Ep #183: Finding Potential in Your Limitations

In this week’s podcast episode, I want to offer you a fragment, a shard of something very simple and very real. If you are going to be an artist, a creative, and you really want to embrace that way of life, no matter whether you make a living as an artist or a doctor or a lawyer, or a parent raising a child, the ability to make yourself vast enough to embrace paradox and what others might see as contradiction is so incredibly helpful and transformational.

And in today’s episode, I want to talk about something that is not binary in my world or my approach. But if you’re not familiar with that, it might seem so.

So, the Art School philosophy is that it is by cultivating an extraordinarily creative way of being that we make our extraordinary creative dreams and results inevitable. In today’s world, when someone hears, “Extraordinary way of being,” oftentimes they think, “I am going to have to be so much extra. I am going to have to find this special formula of myself that is not myself, that is beyond myself.” And that, my friends, is not at all the case.

At the heart of my work, it is about a renaturing, restoring you to your natural creative state while also embracing all the tools of our craft and the ability to always learn and evolve and grow as humans.

A core theme and energy that comes up so often in the Art School and in the mastermind with my clients is this desire and also a feeling of being rooted and nourished in real-deal creative energy and artistry that is often what we’re really after, no matter what external manifestations of that look like.

Again and again, my clients find themselves returning to, “This is the place where I don’t wait to be anointed. This is the place where I know I choose me.” And that is an energy that I want to share with all of you so that you have that energy of knowing what it feels like and you can move forward and create from that space in your own life.

So, this episode is just simple and just a shard of that, of that real-deal creative energy that is also so very extraordinary.

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 could easily have about 17 episodes coming out of the inspiration and thought time I had during my trip to New York City. And I also am looking forward to this next month, getting ready for the ultimate luxury creative retreat on Lake Michigan and getting ready for welcoming in the next round of Art School Masterminders, welcoming back my alumni that are continuing, and also doing a lot of painting.

So, if you follow my artwork as well as my coaching work, stay tuned for the newsletter because I will have new releases of new work coming soon, over the next month and a half, as well as some limited-edition releases of paintings that I have, limited addition prints, once in a while, made for. I do it in just batches of 10 and 20 and I don’t do it that often. But I do release it first in the newsletter.

So, when I think about best uses of this podcast, this medium in terms of helping you, there are many times when I’m in conversations, either one on one with clients, or in the mastermind, or in spaces where I’m with colleagues, like I was in New York City, where I’m thinking, “If I could just take a sliver of this conversation and recreate it, just this one fragment would be so valuable.”

I would love to listen into fragments of certain people’s conversations, and so this episode is a little bit of that. There was this one theme that I wanted to share in a podcast episode that it comes up often in the Art School. We have such a community of authentic creatives and people who appreciate genuine, grounded, real energy.

And then, this theme arose again in such interesting ways and surprising conversations when I was in New York City. And a couple of them were around the Any Warhol series, a series about his life, and then the Netflix series about alleged German heiress Anna Delvey in that Inventing Anna Netflix series.

So, the thing that people kept remarking on who had seen the Warhol piece was that, for all intents and purposes, to us, it looked like form the outside looking in that Warhol was the epicenter, that he had created this world and this galaxy of celebrity and fame and it-ness and that’s where the scene is, that’s where the party is, and with himself directly in the center, like a sun with all of these planets orbiting around him.

And then, come to find out from his diaries how extreme his experience of loneliness and depression and anxiety and extreme FOMO, what that was like for him, and how mind-boggling that is to know that he had this crowd of people and had, again, is often credited for starting this own particular energy in vain of a certain sort of celebrity-ness and fame.

And yet, he felt he was somehow missing out or that it was going on elsewhere. And then, in the Inventing Anna series about Anna Delvey, in the conversations that came up around that, I was struck at how many people were struck and were remarking on this theme portrayed there, that seemed to be she was always in search of the scene, like where the real party was, where the real it-crowd was, where the real in was. And then, she’d go there and it wasn’t there. And then, she’d go there and it wasn’t there.

So, both of these stories obviously are reminiscent of the wisdom that it is not outside of ourselves and that if we go to seek it outside of ourselves, we will never find it because it is not out there.

And then, this is another reason I know this theme wanted to be shared, and another synchronicity, I was reading an email – and I don’t always keep up with all of the newsletters that I subscribe to, but one newsletter I subscribe to is that of Cole Schafer, who is a copywriter. And I follow him because he’s an excellent copywriter, and also I follow him because he’s a poet, and that fusion of those different kinds of writing and that different kind of life of the artist and online entrepreneur obviously, very interesting to me because that’s what I’m doing as well.

And he, in the last year and a half or something, has also started dating Kacey Musgraves, who, in case you don’t know, she is a superstar, like a legit musical artist superstar.

And in his last newsletter, he references this while, also synchronicity, being in New York City. He was writing about his experience being there for a couple of weeks while she was recording in her office, which is Jimi Hendrix’s old studio. And just about what it’s like to be one’s own person and then also be in the world now, in a relationship with someone with that kind of superstar status.

And he writes, “It has taken me some time to know my place in it all. And to be completely candid, spending time around impressive individuals can leave me feeling wildly unimpressive. And I’ve had to watch myself because the fear of being unimpressive has, at times, left me feeling distracted. I’ve had to fight the urge to impress others rather than impress myself. I think this is the fundamental difference between ambition and distraction. With ambition, we’re doing something to impress ourselves. With distraction, we’re doing something to impress others. This is another small thing you see in New York if you look closely. There are a lot of people who think they’re ambitious, but who are really distracted.”

I loved that and I shared it with the mastermind. For me, when he’s talking about ambition, what it feels like to me in language that we use often in the Art School is you’re coming from a place where you are devoted to being in integrity with your work, with what you love, with your craft, with your vision.

And I just want to pull out again and highlight some of these lines, “I’ve had to watch myself because the fear of being unimpressive has, at times, left me feeling distracted. And I’ve had to fight the urge to impress others rather than impress myself.”

And then, that incredibly impressive distinction he makes, right? “With ambition, we’re doing something to impress ourselves,” which I would say be in integrity with your own work, what you do, why you do, who you are as you’re doing it. But with distraction, we’re doing something to impress others.

And again, that line where he says, “If you look closely, in New York,” but this happens everywhere, right? There are a lot of people who think they’re being ambitious, but who are really distracted.

And we were talking about this in the mastermind as well, being clear on what it is that you really want, your core priority, because it can be easy and it happens where you get caught up in making a life and a life’s work out of trying to impress the impressive people, simply to outrun your own fear of being unimpressive.

You can make a life’s work out of trying to find a scene. You can make a life’s work out of trying to make yourself worthy or acceptable into some scene that you think is out there. When really, all of that is a distraction, but you could very easily embroil yourself or invest all of your life force, energy, and creativity in making that your life’s work. Or you could come back to what is real for you.

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. Don’t just listen to this information, but contemplate it. Think about it deeply. Think about how you’re going to act differently now that you have these insights. How are you going to apply this information, this own inner wisdom that you access, and then apply it to your own life in order to serve the transformation that you seek, that transformation that is actually really about returning to the truth of who you are?

So, maybe you can see how I’m weaving together what I started with in the intro about yes, we are about cultivating an extraordinary way of being that is also really about a return to oneself and what is true for you.

You’re not cultivating an extraordinary way of being I order to be quote unquote good enough or worthy of being chosen. You are doing it to live in a place where you’re rooted to what is whole and holy and true for you. And in that work of, as Cole said, if this appeals to you, the kind of ambition where you are impressing yourself and not caught up and embroiled in the side-hustle which becomes a life’s work of being so distracted and impressing the other impressive people, getting lost in that.

So, what can I offer you to help you access and settle into your own innate real-deal energy which is an extraordinary way of being. It is also extraordinary because, too often, it’s the ordinary course of things and way of life to make a life out of being distracted, to make a life out of trying to impress others.

So, really being true to you, being yourself, coming as is, working from that place, the paradox of embracing your limitations in order to access your potential. That is real. That is also an extraordinarily creative way of being.

My next suggestion for this particular coach with me in this particular episode would be to go back and listen to recent episodes I’ve recorded that offer questions about dialoguing with your greatness, questions where you sit and contemplate, “Who am I? Who is myself and what is my work?” These are all questions and concepts that I covered more in depth in recent episodes. So, again, this is a good episode to pair with those.

Also, my other recommendation would be to contemplate where you have experienced real-deal authentic energy anywhere in your life. It could be as yourself in your own work. It could be those places where you’re like, “Yeah, I’m onto myself. I know when I’m trying to outrun my fear of being unimpressive and then getting caught up in distraction trying to impress the impressive people. I know the difference between that frenetic, scared, scarce scurrying, trying to prove energy, and I know the difference between when I am just owning it all, here I am, here is my work. Chop wood, carry water.”

So, look for those experiences in your own life. If you can’t find them, look for experiences where you have felt, experienced real authentic energy from other people, where you’ve been around people who are purely, simply impressive, not because they’re trying to impress, but just because they are in integrity with themselves, they’re authentic, there is something honest about the way they’re working and being in the world.

And then, whether you have these observations of yourself in real-deal energy, or whether you have observations and experiences of other people, to do what I’ve mentioned in other episodes, to do what we practice in the Art School, which is a blend of marrying this mindfulness with a kind of mysticism and magic where you practice that energy, you practice being in that energy.

What is your breathing like? What are you hearing in that moment? What does it feel like to feel your feet against the ground? In those moments, becoming aware of where your skin meets the air and the air meets your skin, maybe just on your cheek, maybe on your ear.

When you’re doing this, you’re fusing your mind, body, and spirit and they’re memorizing that moment, capturing that energy, and it is becoming embedded in you, so that with time, with practice, with repetition, this is like the Olympic weight training part, the Olympic athlete training part.

You do these reps over and over again. You repeatedly practice authentic energy, real-deal energy. You practice it while accessing your imaginal mind and picturing yourself either being in this state, mind, body, and spirit fused state while you’re writing or with others. You practice this and then, in scenarios where you are actually with others and you feel yourself leaving yourself and forcing comments or conversations in order to impress, see if in those moments you can’t just notice that, acknowledge that you know the difference, and let that whole experience be what it is, which is also a return to real energy.

Not trying to be better or different than you are in any given moment, but being present with who you really are and what your real experience is, not what you think it needs to be, not who you think you should be, being present with what wants to happen through you as it is, not trying to hustle to make it better or thinking it would be better somewhere else or in some other crowd, but a return to your center, a return to your truth, a return to your work.

To me, this is what that real-deal rooted energy feels like. And I make a point of, for myself personally, stamping and imprinting it, acknowledging in that moment and centering myself in it. It happens in the Art School so many times, where I give myself moments of pause to say, “This here is real. This is true. This is good. This is absolutely where I am meant to be in this moment.”

And the more you acknowledge that deep within yourself, the more and more that will be reflected back to you in a myriad of ways in so many different people. But it starts first from within you.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If there are any ways that I can help you access your own inner real-deal artist self, that by returning to that energy, that original authentic energy, you can also live out your most bold, beautiful, biggest creative dreams, please write to me. Connect with me and let me know.

I am on Instagram @leahcb1. And you can also email me, support@leahcb.com. And if you want to be immersed in real-deal creative energy, the kind where you create your world, you choose yourself and you create your destiny from the inside out without being embroiled and lost in distraction of impressing the impressive others, if you want to know what it’s like to be the truly impressive human that you are already and you’re meant to be, you want to live from that place, you will love the Art School Mastermind.

If you have big, beautiful creative dreams that you want to bring to life and it is equally and every bit as important to you that you do it in a way that is authentic, life-affirming, soul-building for you, you would love this community and this experience because success is contagious.

And the kind of success that people create in the Art School Mastermind is success that is aligned and in integrity for them, so that it feels like the real deal every step of the way.

So, to close, I want to return to this one part from Cole Schafer’s newsletter where he writes, “This is another small thing you see in New York if you look closely. There are a lot of people who think they’re ambitious, but who are really distracted.”

That’s just so good. And again, that applies not only in New York, but everywhere. And I think sometimes hearing that statement made about other people, there are a lot of people who think they’re ambitious but who are really distracted, can create a gentle and also honest inroad into our own self-examination.

Where and when am I doing that? When am I thinking I’m being true to me, true to my own ambition, desire, and dream? And when am I really just distracted and consumed with impressing the people who are legitimately ambitious?

I want to say too, I am so grateful that I get to be in the presence of and work with many people who are authentic, who are really doing the work and from the inside out. And I cherish those experiences, those real, real-deal experiences. To me, it feels like real living, real creating.

And I had a beautiful experience of that a number of times on my recent trip to New York City, including a particularly poignant moment with a client, a beloved client and friend that I got to catch up with. And that’s a little bit of a teaser for next week’s episode. It’s a little bit of story time, but again, I wanted to share the energy of that moment, to give you another opportunity, an option for trying that on and seeing if it resonates with you, seeing if it spurs anything in your own mind and heart for places you’ve experienced that, if it moves something within you.

But I will wait to share that next week, my friends. So, until that, enjoy impressing yourselves, enjoy the depth, the quiet, the realness, the groundedness of not being distracted by anything else than what is sacred, essential, and true for you. Revel in what is sacred and essential and true for you. Revel in what is real for you.

Have a really awesome, beautiful week, everybody, and I look forward to talking with you next time.