Ep #96: Pulling Back the Veil on The Art School

Leah: “It was my delusion and naivety that got me here” Lady Gaga. Lady Gaga has also said, “I want people to walk around delusional about how great they can be and then to fight so hard for it every day that the lie becomes the truth.”

This last week I had the great honor and fun and privilege of launching our next round of The Art School Fall 2020. I pulled the veil back about what these 12 weeks are really about, so listen in, you’ll see for yourself why Lady Gaga is the perfect one to introduce this episode. I hope you, too, walk around embracing all your delusions about how great you can be and don’t stop there. Then show up and fight every day until that lie becomes your truth.

Female Announcer: 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’s your host, Master Certified Life Coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Leah: Hello, everyone and welcome to The Art School Podcast. It is another beautiful day here in Michigan, southwestern Michigan. It feels like waning summer and fall coming on and it really is a sweet spot in the year. So, we are embracing the good weather. I’m embracing celebrating the end of an epically awesome week. It has been epic work, too, and it doesn’t happen all of the time like this, but I know it’s part of the cycle.

Sometimes, it’s like when I used to do triathlons, you didn’t have race season all-year round, you didn’t train hard every time, but when it was time for it it’s what you’d been training for and you brought your A-game and I was so glad for all the people that showed up, so grateful for them, for the creative catalyst and we have a phenomenal 2020 class for The Art School and the Mastermind.

So, I’ve really been settling in to the power that has been this week and also this episode I wanted to share with you because I pulled the veil back on what these 12 weeks are really about and now more than ever am leaning into all of my strengths at once, all areas of it, owning it all. I know that makes this Art School experience so much more profound and impactful.

There was some epic coaching, too, that went on this week in the Mastermind. Just one example, I had this email after one of our group coaching calls. My client wrote, “Girl, that call today was INSANE!!! Seriously, jaw-dropping. Where I am now, how is it this obvious and I didn’t see it – magic, serious magic. Holy crap.” Which is par for the course this week. This week has been serious magic and as a part of that equation it has not come without failure.

It’s one of the things I’m most grateful for, for this coaching work, for this journey that has been, for me, this last 15 years of transformation and that is truly redefining my relationship with failure. I am not going to say that I love all aspects. I am not going to say I don’t still fear it or for sure am growing and working through my own things, but wow, it’s a tremendously different place.

Things that would have rocked my world even just a couple years ago that happened in the last week I absorb and take care and trust myself to know what to do and carry on like a boss. They are the things that in the past were the reasons why I didn’t venture out and dare to do things and now I see how expensive that fear of failure is and at what cost to your entire life, that refusal to open your arms and know that you are big enough, and that the greater part of you is so much more than failure. You can learn from it, grow from it, use it like the creative powerhouse, master artist that you are.

So, for today’s episode I wanted to let you in a little further into Art School. These next two weeks I will share with you parts of the introductory Art School class. So, it’s a little atypical in that in most Art School classes I would focus a lot on group coaching. I would have provided them videos and content to watch and then dive much more into the group coaching, but this was our first call and I really wanted to meet everybody with the right kind of energy for the next 12 weeks.

Again, I’m so grateful for the participants in this group because they really brought the energy themselves and even though you don’t get to see them or hear from them in this call I still feel like their presence is known. So, for those of you who aren’t in Art School this time I just wanted to share that magic with you and an opportunity for you to think about how you can have your own transformative journey these next 12 weeks. You can be with us in spirit, I will offer a coach with me at the end of this today and again, at the end of next week’s. So, listen in as we launch into The Art School fall 2020.

Welcome, everyone to the first session, the first class of The Art School Fall. I am so grateful that you all are here. I was reflecting back on when I started the first one, offered the first art class two years ago and so much has transpired during that time and so much has happened exactly as I thought it would happen, and then also, largely and thanks to all of you, it’s been so much more than I imagined.

I’m giving myself away here, too quickly. Every Art School is different, right? There are common themes. There are universal themes I teach every time. There is some core curriculum, some baseline of things. It’s always helpful to know and fundamentals, really, of this creative process that as with any fundamental are ones you come back to and more deeply ingrained so that they become second nature.

Sometimes, if this is your first go around and experience with coaching or experience with The Art School some things will be entirely new. So, something that is fundamental meets you in a new way because you have grown. It meets you where you are and there is certainly that aspect to the design of this experience and really of this training because I think of this as not just like a program you take or a course that you take, I think of this as you training to become that next greatest version of yourself, right?

Whatever the dream you have, the goal you have that’s calling you forward, it’s really informing you about who you have the potential to be and I wanted to create a container and an experience where every week and within the week you come back to again and again intentionally, relentlessly and with so much energy. That part’s important. The energy that you all bring to this process is essential. That’s the part I cannot do. I do my best on the front end with what I share with the world and what I communicate about The Art School.

I do my best then hoping that that similar is attracted back, but then really it’s the energy – both the level of the energy and who you are willing to allow yourself to be that creates the magic and also elevates this community and it’s what makes this community so extraordinary it’s because we do – everyone here brings something so incredible and I’ve been so fortunate and grateful for that.

Since, I know everyone coming on or at least have had a chance to touch base at a time before I know that is for sure what is shaping up for this round as well. So, when I was thinking about where to begin leaning into my own creative process and intuition I thought, “You know, I just want to be very transparent to start off with.”

To me, creating in this way, I go about creativity in a very unique way. I think I meet at the crossroads of you’re a very firm and fierce coach. I don’t know if drill sergeant is the right energy, I’m thinking more like elite-level athletic coach, tough love, and magic. Because I know that’s where the magic comes in, like leaning into the divine feminine, intuition, spirituality, embracing all of that and then also being willing to be hardcore analytical and doing the aspects that sometimes are like one is forgone in favor of the other in other realms and what I want to do is I want this to be a holistic process because to me a very potent kind of creativity, the kind I am after and the kind I am interested – the kind of genius and the kind of the lives for people, the thriving that I am passionate about supporting and helping you foster is a creativity that involves the whole human, all aspects of you.

If you have a business goal, an income goal I want that for you and I will absolutely help you go get it in all the ways and I also know that there are so many interrelated parts. I also know and subscribe to the more your soul is nurtured and really met where it is, and you’re giving yourself what you honest to goodness need in this lifetime that directly affects your bottom line.

Then, also vice-versa, the more financially empowered you are then the more your creativity can flourish it’s stepping into creativity with a capital C, becoming truly the agent and the authority in your life, and being not only willing and able, but saying it and doing it, “I define me. I define the results I’m going to create with my commitment, with my decision and then with how I follow through with that every step along the way.”

So, again, I’m thinking about, where do I start today? Where do I start? Like, I’m just going to pull the veil back, we’re going to start with magic. This whole process, The Art School it’s magic. It really is magic, so welcome to magic. If you were expecting something else, you found yourself in the wrong place let me know and it’s my particular brand, but I think it’s really this under-talked-about aspect of creativity is the fusion of all things.

Because what I know, how I personally make magic in my own life and the work I do with clients is in that word “magic” to me subsumes something I was just writing about on the Mastermind forum this morning. Subsumed with that magic is a tremendous inner strength, a tremendous resilience that is – the kind of resilience and strength that can only be born of great love and compassion for oneself in the world and a devotion to cultivating more love and compassion for oneself, for others, and for the world.

That is embedded, that way of being – and I say again and again, The Art School we are about cultivating a way of being, a magical way of being. Now, you all know the word that I don’t always put into marketing. A magical way of being in mind, body, and spirit holistically that makes the extraordinary results you dream of inevitable. And embedded within that way of being is this strength I am talking about in mind, body, and spirit and it is a strength that is born only of a deep love and compassion and capacity for forgiveness.

Because what that enables you to do – and this was something I was writing about to the Masterminders this morning is it increases your capacity for going to the edge and falling over it many times. So, otherwise known as failure, right? Failure, and you may have heard this quote, quite pithy, “If you want to increase your rate of success double your rate of failure.”

Some of you might have heard that and some of you might have attempted that and what I want to say here is if you can make failure your breakfast you will become a creative powerhouse. It’s not something you just tolerate, but you crave it. You’re like, “I’m going to get up in the morning and have my stack of steaming failure because I know the kind of magic that creates.” You acquire a taste for it and for certainly is an acquired taste.

In the beginning we’re like, “No,” but you have to question your mind as it goes and be like, “Is the failure really so bad?” Some of it not pleasant at all, but it’s starting along the way. You’re going to use the thought work and the mindset work to look at our brains and our aversion and avoidance of failure because so much is the avoidance of things.

Like Seneca said, “It is not what we dare that makes life difficult, it is what we do not dare to do that makes life difficult.” So often we are so avoiding failure, so avoiding daring and that is the difficult thing because I prepared a video that will be embedded in your online classroom that you’ll be able to watch before next week at your leisure.

But I talked about choice and really to stay the course of magic requires choice. To become the creative powerhouse you are capable of becoming, to choose that destiny is a choice. Here’s the choice that we’re all making all of the time, there is always going to be discomfort and failure and pain and suffering, but you get to decide the flavor. You get to decide, do I want the flavor of discomfort of, “Gosh, that voice in my head never seems to go away of, ‘You could write that book. You could publish it. You could make more money.’” Whatever the dream is, right?

Living with a dream that you do not give the energy, attention, and legs to with your work in the world – living with a dream that you don’t give legs is very uncomfortable. For me, particularly, I don’t wish that on anybody, but we grow really – as a society we tolerate that much more. We say that’s an acceptable one. That’s even a really responsible response to a dream is to be like, “I’m going to give you legs,” and then we put up with whatever that experience is but we don’t name is the pain because society doesn’t call it pain it just says, “Responsible. Realistic.”

Then, there’s comfort over there, too, right? We have a payoff. We have a payoff, and so always ask yourself, too, if you’re not doing something you want to do ask yourself. Here’s just a side note, as we go through The Art School you may want to have a special journal for this. I am going to give you lots of worksheets and even a workbook at the beginning here that you can print off but have for yourself a running journal and you can make tabs for different sections. So, like a tab for power questions section.

So, a power question would be to ask if you were not creating something currently that you desire to create, to ask yourself, “What is my payoff for not creating this?” Because to always bring it back to, “I’m choosing this right now, why might I be choosing this?” And for sure whatever result you have currently it might be the product of a residual – it might be the residue of a choice you’ve made prior. The results you have in your life currently are the products of thoughts you thought earlier and the momentum, the creation of those prior past thoughts are what’s in your life currently.

You might say, “Oh, I recognize in the past I was choosing this because the payoff was –“ and, “The payoff for not going for my dream was – but going forward what am I going to choose?” Then, let there be that lag time while your creativity catches up to you in the world.

But coming back to choice, you have the choice to really simplify it. A) Stay where you are. Do nothing about your goals and dreams or do a lot of busy work, but deep down you know you’re not going to the edge. Deep down you know you are not like capital C committed. Capital C committed, to me, means in your mind you’ve crossed some threshold that other people would say, “This is not how the world works, that’s crazy.”

To me, capital C commitment means you’ve crossed this scary threshold where you put your stake in the ground in the universe and say, “Done. I have committed. I have built that thing. I can feel it. That is mine. That is who I’m going to be. That is my destiny and now there are no other options.”

Failure can come and go, results fluctuate day by day, but you are tied by this golden but invisible string to this destiny that you have staked out in a future and you just keep following it every single day independent of current circumstances. That level of commitment, and that level of commitment is scary. It will bring up whatever your particular thoughts are, the demons from the basement have been lifting weights that whole time until you got committed and then once you were really committed, they’re, “She’s serious, let’s go after her and shut the shit down fast.”

So, people will say, “Oh yeah, I’m committed. I’m committed,” but they seem like either – they tell me they’re committed but they have been doing things and not making much progress and nothing really, no demons have showed up. I’m not so sure we’ve gotten to commitment yet then. Because when you get to commitment magic starts to happen.

That magic, sometimes first – here’s the thing to remember, failure and demons mean magic are really close by. It’s all a similar world. So, you can take that as a good sign. I use that metaphor, that Chuck Yeager quote of, “The cockpit shakes the most right before you break the sound barrier.”

So, you start to, again, develop a taste for that over time and that’s what I’m talking about. Developing a taste for a different kind of failure. Not the failure of omission, not the failure of staying in passivity and comfort. But you’re like, “If I think about this here, just clearly, rationally, logically life is going to be full of failure and pain and difficulty one way and it’s going to be that way if I don’t go for this goal or dream. It’s going to be that way if I do go for this goal and dream.”

But if I do go for the goal and dream, and I commit, so I know I’m getting there, and I know that also here is the – I’ll take about sacred twin intention. I have this sacred twin intention that in the process of creating this result, this dream in my life I am the master of my ship, my destiny and by that I mean of who I am becoming.

You might not be able to control the circumstances, you can always control who you are in response to those circumstances even if it an – and it is, like an ever awakening requires being awake process of choosing who you’re going to be, how you’re going to forge your character, that way of being in the process. I mean, like, in the past, I can see I have been very impatient. I have been not really willing to – I’ve been like I’ll take some failure, but I’ve kind of exceeded my daily dose after a few tries so I think I’m done here. Instead to be like, “What kind of character do I want to have? What kind of character do I want to forge?”

So much healing happens in this process which is why I love the holistic approach to creativity. Holistic, right, think – it’s the whole. It’s the light and the dark, we welcome both. It shares similar roots, whole W-H-O-L-E with holy with healing with health. So, the creative process as I’m talking about it here and as is the foundation of The Art School is fundamentally and innately a healing process.

That, too, I wanted to make sure – to emphasize in this first class you’re not fixed. You’re not needing fixing. You’re not broken. Those are questions, “Am I fixed? Am I ready? Am I not?” All off the table. However you arrive here today, whole, human, messy, imperfect, perfect, divine, amazing, miraculous those are the – that’s the bigness, the vastness with which I want you to know you arrive here and are seen here and are held here.

The minor fixing things, those are like really small questions. Small adjustments compared the greater work that’s here for you and so often we like to distract ourselves with thinking that we need to be fixed or different before we enter into this process and how do you know you’re ready to enter into the process? You say yes to it. You say yes to it and from that moment that’s the commitment. That’s when the healing, the magic starts, and the creativity really starts to be able to flow through you.

We have an amazing mix of alum and people familiar with my work and people who are excitedly new to this process and people new even to coaching. So, don’t worry if you hear terms or conversations and you’re like, “I don’t know what they’re talking about.” Because as you’re swimming in the deep end here. This is not the shallows, and this is not the kiddie pool. You all, I know, said yes to this experience, were drawn to it for a reason. You didn’t even want to swim in the pool, we are out in this deep, vast sea together, right? Because that’s where the magic happens. So, everybody out of the pool and dive in and just watch your mind for when it says, “I’m behind,” or, “I don’t get it,” or, “She seems to know what Leah –“ just pull back and be like, “That’s an interesting pattern for my mind to have.”

I would keep another section in your journal throughout this process for just observing patterns of mind. Then, as I will say over and over again, observing without judgment, just being very curious because the moment you’re in judgment you’re still hooked by the pattern and what I want to help you develop is this equanimity, this familiarity with standing on a sacred ground.

As Brené Brown writes, “I stand neither shrinking nor puffing up, I stand on my sacred ground.” I think for you to develop a visceral, spiritual, mental, emotional sense of what that feels like to stand on solid ground as another great philosopher said, “Give me solid ground to stand on and a long enough lever and I can move mountains, I can move the world,” Archimedes said that.

So, in order for us to create feats in our life whether it’s small goals, small shifts, but we know they are major wins for us or to move mountains we must find that solid, sacred ground within ourselves. That process is facilitated through the – I’ll talk a lot about meditation here. I talk about it in many different ways, to me it has many different meanings. But meditation is becoming familiar with who you really are, a deeper question of who you really are.

In order to know that we can’t be inside our answers at the same time. So, when I ask you like look at your thoughts, that pulls you back to who you really – who you really are is the person who is able to watch and observe your thoughts. So, I will encourage you to have a practice of that, of journaling your thoughts and a simple, but very profound tool is to remind yourself, I am not my thoughts. Look at these, these are not my thoughts. I am not my thoughts. If I’m not these, if I am not my thoughts, then who is the I that stands and watches the thoughts? Experiment, play with do I feel differently when I’m in this space of what they would call the observer or the watcher and to see if you have had times in your life where you have felt that sensation of standing on solid inner ground, of just clear scene.

If not, don’t worry because this is what the process goes like. Like any learning process, especially an immersive one like this. You’re like, “I don’t know. I don’t get it. I don’t get it. It’s making no sense. I don’t know. I don’t know.” Then, light bulb. What happened there? What happened there?

Lots to say about what happens there, but one thing that can be fun and profoundly helpful is just to look at it from the biological standpoint and so, to that end I would actually literally look at it from the biological standpoint. So, a tiny, mini-homework assignment I would have for you between now and the next week is to Google images of live video of neurons learning. Look for a variety of them.

They’ll be these little sparky-like things with arms going out and there are lots of videos available on YouTube and what have you about neurons as you learn something. So, neurons with their tiny arms they’re like in order to make a connection in your brain they have to connect. There’s a synapse, a bridge, an energetic bridge between two different neurons that has to form.

So, these arms reach out and they’ll show someone trying to learn something, struggling to learn something and they’re snapping and sending out their arms, but then it’s like they’re reaching for each other. They’re reaching for each other and then there’s that ah-ha moment where the gap closes, the bridge is made, that energetic connection Is made and then you need to cross that information back and forth over that bridge to make that bridge a stronger one in your mind so that energy, information can travel more easily across that bridge.

What’s happening here while certain neurons are forming is other ones are being pruned because your brain needs to conserve energy. So, while you are intentionally creating new bridges, new relationships of energy and information about who you are and what you’re capable of in the world which include some of these concepts you’ll learn that takes energy. As you’re focused here it takes energy away. It is pulling energy away from other things that you’re not focused on.

So, it can be really – like I was saying how you’re not broke, and we don’t need to fix you. Something I’ll be talking about and I’ll have meditation and other ways that you can practice this, but also active action-oriented ways for you to practice it is for you to rehearse over and over again and become more familiar and more masterful with calling up this way of being that is like no problem.

Because I want to have your focus be on your creative potential and power and strength and if we are so consumed in problem solving that’s taking – like, “I need to be fixed. I’m not good enough yet. Got to work on this.” That takes energy away from your ability to create. As Einstein said, the level of thinking which creates the solution we’re looking is not the same level of thinking that created a problem that we think necessitates a solution. Right? So, we can’t be thinking at the level of the problem and then create something that we’re wanting to create.

If we’re thinking at the level of problem then we’re still just down here in that problematic level and what I see, and what I’ve known for myself is you can feel that. When I’m in a problematic – when I’m in problem solving mode, I am in problem energy and it is not the same as flow. It is not the same as creative energy. It’s not the energy that, for me, makes an awesome painting. It’s not the energy that, for me, helps me to tap into a flow during coaching. It’s not the energy, for me, that makes money.

It’s a process to learn how to shift this and it is, again, a holistic one, mental, emotional, spiritual and the thing is we all have this addiction to believing that problem solving it’s like our religion. If I can solve all problems, I will therefore be safe in the world forever and get everything I want. I just need to solve all my problems first and then someone will come around and be like, “Ding, good girl, now you may enter.”

But the thing is, problem solving only reinforces the need to have problems to solve. So, the paradox, the irony is though you become really great at this creative process that embody and flowing creativity coming from that energy and a couple of things happen. Either one, you actually do become a really Cracker Jack problem solver in the process or two, oftentimes a lot of things that seemed so problematic you’re like, “Where did they go? All those problems I used to have, where did they go?”

Or you’ll remember problems you used to have, and you’ll be like, “Oh,” feeling kind of sheepish. “Can’t believe I was so consumed by that one for so long.” So, I want this Art School experience for you to be this sacred, magical, potent container where every week it’s this corner of the universe where you get to come and be who you really even if you don’t see her a lot in the rest of the world or you may or may not or it’s kind of halting, this is a place for you to let her come out of closet. Let your powerful self, let your big dreaming self, let your I-eat-failure-for-breakfast-and-I-love-it self come out where you are not only – it’s not even emboldened. You’re like, “It’s just who I am.”

We normalize this extraordinary kind of behavior. We normalize extraordinary ways of thinking, feeling, acting, creating, and being in the world. We normalize putting our hearts out there in the world and – going to Brené Brown quote, “Vulnerability courage is when – “ she calls it ordinary courage is when you put your vulnerability on the line, normalizing that. Because that, to me, like the simple recipe for magic is you go to that place where your vulnerability is on the line and you develop within yourself a resilience, it’s born of love, that allows you to have that ability to go to that place again and again where you put the best of what you have right now on the line again and again and offer it to the world, make an ask, whatever that edge is requiring of you and magic happens.

There’s all these paradoxes. It will feel like you have to be willing to do it all yourself and then if you read the newsletter I sent out last night, it’s also you’re ready to do it as if it’s all you and that, too, is when you know, “Oh, this can’t be on me.” Of course, it’s impossible if I’m thinking, “Oh, it’s all on me,” but I have to be willing to bring the best that I am right now, put my vulnerability on the line and that’s when I’m inviting in something greater than me to participate in my life, to move through me, to create with me. It’s whatever that creative force is that flows through you and enables you to do things that are beyond what your small self could do.

So, I want this to be a space because that is vulnerability, all of those things, failure, really are like innately unsafe to our egos, right? I’m not asking anybody here to walk a wire between high rises. I don’t think we have any of those kind of acrobats here. What I’m asking you do to though I know will bring up a lot of things because likely you would have done it before. This is about extraordinary creativity, not just mediocre hum-drum.

I want to create a space you know because the other thing is having a place to be witnessed by other people and having it normalized for you this true aspect of yourself being witnessed. Like, let’s say, you want to write a book, you’ve wanted to for 20 years and you’ve never done it yet, and yet you know you have books inside of you. You know since you were a young child. You wanted to be a writer and you know that’s a dream for you that no matter how hard you try it will be with you till the day you die if you don’t do something about it, right?

If that’s you then I want you to come here as the woman who is writing her book yes, in the process of it, and I also want you to come here as the woman who has written three books and had book deals and live from that space. Live from the energy of your future self which I think has so much to say to us about who our true selves really are, but we have just been so dependent on reality. We’re like, “I don’t want to be delusional,” right?

But I sent out last week, too, that other quote, the Lady Gaga quote where she said, “I used to be delusional and then I just grew and evolved into a person who actually did those things.” So, that’s what we’re doing is honoring your delusion here for a sacred truth and the magic, the clues to the magic that it offers and we’re twisting that, right? It’s like a different perspective on the world.

We see what other people call delusion and we’re like, “I see a divine seed there. I see the embryo of something that wants to happen,” and this is an environment, this creative ecosystem is a habitat that is like that womb that honors that which wants to gestate and grow and we’re not going to say, “Eh, it’s not really a worthy being yet because it’s like three weeks into its gestation. Abort.”

We’re not going to do that. We’re going to honor and nurture and grow and work with what’s working. So, to that end, too, I wanted to make sure that I preface, gave you an idea of what’s coming down the road, set the stage with the magic, set the stage with the appetite for failure which, if you have not yet acquired, you will, and you’ll love it.

You’ll develop and inner sense for knowing, right? Like, when, how much you can tolerate because there’s a stamina involved with that, too. I, for sure, am not an advocate of burnout because, again, this is about the whole you and that’s a very healthy life-affirming process. To me, that means not hanging out in your comfort zone where you are actually stagnating and a part of you is not being fed and therefore is dying. Not healthy.

So, sometimes you need to be pushed then into a zone that’s uncomfortable and then there are other times where you’ll be like, “I have patterns of overworking and overachieving.” And we’ll look at those too because it’s developing, again, a more nuanced and calibrated sense of coming back to yourself and be like, “What is the difference between taking the action, going to my edge, being vulnerable? I’m following through, making potent, fertile choices,” I’ll talk about and have talked about and then following through on those potent and fertile choices.

Not all the choices, the potent and fertile ones, right? What’s the difference between doing that and then just going so hard that next thing I know I am burnt out or I am sacrificing other values which have been dear in my life? It’s knowing where this sacred, solid, magic ground is of not too little, not too much, and part of it is finding that space is really facilitated by trust. That’s something we’re going to talk about again and again and again.

Trusting that you know how to do commitment. Trusting that because you promised to yourself you are creating this that you are becoming the kind of person who absolutely follows through on what she has said is most dear to her and so precious to her.

If you have not done that in the past, fresh, clean slate. That can all change today. If you have a pattern of you don’t trust yourself to follow through, I would make that one of the core things that you want to cultivate and transform with this experience.

The other thing about trust, too, if we’re really trusting ourselves and trusting our own magic and trusting the creative process then it’s easier to know when you move into burnout or overwork because those things are born of not trusting the process, not trusting the magic of the process, and not trusting yourself. Those overdoing things come from a sense of inadequacy or a sense of, “Well, if I don’t do what everybody else is doing I for surely can’t have things like my way done in integrity with me.” I’m speaking from experience here. I’m pulling from my own thought model journal.

So, trust, security, growing into – using that to develop confidence, right? Because for a while you’re going to have to use courage while you’re doing all this failure stuff and the courage is then going to lead you to confidence and competence.

One thing I want to do today is ask you all and I will give you a few minutes here so we can tap into the collective energy and magic going on and then also this may likely be something you return to this week. I want you to ask yourself what you think brought you here and what is one of the deepest core lessons or gifts or knowings or changes that you want to receive as a result of this 12-week journey.

So, this is the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in, really work with me and coach with me. Don’t just listen to this information. Don’t just consume it or be entertained by it, do be nourished by it, but take it in and ask yourself, “How can I apply this to my life? How can I integrate it and then use it in a way that really moves the needle for me, that changes me from the inside out, that helps me truly cultivate that way of being in mind, body, and spirit that makes the extraordinary results I dream of inevitable?”

I want to offer you the question that I offered my Art School participants. To them I asked you, “What brings you? What do you think is the deeper purpose, meaning, call to you in being a part of The Art School?”

So, while you, dear listener, may not be officially enrolled in this session of The Art School, I do hope you join us in the future, but for now consider that it’s no mistake, no accident that you have chosen to listen to this podcast, that life has brought this podcast to your attention. It’s not like I’m Joe Rogan. I’m not all over the place, right?

Think about what might be calling to you, why this information is coming to your attention. What in life is trying to get your attention? What in you is trying to get your attention? What are you meant to listen to? What are you meant to hear? With that information that receive what are you meant to do with it? Are you going to do something with that and when?

If you do accept my invitation every week to work with me and coach with me, even if we never meet, even if you never hire me or enroll in The Art School but you take me on a virtual mentor or you use these teachings, how do you want to be different because of this training? How do you want to be changed by it? What lesson do you think you’re meant to learn? What is being offered to you?

Because I promise if you keep coming back here week after week something meaningful, something sacred, something significant is meant for you here. Something in you, in the universe, through your soul, in life, something is trying to get your attention, and something wants to happen through you. Listen, what is it? Lean in. You’re not confused. You know what it is and now what are you going to do with that information?

Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this podcast, if these episodes have been useful to you the best thing you can do to pay it forward is to share, is to subscribe, is to go to iTunes and leave a review. I sincerely appreciate each and every review I receive, each and every subscribe and share. Our audience is growing and that is because of you.

So, thank you so much for being here. It gives me a reason for doing this work. When you’re ready to take this work deeper a way to stay in touch and in the loop about upcoming Art School sessions, free classes – which I have been offering a lot of free classes, so you don’t want to miss out on those.

The best way to stay in the loop is to go to my website www.leahcb.com and sign up for my newsletter. Also, I would love to connect with you on Instagram. My Instagram handle is @LeahCB1, that’s @LeahCB1 on Instagram. I have a lot of exciting, free offerings in the pipeline for later this fall, so do stay on that mailing list and you’ll be the first to know about when those are released.

To close today I will share an insight that someone gleaned during one of our Art School calls this week and she pulled it out and pointed it out in the chat. She said, “’Don’t be so dependent on reality’ might be my favorite Art School line yet.” And that made me laugh and then also because true.

So, what I want to leave you with today to think about is this creative direction, this creative prompt as you go about your next week. This about this, how can you look around at reality less, be less dictated by what is, and how can you imagine more? Be more loyal to that compelling vision you can create with your imagination to that relationship you can create with the potential within you and what you have yet to do or become. How can you be more dependent on your imagination and look around less at reality? Does that sound dangerous? Does that sound delusion?

Then, perfect, we are right where we need to be to be truly creative and you are in really good company. I’m so glad to have you here. Have a beautiful week, everyone and I will talk with you next time.