Ep #51: Quantity Over Quality

If you’re listening to this podcast and you have a dream, you sense you have some greater creative potential, you sense that there is something that wants to happen through you, and yet you’re still struggling to flow that creativity. You’re still struggling to actualize that potential. You’re still struggling to create that vision outside of you and to get out of your own way.

Well, in the last few episodes of The Art School Podcast, I’ve been introducing you to this concept of self-organizing intelligence, how to let your creative genius flow without judgment, how to let it evolve, and how to let it continue to refine and inform itself through the process of revision over time.

Today, I want to introduce you to another layer of this work. I want you to be able to overcome the things that I see stopping so many people and holding them back from developing their craft, from flowing their genius, and from creating their dreams and becoming the most creatively powerful version of themselves that they just know they are capable of becoming.

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.

Welcome back, everyone. This is episode 51, so almost to the year anniversary point for The Art School Podcast. And I want to thank you all so very much for supporting this podcast by listening in, by leaving reviews, by writing in. That means so much to me. They really help me know that I’m creating material and sharing things that hit the mark for you. And that is a metric, that one by one basis metric, to me is the most important metric.

Last year, on my 40^th birthday, these wonderful friends we have that often make us these beautiful birthday dinners had asked me if I had any special wishes for my 40^th birthday. So I was going through some and one of them was that I wanted The Art School Podcast to hit the top 10 in the US charts in my categories before the year was over.

And then what was interesting was I found out a little while after that, that I actually had been in the top 10 when the podcast first came out, when I launched three together. I think that kind of blitzing of a launch kind of helps you out there and I had hit number seven.

So then I realized, okay, so I did that. And now though, I felt like that was a meaningful message for me. That was asking me, okay, there’s that, now get clear on what you really want. And I realized the metric I really do care about is that this work, this content, this information really helps you listening, you, that one person out there listening, that you take this, like I say in the Lean In portion, you take this information and you make it transformational and you use it to move your life forward. That is the world to me.

And so every time I read a review, that helps me know that, okay, this meant this to this person, or if I get that kind of feedback from my listeners who are in the Art School, that I talk to more often, that also is so helpful. Because I know, if I can help one person, that is the world to that one person, and I also know that so often, what is most personal is also most universal, that if it’s working for you, you are not alone out there and that will also work for someone else.

So I wanted to send a shout-out to a couple of listeners who have recently left reviews. This one is from Kelly Darke, who writes – the title is Engaging, Authentic, and Beautiful, “This is a podcast you need to listen to. Leah is inspiring, insightful, and so encouraging. Each episode is full of useful information with a truly authentic vibe. Thank you, Leah, for all that you do.”

Thank you, Kelly, for that beautiful review and for taking the time to leave it. I’ll continue to share some of those in upcoming episodes. And if you haven’t left a review yet, I would love to hear from you.

So, I am creating this podcast for you, this particular episode, from Nebraska. We are here for a week for harvest, visiting my husband’s family on their family farm. And so I’m actually in town at my brother and sister-in-law’s using their two internet, because farmernet is a little unreliable and I had Art School that I taught today and I have coaching calls. So I appreciate the use of town internet.

And also, it kind of pertains to the subject today because I love this family time and I love, love, love being an entrepreneur and that I get to work remotely and I can be here with my family and I can also do the work that I want to do this week and stay connected to all of you. So that is definitely one of my favorite things, that autonomy and that freedom about being an entrepreneur.

And it also comes with I haven’t slept very well in my own environment for the last five days. So I just taught art school and I loved it and I also have days, guys, where I don’t feel on top of my game, but I still give myself the gift of showing up and knowing that I’m going to bring my best, and the same with this podcast.

I’m kind of tired, I kind of feel like my words, my self-organizing intelligence is struggling to find the words today. But I’m committed to doing this and I know what a powerful force that seemingly humble practice of consistency is.

And that is part of what is at the heart of what I want to talk to you about today is this idea of quantity over quality, and that over time, a dedication and a devotion to showing up and to giving your best, even if your best on some days isn’t your best on other days, but continually showing up and practicing your craft, sharing your work with the world, using your voice over and over again, that married with this commitment to your final dream that you are doing that, you are creating that, you are claiming your destiny – it’s not a matter of if it works out or not, you say, I am doing this, I am creating this, this huge beautiful thing, or maybe to you it’s not huge. Maybe it’s you have this small dream in a beautiful corner of the universe and that is beautiful too, but that every day, you do what you can to show up to create that with complete belief that that’s what you’re creating and not questioning, not second guessing yourself – and here’s the kicker – not making how you show up contingent on how you feel day by day.

Because this is where I see people self-sabotage over and over again. They say, I’m not feeling it, I was feeling it and now I’m not feeling it.  My friends, not feeling it is not a good reason not to do it. You owe it to yourself to show up in those consistent ways, to give yourself that satisfaction of follow through and lay, brick by brick, every day the foundation for the walls of your dreams.

But to say I don’t feel like it, no, no, no, no, no. And this is not to say that you use your goals against yourself and that you throw yourself into some punishing routine. You take consistent steps that are sustainable and that do move you forward. Sometimes you take leaps. Sometimes it’s like, if you’re an athlete in a training season, sometimes you’re buckling down, you’re conditioning hard, you’re doing two-a-days. Sometimes it’s go time and there are games to be played night after night.

Other times, you rest, but you never just don’t show up because you don’t feel like it. You, my friends, deserve a better life than that. You have to remind yourself that if there’s a dream you want, if there is an extraordinary psychology that you want to create from, you need to cultivate that psychology by learning to think greater than you feel. And again, this is not to say that you just run roughshod over your emotions and you don’t listen to them and that you don’t listen to your body. That’s not what this is about at all.

Because if you’ve formed a dream that was informed by your soul, by your whole being, it is not going to instruct you to create a life that comes at the expense of your values or what you hold most dear. It is not going to ask that you do violence to yourself or the beloveds in your life or the beloved parts of your life in order to create a dream.

Your potential, however, your inner genius, your sacred dream will ask of you, however, that you find strength you didn’t know you had. And sometimes, that strength is needed in the most mundane of places, in the places where you’re like, I’m just bored by it now. I’m just not feeling it, it just feels tedious, I don’t feel connected. That, my friends, those are some of those seemingly innocuous places are some of the most treacherous places.

Those are the places where people give up and they don’t think they’re giving up. They just think, I’m not feeling it, and think that’s a legitimate way to talk themselves out of their potential and to talk themselves out of their dream. You deserve more than that. Your one wild and precious life deserves more than that.

I also hear people say, when they’re saying, I don’t feel like it, a lot of times they’re meaning, well I should feel more confident about this by now, or I should feel better about my abilities here, or if I’m offering this to the world, shouldn’t this be better? Also no.

So the coach, Dan Sullivan, has a brilliant way of talking about this. He talks about three Cs. And if you want to evolve, if you want to move your work forward, if you want to actualize your potential and create your dreams, you need to have these three Cs in order. And too often, we have them out of order.

So the three Cs in correct order are courage, confidence, and competence. But too often, when we’re going for a dream or we’re wanting to cultivate something within ourselves, we’re wanting to feel competent first because then we don’t have to feel vulnerable. And if we feel competent, then we don’t have to worry about what the world thinks of what we’re doing or about what we think of what we’re doing because, hey, we’re good at it.

But who ever gets to competence without first venturing through many iterations, without first being a beginner and being vulnerable? So that’s why, too, you need to practice courage first because if you’re being vulnerable, you’re going to need courage.

That doesn’t mean anything has gone wrong. When you don’t feel competent or confident when you’re beginning something, that does not mean you should not do the thing or that something has gone wrong. That just means you are exactly where you should be, and now instead you have the opportunity to practice courage, to grow your heart. And that is not a phase of the creative process you want to cheat yourself of.

You need that heart. You need that inner strength to really build and be able to channel that organic amazing intelligence and wisdom and that creativity that wants to flow. You need that period of digging deep and showing up and being vulnerable, but doing it anyway. It’s also a period too that helps, in an organic way, maintain a healthy ego, an ego that doesn’t need to defend itself, an ego that isn’t afraid of making mistakes and learning.

But if you try though to want confidence, meaning you feel pretty secure about it, you’re feeling pretty good about everything, without going through courage, you’ll also cheat yourself, and there’s no way to ever cultivate true confidence without that underlying foundation of courage.

So, that’s a great check  at various times, if you find you’re procrastinating or you’re not getting traction or you are just generally avoiding or resisting taking action, ask yourself what phase of the three Cs that you’re in, courage, confidence, and competence, and if you’re trying to skip one and just purchase the competence at the end. Do not cheat yourself of cultivating courage and confidence by thinking you can just purchase competence.

The other thing you don’t want to cheat yourself of is this meta ability to act, again, even though you don’t feel like it. And the more you practice that, the more you think in alignment with what you want to create, with who you want to become, then the more in the moment you will not be thrown off course by things like, I just don’t feel like it.

Like, for instance, today I’m feeling a little bit out of my normal routine. I am out of my normal routine, and so I was feeling resistant about doing this podcast, just this general vague feeling of I just don’t feel like it, maybe I should just wait until I feel like it. I feel like it’s going to be better if I wait until I feel like it. Maybe if I go for a long walk or write some notes this time or find just the exact right thing to say, then I’ll feel like it.

But I also know what I’d be cheating myself of if I procrastinate and delay is that ability to create even when I don’t feel like it, and to do so in a way that’s very kind to me. Because cultivating this ability to continue to think and feel greater than I am currently thinking and feeling, to continue to think and feel in a way that supports and facilitates my creative evolution and my craft is something that I want to get better and better at, and that often, that most insurmountable obstacle that lies between us and our dreams and who we want to become isn’t really this big huge mountain, but it’s every day that very small next step, especially when you don’t feel like it.

When you can act consistently and in alignment with what you want to create and with who you want to be in the world, even when you don’t feel like it, you are on your way to greatness. If you can act kind, even when you’re feeling not so kind, if you can act patient and generate patience and cultivate patience even when you’re feeling like you just want to be done with this already, those things too help cultivate that way of being that creates greatness, that creates inevitable results that are the very things that you’re dreaming of.

So, what’s a tool then that brings this all together? What’s something I can I can give you that is a deliverable, that is a touchstone, that is something very pragmatic and well defined that you can come back to over and over again?

Well, it’s the practice of a devotion to quantity over quality and knowing that quantity, in the long run, will lead to quality. So it very much lines up with things we’ve been talking about the last few weeks about self-organizing intelligence and if we can just flow without judgment and get out of our own way, there is this consciousness within us that is ever-learning, ever-watching, ever-evolving, and that we can do this. We can continue to show up most vulnerably, most honestly, and then that will be the best way to evolve our craft and to reach our dreams rather than this constant ongoing self-judgment and harsh self-criticism.

So how does this quantity over quality leads to quality tool work? Well, it’s very simple and you can employ that sacred twin intention process. You set yourself up for so many iterations of what you’re going to do and you decide, ahead of time, how you’re going to think and feel throughout this process.

I’ve also mentioned in recent podcasts how wit occurred to me that one of the things I most desired to be is to be in this place where I’m not self-conscious, where I’m just flowing. So I try to think, what is the antonym, what is the opposite of self-consciousness. And at first, I thought maybe it’s confidence. But then, when I drilled down to the heart and soul, what really resonated with me, the oppositional state of being for self-consciousness is not confidence for me.

For me, it’s consciousness because when I’m in that place where the small me is out of the way and I am consciousness, through me, through my eyes, through my body, through this particular incarnation of consciousness, then the world just seems to work. Then I feel more like myself than ever before, even though I’m not thinking about myself at all. Then I feel at home in the universe. And I know that’s when I’m also in flow state. That’s when my thoughts, my decisions, my creative decisions, one thing seems to seamlessly lead to the next, and that’s when I learn the most quickly and I’m not impeded by the negative emotions that come with being worried about my ego, being worried about how good I am, being worried about how my progress is, being worried about how I’m measuring up.

When I’m not worried about myself, concerned about myself, self-absorbed, then I can just flow and then that learning, it’s an organic and a natural process and it is an evolutionary process, meaning there are improvements and growth that happens along the way organically.

I have a few stories to share with you that will illustrate this process. One comes from the book Art and Fear by David Bayles and Ted Orland. So the story goes, the ceramics teacher announced on opening day that he was dividing the class into two groups. All those on the left side of the studio, he said, would be graded solely on the quantity of work they produced. All those on the right, solely on its quality.

His procedure was simple; on the final day of class, he would bring in his bathroom scales and weigh the work of the quantity group. 50 pounds of pots rated an A, 40 pounds a B, and so on.

Those being graded on quality, however, needed to produce only one pot, albeit a perfect one, to get an A. Well, grading time came and a curious fact emerged. The works of highest quality were all produced by the group being graded for quantity. It seems that while the quantity group was churning out piles of work and learning from their mistakes, the quality group had sat theorizing about perfection and, in the end, had little more to show for their efforts than grandiose theories and a pile of dead clay.

So, I know I need constant reminders of that story because it can sure seem, especially all of the conditioning that I received growing up, and well-intentioned standards of excellence and things like that, often resulted in an overthinking and waiting for just the right moment and delaying and overcomplicating rather than just showing up in a humble and yet consistent and disciplined way and doing the work. Just continue to show up and do the work.

Another story I heard once from someone who is a painter and she said that on the first day of her studio painting class in college, the professor said, “Well, we all have 1000 bad paintings in us, so we might as well get started and get them out of the way.”

And I love that and it’s not that I necessarily think that you need to paint 1000 paintings and that they’re going to be bad and then all of a sudden 1001 turns out and it’s great. But I do love the freedom and the liberation that that provides. And it also ties in with the concept we talked about last week, about the power of horizontal revision. And yes, vertical revision has its place and its own power, but also, if we stop making every work that we’re working on our opus, thinking it needs to be our opus, that rather we can better serve our craft, our art, our dream, and our lives by not taking that one thing in front of us so seriously.

It’s something I think Liz Gilbert states so beautifully in her book Big Magic when she talks about how, as an artist, the work has to be both sacred and not sacred, so sacred that you are willing to let that next step, that next pot you throw, that next painting you do, that next offer you make, that next business opportunity that you follow through in, your devotion to what you’re creating and to your life has to be so sacred that that next thing Is not so sacred that you need it to be perfect.

The last story that I wanted to share with you is one that, if you’ve been listening, you actually have been very familiar with, even if you didn’t know I was going to tell this story, because when I decided to do this podcast, almost a year ago. I could feel my perfectionism rearing its head.

So I employed this quantity over quality is going to lead to my intended results because I knew that if I overthought this, if I gave into all the voices in my head – and I have some very specific ones that tell me why I wouldn’t be good at something like this, why I wasn’t good enough yet, why my style of thinking, speaking, writing, creating content would not translate well over this medium, then I wouldn’t do it. Or I would do it and it would be so painful that I would not enjoy the process, that I would resent it, and that I actually wouldn’t grow and get any better.

So I made a deal with myself, an agreement, a sacred contract at the beginning that I would do 52 consecutive episodes, I would show up consistently every week, no matter how I felt, no matter if I felt so tired that I didn’t think I could think clearly, kind of like my mind was trying to tell me today, no matter whether something big was going on in my life, whether some upheaval that resulted in logistics being difficult, time being tight, emotions being raw, energy being exhausted.

No matter whether I thought I didn’t have anything worth sharing with you, I was going to show up and I was going to trust that there was something that wanted to happen, and that part of me bringing something to you that I hope is life-giving, life-affirming, even healing, moves your dreams forward, that this process too is also healing for me, is also healing those places where I’ve held myself back, is also helping every week me showing up in a loving place as I peel off yet another layer of inhibition, self-doubt, self-judgment, showing up in a place where I’ve decided ahead of time, hey Leah, our standard and our process here is one of deep love.

It’s that Dr. Suzuki quote I love where love is deep, much can be accomplished and I deserve to show up for myself that way, just the way that I do for clients, and it’s my devotion to that belief that that is where true transformation happens. It’s that whispering to my soul, that whispering to the creativity within me and then surrounding to that which wants to happen.

And it’s not this kind of surrender that then means I don’t have to do anything and I just hope it all works out. It’s more of the surrender of okay, something wants to happen through me. This work wants to happen through me. For whatever reason, it matters deeply to me that what’s in you that wants to happen through you, that your creativity is liberated, that your life flourishes as a result of that.

And I am going to help facilitate that, even if every week it’s sometimes hard for me and I have to learn to overcome myself. I have to practice thinking greater than I feel. I have to practice thinking greater than self-doubt. I have to practice not indulging in self-doubt. I have to practice not indulging in judgment or how things might not turn out, or whether should I have said that differently.

I have to decide ahead of time, what is the most powerful, most loving, most affective way for me to create this work, and then showing up every week, no excuses, to do that. So 52 weeks without judgment. Next week will be episode number 52 and I can honestly say there’s been so much healing that has happened for me personally by doing this podcast and I want to thank you so very much because it would not have been the same if I were just doing this in my closet and never sharing it with the world and never sharing it with real listeners.

And there have been so many gifts as a result of this process. The emotional healing, the tremendous financial leaps I have created in my business in the last year, creative healing, and so much more to come. So although this is episode 51, nearing on 52, I also feel like man, I’m just getting warmed up, I’m just getting started. This is just the beginning.

And that’s what I know is possible for you too. No matter where you are on the spectrum of your journey, if you’re just starting out, if you’re a rising star, if you are established, but now you want to see okay, if I really open this thing up, what can I do? I want for you to feel like there is so much more ahead of you and that with every year, it’s going to be the best year ever.

You can look back and count your blessings and have your heart overflow with gratitude for all the years before and everything you’ve done and created and experienced and also know that it’s completely within the realm of possibilities for you to have your life be this gently rising arc, where every year you look back and say, that was the best year ever. That was the best year ever.

So you know now, 51 podcasts in, that this is the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in and really work with me, coach with me. Don’t just listen to this information. Take it, use it, implement it, integrate it, apply it to your life. Take this information and make it transformational.

So you can probably guess what your assignment is going to be this week. I want you to think of an area in your life that you want to move forward. It can be something that is so precious and important to you, it could be something that’s kind of irking you, that you’re just not making more forward progress but you think this area’s not a very big deal. Maybe this is a great place to play around with this concept Leah is talking about. Quantity over quality is going to lead to quality.

So find a way where you can set yourself up for so many iterations. Maybe you’re going to write 100 poems and you’re going to do 100 and you’re going to find a way to define what’s the beginning, what’s the end, how do I know when one is done. Give yourself also a time constraint for doing this.

So you’ll see with my podcast, obviously I create one a week. Sometimes I stack them and do more than one a week, but it’s always I release them at a rate of one a week without fail. And also, a little bit more backend detail to that, I also constraint the time that I give myself to work on these.

Because in the beginning, I will tell you, my very first podcast, it took my two weeks to get that first podcast out. Part of that was me figuring out the technology, but then part of it was me being like, oh no Leah, we can’t do it. There’s no way – you’re just going to have to get really efficient at creating something that’s meaningful and useful within an hour, if not at max, two hours.

So that’s the constraint I give myself. So that keeps me moving forward along that horizontal revision timeline that I talked about in last week’s episode. So give yourself a time constraint, give yourself a regular schedule, and then give yourself a certain amount of iterations. Or in the case of the ceramics class that I offered earlier, that story, another way to measure it.

So in that one, they measured the pounds of pots produced. So some way that you’re going to be able to objectively measure that quantity. And then this part is huge. You decide ahead of time your orientation, your protocol for how you’re going to think and feel around this process.

So for instance, using my podcast as an example again, I knew I wanted to come from deep love with this and I wanted to be as authentic as possible. I also knew that that authenticity piece is related to quality for me and that I had some healing to do. So giving myself one through 52, I knew ahead of time, hey Leah, this is something that’s hard for you. It requires a lot of courage. It’s not something you have competence in yet at all. I’ve never created a podcast before, it’s a completely different medium for me to offer coaching when I don’t have people directly in front of me.

I definitely was not feeling confident about it but I knew I could have courage and I knew I could practice courage all year long. I knew all year long I could practice showing up and doing something, even when my fear about it not being perfect and being very far from perfect could feel almost debilitating, but I decided I will not be paralyzed by this.

And one of the great gifts of that has been to discover that that idea that people throw around about how – the gifts of imperfection, let’s say, like Brené Brown’s great book. That is an amazing idea. But to have a way in your life where you can actually practice that so that you can get on a gut, heart, cellular, bone-deep level, how true that is.

Your creative flow, your creative liberation, your dreams lie on the other side of that discomfort and your ability to move through that discomfort is going to be incredibly aided when you realize what an ally your imperfection is. And not only what an ally it is but how imperfection can be this pathway for you to discover aspects of you that you may have closed off before because the world had told you oh, that’s not perfect, that’s not acceptable.

But I can tell you, me being able to show up every week and flow this, I am learning things about myself and I’m finding strength and power through this process of imperfection. Of showing up inconsistently, of allowing it to be imperfect, of allowing myself to feel whatever fear and feelings come up, but saying hey Leah, you’re practicing courage, or deciding ahead of time.

Here’s that protocol part. I decide ahead of time, this is valuable. This is good. And then when my brain wants to tell me after I turn off the record button and it’s like, oh, you rambled, you forgot this point, oh, you should have said that differently, you might have offended someone the way you said that and it wants to second-guess, I turn that off.

And I’m like hey, no. Not here, not today. That does not meet our standard of deep love. We decided ahead of time there is no back talk after the episode. And before the episode, there’s no self-defeating talk there either. So it is exercising my own agency to say yeah, I do get to decide what this process is like for me and yeah, I do get to decide that it’s going to be incredibly, immensely valuable.

Not only for me, but for other people out there. For countless people that I won’t ever meet. I’m going to decide that the kinder and freer I can be with this process, the more loving, the more powerful and profound the effects are going to be for people out there listening.

And the amazing thing is I have had the gift of having people write in and now be my clients who have said how meaningful, how powerful it’s been for them. But I had to think that way before I ever had that evidence. So again, think now about a dream of yours, a goal of yours. Any area of your life you want to work on. Think about how you can put this quantity over quality is going to lead to quality practice into place.

Because I guarantee, learning happens so much faster when you don’t have to constantly slow down to deal with the negative emotions that come up when you’re judging yourself so harshly and criticizing yourself so harshly along the way. Learning happens so much faster and the process is so much more amazing when you’re not self-conscious, but you are flowing consciousness.

This really simple practice engenders consistency. It engenders a discipline that feels like a loving kindness for yourself and you can feel it actually moving your life forward and you will see external results in the world. This practice helps you develop the internal muscles you need, the internal muscles for greatness. No matter what greatness means for you, but you will become someone who is not at the whim of feeling like it, not feeling like it.

You will become someone who shows up for your life no matter what. This practice seems so simple but I promise, marry this with deciding ahead of time that the protocol is deep self-love, decide ahead of time that you can decide what the results are going to be and grow into them, and this consistency married with commitment to your final results, to your destiny makes you unstoppable.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you’ve enjoyed this episode, if you’ve enjoyed this podcast and found it useful, the best thing you can do to support this work is to go to iTunes and leave a review.

As I mentioned in this episode, the metric that matters the most to me is that this podcast is useful and even transformational for you out there listening. That this somehow helps you move the needle in your life in ways that are meaningful and important to you. Even if sometimes that is just helping you shift your mindset and have a better day.

So let me know. Let me know if it’s working. Let me know what you’d like to hear more of. And if you’d like to stay in touch and be connected to this work on a deeper level and to this community, head over to my website, www.leahcb.com and hop on my mailing list.

I do not email too often. And when I do, I really think it through and think about offering something that’s useful and valuable to you and I am going to be announcing some really exciting projects coming up here in 2020. Many of you listeners and many of my clients have been asking for things like retreats and large group masterminds or small group masterminds, or different variations of The Art School.

So thank you for all of that feedback. I have been listening. I’ve been taking it in and I’ve also been doing some soul searching, envisioning, and deep diving myself. I have been taking these musings on hours long walks actually, while we’ve been in Nebraska. Even thinking about what I want to offer before this year is over and what I want to offer next year.

But I’m also thinking further than that because I’m really wanting to attract people who are not just thinking about what they want to create before 2019 is over, or what they want to create in 2020. I want to get some huge-hearted creative powerhouses, visionaries together to think about who do they want to be in the next decade.

And I’ve got plans, my friends. I have plans for these retreats and these other coaching offerings that really, I don’t want to offer anything that I would not be beyond thrilled and excited to attend, take part in, participate in myself. So stay tuned. I’m really excited to introduce more details about these things in the coming weeks and months.

So I hope you will stay tuned. And this brings us to the closing inspiration for today’s episode. As I mentioned earlier, I put this practice of quantity over quality leads to quality into practice in creating this podcast. I told myself, Leah, do one through 52 without judging yourself. Set up a protocol ahead of time for how you’re going to create this, how you’re going to think about it, how you’re going to feel about it.

Set your intentions ahead of time and stick to that. And give yourself the grace of those 52 episodes to really let things unfold and to let yourself get out of the way and let something work through you. Something that’s going to be useful to other people, but it’s not going to be your job to judge.

So as a reminder to keep me on track, I borrowed once again, something from the godmother of – so many of us can claim her as a godmother of our creative journeys. Julia Cameron. She has a story of having a Post-It note above her computer or in her office. I can’t remember where.

But anyway, it was like a note from her higher power. God to her. And it said, “Julia, you take care of the quantity and I’ll take care of the quality.” So I wrote myself a similar note from god. My higher power. The universe to me in various places because I can benefit from many reminders. It says, “Leah, you take care of the quantity and I’ll take care of the quality.”

So I want to offer you that today as we close. Is there some area in your life where something is wanting to happen through you? And if you could just get out of your own way, you know that so much healing could happen and that you could bring so much goodness to the world.

If so, try this. Write yourself a note from love even, if god or the universe doesn’t resonate with you, from your highest self. Let yourself just take care of the quantity and let something greater than you work through you and take care of the quality. Have a wonderful week everyone. I’ll talk to you soon.