Ep #185: One Line That Changes Everything

One line, my friends. That’s what I have for you in today’s episode. One line. What can one line do for your art, for your creativity, for your affluence, for your entire life? Well, listen in because that is the subject of today’s 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, once again, to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I am batching a few of these episodes together. Still, this is such a time-travel kind of thing for me because I’m thinking ahead to, “When will this episode come out?” Probably towards the end of May. We’ll be moving into June.

Right now, I’m recording this at the end of April. I have still, as I’ve said in the prior episodes, I’m in the heels of an amazing trip to New York City. I have a gazillion things from that trip alone that I would love to share with you. And then, also, not wanting to fire hose you. And then also, something that I’ve really been contemplating this winter is, you know, I’m nearing the 200 mark, for 200 episodes. There are a lot of episodes. Many of them are very log. Many of them are very in depth.

And I go back and listen to some of them to look for, “How did I say a certain thing,” or, “What was that quote?” And then I’ll find myself hearing things that I had forgotten that I’d said. And I think, “Dang, that was good. I like how I said that.” And so, if I have forgotten it and not gotten to anything or everything in a long time, I’m sure such is the case for those of you.

Also, I’m a huge advocate for spaciousness and white space and margins and alone time, pure aura time, as my friend Christie Inge says. Which also means not listening to anything, not taking in any additional voices or information in order to come back to that sense of, “Oh, there I am. There’s my heart. There’s what I think. There’s what I know. There’s my connection to my source.”

And then yes, of course, I love to read and I love to learn. And I know that’s a process that’s akin to what many of you have described. You’ll tell me that you don’t listen for a while. And then you binge listen. And some of you have more consistent practices.

So, when I’m considering that and then I’m considering my own creative rhythms, I’m considering my own plans for coaching, the Art School, retreats, workshop, when I’m considering my own creative work, paintings and books and more poetry, and when I’m considering family life – like we have summer coming up here soon.

My kids are still all in these – I mean, they’re getting older – but this youngish age, right? It’s all special, and this time particularly, I think I always want to make sure that we’re being intentional and really reveling in our family life and what the dynamic is right now.

So, all of this to say, I’m kind of canvassing everything I’ve created and thinking, “I think it’s okay now if I offer some of these shards and fragments, these slivers of the work that I do,” so that we get to stay in conversation. And also, they give you bitesize nuggets to chew on and to nourish you if you like week-by-week.

And oftentimes, also taking this orientation that there’s only one thing you need, and really taking that in. I know, when I did the mindfulness-based stress-reduction program, the Jon Kabat-Zinn program years ago, one of the first exercises we did was the raisin exercise, where you’re given a raisin and then you have something like three or five minutes to chew that raisin. Not even chew it. Keep it in your mouth. Eventually it dissolves. To really experience that kind of mindful eating sensation, to really experience the raisin, to really experience your own experience of eating.

Obviously, that has stuck with me. And so I want to give you some podcasts, as best I can – and I not short-winded – that are like hose raisins, those gems. And I was thinking, as I was in New York City and thinking about how, in all of the masterminds and groups I’ve ever participated in, there’s always the reason I thought I was joining, and then it becomes apparent to me, as I move through the program, what the reason I joined actually is, and that sometimes that was hidden from me from the onset, or not clear until I went all the way through.

Like I thought I was signing up for a program for, let’s say, business coaching. Turns out, I was signing up for the program for some different insight that was eve more life-changing and necessary. But if you had told me at the beginning, “Here, here’s the raisin of the insight you were going to get,” I probably would have been like, “Yeah, no, I don’t think that’s what I need.” But absolutely, it ends up being what I need.

So, I was thinking about that as I was at this retreat for this mastermind that I’m in, in New York. And I was talking to clients there about this experience of these lessons, these raisin-sized lessons that are monumental and life-changing, and that how often is that the case, that we think we need so much.

We think we need all this business coaching and know everything about the funnel and extensive technical support. When actually, there was one insight that changes everything.

Similarly, with coaching, a lot of times, when we’re talking about the mindset part of coaching, there can be an obsession with getting all the good thoughts, “Let me get all the right thoughts. Let me take in all sorts of information and inspiration.” And I get that because it’s fun and I love that too. I love reveling in that and new thoughts.

And for myself, there has often been – I’d say most often – there are periods when there is one thought that I hang my hat on, one thought that is like my solid, sacred ground to stand on in hard times, and then also in good times.

There is one thought that I just need to practice and really get to know what the embodiment of its energy is over and over again. And there is a physical, energetic aspect to approaching thought work this way. It’s not like you just plant a new thought in your brain and you believe it. It’s more in depth.

It encompasses more aspects of you, mind, body, and spirit. How truly different are you as a person, how shifted is your energy from the inside out because this is a thought that is truly now a part of you and that you are believing, knowing, accepting to such a point, accepting it into yourself, accepting it versus trying to believe it, so that it actually does change you and your world from the inside out.

Playing with those lessons, those kinds of thoughts, those one-liners that change everything has, paradoxically, been a gigantic, a huge, a tremendous part of my own experience. And I see this bear out with clients too, coming back to focus in on the one thought, the one lesson that really serves them, has been key.

So, I am going to share with you just one of the one-liners that has been key for me. And I’ve used it in many different scenarios. It’s been gold for me. With a caveat though. This is not about adopting what someone else, has worked for someone else. There is a magic and an art to figuring out for yourself what your own secret language is.

What are the words, the combination of words? What’s the sentence that really speaks to you? That makes a bell, a gong ring inside of you, that resonates with you? Even if it’s only for a moment, you’ll know that that’ one that’s got some intrigue and possibility for you.

So, play around with this also if you have a coach. If you’re working with a coach, this is a great thing to do with them. If you’re a wordsmith, a poet, have friends that are wordsmiths and poets, this is a great thing to do as well because this is, for me, one of the most fun, exciting, mystical, intuitive areas of coaching, to play around and figure out what someone’s secret language is, and to figure out, what are the words, the combination of words? It feels a little bit like mind-reading.

There’s something else going on, but you can tell when you’ve hit gold, when you’ve struck upon something that turns like a key in a lock and opens something else up with a client. That’s the kind of feeling that’s possible. And so, perhaps you’ll find that, be able to borrow some from other people. Perhaps mine will resonate with you.

But if not, no worries, yours does exist, again, approaching it with a playful, I think magical, mystical, intuitive touch to it is a good part of the fun. So, I’m going to share one of mine with you in today’s episode, and it’s one that I have playfully alluded to and dropped into many different episodes.

If you remember the episode where I talked about, “You are sitting on a goldmine…” very related. So, here is my one line. “This is gold. This is gold.” In places where my mind wants to complicate what I am doing, how I am doing it, in the places where I have a goal or dream and my mind wants to complicate it with fear and bury it under mountains of overwhelm, self-analysis, over-analysis, did I say complication? Yes, complication, like a return to this. This is gold. What I have here is gold. What I talked about in last week’s episode, recognizing that instant when love begins, recognizing that instant when something is real and comes into being, in those moments, to me, one way of articulating that feeling and experience is saying, “This is gold.”

And then staying with that, noticing the energy of the original inspiration or dream that came to you, noticing that, articulating, wrapping language around it that suits it, fits it. For me, in many times in my life, it has been, “This is gold,” because that to me speaks of, “I know good when I see it.” And it keeps me out of those swamps in my mind of self-doubt and second guessing and wondering if I’m actually good enough. It keeps me out of all of those places, to just stay in that original inspiration energy of, “That thought came through, love came through, something real and true and original and good came through. This is gold.”

And so, a way that I use one-liners that keep me going through difficult times, which are largely produced by my brain, and then also jarred by outside, sometimes startling, jarring, challenging, adverse experiences is to come back to that. And actually, it does not feel overblown or egoic to me. It feels like standing on sacred, solid ground. It feels good and true. It feels like sitting on your own goldmine. It feels like solid gold.

And so now, do you want to hear a very fun and a magical kind of story? And this is not an exception. This is beautiful when it happens, the synchronicity. And this kind of thing happens a lot when embodying, practicing, doing reps of one-liners like this, really rewiring and reconditioning, when you’re focused in like this, so much so that you’re going to see it reflected back to you in such wild, surreal, cool ways.

So, here is a very recent example. I was watching my brain go to a place of, “I’m not doing enough. I should do more.” And go down that track. And I did my meditation, was quieting myself down. And I was noticing this over the course of a couple weeks, something must have poked my psyche and it was feeling not enough.

And so, then it was like chasing down all the things to compensate for that, by making plans that I really have no interest in. And so, when I got quiet and I just watched all of this – I’m giving you a very abridged version of my process here – I thought about everything I have created.

I thought about, “What is already done that is actually my intellectual property? Is actually my work out, still working for me in the world? Is actually something that serves people? Is actually already a huge resource that I can rest on for a while because it’s made, it’s continuing to give goodness?”

Well, the podcast. I have, at this point, 180-some episodes. And I just rested knowing that, in that place, something would rise up in me that would be like the truth of the moment, and like the simple thing that rose up was, “This is gold.” It felt so good to think that.

“The podcast is gold.” And it felt, again, so good to think that, so the opposite of the contracting, hustling energy I was feeling when plugged into the thoughts of, “You need to do more. And you need to do it better. And you need to do X, Y, and Z.” Watching that human stuff happen in my human brain, and then plugging into a different place, a quieter place, to see what truth would arise in that place. And it gave me that one-liner, “This is gold.”

And that’s something that has come up for me before, to help me. But then also with clients, when I hear clients also who are already massively achieving, but who are not feeling the experience, not receiving the benefit of that achievement yet because they simply have not allowed themselves to slow down, to really let themselves root in what they have created so that the goodness catches up to them and their bank account, and whatever it is.

And so, that’s a thought, Obviously, I’ve shared it on prior podcasts, that you are sitting on a goldmine. And it moves you out of scarcity and back into this state of plenty, this state of abundance, this state of affluence. Just this feeling that comes to me when I think, “Yeah, this is gold.”

So, here’s the fun part of this story. That’s a fun thought just to think about anything, any of your work. When you’re feeling inadequate or insufficient, to have a lot of compassion for yourself and not feel like you need to fix something about yourself and not thinking in a meta way you need to fix something about your mindset so that you don’t have to worry about fixing yourself.

But to instead play with an energy of, “What does it feel like when I’m believing that what I’ve done is gold, that what I have to offer and share and contribute that I’ve done already is gold?” To me, that feels amazing. And if you can’t get there right away, practice thinking it about somebody else’s offer. And then, you do a little switcheroo and you gently glide it over to yourself.

Again, this is a very abridged description of how I actually help clients achieve this, but I’m giving you the shorthand. So, I was thinking, “This is gold.” And it feels so amazing to me that when I was on the plane out to New York City and feeling kind of airsick and not able to read, not able to write, I was like, “Well, I will just close my eyes, open my mind and spirit and meditate on something that feels really amazing, like what feels really amazing? What energy? What state of being?”

And that came up, you know, what feels really amazing? Giving myself time to celebrate in my seat with my eyes closed. No one needs to know, but the podcast is gold.

And I was doing that. So fun. The time went by. I felt awesome by the time I landed. I also felt very settled and open. Fast forward to when I got to do my day with Zoe, doing the walking tour and she said at one point when she was asking me, what are some goals and dreams and visions I have?

And then she said something and it made the hair stand up on the back of my neck. And then I thought, “Of course she said this.” She said, “The podcast is gold. The podcast is pure gold.” And the way in which she said it was exactly the energy with which I was saying it.

So, this will be a surprise to her. I hadn’t even told her this because I just wanted to revel in that moment and that moment of the universe winking at me, and that affirmation. And I wanted to revel and just linger, period pause in the magic of that moment.

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. Make some of this magic in your own life. Play with this idea of one-liners. What are one-liners that you can use as your own metaphorical hat rack, you can hang your spiritual hat on that. You can use that as the sacred ground on which you stand, you can use it as a gem, a touchstone that you meditate upon.

You think about, “What is really the energy of that? How would I truly shift how I feel and think if I completely accepted this as truth?” Approach it with a light touch. Think about accepting it gently into your system, naturally, gradually, and then you can pick it up some until it becomes just a part of the fabric of your being, until it radiates from you, from the inside out, and then watch the mag chappe when it starts being reflected back to you in the most beautiful, golden moments, unexpected ways.