willing to commit their hearts, their minds, their imagination, their life to creating a tomorrow where we move forward and we move together.

And I’m just so grateful for you, my students, and also you the listeners who are a part of this movement and community. It is a movement, I think. It’s within our Art School community, but it’s part of a greater movement. So, you out there listening, creating from your heart, creating from your imagination, keep doing it. Keep holding that vision. It’s happening all over the world and this is how we are going to heal and change and move forward. It’s going to be grassroots, from the bottom up. And I wanted to celebrate and express my gratitude for all of you doing that, all of you capital C Creatives with your magnificent spirits and your big wide open hearts and your brilliant minds and your ready and able bodies. And you’re so willing to move.

That’s another thing that, I think, was a desire in my heart and perhaps I hadn’t recognized how accessible it would be. Because it’s not something that have quote unquote actively marketed, but there are so many people in this community who have a greater humanitarian vision, who just know in their heart of hearts that whatever their work is about in the world, it is about uplifting and healing and making the world a better place, loving on the world in the ways that only they are able to love and the way their art is able to appreciate the world around us and also elevate the energy of the world. So, that has been astounding and I wanted to celebrate that as well.

I also want to celebrate all of your work and your breakthroughs and your perseverance and your support of one another and your willingness to stay the course and stick with it. I want to celebrate your progress, your evolution, your growth. I want to celebrate your joy, our victories, the ways you come bounce back after a setback or a failure and your increasing resilience.

I want to celebrate your shifts in perception. I want to celebrate the ways that you’ve even amazed yourself about how much you can transform yourself and transform your life.

So, I asked in the intro leading into the podcast, what do you desire to have increased in your life? What would you love more of? What would you love to be celebrating? And that really is the key right there.

This is the creative law of increase. What you celebrate increases. Celebration, for me, is this joyful, open-hearted, big-spirited, allowing yourself to be expansive form of gratitude.

And gratitude, quote Dr. Joe Dispenza is the ultimate state of receivership. And as you’ve heard me talk on previous episodes, to me, receivership, being in receptive mode is a capital C Creative capacity. Therefore, being able to be in a state of gratitude, to be able to move yourself into the energy of celebration is also a capital C Creative skill, Creative ability. And I would even say, because for me, the energy, the embodiment of celebration and gratitude are very heart-centered, I would say it’s a superpower.

Because for me, the most powerful place form which to create is my heart. Yes, an alignment of mind, body, and spirit, of imagination and intellect and other aspects of soul and body. And yet, I know I’m in that place where I can really feel my heart open and feel this expansive vibrating and also magnetic energy in my heart.

Here is the other thing I love about celebration being a creative law of increase, a creative tool of increase, that it’s not about you doing more. I want to say that again. Celebration is a creative law, a creative tool that results in increase, but it does not, by definition, require you to do more.

I think this is one of the medicines, the healing, antidotes available to us in a time and a place when so many are experiencing burnout and exhaustion and they’re giving up on their dreams, or they’re giving up on their health, the idea that they can have their health and their wellbeing and their dreams because of this idea, “Well, I just need to work harder. I just need to go harder. I just need to do more.”

And you’ve heard me talk before how a lot of times, that can come from a place of lack. And I won’t unravel all of those reads here, but what I do want to focus on is celebration being an antidote to that, a way to create increase in your life that is not asking you to bleed. It’s not asking you to work yourself to the bone or to drain your soul.

But here’s the thing. If we want to celebrate martyrdom and sacrificing ourselves and our values for a goal, then that’s what’s going to increase in our life. Because as I said, it’s a creative law, it’s a creative tool. How you use it matters.

So, as I was recently sharing with Art School students, I sent them an email and said, you know, what do you want to increase in your life? To prime us for a conversation we’d be having in Art School. And I’m talking about this practice, this law, this tool that what we celebrate increases. Because what is also available to us is not just celebrating the good things. But when we focus on what we lack, when we are coming from a place of I’m not good enough, I have to make up for, I have to convince, I have to force, when we’re coming from scarcity, when we’re coming from a focus on our problems, like, “Well, there’s a goal, there’s a gap, let me figure out what’s wrong with me or what the problem is that’s keeping me from that.”

When we’re problem-oriented on that, when we’re worried about whether or not we’re going to make it, guess what, those are all of the things that we are celebrating. We are celebrating our misconception of inadequacy, of scarcity, we are celebrating problems. We are celebrating worries. We are celebrating all of the dreaded what-ifs. And then we find that we’re perpetuating a paradigm, a problem paradigm.

And sure, we might be like crackerjack problem solvers. But is it coming from a place where we are generating problems because that’s what we’re celebrating? What if you don’t need to unwind all that? What if you don’t need to solve all of the problems? What if what is available to you – and this is, you can probably tell, the case that I’m making – you can shift your focus instead?

You can put that down and instead shift your celebratory focus on what you truly desire to increase. And not only the what you desire to increase, but also celebrating the how you go about it. And so, if you’re going to apply this creative law of increase, this celebratory practice with intention, I would highly recommend that you celebrate a how, that you celebrate a creative process that you love, that generates and regenerates you, that brings value to the lives of others and also fills you up.

Celebrate the places where you get paid to be you, where the more you that you are, the more successful you are, or the more you that you are the more naturally you thrive. Celebrate the places where you are a natural. Celebrate the places where it is easy for you and it is fun and you do what lights you up and that that also lights your way.

Here is another point that I want to make, a case and argument I want to make for celebration. And that is that it is priming you to move more effortlessly into the future that you desire, into the lifestyle you desire. It is priming you to be able to be drawn like a magnet to those goals and to those dreams, and again, in a way that is life strengthening and deepening and soul-building and life affirming. Rather than deeply expensive to your health and to your wellbeing and to your values.

And here is why I say that. When you are celebrating, you are really embodying the energy of gratitude. You will feel it move you. I’m not suggesting you do this as a perfunctory intellectual busywork exercise. I want you to know this and change your state, like move yourself to grateful tears and this heart-opening expansion.

Know that that’s available for you and be willing to not get it and not connect the dots until you do. Just in the same way you’ve ever worked to perform any kind of new skill. Whether it be learn a language or play an instrument or play a sport. You had the vision in mind that it was possible that you could move from not being able to do it to doing it. And in the meantime, there’s that whole awkward phase where essentially your neurons are reaching for one another.

They’re pulling from one place, that I can’t do it place, and they’re putting out feelers for another place, creating bridges where new information can cross. And you feel that. You feel that, “Oh, I sense it’s possible for me but something in me is grasping in the dark. It doesn’t seem like it’s working.” Keep moving past that part.

It always feels like it’s not working until it works. Awkwardness, confusion, it’s a productive disorientation. Like I’ve quoted an author in a previous podcast, this productive disorienting feeling of what am I doing, what’s going on here? That awkwardness, that confusion, that is a sign of learning. So, keep going and don’t deprive yourself of that moment when those neurons connect and you have that light bulb moment you’re like, “Now, I get it. Now I’m able to do it. Now it clicks.”

That same process applies to being able to open your heart and fill it with this grateful celebratory energy. And actually, it’s not even accurate, I think, to say fill it with. It’s a generative. It’s like you are doing it. It comes from within you. You’re flooded with it, and at the same time it is stimulated, triggered by something within you.

So, again, to come back to why this is so powerful for creating scenarios where you move more effortlessly, you feel in creative flow, you feel like you’re drawn to your goals and dreams and desires is because while you are practicing the embodiment of celebrating your future, you can celebrate now in order to then harness what it feels like to celebrate your future, then you’re putting your central nervous system at ease. You’re putting all the inner gremlins that are afraid that your big goal and your big dream is going to be this scary, awful thing and it’s going to trigger that fear center in your brain that’s like, “Oh, remember the last time she went for a really big goal or dream? Remember how we almost died? Or felt like we wanted to. Oh no, let’s send up all of these reasons to pull her off path and knock her off course because we don’t want to go back there again. That was terrible.”

So, instead of trying to root out all of these fears that still live, may live within you and may try to block your growth, your expansion, or may just try to make it so difficult that it seems like something else is blocking your growth and expansion, if you’re celebrating, it’s soothing those areas. It’s also creating this feeling of joy and peace, all of these wonderful sensations as being the predominant energies and experiences around the goal and dream. It is priming you for celebration.

It’s like anticipating the argument of all of these things and making them a moot point, instead providing not only an intellectual argument for evidence that your goal and dream is good for you, but you’re actually already feeling it. You’re actually already feeling that it’s safe to succeed, that it is safe to reach your goals, that it is safe to live within your dreams. Not only that, it feels amazing.

How could that not be a scenario then that you move more effortlessly to? That you are just innately magnetized to? If that energy, that celebratory grateful energy doesn’t dissolve all blocks, it at least becomes so much bigger and so much more vast so that becomes your dominant creative energy, rather than your dominant creative energy being fear, which then must either require huge amounts of willpower to overcome or just makes you retreat and go back into a corner and dive under the covers.

So, what if you’re asking, “Well, what if I don’t have anything to celebrate in my life in this time?” I don’t mean to diminish any heartbreaks or loss or tragedy that you’re moving through or any adversity. And I also want to say you’re hearing this for a reason. You’re hearing this because something in you desires to awaken and reclaim your identity as one who is also capable of celebrating, who is also capable of celebrating life.

And so, if you feel like you don’t have anything to celebrate, drop the needing anything to celebrate and just make a promise, a loving promise to yourself that you are willing to find out what it is to become just a person who celebrates. Just as many teachers have said, you don’t need a reason to be happy. You don’t need a reason to be grateful. Instead, happy. Like, grateful. Those are being states. Those are ways of being that are available to us that don’t require a condition, an external condition.

And in the same way, you can be celebration. You can begin to practice and even just being a little bit willing and a little bit open to this is already the beginning of a transformation. Something is already being done and then, once you are a little bit open and a little bit willing and allowing in that celebratory energy and gratitude that I’d say already does exist within you, that takes on a power and a life of its own.

That is a deeply healing energy of its own. Also, even a little bit of focus on that increases it. So, I want to return to my original point of, like, what we celebrate increases. So, if you can just focus on the feeling of celebration, life, anything, that will begin to allow for that energy to increase in your life. And it’s not something that you have to knock yourself out to figure out. It doesn’t have to be a problem to solve, but an energy that you can invite in.

And here is a second suggestion I have, whether you feel like you don’t have anything to celebrate or whether you feel like you do and you just are onboard with this idea and like, “Give me more, I’m going to run with this,” you want to increase certain things in your life but maybe you’re not experiencing that exact thing yet.

Two suggestions. Think about the essence of that thing. So, if you desire, like, so much money in the bank that you never have to think twice about whether or not you can use it. You know that no matter how much you spend, there’s going to be a fraction of what comes back to you and what’s already there, so that you’re not limited in where you go, what you want to do, who you want to do it with, and how many times, and the general experience, overall quality of it.

The essence of that is freedom. And the essence of that is expression and the freedom to live your life. So, then take that and look for that and just be so committed, you know, like you’re playing this hide and seek game and you’re so determined to find – you know you’re going to find it.

Look for every place in your life where you feel, even just for a fraction of a second, freedom. Back when I did not have as many clients as I wanted to have, I realized what I did have was a lot of freedom and I had a lot of openness in my schedule. So, I celebrated that. I celebrated that that was a manifestation of my dream already and that the money down the road was on its way and would allow me to amplify that even more.

But in the meantime, I wasn’t going to use the dream or goal of money as a reason to not experience and celebrate freedom now. Once I’d looked at it that way, it became so clear how backwards that was, that the fact that I didn’t have money, the reason I really wanted to make more money was in order to have more freedom, that I was using that against myself and not allowing myself to celebrate the freedom that I did have.

I decided, that backwards kind of thinking had to go out the window and I really committed to practicing and walking the talk of this celebratory creative law of increase that I would celebrate at every turn all of the ways, bot specific and in essence, where I was already experiencing, already embodying, already living the very things that I saw my future self, my fullest expressed potential self doing, being, how she moved in the world, how she was in the world from the inside out.

The second thing I want to offer you if you’re like, “I don’t see this, I don’t know how to access this kind of celebration energy in my life right now because I have never before.” Look to where you see it in others and in the world.

Because the fact that you know it exists means you can see it. It has been brought before your attention. It’s been brought to your vision someplace in the world and celebrate it in the world and in others in a way where you really feel like it’s your own.

You know, whether it’s their freedom and their ability to move around the world, whether it’s the impact they’re making, whether it’s the reach that they have, whether it’s the art and the freedom of expression that they seem to have in their particular medium, whether it’s relationships, whether it’s love, see that in the world and celebrate its existence. Feel true joy for that person’s experience in it. And then hold that in your heart. That, “Oh, we are all connected. And if I can feel that right now even if it’s not in my world, that means it’s also possible for me.”

This is a way of teaching your body how to receive that, how to expand your capacity, how to raise your energetic set point so that you can more effortlessly too become a match for that.

Finally, a lot of people may think that celebration and gratitude make them complacent. And I have just not found that to be the case at all. I have found that celebration, this form of gratitude, for me, has made me so much stronger, so much more self-trusting, so much more resilient, so much more willing to take action in the world in places where I used to be afraid.

And it’s not that I don’t ever feel fear or hear negative talk in my mind now, but celebration has edified my spirit. And celebration makes me feel like, well, more than not, I am deeply okay. I will be deeply okay. I can handle anything that comes up. All of those fears, those dreaded anticipations I may have had in the past that consciously or subconsciously were holding me back from really going for it, that has me keeping a foot on the brake, once I really embraced this celebrating what I want to increase I my life, really embodying that, I felt not only from a thinking place, from a head place that I could handle anything. I just knew it.

I just knew. I just know, it will be okay. Even this thing that has me rattled or that I would rather not have happen, I still know how to be with it in that moment. I know how to encounter difficult situations. And I’ll be okay. And then, I’ll be able to be with other people in scenarios like this, that in the past I was afraid I couldn’t hold a space for. And now, I just deeply know it will be okay. I will be able to do that. I always do.

And that right there is something that even if I do not know each of you individually listening, I know you have had experiences in your life where you have handled things. Otherwise you wouldn’t be here listening now. And so, even that as an entry point, I have always done this. I have always handled it. Even if you want to judge yourself for having handled it badly, you still did it. And then you learned.

And when you dropped the judgment, you know what you have? You have wisdom. And so, to celebrate that, to celebrate every possible nook and cranny and excuse you have for celebrating and focusing that attention, that energy on deliberately what do you want to increase, and moving that focus away from what you don’t want to increase.

And here is another very powerful, I might even say magical capacity of celebration. And that is transmuting energy that perhaps isn’t what you want, isn’t what you want to embody, isn’t who you want to be into something that does serve you, that does resonate, that does fill your heart and lift your life.

And I also want to say, I believe that all emotions have wisdom and also there are emotions that once I have learned the wisdom, I don’t want to hang onto that anymore.

So, I want to give you an example of using celebration to transmute energy, meaning changing an energy you are experiencing, changing an experience in your life from one thing to another.

So, let’s say there is a place in your life where you want to celebrate someone else. They are doing what you do. They have something you have. They’re an example of being able to do that, that that’s possible. But let’s say you’re not doing it yet and instead of feeling like celebrating you’re like, “I’m sorry, Leah, but I just feel jealous. I just feel envy.”

And I get that. And I’ve been there. So, here is what I did. I did a safe emotional container exercise. I sat in a meditation with what this experience of jealousy, what this emotion feels like in my body. I listened to it. I watched it. And what I learned from it, because all emotion has wisdom, it’s not that I needed to act on it. It’s not that I needed to stew on it and perpetuate it. It’s like, what it revealed to me is that this essence that they were embodying is something very dear to me and that I hadn’t yet integrated how dear and how available that was to me as well.

When I listened to jealousy, it told me that they were a mirror for something within myself, they were a mirror for something within me that I actually already was, that I am, and that it was completely available to me to celebrate that within myself, even if I didn’t have the same external circumstances or results yet, but to celebrate that within myself and to celebrate again that it’s dear to me, that it’s something, a desire that’s okay for me to have, that’s sacred for me to have, that is a sacred connection. This desire is a sacred connection to the truth of me.

And once I had learned that, then that jealousy, it didn’t have to stay there. I got it. I learned the lesson. And then, with the energy that was there, what I realized was available – and this was a huge epiphany and insight to me that then I’ve applied in various scenarios with various experiences and emotions, I had the realization that if I perpetuated the jealousy, that that would just be misplaced energy, that there was life force available for me. And if I stayed in a place of thinking that there are certain experiences, dreams or desires in life that are dear to me but not available to me but available to others, of course that would create a feeling of jealousy.

And to me, I could, like, for sure feel it in my lower centers, like my root chakra, that’s where it was living in my body and also there was a tightness, I couldn’t open my heart while also feeling this.

And so, I had this epiphany that it was without celebration, when the focus was instead on lack, when I was celebrating the misplaced idea, I’d say the lie that I was not this, that I couldn’t have this, and I felt the lack, that celebrating that created a feeling of lack and jealousy within me. Whereas when I opened my heart and realized what jealousy was trying to teach me, that this was also me and available to me and I could celebrate it, I felt the movement from that lower center into my heart and my heart opened.

And I was like, “Oh, you can move jealousy into joy.” Jealousy into joy. And I kept repeating that and feeling like I could pull this energy up that had been jealousy and had kept my heart and my mind too feeling so cramped and irritated and that I was mad at myself judging myself for being jealous before I sat with it.

But once I did sit with it, listened to the wisdom it offered me, then I was free for further wisdom and insight. And then I was free and that energy was free to move. It was liberated. That life force was liberated to what it always wanted to be, was that this dream, this desire, this acknowledgment of who I am, it just wants to live in my heart. And that felt like gratitude. That felt like the celebratory energy that I’m talking about.

So, I wanted to include that story in case you are in a place of, “Gosh, I just feel bad. I’m judging myself because I don’t feel grateful and I don’t feel celebratory,” use the emotion, the experience you do have. Be with yourself. And those current experiences, those current emotions you do have are also so wise and they are leading you back at all times to your truth, even if it’s the paradox of maybe jealousy did not feel in alignment to me, and when I sat with it, it was absolutely pointing me back, guiding me back, leading me back to alignment.

And not only that, but with this profound insight along the way was that it was just simply because my attention was focused on lack, that’s what was increasing and then that was the energy that was increasing in the form of increased jealousy.

But when I returned my desire to this desire to celebrate and I sat with the jealousy, the jealousy helped me shift both my focus and the energy back to one of celebrating from a genuine, genuine place what I actually do want to experience and what I want to increase.

And here is the final point that I want to offer about celebration, is that not only can you celebrate, but you can channel in a greater way celebratory energy by being a reason, creating cause for other people to celebrate. And so, one recent story I have of this was I was really craving flowers at the beginning of the month. Or maybe it’s been a few more weeks than that actually.

And so I thought, I’ll buy myself some flowers, and then I’ll also send flowers. The moment I did that, I placed the order, and then the next day I had a deliver from the company that I had ordered flowers for, for someone else, and myself, I had a delivery from them. I’m like, “Well, that’s strange because it said it would take like a week.”

And I opened the box though and it was actually somebody else had sent me this amazing bouquet. A client had sent me an amazing bouquet. And then just last week, I was working with my assistant. We were choosing flowers to send to our masterminders for our virtual retreat, the next one which is happening tomorrow.

So, we’re having this discussion about the beautiful flowers and which ones and making sure they get to the right place at the right time. And then my doorbell rang upstairs and I went up a couple hours later to see what that was about, and there was a flower delivery from another client. A stunning, beautiful bouquet with an amazing forever-keeper note, so thank you very much, you people who know who you are.

And then today, again, we’re sending flowers to clients and I had sent flowers to someone else because I just thought, why not, out of the blue. To me, that feels like beautiful celebratory energy, to bring surprise and joy and beauty to somebody else and then I got my own surprise delivery form my assistant, head of team, the Rockstar Nikki who thought I should have flowers too while I’m sending everyone else flowers.

And so, it can be that, celebrating, being a channel for celebration, creating reasons for other people to celebrate. I think this last point might be one of my favorite things about celebratory energy, this idea that we get to be a channel and a cause for other people’s gratitude. You get to be a day-maker. Your work or just who you are, you get to feel like a joyful part of someone else’s existence, or the part that brings them peace, the part that makes them laugh, the part that just makes life more special and beautiful, the part that helps heal, the part that meets them in a way that no one else can, the part that makes them think, “God, I’m so glad to be alive at the same time this person is.”

I know so many people like this in my life. I’ve mentioned my students and clients at the beginning of the call. All of you listening are reason for me to celebrate. Family, friends, and then all of these people I think of as my friends but they don’t know me, I don’t know them, but I am grateful for what they do and who they are in the world. It gives me cause for celebration and cause for gratitude. And that’s available to all of us, to be that person.

So, this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in and really work with me, coach with me. Take this information, move it beyond an idea, move it beyond passive intellectual exercise or entertainment. Use it, implement it, and make it transformational.

So, this week, we’re going to play a fun game. I think it’s so fun. I hope you do too. A couple different ways you can play. So, you can begin by playing the what if exercise, which we’ve done before. But this time, we’re doing it with this renewed appreciation of celebration.

And you just begin, like, wouldn’t it be amazing if… and then you fill in all of the blanks. And here’s the thing. This is a place where you stay out of the how. You keep the analytical mind out of this sandbox, off of the playground for a minute se we can open our hearts and our imaginations and let the magic in and let the creativity flow.

And if you really love tis exercise, then be sure to listen to or relisten to my interview with the author and coach Andre Owens, because she has a fabulous story about this exercise.

So, wouldn’t it be amazing if answers, you know you’ve hit it if it just lights you up, sparks something within you and you do not have to know the how. “Wouldn’t it be amazing if my article got picked up by the Huffington Post? Wouldn’t it be amazing if someone from CBS contacted me out of the blue and wanted to do a feature? Wouldn’t it be amazing if all of a sudden, I had a waitlist of 100 people for my program? Wouldn’t it be amazing if this publisher reached out to me and said, hey are you interested in taking your work, your artwork and turning it into a compilation of art and prompts?” And so on and so forth. I am just spit-balling here along with you, but you add in the things that light you up the most.

So, then here is where an additional part of the magic comes in. Because that first part, so fun, so powerful. And then you also mix in things where you’ve already done it. Like wouldn’t it be amazing if – I’m going to use an example from my own life – if I set my own schedule, my own hours? I got to go outside whenever I wanted to? Wouldn’t it be amazing if I worked with my dream clients every week? Wouldn’t it be amazing if I sold paintings for thousands of dollars? Wouldn’t it be amazing if I published a book of poetry and a book of creative prompts and it was something so dear and true to me? Wouldn’t it be amazing if I had the lifestyle that allowed me to be an artist and coach and a writer and a podcaster and to have the kind of cherished precious family time that I want to have?

So, all of those things, those are all true things for me. Like, wouldn’t it be amazing to have a multiple six-figure business building to seven as an artist and as a coach and as a mother of three and a wife and an entrepreneur?

Like, all of those things are things that I have already experienced, am experiencing, but something about when I celebrate them through the lens of wouldn’t it be amazing if… gives me a renewed sense of appreciation for my own life and what I’ve created.

And staying in that energy and mixing those in with things that haven’t happened yet, like let’s say wouldn’t it be amazing if I licensed my art with someone like Magnolia Corporation? Because Joanna Gaines is one of my best friends that she doesn’t know that we’re best friends. So, that’s something that hasn’t happened. But I’m like mixing that fun and that levity and that celebratory energy in with the other events and circumstances and experiences that, at one time, truly were just what-if potential for me.

I have a full roster now of dream clients. At one point, they weren’t actually in my life yet. But I felt them in this energy. And I feel like I really did create this experience from exercises like this, from being in my heart first and feeling it and celebrating it before it ever happened, with first creating paintings and then selling paintings for thousands of dollars and then selling paintings for several thousands of dollars.

That first was something that I envisioned through a sense. Not through seeing it, but I felt it in my heart. I connected with it through my heart. I felt, oh my gosh, that would feel amazing, that does feel amazing. Priming my brain, my body, my spirit to be aligned with that.

So, then as I do move through the world and I paint paintings, I coach my clients, I create this podcast, I put other content out into the world, doing so not from a place of, “Well, I’m doing this in order to check it off the list so then I can finally get somewhere,” I’m already there. I’ve already got it. I’m already in the energy of it and also focusing along the way, building a life that feels heart-centered and fulfilling and joyful and full of ease to me, where I am working but it also feels effortless and natural and also gives me these amazing opportunities along the way to continue to discover things about myself, like the entire experiencing jealousy and then realizing that is such a profound teacher and having this moment, realizing I can move jealousy into joy. Like, appreciating the entire celebrating those parts of the journey as well.

So, I mentioned two ways you can approach this exercise. One is through the lens of what if, like I just said. Or you could just do straight up gratitude, like celebrating it already as if done. Which is also something that I did and I mixed the two together, play back and forth, whatever allows me an inroad.

And so, being grateful for things already in your life and, you know, an easy place for me to open my heart and start is always with my family, is always with my children. Because talk about – I knew I wanted to be a mother. I knew I wanted to have children. I could not have planned, designed, or fathomed the magnificence, the precious, miraculous beings that are in my life now that are my children. It exceeds anything I ever dreamed of.

And so, beginning with other life experiences, even reminiscing about things, experiences I had traveling as a college student, traveling as an older adult, and really honoring the privilege and the expansion of those experiences, beginning with friends, people that I’m just so like, “Wow, I get to know them and enjoy them and love them and learn from them in this lifetime, be in their orbit in any way.” That always is a good place for me to start.

And then bringing in other things, like I’m grateful for my business. I’m grateful for the income I’ve created. So, I’ll start with things I do have and then begin this process of bringing in things that haven’t physically shown up in my world yet, that my five senses can’t locate through sensory perception, but that my heart knows, that my heart has located. It just knows that that already exists for me.

And so, all along the way, no matter what way you approach it, thinking about where you desire increase in your life and celebrating that, using celebration, using the power of your focus as the innate, the naturally super-creative tool that it is. Practice it and see that increase happening in your life, not only in what shows up externally, but in what you experience, the expansion, the increase that you experience internally.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you have enjoyed these episodes, if they have inspired you to expand and have more reasons to celebrate in your own life, the best thing you can do to pay it forward is to share, is to subscribe, and is to go to iTunes and leave a review. I’m so grateful for all of you listening and the time that you take to help me reach more people and inform the audience of what this podcast is all about, whether it be through sharing it in an email with a friend, tagging me with a screenshot on social media, or going to iTunes and leaving a review. I appreciate each and every effort and share and review. So, thank you so much.

And when you are ready to take this work deeper, if there are places in your life that you want to increase, places where you want to be celebrating, not just minor changes, but transformation, the kind of thing that is truly a cause for celebration and not just in the moment, but it’s the gift that keeps on giving because it’s been a creative transformation from the inside out, then you would love the work that we do in the Art School.

We are open now for enrolment. We have the summer workshop series coming up beginning in June and so the summer workshop series is automatically included for anyone who enrolls in the fall Art School 2021.

So, I offer the summer workshop series for those of my students who are continuing on from this Art School and opting to reenroll for next. It gives them a way to bridge that distance during the summertime and stay in their creative flow, stay connected, stay supported. And it gives those that are new to the Art School an opportunity to build momentum, to ease into the process or either just jump right into the deep end and jumpstart and get a lead on whatever they want to create when we go into immersion mode in the fall.

There are links to learn more and also to register in the show notes, or you can find more at www.leahcb.com. Also, feel free to email us, support@leahcb.com if you’d like to learn more. And if you’d like to schedule an exploratory call with my team to ask more questions, completely non-pressure call, just an opportunity for you to speak with a living, breathing human being who can answer any questions you have about logistics or whether this is a great fit for you. We’re here for that and would love to have you join us for the summer workshop series. It’s a fun dynamic environment. It’s a way to elevate your energy and get the magic and creativity flowing or continuing through the summer, and also a great way to sort of prime your experience and enter hitting the ground running when we start up in the fall.

So, to close, I want to leave you with an idea that to me really ties together these last few episodes. The episode where I talked about what if you’re closer than you think, what if you’ve been wrong about who you are in terms of being limited.

And in the previous episode, I talked about the power of I-am, which is really another way of saying celebrating the I-am, your isness, your innate magic ability, beingness.

And so, the final message that I want to leave you with that I invite you to take for a walk or into your meditation or journaling or into conversations is, what magic, what beauty, what power, what gift, what grace, what strength within you can you celebrate so that it shifts your attention from any place where your mind might be wanting to fix or really explore and ruminate on the places where it wants to argue that you’re in lack or you’re not enough, and instead to turn this law, the creative law of celebratory increase, to turn that towards yourself, towards your sacred self.

How can you celebrate your sanctity? How can you celebrate the precious, precious gift that is you? How can you really sit with that and receive the gift that is you and truly celebrate it?

What would it be like if you celebrated that and that those gifts that are you, the life force that is you, if that were just amplified effortlessly through celebration, which is another way of saying gratitude, which is another way of saying love?

I hope you have a beautiful week and find no end to the things deserving and worthy of our celebration. And again, I am celebrating all of you and this increasing audience and the increasing frequency which with I get to meet with you and connect with you, and celebrating all of those encounters that are yet to come. Have a beautiful week, everyone, and I will talk with you next time.