Ep #29: Reviving Your Creative Capacity

Have you ever had the experience where you just knew something was off with you? Maybe it was physically, and you went from doctor to doctor, and it was finally once you received an affirmation or a diagnosis that you felt some relief and because now you had a way forward and now there was a way to address this plaguing issue.

Well, that’s an experience a lot of my clients have when they come to me with this particular phenomenon where they are pouring in their heart and soul, blood, sweat, and tears into their creativity, into their business, into their life, and yet they’re not getting results that are commensurate with their effort.

98% of the time I can diagnose without hearing more something that’s going on underneath. It’s so universal and people are so relieved to find out that this is what’s going on and that it’s nothing that’s wrong with them, but it’s a situation that can be easily addressed and remedied.

So if you’ve had this experience of giving it your all and not getting the results back that you’d hoped for, not creating, manifesting, or experiencing what you’d hoped for, then you’ll for sure want to tune in to today’s episode and hear about this three-part tool that will get you off and running and in a short amount of time seeing a drastic improvement in what you’re able to create and the traction that you’re able to get.

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, you beautiful, creative souls, and happy Memorial Day weekend. I know you are listening to this after Memorial Day weekend, but that is when I’m recording it so I’m thinking of you all and wishing you a really fun and safe and gorgeous weekend with your loved ones.

I just spent a wonderful week in Iowa. My youngest, my daughter Blaise and I took a trip to see my parents on their farm in northern Iowa. She was done with school early and one thing that I have been wanting to carve out and do is special dedicated alone time with each of my children because they are wonderful as a group, and it’s also a very different dynamic and relationship to have time with them one on one.

So it was just lovely. I got to see my parents and my brother Andy and his kids and my sister and her daughter, and we just had lots of lovely outside time. Blaise got to climb every apple tree in my parents’ orchard. We cut rhubarb and made four different kinds of rhubarb desserts so it was just really like, an idyllic time and also helpful because in the back of my mind, I was just soaking it in in terms of research for the novel that I’m writing because it’s set in north central Iowa.

And to me, the landscape and the spirit of the landscape has a very important role in that novel. So I was drinking in the energy of that. And all of that is so very relevant to today’s topic because as I mentioned in the beginning over and over again, I have clients who come to me who are very conscientious. They are hard workers, they are diligent, they’re on top of things, they work really hard, and yet they’ll have this frustration and be baffled by the fact that mysteriously, they’re not getting the results that one would expect for the amount of effort and the quality of the work that they’re putting in.

So there are many different things that then go into it that we can tweak and address and coach on and it’s part of what I call the creative audit that I do with people is to see where can we make some tweaks that really will create a lot of traction. And because a lot of times, the things are small fixes and small shifts that make a huge difference and it’s not like, rebuilding the whole engine.

So one aspect of that is this three-part tool, and I’ll do this energetic program with like, an energetic up leveling program with many of my clients who are having this experience. And it’s like an in-home retreat, and I’m actually working on creating it into a product that will be on my website so you can do it on your own and that should be available by the end of the year.

But I call it revive because how it seems to me when people come with presenting in this way where they’re putting so much into it and yet not getting a lot of traction, how it presents to me is it’s like they have this Ferrari and their foot’s down on the gas, they’re ready to go, but no one has filled up the tank or they filled it up with the wrong things.

So this is kind of like an oversimplified explanation of the process we go through to figure out what’s going on. But today, I wanted to share with you the three-part tool that’s part of this revive. Revive your soul so that you are operating with all of your power available to you. Because what I have come to realize because this is something that I struggled with for years and didn’t realize I struggled with and it was such a relief to find this out, and so many of my clients are the same way is that we are going full bore, 150 miles an hour, putting everything into it.

And we’re doing this thinking that we have our full power available to us but really, it’s like we have half a tank or a quarter of a tank, or really, we’re running on fumes. But we’re so accustomed to running on fumes because it’s been a long time since we’ve had an experience of being so filled up, of feeling our wholeness, of feeling revived and connected to our soul and to be in physically energized and vital that it’s just become our new normal.

And for a long time, I’ve used the metaphor, again, of the Ferrari and not having gas in the tank, or just being accustomed to running on quarter of a tank. But I really think it’s more like fumes because on a quarter of a tank, your car still goes. It’s just more like half our engine is not having access to the fuel. And when I tell this to people, they’re like, “But I feel okay and everything feels normal, I think I’m getting what I need,” but again, it takes some time to step back and really assess.

Are you getting what you need? Are you giving yourself more than enough? And that’s usually where I have to go with people is their comfort zone is more along the lines of well, I can do this to get by, I can scrape to get by, I don’t need that much, and doing anything more than that feels indulgent, they feel guilty. But what I want to challenge you today is something that seems so simple but a lot of people have a lot of obstacles to doing this.

But I promise, if you use this tool and practice this wholeheartedly, you will revolutionize your creative life and the results that you’re able to get. I know the more I have done this, the more money I have been able to make with much less effort. My art flows with much less effort. It doesn’t mean that I still don’t show up and do the work, but I’m doing it from a filled-up place and part of this is time spent in our work of really embracing and knowing my wholeness.

But it’s such a different thing to write and to paint and to do business and to coach from this place of having way more than enough energy and time and abundance than it is to be doing it from a place where I am really being miserly, or nickel and diming myself with what I need to thrive and it requires getting really honest with yourself about what you need to thrive and then making a commitment to give that to yourself, making a commitment to be someone who takes extraordinary care of themselves.

One way I’ve been doing this for years and just when I think wow, I am really taking care of myself, I’m giving myself plenty of what I need, then there is another revelation and another layer of the onion to peel back. So for instance, I think it was about three or four years ago, I went to a writer’s retreat in Montana with the author Laura Munson, Haven’s Writer’s Retreat. And it was something that I did for myself for my birthday that year, and I wanted the dedicated time to work on my book.

And I got up there and there was a beautiful vegan chef and this beautiful bedroom a 500-acre property that butted up to national forest and there was a beautiful yoga studio on site. So all I had to do was write. I could exercise early in the morning and meditate. Somebody was making my meals, and I had things covered at home. So all I had to do was write.

And I had been struggling to get the writing going. But there, it just poured out and so much so that even in the evenings, when other people were gathering around this beautiful stone fireplace in the living room area and having a glass of wine and visiting, which would have been lovely because there were some really beautiful lovely people there, I just wanted to go back and keep writing, and it didn’t feel to me like work. It just felt like this delicious feeling in my heart where my heart was so grateful to have the space to work.

And I also had a really stunning revelation because a thought occurred to me that I don’t suck, and I didn’t even know I was thinking that. I am a coach and I have coaches, I didn’t even realize that somewhere deep in my mind, I was being really hard on myself for the fact that writing was feeling hard, and it wasn’t until I went there and got to experience the luxury of – and I call it a luxury, but I really mean it’s something that I’m committed to giving myself full on.

I don’t mean luxury as in I shouldn’t have it or it’s this thing we dole our sparingly. I mean, it gave me an insight into the way I want to live and organize my life so that I can live that way creatively. But the fact that I didn’t know that I was thinking well, I must suck because this writing business is hard, that was a revelation, but it was also such a revelation about how much of that – it wasn’t the writing that was hard. It was a realization and then a pride that came with knowing I’m doing an amazing job.

I have three young children, I have an art career, I have a coaching career, I’m also writing. I’m doing an amazing job and what I’m doing is not easy, but now that I know what it’s like to be filled up, and it’s filled up in mind, body, and spirit because trust me, having someone cook for you, that was just as much fuel for my creative process as was the nature, as was the time alone, as was having access to Laura who is an amazing editor and writer.

So I know I can hear already some people saying, “Well, that must be nice to be able to go on a retreat, but I can’t go on a retreat from my life.” So first of all, if I were your coach, I would challenge you on that and I would say if you want to, let’s find a way to make that happen, but I’m going to table that road of coaching for now and bring it back to the tool that I wanted to share with you today because maybe going on a retreat in the next 12 months is not in the budget you had planned for and not in the calendar.

But what I wanted to do with creating this revive your soul retreat is giving you the option of filling up your soul with everything it needs so that you can thrive as a human being, you can thrive as a creative, you can thrive financially, you can thrive in your relationships without having to leave your home, and to do it in ways where it builds up incrementally, so it’s not such a shock to your system and then it doesn’t cause an identity crisis and it’s not a shock to your bank account.

And so this leads us right into the coach with my portion of today. So instead of just listening to me and taking this information in and being entertained by it, I want you to take the information and make it transformational. So really lean in, do this work, and coach with me. Because I know you’re out there doing amazing things, I know you have a beautiful dream in your heart, and I want you to be fueled so that you can carry that out into the world and share that and have the experience of being so proud and in awe of what you’re able to create and have the experience of being able to share it with others.

And you can make it so much easier on yourself and that process so much more enjoyable, especially through the parts that are just inherently challenging and difficult by using this process. This is like a three by three process. First of all, I want you to think of three things right now in your life that you are incredibly grateful for and proud of. Things that were once a dream.

So for instance, for me, one is the family that I have. I love my children and my husband so much and there’s just many times a day or a week when I think this is a dream. This really is a dream. I could not love them more and the experience of having the family I have is priceless.

So another is related to the fact that I once wanted to be an artist and had no art and now I make art, I make art that I love, I love making art, and I sell my art and other people love it, and I make money making my art. That, I’m so grateful for and I’m so proud of and it really is a dream come true.

And a third one would be the coaching that I get to do. There are so many times in the middle of a coaching session when in my heart and mind I’m thinking, I can’t believe I get to do this. I can’t believe this is a career I didn’t know about growing up and yet here I am and this is what I’m built to do. I feel so at home in the universe doing this. I know I’m creating a lot of value and I’ve really been of service to someone else, and they are finding it very valuable and they are appreciative, and I feel like I’m making a true difference, a true immediate difference in a person’s life.

And then also the ripples that it sends out by changing a person’s life, especially somebody with big dreams and a big heart and a big vision. So, those are three examples and in a later episode of this podcast, I want to spend more time talking about what gratitude really is because I know it’s a buzzword. I know everyone talks about gratitude journals and gratitude lists, and yet when I talk to so many people, I find that they haven’t ever really been taught gratitude in a way that’s landed with them so that they actually were able to experience the energy of gratitude.

Because connecting to the energy of gratitude, actually knowing how to do and be grateful is instantly transformative. And not that it’s bad to make gratitude lists and to have a gratitude journal, but there is so much more and such a greater power available that again, I’ll talk about that more in a later episode.

So now onto the second part of the three by three. Now that you’ve done the three things that you are already proud of and already grateful for and already in love with in your life, think of three things you’d like a little bit more of in your life. So whether that’s a little bit more time to read, or a little bit more white space in your calendar, or a little bit more time with loved ones, or more time with your art, or more money, making more money.

Write down three things that you want a little bit more of and I challenge you to reach for those three things just a little bit more in little ways. Find ways to give yourself just a little bit more of that every single day and if you don’t think you can, then every day for that one thing you don’t think you can give yourself more of, write down 10 ideas for how you can give yourself more of that with the budget that you currently have, with where you currently are in your life.

And then the third part of the three by three are three things you just want a little less of. So, less time with social media, if it’s not filling you up, less time with other people’s priorities, times when you say yes and you really mean no. Less worrying about things because worry pretends to be necessary. So, sometimes when I challenge people to kind of put down the ball of yarn that they’re all trying to untangle and worry over that’s kind of become their little lovey and their obsession and their hobby, it’s a little bit too much at first.

So then I’ll say okay, let’s step back and can you worry a little bit less about that? Can you pick out times when you’re not going to worry about money, when you’re not going to worry that you’re good enough, when you feel the thought come up oh, I should worry about money, I should worry about whether I’m good enough? For that time, can you just pass on it and put that ball of yarn down?

So that in a nutshell is my three by three practice from my soul revival program. So it might be helpful for you too to think of a dream retreat you’d love to go on and you’d work on whatever it is that you would most love to work on. So let’s say for example, that you’re an artist who wants to be in the flow more often and you also want to be of the mindset that your work is so valuable that the world also knows your work and money is abundant, is as abundant as your creativity is.

You are prolific and your artwork flows from you and dollars float in. And so let’s say the dream retreat was two weeks with a master coach in the studio where all you had to work on was your art and your mindset. Meals are taken care of, your mind is being supported by a mentor and a coach, you have all the art supplies you could ever dream of in a beautiful space.

So, take that example and turn it into whatever your dream retreat would be and now think of what the essence is of that dream retreat. So, for a lot of us it will be time, beauty, support, and mind, body, and spirit and space. It will also be a lack of worry, distraction, guilt, and loneliness, and probably a lack of doubt too because you’d have the support there of coaches, teachers, mentors, or colleagues.

So try to identify what the essence of that dream retreat would be, how you’d be thinking and feeling, and then reduce that and challenge yourself to come up with three ways you can give yourself a little bit more of that. Do your own revival retreat program over the next month. Do your own energetic up leveling program over the next month.

Give yourself just three of these things in small doses more and more every day and reach less and less for the three things that take your energy away. And then return to that first part of the three by three. So you’re allowing yourself to rest in the energy of what you have and what you’re grateful for because resting in that energy of what you have is going to expand your capacity and your gratitude for having.

There is this wonderful quote in a book I read years ago called The Mind-Made Prison by Mateo Tabatabai and a line in there stuck with me for years because he said that you will never have a greater capacity for joy than you do in the present moment. And that really captures the heart of this exercise.

So you want to embody what gratitude and what being in love with your life as it is right now is and then those three things you’re reaching for are not three things that you’re reaching for from a place of wanting to get better or a place of scarcity. It’s just from a place of nourishment and knowing that you’re going to feel more nourished and more nourished the more you reach for those.

And then also reaching less and less for those other things not because you’re bad for reaching for them now, but because it’s going to allow your energy levels to rise. So I hope you try this energetic program and if you do, I know you’re going to experience results, so I would love to hear what the results are. I’ve heard clients say they just have so much more energy not only for their art but for friendships and also say they weren’t maybe even working on money goals, but the more they tended to their energy levels, the more the levels in their bank account rose, the more invoices came in paid. So I’d love to hear what happens for you.

Thank you again so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you enjoy this content and these episodes and you want to take it deeper, you would love the work that we do in private coaching and in Art School. The next Art School starts up this fall in September and we are already filling both the master class and the open class.

You can go to my website, www.leahcb.com to learn more about both of those programs and to sign up for a discovery consult. I have some of those currently open and available. And also this summer, we’re doing something really special. We’re offering a summer workshop series.

So every month – we just had our last one in May and this next one will be June, Tuesday the 18th at 12pm Eastern. And we do an intensive on a special topic and then I have a workshop portion where you have an assignment and you can ask questions, the group can talk amongst themselves and I’m right there so you get the ball rolling and you start getting momentum.

And then there’s plenty of time for everyone to be coached. So that’s a great opportunity to see what the community is like, to see what Art School is all about, to be inspired, to energize your summer, to see what being coached is like, to see what working with me would be like. So you can email me at leah@leahcb.com with summer workshop series if you are interested in that. I have a limited number of spaces available because I want to make sure that I get to everybody on those coaching calls and I’d love to have you join us.

So this is the last recording of making this episode in the month of May, which I’ve talked earlier, it’s been the month of May, yay. So one last time, I wanted to close with what the mantra has been for the month, and that is I love you and there is nothing you can do about it. Have a beautiful week everyone and I’ll see you next time.