Ep #165: A Different Take on Making Your Life a Work of Art

It’s been over 15 years since I began my journey transitioning from being an attorney to an artist. And over a decade now since I started my practice as a life coach. And throughout those years, I often receive the input either from mentors, other coaches, masterminds that I should incorporate the phrase, “Make your life a work of art,” because I’m an artist, I work with artists and creative professionals, or people just wanting to embrace creativity and bring the magic and the spark and the aliveness back to their lives using creativity as an inroad for being fully themselves.

And yet, when I’ve heard this phrase, “Make your life a work of art,” I had such a visceral reaction to it. It was like a wall would go up in my heart. And today, I’m recording this Wednesday, December 29^th, I am revisiting this and coming at it from a completely different perspective; one that honors my magic and maybe comes with some surprising advice and also how to move through periods where you have to challenge convention and the way things are supposed to be done.

So, I have a different take on making your life a work of art today, a different episode than the one I had planned. But this really has come about as a result of me really wanting to be in integrity and embody my version of creativity and magic and art and aliveness and truth, and really embody everything I talk about, about normalizing the extraordinary.

Because part of that is also normalizing difficulty and darkness. We’ve talked a lot about the solstice, the winter solstice and the darkest days of the year. And I’ve moved through my own difficulty and was thinking, “God, I don’t have anything to share, I’m not going to have anything to share.”

And it was moving through that in a place that’s very real for me that resulted in the episode that I’m sharing with you today. And so, I hope this finds you. If you are in a place where you’re wanting to reconnect with your own sense of magic, of the true energy of possibility, feeling truly alive, even while also embracing difficulty – I have something to say about that as well. And I think you’ll find something for you in this episode.

Oh, and one more thing. I am sharing that story that I mentioned last week that I’ve been dying to share. It involves receiving a box full of thousands of dollars several thousands of dollars of cash. So, it’s veery much a part of this make your life a work of art and moving through some highs and lows.

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. This one coming to you from the attic of my parents’ farmhouse in Northern Iowa. It’s like looking out on an Arctic tundra right now. Although, I’m actually looking out into our evergreen grove, which we called the Deep Dark Woods growing up because we thought it was an enchanted forest, which it was and is.

And from where I’m sitting up here, I can see the base of the tree where one of our makeshift forts was. And at the base of that tree, several years ago, I planted a tin with some of my biggest most precious dreams. And part of the calling of wanting to come home for me was of course about Christmas and always about being around people that I love more than anything and giving my children the experience of their cousins and being able to wake up and have coffee with my siblings and seeing my mom and dad interact with all of our kids and nieces and nephews, and also feeling called to remember something.

When my brother Andy was married, he and his now wife Tracy asked me to write something, an essay, to read at their wedding. And I wrote an essay about the importance of remembering the magic. And it was tied to this very same enchanted forest. Everyone else knows it as an evergreen grove, that drives by.

And it was about the magic that we felt touched us and surrounded us and that we touched in childhood, and keeping that alive, the importance of keeping that alive as adults.

And that essay and that phrase and this evergreen grove and this house and these people, I have so missed. I have not been able to come back as much the last two years.

And now that I’m home, things are snapping into place. Things that are also, like, outside the line of sight of my rational mind, but that I also know that my heart and soul just need from being home. And home in so many senses of the word. Not just in this farmhouse where I grew up with my family. But also just feeling at home again, feeling like the magic come back.

And what I’ve realized, as I mentioned, moving through some difficulty. And then I realized moving through is maybe a little too optimistic, or maybe premature of a statement. I still am in it. And I’m recording this podcast while being in it because, you know, I had this thought that when I wrote it out, I realized it was there. And you want to be an example of normalizing the extraordinary and extraordinary creativity. And how can you do that when you feel so zapped and not like you’re feeling the magic?

And then, I realized what a lie that is, that all parts of the human experience are actually magic. But there’s no magic in trying to be performative or perfect, otherwise known as holding it together all of the time. What does that even mean? When you’re not holding it together, are you not human? Are you not magical?

But embracing difficulty and thinking about how just being home has given me an opportunity for which I’m very thankful to do that. I wasn’t going to share this story, but I will. Just this morning, my dad was talking to my middle son at the counter and saying, “You know, grandson, it’s important that you always have a place like this to come back to. You can come back here and we can all be together. And it’s a safe place. It’s a sanctuary. You can talk about anything here. You can reconnect. You can come back to yourself.”

And my dad was leaning across the counter talking to Sammy. I was getting coffee from the coffee pot with my back to them. And I also felt that that conversation was maybe intentionally within my earshot. And something that has clicked into place for me now that I’ve had this slowly easing into feeling home was that what takes me out of home is a false belief that I am responsible for the magic.

What takes me out of that is forgetting that it’s about a relationship, our relationship with the mystical part of life, our relationship with divinity, our relationship with a muse, our relationship with love, with something greater, and that it’s not all on me.

And I’m also not beating myself up for forgetting that, even unconsciously forgetting that. Because it’s easy. I can see where falling into – moving beyond wanting to create magic, whether it’s for clients or children or family or in other relationships, or just even on this podcast, how there can be a line you never mean to cross, but just that unconsciously slipping back into old patterns of, “In order to be magical, you have to be on all the time and perfect.” And it starts to feel so much ore performative.

And of course, of course, you know, that line of thinking always cuts off the flow. And I realize in being home, and then also even in being home – because there are many families in this old farmhouse together. Even in the room I’m currently recording this in, it’s silent only because the dads and my sister took all of the kids to the local Y in this minus-three degrees, minus-20 degrees with the wind chill temperatures to create some quiet space, well to run the kids’ legs off and to swim them into exhaustion. And also kindly to create some space and quiet where I can hear myself think and work.

Because trust me, I wanted to have something done and prepared before being on vacation. And the last several weeks, I could show up and do what I had planned on doing, and then it’s like I was out, my tank just had no more. And then, I say that, but I was also moving through all of the holiday things, which are very sacred and essential and important to me.

But again, it is in this space of being home and more than just the literal meaning, in the way that Martha Beck talks about it when she says, “The universe is always delivering you what you most want. But it’s delivering it to your home address and you have to be home to receive it, at home within yourself.”

And I have felt more zapped and less like myself of late. And then feeling the shame on top of that and moving through that and then moving through my own process of embracing this difficulty as part of normalizing an extraordinary way of being. Moving through the process, again, of shedding off more layers of perfectionism, allowing myself to be more fully me.

Like my old mantra tried and true, coming around into a higher upward spiral of it, of, “The more I am me, the more I’ll flourish and thrive, the more successful I will be.” And really, that I understand how hard that can be to do when it feels like there are expectations and people depending on you.

And so, that’s why I think this is a timely episode. Because you’ve heard me say so many times, you really can do it your way. You can be in integrity with your own deepest truth. You really can make it up and do it your way.

And one of the things that I’m deciding is my way is exactly how I’m delivering this podcast episode, for example. But it’s also coming back to reconnect with a truth that I’ve known but that I still can forget. And that is something I even talked about last week, that the most important connection you can make is that this vision, this dream, this potential that you sense is real.

And I was looking back at my own transcript, which I don’t often do. And I realized, I have a thought about something being real that’s clear to me that maybe is not clear to all of you. And that is like, when something is real, I’m not just making it up in my own head. But I mean really, it’s real and it has its own life force. It has its own pulse. It has its own consciousness. And it has chosen me to play with in this lifetime.

That dream, that vision, and the same for your dreams and vision. They have their own consciousness, their own magic, their own will, their own life force. And they want to play with you. So, it’s been a great reminder to me. And maybe this is a timely reminder for you as well, that it’s not all on you. The magic is not all on you.

But this process of creating a life that lights you up, that is really like we talked last week, a life you really, really love, part of that for me is, “Oh right, it’s not all on me.” And for sure, a life I really love doesn’t require my performance as a perfect human. It requires nothing. But it is an invitation to play. It is an invitation to create space and connect with wonder and awe and that life that I love, what that means for me.

And so, I also have a story about that, that unfolded within the last several weeks. A story that ties in with things we talked about, about moving beyond upper limits and asking yourself the question, “How good am I willing to let it get?”

And for me, I knew that among certain business goals I had, I wasn’t feeling the same sort of juice or excitement. And that there was some sort of disconnect between numbers and goals that I had articulated that they were feeling – as I’ve talked before – even though they were inspiring, something wasn’t quite aligned.

And I realized, what wasn’t quite aligned was how important to me life that is a work of art is. And then I revisited that phrase, like I share din the intro. I used to just cringe when people would say to me, “Oh, you should then make your whole motto be about making your life a work of art.”

And my heart would just shut down in an instant and my gut would hurt and I would even get kind of ornery and irritated. And I realize now what that was. It was because I was still working through this unconscious thought that a great work of art was judged from the outside in. That a great work of art was about showing up to prove something or perform something to receive external validation.

And even once I became aware of that and consciously knew that that’s not what a work of art would mean to me, it’s been more recently, like in the last six months, where I’ve been sliding into the truth of what it actually feels like, what a work of art feels like to me.

For instance, when I’m with a painting, do I love it? What is amazing to me? What excites me if I sit and let the painting or creativity talk to me? What gives me the goosebumps? Now, will this be liked or will this be pleasing? But what about what lights me up, and letting that direct conversation between me and the mysterious forces of creativity, the bigger forces, letting that be everything, letting that love affair, relationship be everything?

Is this neat to me? Does it bring alive a part of me that I can’t even articulate that just says, “Oh, that’s it?” You don’t know how that’s it. you have no business, no background and training in knowing why that is exciting or why that is just right, but you know that it is. Letting that be, “That is art.”

That experience is art. And then what I put forth or what’s visible to other people, like, that’s like an artifact of the art experience, that relationship that I had. Which to me is, first and foremost, a spiritual relationship. And so, when I would hear people say, “Make your life a work of art,” I think what I was hearing was, “Make your life look great to someone else. Make it look like what a museum would likely be hanging on the wall of the museum or in the covers of a glassy page of a magazine.”

But I didn’t feel soul in it. And now, somehow, those words, I can feel my way into them differently. And now I’m like, I can own that now, what a work of art means, and I can also own that it happens on my terms, that it’s not going to be perfect or polished.

For instance, with my business, I used to think, “God, why can’t I just have this perfect, polished brand,” and over and over again, as you’re drilled to do, like, same message over and over and over again, don’t confuse anyone, just simplify it, write for a fifth-grade audience.

It’s not that I haven’t tried to do that. It’s like, I can’t even. I try and then it doesn’t work or I have tried in the past – not in the recent past, but I gave it the good college try and it did not work. Or I just kind of shrivel up and feel like my soul is dying.

But instead now, I have created enough evidence from this thought that the more I’m me, the more I flourish, the more successful I will be, the more I will be paid. And the more I shed anything that’s not me, then the lighter I will be and the better I will be able then to be agile and channel the creativity that I feel and create what I envision creating.

And that, to me, is a work of art. And you can do this with so many aspects of your life. And so, I started to talk about bringing this into my business. And so, in a lot of my own behind-the-scenes goal setting and vision boarding, mind-movie process I would create scenes that would maybe make no sense to anyone else, but would delight me and lay over them words that I was like, my clients say this, “That would be amazing.”

And the word magic shows up over and over and over again, and life changing, and profound, and also synchronicity. Like, a life that crackles and sparkles with that sort of, you feel the divine, you feel forces that are greater than our rational human mind intervening – not intervening, but flowing through and collaborating, like that kind of delight and wonder and awe at being alive, like having a life of presence that’s full of those moments like that, that are also so delightful that there’s no reason for how delightful, but it makes you laugh out loud and belly laugh with how fun and freaking amazing, and just because.

Like the same way that flowers are just so gorgeous, a field of flowers, just because, a riot of beauty and color and so generous and petals falling everywhere, what you would call waste, just so over the top, you know it’s food for your soul. More, more, more of that in my life, in my clients’ lives, in my family life, in my personal relationships, in my art, and in my business. And something even better, even beyond what I can imagine, but that would just tickle my soul.

And so, several weeks ago, one of my clients, who is in the Art School Mastermind, who lives close to me geographically had said, “Hey, could you stop by? There’s something I want to give to you.” And so, I went to her house and she comes walking out with this beautifully decorated box.

And I actually just had to pause the recording because I started to cough because I think – I know. I can tell – me telling you this is also moving past and shedding layers that’s like, “Oh, don’t tell this story, Leah. It is very magical. It is so precious. It is so beautiful, so meaningful to me. And some people will think it’s over the top and too much. You should rein it in. You should really rein it in.”

And so, I’m narrating my own personal process, real time, for you. She walked out carrying this beautifully decorated box, decorated with her own art, and handed it to me, hugest smile on her face. Just joy and enthusiasm and excitement radiating off of her. And I opened it and there were several thousand dollars of cash, of hundred-dollar bills on the inside, wrapped up in $1000 increments also decorated a red envelope that said, “Priceless,” written on it with more cash in it, and rose petals.

And I just knew enough in the moment to just stand and take in what an incredible moment that that was. It was the payment for the Art School Mastermind. Such a sacred moment, such a beautiful moment, and also I knew it was a moment of, “See, even better than expected.” Because to me, yes, of course the money is a powerful and important manifestation, that exchange of energy. But it was also all of the extra gratitude and appreciation and love and beauty and abundance and yeah, that word priceless, and the beauty there that I rooted my feet down to the ground and really asked myself to open my heart and take it in and let my central nervous system calm down to take it in.

Because the greater message was, everything that you ask for, to be doing the work that you love in the world, to be changing lives, to have profound meaningful work, to be doing this work of really seeing people and being with them and helping to facilitate them, moving their greatest selves and living from their souls in the world and shedding anything that’s not them, shedding anything that asks them to settle, shedding anything that limits them from accepting great amounts of love and appreciation and all sorts of energetic abundance into the world.

This is what you asked for because it was real, because it was possible. And yes, I held the intention and I have built and I have built and I have built. And then also moments like this were just there to let the magic come in.

Because I never asked for that exact scene. I could not have designed something that beautiful and meaningful and profound and sacred for me. And then, at the same time, I go and I look at my journals and vision board and mind movie. And I won’t go into all the details, but there are also things that I guess call to me and I chose them, and they were all present throughout that day, all very present throughout that day. And woven into that day too was that I had an incredibly difficult morning in just having an exchange with someone in my business.

One of the things I have worked on the most is feeling that someone is disappointed or that I have hurt or offended someone. And I really was in a place where I stayed with my truth and came from love and integrity. And I knew I was doing the right thing. And then also, like, letting go of managing other people’s thoughts or accommodating my intuition or truth because of the discomfort, because of my inability to embrace discomfort.

But I really did that morning. I embraced something that was very difficult for me and stayed with it, and then just like not even two hours later was met with this other experience. It blows my mind, but I don’t need my mind in that sort of instance because it’s all about knowing the felt knowing that that was real.

And it’s also an invitation to, “And what else?” What other sorts of wonder and magic – and again, there were so many synchronicities in this day that I’m giving you the big punchline of the story. And also wanting to share it, to illustrate that you can experience all of life. You can move through difficulty, and then also it doesn’t disqualify you from everything your soul is craving, your heart is craving, and more.

And I mean, talk about the more. This woman could have just paid, as she thought, she’s like, “I could have just paid. But I thought about everything we talk about, about how can you put the energy into this that’s the energy that you want to experience? How can you seed these moments? Where are the opportunities to seed what could be dismissed as everyday moments with your own magic?

So, it’s about receiving them magic. And it’s also realizing that we are so powerful, we can seed the magic. We can bring the magic. We can create from a magical place and then continue to open up and spiral upward there.

And also, about embracing the difficulty, I think I’ve mentioned in a recent episode that I was reading the book Wintering by Katherine May. And I brought it home with me here and I was revisiting it and thinking about a question that’s he poses which is, “What does this winter have to teach you?”

And I know one thing that my recent wintering experiences are asking me are to take a deeper look, a closer look at all of the places where I’m still doing business as usual, just because I’m not fully giving myself permission to do it my own way. Where are the places that I’m creating my own bottleneck thinking it needs to happen a certain way, that I haven’t given myself, again, just full permission to state what I’m creating and what I’m wanting and stay out of the house and drop that this is how you should or this is how you get there, drop my to-do list, and instead return to that home place, that home energy, that way of being where the universe delivers everything to you at that address.

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.

So, my question for you is, what would be your work of art, your life as a work of art? If you knew you could do it entirely your way, if you got to just drop all the shoulds, all the intermediary ways that we create a big distance between what we would love to create, the life we would love to live, and fill it with all of these endless intermediary steps and to-dos and hows, what would you love, love, love to create if you could put all of those things down?

What would be your life as a work of art? Would there be magic in it? And this is, again, where I would get very granular. Again, I didn’t specify that exchange, that experience with my client. But I did have a feeling, like when I was in that moment, I know I had already touched that moment by a feeling; a feeling of doing the work that I’m built to do in the world, it being sacred work, and it being work that is deeply appreciated and valued, that my clients feel that it’s sacred, soulful work, that I am supporting not only the deepest greatest creative work of their life, but I am supporting their lives, their souls at the deepest, fullest level.

I had touched the energy of that. And while it sounds heavy, I had also felt like a fun and a delight and a magic and that there was beauty and joy. And also this extra energy of – I don’t want to call it indulgent and I don’t want to call it over the top. Because all of those things seem to have such a negative connotation.

There’s something in the soul that is so brought alive, like the joy is sparked when we have these experiences where, yes, could she have just written me a cheque or paid with a credit card or a wire transfer? Yes. But that the universe, it was like a message that there is life force, there is delight, there is magic to be had if we open ourselves to that.

So, get granular with touching that kind of energy. Where have maybe you gotten into a rut of just business as usual, humdrum way of doing things, approaching life? And you kind of feel like the magic’s gone out or going through the motions? You can feel yourself because maybe you’ve been at it for a while. You can feel yourself pulling back on your desires, on your belief. You can feel yourself dialing down.

How instead can you do what you need to do to go back home, to create space, and maybe it’s the right contact with the right people. I know for me, that is definitely something that I have intentionally welcomed into my life and am dialing that up, surrounding myself with people who are ready to play at this level and who are ready to amplify, who have the maturity and are ready to move even deeper into the skillset of embracing all of life, normalizing an extraordinary way of being that embraces all of life, from the difficult, the adverse, the challenging, to the delightful tickles your soul’s funny bone kind of experiences.

Surrounding myself with people who are open and who love that kind of energy and who are passionate about creating it in this lifetime and moving more of that generous heart and soul spirit out into the world, whether it’s through their creative work or also just their lives being their works of art. That’s’ something that, again, I’m dialing up, and that maybe you want to explore.

And if you’re in a place in life where you are also feeling zapped or you’re just not feeling it or you know that there is a place of greater energy for you to return to and reconnect to, one of my core pieces of advice – and this could be in maybe a future episode – is to not make this period of difficulty mean that it’s not working or that you’re not healing or that you’re not doing something wrong.

Instead, really embrace it as part of the process and listen intently for next moves. And I think the hardest thing can be to follow through and give yourself permission when that voice says, “Rest.” It can be the hardest thing to lay aside the fear and the rational mind when maybe that voice says something completely random.

I will tell you, we call it following the thread or following the golden thread in the Art School. But the magic that is flown from people tapping into that – and we talk about how there’s a particular feel, there’s an energetic feel to that when you’re following the golden thread, where in community, it’s legitimized. It’s normalized because everyone can speak this aloud without shame about, “Yeah, I’ve been having these strange desires to start riding a horse and I’ve never done that in my life. How could that possibly be connected to anything or mean anything?”

But then, they go do it, and the story unfolds. The magic continues to unfold. Or other people flying across the country to meet up together and put together an art show, seems really irrational and yet they’re following that golden thread because that’s being in relationship with the magic. That’s knowing that when we talk about something being real, that means it’s not just real in your mind. It is real energy, life force, consciousness outside that’s asking to play with you.

And then listening and then saying yes to those things to the best of your ability. And sometimes, again, I think the hardest thing can be for us to let go of being in control and over-actioning and overdoing when it’s asking us to rest, when it’s asking us to move our business in a different direction, when it’s asking us to do things that other people in our life may not like or certainly will not understand.

And I think that’s also why it’s important to surround yourself with people where you don’t need to explain yourself, but they honor it when you are honoring your inspiration and you are honoring that call and you are honoring nourishing and serving your soul and going for it, and they’re not waiting for justification or for you to explain yourself. But instead saying. “I feel it too. I get it. I hear you. Say no more. Go for it. You’re in the magic right where you are. We can feel it too.”

So, the second part of my coach with me would be for you to explore how to get back to that home feeling within yourself. Does that mean you physically go to a place where you last experienced what it feels like when you’re fully yourself, where you feel the magic touching you?

Right now, I can feel connections being made that, again, are outside the line of sight of my rational mind, about the fact that I’m in the attic where I used to sneak away to read and dream as a child. I’m looking out the window to that grove, AKA the enchanted forest, the Deep Dark Woods where we spent hours make-believing and playing together, and then also solo, and that I buried those big, beautiful dreams of mine underneath a tree where we played at the foot of one of our magical forts.

I feel a tighter weaving, like a design, something greater than me coming together. I can feel that I’m connected to it. I can feel known by it. I can feel in this moment that, as I am creating this imperfect and also just true – and it’s where I am in the world – message for you, that I’m right where I should be. I am home. And I’m listening for what needs to be let go of and I’m listening too to the invitation to just, again, fill up a whole journal.

I’ve done this before. I have journals filled up not with hows, not with coaching, not with plans, but just what would be amazing. I’ve done the Julia Cameron five imaginary lives. What would be five imaginary lives?

I want to stress a very important point here in these exercises, is that part of going home to yourself, being at that home address where the universe delivers everything you’ve been asking for is that it’s not about figuring it out.

So, all of these exercises, all of these invitations are designed to get you out of the thinking mind, out of the limited confines of rational, logical thought, and back into that place, that soulful place where you’re feeling possibility, where you are connected to, have access to something that is even greater, even more perfect for you than you can imagine.

That was a moment – that box moment was a moment for me where all of the details of that moment, I think one of the most magical, profound things was how deeply I felt known, yes, by this client, and seen. And that also, moving through her, I felt a connection to the divine. Like, so many parts of that, I felt more known than I know myself even, more touched. I felt parts of me wake up that I was like, “Oh, that is a part that I forgot was there, or haven’t remembered, or has never woken up before.”

So, create space for yourself for that. And again, one way of doing that is letting go of figuring it out, giving yourself a place to play and dream and create, giving yourself physical space, giving yourself space with people in relationships, with people who are that spacious, who are willing to go there with you and together you create a kind of tribe that calms your central nervous system and allows you to really tap into that.

Finally, if you are moving through in the midst of a winter for yourself, embracing that – and I don’t say that blithely or pithily. It has taken me years to really understand what that means, embrace difficulty.

Instead, I thought I would just overcome it and not have it. Really I think for me, one of the hardest parts of embracing difficulty is that to me, it feels like I have failed somehow.

And that’s just not a compassionate, loving place to be. So I know one of the places I’ve grown remarkably is even when I’m feeling so low, just being with myself in a way that I have not always been able to do. And that too has been some of the most profound work that I have been honored to do with clients.

To learn how to love yourself through the winters, and then when you’re ready to ask yourself, what is this winter here to teach me? How is this winter actually a part of my process? And not a derailment from, but how is it a sacred, sacred part of my life?

Because it absolutely is. It does not disqualify you from your dreams, it does not mean you are forgotten or abandoned. I think it can really be something that calls us to a deeper knowing of home.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School podcast. This is usually part of the podcast where I have a call to action and an ask for you and I ask that you share and subscribe and leave a review if you are so inspired. And thank you very much.

And while I always love it when you do that, today, I have another invitation. It is certainly not required and really, I would be so grateful if you would send your love and prayers and intentions to my little sweet hometown of Rudd that was recently hit with a tornado.

I’ve posted some pictures on Facebook and to me it feels very right to share this in this podcast because one of the things that actually has inspired my work and in particular this podcast was the little library in our hometown.

I spent hours at that library. I learned to love to read at that library. Played in the park next door with my siblings and friends. And spent so many hours again there with my family. And it really is a hub in a tiny little town of barely over 200.

And in the recent tornado, it was destroyed. One of the pictures I’ve shared is this striking photo of the roof was ripped off, but the bookshelves remained. Even the magazines in the magazine rack were unruffled.

So there is this photo of the bookshelves and then you can see above it, just open blue sky and a stark naked winter tree and some green bins. And I was like, wow, if that isn’t so much of my childhood summed up in a photo.

Because I am so formed by this rural agricultural landscape and then also a library was a place where I could feel that the world was my oyster and that the sky was the limit. Those two images juxtaposed together, the books and then the sky, and again, that stark winter background with the green bins. So moving to me.

And they’re going to rebuild the library. There is a GoFundMe and if you are so moved, I would greatly appreciate and the town of Rudd would greatly appreciate even five dollars. Five dollars at a time goes a long way.

So again, I mentioned that the library was actually a part of this podcast. And it was because when I was thinking years ago, what would I love to create if I could drop the how-to’s, what would be a big dream? And I thought of how libraries were such an invention, such a revolution.

Putting in every town this place where people could go and expand their hearts and minds and learn and a place of really the sky is the limit through opening the pages of a book, whether it’s non-fiction or through great works of literature, or a trashy novel, be transported.

I just know that books have been life-changing for me and I’ve always wanted to write them and I’ve always loved reading them, including from being a small child. So I thought what would be something, if we’re talking about big, bold, audacious dreams, and my thought was, well, I think the next revolution could be putting a center in every town and it would have a beautiful garden around it because everybody deserves something beautiful where they live, something that makes their hometown, their everyday lives special and magical and beautiful.

So my thought was you could create a resource center, similar to a library, that has a beautiful garden around it where the community could go and be uplifted and inspired by the physical environment of the garden, and then also by that interior, the tools presented through things like coaching or different forms of meditation.

A place where you could share free resources to uplift, empower, enrich, and make more magical and beautiful everyone’s life, that everyone would have access to it. And then I realized podcasting is kind of a form of reaching everyone, provides that kind of access.

And then now there’s this full circle moment where I have the opportunity to help rebuild this sweet little library and hopefully – I know they will make it even better than it was before. And then also the opportunity to extend the invitation to help.

And again, nothing is too small. And grand gestures are also magical. And again, that link will be in our show notes. And if you are feeling personally called to create big things in 2022 and beyond, the Art School Mastermind is open for application.

So if you have a great creative dream, if you are just sensing without even being able to articulate exactly the next greatest version of your work, your life that wants to come into being, whatever you’re thinking of doing, in the Art School Mastermind, it’s going to happen.

That’s how high the energy, that’s how powerful the coaching, that’s how next-level and dare I say and I will say magical this community. So our next round does begin again January 18th.

This experience will be pure and simple. You doing your best work ever and being more fulfilled, happier, healthier, wealthier in the process. Again, you can find a link to apply in the show notes, or go to my website, www.leahcb.com and go to the work with me tab. Scroll down to the mastermind or that site is also www.leahcb.com/theartschoolmastermind. Also, please email us with any questions. We’re happy to help. Support@leahcb.com.

So to close today, I want to share with you an inspiring story and then also a bonus prompt, a bonus coach with me. So Anna Ray Andrew is one of our illustrious Art School alum and she was in this past Art School fall 2021 and she’s a member of the upcoming Art School Mastermind.

And she has been lighting it up particularly as an example of doing things your own way. Absolutely making the rules as you go, declaring exactly what you want, and then staying out of the way. Not figuring it out, but staying home in her truth, in her magic, listening for, feeling for next steps.

And then following through with such joy and power and honesty and really again, being an example of normalizing the extraordinary, including embracing the difficult. And if that were not enough, that’s a little abstract, it has also included some pretty epic manifestations including several thousands of dollars of paintings being sold.

And from people that she did not reach out to. She did not to a song and dance and knock herself out promoting. And instead, she has been building this career and building this career, and these people are coming to her.

And she had shared a story with me of someone literally saying to her, “Just tell me what to say yes to.” Pause to take that in and really what a beautiful example of an invitation from life. Just tell me what to say yes to.

So are you having that kind of conversation with life, with the universe? Are you telling it what to say yes to? Or have you gotten kind of gun shy? I think part of the gift of winter is that once you know you can embrace that difficulty, that removes that sense of well, maybe there are things that I can’t handle.

And instead, frees you again to go for it. So that’s my question to you. What do you want the universe to say yes to? Do you know? And if you don’t know, sit down some time soon. Have a conversation, write it out. What do you want it to say yes to? The sky is the limit.

Have a beautiful week everyone. Thank you so much for being here. And I look forward to talking with you next time.