Ep #173: Scarcity Thoughts You Didn’t Know You Had

This episode continues our mini-series where we are making a money move, a capital-C Creative powerhouse move, moving away from a paradigm of scarcity and not enough, into a place of knowing you are sitting on a goldmine, into a place where you feel safe and empowered to flow your creative genius.

In this particular episode, we’re going to be working with three specific manifestations of a thought of not enoughness. So, one might be a thought about your work, that it is not strong or clear enough. Another could be a thought about your work or yourself that you’re not refined enough yet. This is a particular favorite for those of you who are very refined and sophisticated. I love you. I get it. And the final thought – this is for all my dear problem solvers out there – is the thought that there is still something that you need to figure out yet.

We’re going to dig into the nuances and the specifics of how these highly creative thoughts are working in your life to create results that are probably not highly desirable. But once we look at them, once we see them and raise our awareness, we are then disidentified from them. And then, we are empowered to choose.

Once we understand ourselves and understand our process, that puts us back in the capital-C Creative mode where then we can choose anew, choose our thoughts and then choose to create anything we want.

You are listening to The Art School Podcast; a show for artists and creatives who want to become the next greatest version of themselves. Learn how to cultivate an extraordinary way of being and take the mystery out of making money, and the struggle out of making art. Here is your host, master certified life coach, artist, and former lawyer, Leah Badertscher.

Hello, everyone, and welcome to another episode of The Art School Podcast.  Again, I am creating these podcasts, this mini-series for you all at once so I can stay in the energy and the rhythm and my own train of thought about it. And I am pretty excited because I geek out over advanced thought work, advanced coaching. And I also want to offer a caveat, that if you’re new to my work and you are like, “She is speaking Greek,” hang with me. Always take the orientation that no matter where you are, no matter who you’re with, even if you jump into the deep end, even if you feel a lot of resistance to something someone is saying, trust that you’re there for a reason and trust that you always get what you came for.

For those of you that are at a more advanced level, I think you’re going to love this. And if you want to go even deeper, you will love the workshop that I’m doing this March, which again, is covering the fundamentals of what it takes to cultivate a way of being, mind, body, and spirit, a psychology but also an energy and also a stewardship of your central nervous system in order to create whatever you want; The Fundamentals of Being an Affluent Artist

One of my masterminders said, “Can’t you just call it Becoming Affluent AF?” We can, or Prolific AF, whatever floats your boat. This is going to be a mind-blowing week and we’ll meet you wherever you are. Again, it’s the kind of offering where we are honing in on the fundamentals that, for a beginner, will blow your mind and, for someone who is more advanced, you’re going to be able to take this and master it at a level that opens exciting new worlds and breakthroughs for you as well.

I’d love to have you join us for that workshop, and you can do so by signing up in the link in the show notes. Also, find me on Instagram @leahcb1 because I will for sure be sharing resources and ways to connect with that there.

Before we launch into the three specific thoughts that I offered in the intro that we will work with, I wanted to again cover a fundamental. And that is the profound power in being able to separate facts from stories, circumstances from thoughts. And why is this so important when it comes to the value of what you offer, the value of what you do, your skill level, your work, your art.

It is so important because you get to decide what you are going to think on purpose about your work, about your art, about you, about you as the artist, you as the creator in your life.

You get to choose. You get to decide what you are going to believe. And then being a true creator of your life means staying with that belief which you have intentionally, consciously chosen and decided, and then aligning with, partnering with, aligning with that belief, finding the energy that matches that belief, creating in your life from that place. And then from that belief and from the level of energy which you will embody, that way of being which you will create, from that way of being, you will create results in your life that match that intentional thought, that creative thought that you chose on purpose.

That’s what the creative process can be. That’s what it is to be creative. That’s what it is to become an affluent artist, to know that you are one, that that is available to you, that that process is available to all of us.

Too often, we’re just walking around like the thoughts that occur to us on default about our work, about art, about our possibility, our potential for success, for happiness, for fulfilment in the world, that those are just fixed things outside of us that we are observing.

But I am all about handing you your creative power back and seeing, no, those are thoughts that you’ve chosen to believe and you’ve taken on as if they’re just your identity and part of the identity and the fabric of the world.

But this is where we get to wake up from that dream and see them as thoughts, as options that we have chosen to focus upon, and that by focusing upon them, we have brought them to life. We give them life in our world.

And again, if this seems like Greek to you or you have massive resistance, stay with it. Don’t disqualify yourself from the breakthrough that’s coming. There is something here for you. You can get coached on this so many places. There are amazing coaches.

I offer so many free resources in addition to this podcast. Just in February, I offered endless free coaching and a free Facebook group. I have this upcoming workshop. I go on epic deep dives and do intensive work with my masterminders, with my private clients. There are upcoming Art Schools.

Don’t let the fact that this does not click immediately be a reason for you to dismiss it. When you feel the truth of this sink in, you will feel like you have been set free. And then, it might close up again. But hang with it.

So, that’s what I wanted to cover first is that knowing that distinction and then cultivating a skill. Because it is a skill. And like any skill, the more you practice it, the more you become adept at it and do it more easily until it becomes second nature, where you can begin to see, have the perspective of, “Oh, I can see that this is where I am buying into my story of this rather than seeing the objective facts.” So, know that that’s a skillset, learning to separate fact from story and opinion.

My daughter, my second-grader is learning this right now in school and she is so delighted in this and wants me to ask her questions all the time, “Mom, ask me something and let me tell you if it’s a fact or if it’s an opinion.”

And then, so, we get into – I’m giving her some more challenging ones. I mean, we just had a snowstorm, and so I said, “Blaise, it’s cold outside. Fact or opinion?” And she just goes, “Hmmm…” She wants to say it’s just a fact, but we’ve been doing this enough now that her wheels are turning and she’s like “I want to say it’s a fact, it’s just cold. But maybe it’s not a fact to everyone. Maybe a fact would be that there’s snow outside and that it’s 32 degrees. But maybe it could just be an opinion that it’s cold.”

So, that’s the beginning. And how exciting, if we all learned this life skill as a life skill from a young age. It’s okay that we haven’t now. It’s perfect that you’re hearing it now.

So, I wanted to lay that as groundwork and then I want to jump into these specific manifestations of the thought that it’s not enough, these three different examples. Also, I realized in last week’s episode that I forgot to share with you examples from the mastermind of the power of doing this work.

So, in just the span of less than a week and in two calls – before we even started, one woman was sharing how, with this work, learning to separate fact from story, circumstance from thought about the circumstance, and then marrying that along with a new thought, a new paradigm of, “I’m already sitting on a gold mine,” how she made back her investment in the mastermind before we even started.

And another woman, we started a call where her first question was about pricing, did I have guidelines for pricing art work, to cutting through all that, not making it a complicated process, to trusting your gut. So, she went from the beginning of thinking this had to be kind of an angsty, hard to figure out process where we’re basically trying to get around our own fear and shame of just setting the price that we know to be our price by relying on someone’s external format, to trusting her gut and knowing, “Nope, this piece is 8K, and that feels amazing to me.”

Another of my clients, when we had done work in the prior Art School about owning that she is, just the truth of her is storyteller, shared now being able to go into conversations like at cocktail parties and with casual acquaintances, rather than shying away from introducing herself as a writer and as an author, where she leads with that. And also, not unrelated, having weeks where she’s writing easily 20,000 words a week and sending out query letters to new agents and editors.

Another client in doing this work where we untangle circumstances from our stories about them decided that, even though last week her artwork had been one price, that meant nothing for this week, that she could decide and choose to believe in the value this week. And she did. She doubled the price and then sold them at that doubled price, just one week after having had them at half the price.

Another client went from feeling confused and some shame around doing a deal that she felt, if she came out well and her family came out well, that this probably meant something was very wrong and that someone was negatively impacted. Untangling facts from thoughts there and instead choosing an intentional belief, which is, “This is a win-win. My expansion, my wealth means more expansion and more wealth for everyone; my family and all parties involved.”

By choosing that thought and not forcing herself to believe it, but really doing the work of embodying it, she then created a result that was worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. And the feeling that it really truly was mutually beneficial and uplifting and life giving to all parties.

Another client shared a powerful, powerful revelation about how seeing where her energy had been tied up in solving problems, like problems that she just thought were part of her identity for most of her life, if not decades, and then deciding she’s ready to be done with that. And then, not a coincidence that within a few weeks’ time, she had all these opportunities coming to her; opportunities that feel warm and nourishing and life giving to her that are aligned with the life, the way of being which she’s embodying, which is, “I love my life,” which also happened to generate several thousand dollars of extra income for her.

So, I wanted to share just a few recent examples from clients who are doing this work to speak to any place in your mind that is like, “Sure, do I just feel better, but then what does it actually create?”

This work, your thoughts, and them embodying the energy that is aligned with those thoughts, that is aligned with what you truly want in your life, this is the creative process and this is how the creative process works.

So, with that context then, let’s jump into some of these specific thoughts. So, whether it’s about your work or a service that you offer, one thought that can manifest that is a derivation, a variation of it’s not good enough can be, “It’s not a strong or clear enough offer or work. Or I’m not strong or clear enough in my offer or work.”

So, a lot of times then what people tell me is that the emotion or the experience in their body when they are believing something like this is that they feel weak. And what do then they do when they are feeling weak?

Well, some of them try to then make it better, they try to do more, as I’ve spoken in a prior episode. Some of them go into over functioning mode, they overthink, overwork, they go into perfectionist mode. Or they try to keep their work vague, keep it weak, hoping people will get it, trying to throw spaghetti at the wall, hoping it’s better but kind of closing their eyes and just taking a shot in the dark.

They describe a feeling of going unconscious. One client said, “I’m closing my eyes and just swinging the bat and hope I connect with something, but pretty scared that I won’t.”

Another client said, “What I tend to do when I know I’m feeling weak and I’m believing that my work that I’m not strong enough or clear enough is that I complicate things and I obfuscate things. I bury what’s really there underneath a pile of a lot of extra stuff. I do a lot of throat clearing. I pull my punches. I don’t promise results. I don’t communicate to people that I believe in my work because I don’t, because I’m feeling weak. I don’t share testimonials of other people who have loved my work because I’m afraid that maybe that was just a fluke or that it’s being brazen and that my work should speak for itself. I don’t think maybe the testimonials are good enough. I’m feeling that my marketing then can’t be strong and clear because I actually think I’m a fraud and am not believing in what I’m offering.”

So, the only thing that any of this can ever create, believing that your work, believing that you are not strong and clear enough is then a result that is not strong and clear. Instead, we create work or experiences that always feel to us like they could be more strong. But I want to remind you that the only reason this happens is not because our work is actually not strong or clear. This is the distinction between circumstance, fact, and thought and story.

We don’t create the result that we don’t have strong and clear evidence that our work is good because it’s actually the truth of our work, we create that because our thought about our work. We had an option to choose thoughts about our work. And when we chose, “It’s not strong and clear enough,” we created an experience in our life, an experience of our work where we feel it’s never good enough yet, it’s not strong and clear.

So, I want to emphasize again, it’s not the actual work. Your work is neutral. What you are offering the world is neutral. It is not the quality of your work that is creating your results. It’s your belief about your work that is creating your results. It is your thought about your work that is creating your result.

And then, that thought, that belief about your work, it creates tis energy, like weakness clients have described. And then, from that place again, we just perpetuate, we carry out that self-fulfilling prophecy, “My work is not strong enough. My work is not clear enough.”

So then, another way that not enoughness can manifest – and our minds are very clever and they will try to be very persuasive about, “Oh, I don’t really subscribe to not-enough energy or filtering. I’m not really coming from a scarcity mindset. It’s just true. I have high standards. I’m a professional. I’m trained. I know what’s refined and what’s not. And I know that my work is not refined enough yet, or that I’m not refined enough yet.”

And that, again, my friends, is just fear and perfectionism masquerading as sophistication and intellect and being refined. And this is how that thought, “I’m not refined enough,” plays out being the creative thought that it is.

So, you can think about your circumstance, who you are I the world too could be just the fact, and then your story or thought about it, if it’s, “I’m not refined enough,” will then create an energy of insecure.

And I want to pause here too and say sometimes it occurs to us, like first we just feel insecure, or weak, or ashamed. And we’re like, “What? Why am I feeling insecure?” And then our brain will say, “Oh, you’re feeling insecure because you’re not refined enough.”

And then, for a moment, that gives us, like, hope. We’re like, “Oh good, well now I have a problem I can solve. I can solve for this feeling of insecurity. I can solve for this feeling of shame. I can solve for this feeling of weakness by just solving for the problem that I’m not refined enough.” But again, this is where we get trapped in a loop and a self-perpetuating paradigm, a hamster wheel of trying to solve for a problem by staying at the level of consciousness of the problem.

So, again, sometimes it occurs to us as an energy first, “Oh, insecurity, this feels terrible. Why am I feeling terrible?” And you’re like, “Oh, because you’re not refined yet. Go out and improve yourself.”

And then this gives us some sort of fantasy hope, that there’s going to be a place in the future where if we can just be refined enough, if we can just prove to ourself, then we will overcome this feeling of insecurity. But again, that’s not how you make that leap in consciousness that Einstein was talking about. That’s not how you move from a level of problem to a level of capital-C Creativity and freedom.

So, the thought, “I’m not refined enough yet,” a feeling of insecurity, how this then manifests, how it shows up, some clients tell me that they hesitate to put their work out there when they don’t feel refined enough. They hesitate with anything they communicate or share, whether it’s through a visual art form, whether it’s speaking about their work. They don’t allow themselves to speak boldly. They don’t allow themselves to assert themselves.

Even if they create a lot of noise and speak as one asserting themselves, in their heart of hearts, they are afraid that they are faking it and that people can see through them or that this is a house of cards that is bound to fall. They hesitate to write and just speak their mind.

Other clients tell me they create tentatively. They don’t fully express or assert their work because all of that could then elicit feedback from people who had proved their thought true that they’re not refined enough, that they’re not good enough yet.

They allow themselves a lot of first drafts in private and then edit so heavily or there’s such an inner censor that the first drafts don’t even make it to the page. So they don’t actually even allow themselves the fullness of a creative process where they could embody what it is to learn, what it is to fail, what it is to really be vulnerable and put your work out there and then to learn from that.

And then, what this all creates is that we don’t have the ability. We haven’t been able to access a process that allows us to authentically evolve our work, which one could say is a way of refining it, to do that powerfully and in a way that’s meaningful to us, that allows us to flow what’s in us to flow and genuine and original to us or through us.

Another way this thought manifests for people, they think they need to be more refined, they feel insecure, and then the action that these kind of clients describe taking is then they become more passive learners. They keep signing up for things. They wait, they study, they overthink. Again, they don’t assert themselves or their own work. They don’t share it with the world.

And then this creates the result where they have evidence that they always still need to be more refined and they’ve studies so many people that they have all this evidence to compare themselves with, “see, I’m not refined. I’m not as far along as that person.”

This, by the way, I can tell you, I know this model, this, “I’m not refined enough,” thought so well myself. And I will tell you, one of the things that was a breakthrough for me was not only just staying with this model and seeing how truly that thought, “I’m not refined enough,” can only ever produce a reality in which I will never be refined enough, which essentially equates to, “I will never be good enough.” That was a breakthrough.

And then, as was the realization that me sharing me and not waiting for being quote unquote refined, whatever that means – it’s always a moving goalpost. It’s just a fancy word for perfectionism – that me just being me actually has a healing effect, that there’s actually a creativity that just flows through me, not because I’ve tried, not because I’ve tried to refine anything, but just because I’ve allowed myself to be in the world and given myself over with abandon to the creative process.

And that has expanded my own life and healed my own life so much, but also the lives of other people. It’s also for my own children. It’s been tremendous for me, as a mother. But then obviously also for my clients, being an example of this, being an example of being a courageous creative and deciding on purpose that one of my values is courage and that means aligning with courage and choosing courage over being refined, over the safety, over the people pleasing, over the applause of, quote unquote, being refined.

I will say too, I have been elated and delighted to discover that while I’m not refined enough, being more refined does not create a lot of money. It certainly limited my income, and allowing myself to be courageous and to come as is creates a whole lot of money.

Also, my clients describe feeling insecure, I would say also like tentative, intimated, and timid, and tentative and timid do not major transformation make. Tentative and timid do not major bank make either.

Creative, full, messy, bold, coming as is, being truly connected and authentic and aligned, that, my friends, creates true wealth, true abundance, both in your bank account and in your entire life, from the inside out.

So, this entire collection of episodes around the theme of moving from a paradigm of not enough and scarcity into a paradigm of an empowered creator where really you can create whatever you want, coming from a place of sufficiency, coming from a place where you are really owning and knowing that you’re already sitting on a goldmine, all of these episodes have been a coach with me.

And I’m also offering all of these other offline, more live opportunities to coach with me, both in February we did a free coach with me in the Art School Facebook group. Be sure to sign up for my newsletter if you don’t want to miss out on the next time something like that happens. And then, also in March, I’m doing a workshop for a week on the fundamentals of becoming an affluent artist, so you can join me for that as well.

But to continue to do this work on your own and to take it deeper, practice in your own life being able to sort, “What are the facts from my thoughts about the facts? What are the facts, and what are my stories about the facts?” And then, begin to see how your thoughts and your stories are always, always creative, how your results are always created by a thought or a story that you are giving your energy to.

When you are giving your energy to a thought or story that you are not enough, whether that shows up as not refined enough, or whether that shows up as well-refined is the only way to make money or be successful, or whether it shows up as I should be further along or my work should be stronger or better by now, all that those thoughts can ever create are a whole lot of exhaustion for you trying to overcome them in the action line.

And then, no matter the result that you do create, even if it looks like a home run to someone else, to you, you will only have an experience of it of, “But it’s not enough. Or I somehow am not yet enough. I’m not the real deal. I’m not true.” Whatever it is.

So, all of this work is to give you a way to move out of those paradigms, of those levels of problem solving where we stay at the level of the problem, where we stay at a level of consciousness that is enmeshed and matching scarcity, and instead make a leap to a place where you’re owning the goldmine, sitting on the goldmine, creating from the goldmine, creating from sufficiency and then really creating what you want to create, not chasing things because they will somehow that you are enough.

Do this work on your own. Begin to see how your thoughts are creating your results. And then join me in either an upcoming free workshop or in the March workshop, in the mastermind, in an upcoming Art School. And we will take this work deeper and create creative breakthroughs.

You can’t even currently imagine if you’re thinking from a level of scarcity or not enoughness, coming from a place of sufficiency, coming from a place where you know you don’t have to prove that there’s gold. You’re sitting on a goldmine. We’re just working together to excavate it and flow it int the world. That, my friends, changes everything.

Okay, and now only the final thought, “There is something I need to figure out.” So think about any area in your life where there’s something you’re wanting to create, something about you even and you feel like there’s always something yet that you need to figure out. One of the most common emotions that my clients describe feeling when believing this thought that there’s something they need to figure out is insecurity.

And then how they describe acting or not acting, showing up or not showing up, when they’re believing that there’s something that they need to figure out and it’s creating an emotion or energy of insecurity, again, I just want to pause and say sometimes you can just feel insecure and you’re like, oh God, I hate this, I hate feeling insecure, and then your brain will be like, “Well, there’s why you’re insecure, there’s something you need to figure out, you’re just not good enough yet. It’s why you feel insecure, it’s just a fact. You’re not good enough yet, but if you figure out why and then you figure out how to fix that, then you’ll feel secure.”

So again, that sort of – the hamster wheel. That’s how we get on the hamster wheel. That’s the booby prize that we’re actually ever going to be able to figure that out. And from that place, how we end up acting, how we show up or don’t is apologetic, we’re back on our heels, we’re qualifying our work, explaining away, making excuses for it, diminishing it.

We’re looking to what we haven’t done yet. We’re looking around for other people who seem like they’ve got it figured out. And that action in and of itself is not inherently good or bad. It’s neutral. But when you’re looking to other people from a place of I’m not good enough, there’s something I have to figure out, they’re good enough, then no matter how much we look at them to try to solve for this, we’re never going to be able to solve for it because that original thought, “There’s something I need to figure out,” is the only thing that can end up in our result line.

So we can study all of the people. But if we’re still coming initially from a place of insufficiency, it doesn’t matter how well studied we are, who we studied with. This is why it’s so important when you’re doing any kind of coaching work, which I believe in deeply, is also doing this work of coming from safety and sufficiency.

And that doesn’t mean you have to do it 100% of the time. And a really amazing coach, Kara Loewentheil had said you can make a million dollars with a half-managed mind. And that is true of anything, of anything you want to create. You don’t have to do this work perfectly. That’s just another way that we get tripped up in thinking we’re not good enough.

But just being aware of when we’re coming from sufficiency and wholeness, and when we’re coming from lack. When we’re out studying and doing these actions. Because again, the actions of studying, of studying others, of studying books, taking trainings is not bad or good. But the results that you’re going to be able to create with those actions are going to vary depending on what the thought and energy fueling the action is.

So other ways people describe their actions when they’re believing there’s something they’re lacking that they need to figure out yet and are feeling insecure is that they say they anticipate people’s criticism and judgment of their work, of what they haven’t figured out yet.

So they hesitate putting their work out into the world, which would help them actually learn and figure things out. They don’t commit. They don’t take steps, they don’t move ahead, they don’t assert. They don’t share. They pull back on projects or do them half-heartedly.

They, again, spend a whole lot of time checking out other people’s work and passively learning and less time actively creating. Definitely a lot heavier on the consuming side than on the creative side. And then at the end of the day, still come back to see where their work falls short, even though they haven’t been investing a lot of energy and attention in creating it.

And the only result this can ever create, this thought that there must be something they need to figure out yet is that we create the result of we’re not there yet. We don’t arrive, and we always have something to figure out. It’s like that goal post just keeps moving out further and further and further.

This also is related to experiences of overwhelm. That’s an entirely other episode, but if you feel like you get easily overwhelmed whenever you get an idea, this one thought that there’s so much you need to figure out yet is probably a piece of your equation.

So I want to mention again the importance of learning the skill and it is a skill, so give yourself a lot of compassion and space for learning and developing and strengthening this skill of creating safety within yourself, of learning to regulate your central nervous system, particularly when you’re putting yourself in a place where you’re going to share your work, and where you’re going to learn new things and do things you’ve never done before.

Because I really wanted to tie in safety with these thought models, these paradigms. Because at the heart of a lot of the feelings and energy of these experiences, when we’re believing thoughts that we’re not enough is insecurity. And it’s just so ironic that sometimes to us, feeling insecure is what feels safe and familiar.

So sometimes we can actually like being in these paradigms where there’s always something we need to figure out and we’re never quite good enough because it’s kind of one of those hurt so good kind of things, that again, we know it’s not ultimately what’s going to lead to our most fully expressed and nourished life.

But it feels familiar and it gives us a project, and it gives us some sort of fantasy hope that at some day in the future, we are going to figure this out. It gives us that dopamine hit until we do it so often and then we become more despairing and hopeless.

So with a thought like there’s something I need to figure out, we’re thinking that because it seems to promise an answer to our underlying feeling of insecurity. Whether that insecurity is about our own personal worth or the worth of our work, or our value in the world.

But then we create a wild goose chase where we stay in this sphere or we make a hobby, a life out of there’s always more to figure out. And if I’m good enough, then I’ll figure it out and then I’ll get that thing, which allows me to feel safe, which allows me to love myself. I’ll feel secure when I have more paintings, more clients, more opportunities, more jobs, more money.

But the thought error is that believing that those external results, whether it’s money or an opportunity or an award or a book deal, thinking that that is what creates the experience of safety, all of those things are amazing, but when you come from a place of sufficiency, you get to still create those things and pour all of your energy into that pure creative process rather than having a lot of your life and your mental health and your emotional health and your happiness hijacked down this road of chasing there’s something you need to figure out yet.

This is making your worth, your belief in your worth unconditional. Not conditional on any of those results. Also, not making your worth or your safety or your love for yourself conditional on your productivity. Because I think too this is where when we think there’s something we need to figure out, another way this shows up then, how we show up is that we get hyper attached to how productive we are being.

I mentioned in prior episodes that it can be really uncomfortable to sit with some of these thought models and the ways that our thoughts create maybe bummer results for us, less than what we would want. But it is so important.

And when you make the connection that your thoughts really are creating your results, even if the results right now you don’t think you would choose if you’re being rational or on purpose, I don’t want you to cheat yourself of that moment because there is a freedom and a lightness that comes with that awareness.

And these connections, it’s why I was breaking what could have been a big masterclass down over into a few episodes so that there is some repetition. Because that’s how we learn. We learn by repetition.

I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve said the same thing over and over again to a client and then I say it maybe the same way, maybe a slightly different way on the 180th day, and they’re like, what? Sometimes they’re like, “What? Why did you never tell me that before?” And I’m like, oh my gosh, I have been saying it all along.

But sometimes when our brains are operating at the level of the problem, we are not open to even hearing the solution, even when it’s right in front of us. And again, there is no shame in that. Everyone is on their own timeline. But just to let you know, this was part of my design here, breaking down these episodes rather than clumping this all together.

They’re all variations on the same theme of moving from scarcity, of not enoughness, to a place of sufficiency, of being willing to create safety for yourself, being willing to cultivate the skills and invest in yourself to cultivate the skills, to create safety that then sets you free, that then that kind of safety that liberates your inner creative genius.

Creating the kind of safety that liberates that gold that you’ve been sitting on all this time. Again, this collection, this mini-series has been a coach with me. And if I had additional coach with me, not only recommendations, I’d say if you’re my client, do this. Do not skip this step. Do not do this in your head.

Write it out. Go slowly. Make it like a meditation. Don’t just do an act of writing, but make it a mind-body exercise where you’re really trying to get the truth of this inside of you.

If you’re hearing this, it’s because a part of you already gets it and is waiting for the rest of you to catch up. Oftentimes it’s your body that gets it first and the a-ha and your mind catches on later. It’s your soul that gets it first, and it’s what brought you to this particular information at this particular point in your life.

So stay with it. Write, write slowly, go for walks, think about it slowly, talk through it with other people. Do the work. Don’t just listen and be curious, but be committed to internalizing it. Be committed to finding that own enlightening experience and breakthrough for yourself.

Thank you for listening to another episode of The Art School podcast. If you would like more of this, I have so much more to share with you. The best way to make sure you don’t miss out on anything is to sign up for my newsletter.

You can do that by going to my website, www.leahcb.com and signing up for my emails, which are called The Art School Newsletter. I share a lot of things that I don’t share elsewhere, including being the first to know about free workshops, limited coaching opportunities, but also upcoming Art Schools, upcoming masterminds.

And if you want to learn more about working with me privately, you can do that by going to my website, www.leahcb.com. You can send in an application to be added to the waitlist. You can also email us with any questions, support@leahcb.com.

And finally, I love to play on Instagram and I would love to connect with you there. My handle is @leahcb1. And also, if you share a podcast, if you share the episode you’re listening to, or that you’re out walking your dog while listening to the podcast, I have been known to pop into your message box and leave you a voicemail and connect with you there.

For me, it’s so gratifying and meaningful to know that there is a real human with real dogs, real families, and real studios and lives on the other end of this. And so I love making those connections there and you can again tag me @leahcb1, and also hashtag The Art School podcast.

I wanted to close this series with something that I used to open it episodes ago. And that is because it is so foundational to my work and again, worth repeating because repetition is how we learn.

Repetition is how we rewire our brains, recondition our nervous systems, and recondition our bodies to that level of safety and trust of ourselves where our creativity, our gold can flow, and also abundance can flow back to us, that we feel safe to receive and to channel, expand our capacity to be even greater channels for even more abundance and creativity.

And so what I shared weeks ago that I’d like to share again is this. One of my masterminders had written this on our Slack forum. “This container of The Art School Mastermind is the absolute most dreamy place I have ever been so myself. So not in fear. Feeling safe to say the things I really want to share and honor.”

The creatives that join The Art School Mastermind and all of you out there listening, you are already extraordinary, already magnificently creative. I know many of you have already achieved your big and gorgeous success and you’re committed to living fulfilling lives that are aligned with your souls. And you may also have been aware of ways where you have been holding back, where you have allowed yourselves to be different and successful, but maybe only so much. Still flying just under the radar.

When you don’t feel safe in the world, you will allow a trickle of your innate creative genius to flow, but the full weight, the gigantic force of who you really are, oh hell no. You’ll keep that dammed and damned lest all hell break loose and you flood, destroying yourself and those you love in all downstream in the flood place with who you really are.

This sounds dramatic, but it’s not an exaggeration. Successful, brilliant, gifted clients I work with harbor a secret fear that if they really let their genius rip, then it’d cause harm, not only their life but the lives of those they most love.

And this needs to change. Because in other words, in varying degrees and ways, we are fearing ourselves. On one level we feel a call to create freely, unabashedly, unapologetically, ecstatically, exuberantly. On the other hand, there’s this fear that it is shameful, wrong, reckless, or just downright dangerous.

And on one hand, we’re right about this. Because as we create, as the forces of nature that we actually are, it is dangerous. Fatal even to the systems of oppression that we have internalized. Systems that taught us to mistrust ourselves, our own connection to creative power, which is also our own connection to the divine, life, God, the universe, source.

When you can learn to no longer fear yourself, creativity with a capital C or your connection to it, it’s not only dreamy. It’s like waking up from a dream and finding you are safe, you’re home. There’s no limit to what you can create from this place in this extraordinary way of being that is just who you really are when you feel safe to be you.

And I might add, feel safe to know you have been sitting on a gold mine all this time. And now it’s time to let it rip. Thank you everyone for joining me. Have a beautiful week and I look forward to talking with you next time.