Ep #174: The Magic of Re-Geniusing

“Everyone is born a genius. But the process of living de-geniuses them,” Buckminster Fuller. If the process of living can de-genius us, then I want my life’s work to be about the process of re-geniusing. And that is the very work that we do in the Art School.

This past weekend, I hosted our virtual Massively Magic Mastermind Retreat for the Art School Mastermind. And I wanted to share with you in this episode some of the specific takeaways from this retreat, as well as a high-level conceptual framework that you can follow to create your own re-geniusing, a restoration of knowing the value, the validity, the power, and the sanctity of your creativity, of your creative genius. And I also want to encourage you that by doing this, you absolutely can translate that creativity, that creative genius into actual power, which means to be able.

You can use your innate creative genius, which is real, which is valid, which is holy, to actually create the results that you want, to actually live a life you love, to actually contribute your essence to the world. And in a way that is fulfilling, that is soul building, that is in integrity for you.

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. So, I am recording this for you just the day after our Art School Mastermind retreat, our virtual Massively Magical Retreat. And it really was.

A lot of people are surprised that you can create such electricity and create such a powerful experience over Zoom. But we never have a problem with that. We never have a problem bringing that kind of heat and that kind of magic and that kind of transformation.

And that being said, we are also so looking forward to when we gather in person. That was a common sentiment expressed with everyone in the mastermind. And I am feeling it too.

So, I am looking at retreat venues for the upcoming year. I already have one on the books. I’m collaborating with a very special organization to do a retreat in the Pacific Northwest coming this fall, so stay tuned for that.

We’ve been going over the schedule and the itinerary and the location. It’s amazing. So, I’m definitely looking forward to that. And then, looking forward to in-person opportunities to meet up with you, to meet up with Art Schoolers in the coming year.

And I’m also looking forward to Art Schoolers meeting up with each other. Like, in real-life meeting Zoom coaching, through our Slack coaching, through our online virtual sacred container. And then also for those of you honorary Art Schoolers who are listeners, for you to get to meet some of your next best friends for life. Because I know those connections, I’ve seen them made in the past and I know they are coming for many of you.

And for me, that is one of the greatest gifts of this experience, is seeing people who were strangers develop these very strong, meaningful connections, really cementing lifelong friendships.

Something else I am excited about in doing that is sharing this energy that is so contagious, of extraordinary creativity and success. And so, I’ve been thinking, how can I share more of that contagious energy that happens within the classic Art School program, which happens within the Art School Mastermind? And how can I share that energy more with all of you so that really you have the benefit of that contagion, that positive contagion of success and of creativity?

So, I thought for each episode, I also want to include celebrations; celebrations that are happening within the Art School, with working with people who are my clients, and then also celebrations that I get to hear about from those of you who listen to the podcast and then share with me so generously the stories of what you are doing with this work before even working with me one on one.

You are already doing what is my dream, taking this work and not only listening to it, but applying it to your life and already creating transformation, already creating that inner work that is so sacred, that internal work, and then moving it also into your external reality with your art, with your relationships, with your contribution, with just your experience of being you and creating, and then also your relationships and your community.

So, I wanted to give a shoutout to a very special artist listening in from Scotland, in a town with a castle. And she shared with me some of her incredible, beautiful, magical art as well as a very moving story of her personal strength and courage, and a story that means so much to me of how she has listened to the podcast through a very challenging period in er life, and how tapping into this kind of energy and information and also tapping more deeply into honoring her own creativity is really giving her strength and helping her heal.

So, you know who you are. I just wanted to send you this message over the airwaves and celebrate you and celebrate some very significant recent milestones in your life and celebrate your art and then also celebrate the beauty that is waiting for you on the other side of really this deepening and strengthening experience for you.

And so, for all of you listening too who are maybe also having this podcast in your ears, helping it fortify you through difficult times, and also through the creation of your dream, thank you for doing that. And I love to hear from you and I love to hear your stories and I love to celebrate you.

Also wanted to give a shoutout to another artist listener, Matt. You know who you are. You have been so amazing about sharing the podcast on social media and I’m deeply moved by the way you are taking this work and taking yourself and your art seriously and making the most of every opportunity to edify, strengthen your own affluent artist mindset. And then translating that and experiencing a greater and greater joy and prolific AF possibilities with your own artwork. So, thank you, Matt. Thank you for all the shares. Thank you for sharing your art and your celebration.

And so, for all of you, I hope this inspires you to take this work and run with it. These are people who have not worked with me one on one and yet are creating such meaningful, profound shifts and transformations in their life and it is absolutely translating to their work too because I get to see pictures of that.

So, that kind of information, sometimes we don’t need more information, but we need stories to have faith in. And yes, take the information, make it transformational, and also let yourself be inspired. Let your faith be strengthened by the stories of other people’s success.

In the Art School, in our mastermind Slack, one of my members had written this about this work that we do in the Art School, in the Art School Mastermind. And I wanted to share, because it’s such an enthusiastic and genuine post, that hearing things like this can also help soothe that part of our brain that is so afraid that this work doesn’t work.

And so, instead, to give that part of ourselves evidence that it does work, and to give that part of yourself that needs permission to be enthusiastic about the work, because that enthusiastic energy is transformational energy. It is like the energy that the alchemical process needs.

So, this is what that member posted in our group. I had encouraged everyone – we have a celebrations winning channel. And I had thoughts, you know what would also be cool? Is not only do we celebrate our own success and achievements and milestones along the way and results. But if we also were on the lookout for celebrating other people, celebrating when we see fellow members in the group doing something that they weren’t doing before? We see them evolving. We see them reaching some sort of milestone. So, to have this cooperative, collaborative community-oriented celebration as well.

So, I just posted about that. And then, this member wrote, “Oh yes, a big cheers to celebrating one another. We’ll write more on that, but for now, celebrating Leah. This mastermind experience is next-level, game-changing, bringing the evolutionary heat. So good. Thank you for all you’ve done to get to this level of guidance and offering all you offer.”

So, thank you to that member for those kind words, which are also a testament – I mean, when she’s talking about bringing the evolutionary heat, it’s also a testament to the people in this community because they’re hungry and ready for it. They’re ready to do the work, take the work, and make it transformational. And that is so gratifying as a coach. That is so fulfilling.

That is just so much fun. That’s where I feel my own zone of genius come alive, when people are ready and willing to really go for it and we do some very advanced coaching and I am, say, eclectic is probably not even the right word in terms of my range of what I bring, the skills, the gifts that I tap into, the training I’ve had, but also just the craft, my own particular approach to it that I’ve honed over the years. And I’m really grateful to have a community of people who are like, “Yeah, down for it,” and are willing to be vulnerable, courageous, so compassionate with themselves and one another, and really be challenged, and really sometimes, like, have the experience of having your brain broken.

It’s a good experience. It sounds bad, but oh my gosh, having that feeling of when someone cracks something open for you and it’s like, “Oh my gosh, that just broke my brain in the best sort of way.” It’s another kind of mind-blowing.

And that part of the process is a joy in and of itself. And also, accelerates the process of getting results and also accelerates and multiplies, amplifies the impact and the kind of results that we’re able to get.

For instance, I also want to shoutout too – because this is so contagious, this success – for another member who is such a joy to work with. She appreciates this level of coaching. She really gets it. She’s really open to it. She is not afraid to be challenged. She’s not afraid of a challenge.

And all along the way, one of her ongoing mantras has been, “I love my life and I’m building a life I love.” And what I want to also share is that this client also had a $24,000 month that came very easily and came very naturally.

And she said that, you know, she watched her mind almost discount it as not being something she could own because it did come so naturally. But when we looked back over the arc of her work, she instead was also able to celebrate everything that she has done, building a life she loves that brought this to fruition, that brought this kind of result to fruition and continues to bring this level of result to fruition, this level of creative efficacy where she has an intention, she holds it, and she has the knowing that it will come about.

So, shoutout to you too. You know who you are. And also, I wanted to share that story, that angle, that specific result with this community too, for the part of our brain that’s like, “Yeah, inner work is all well and good, but it doesn’t really work in the outer world, it doesn’t really translate to results.”

And people’s stories like this are an absolute answer to that, and as is this episode and the information that I’m going to share with you. Because one of the things that we dove into this week in the Massively Magical Mastermind Retreat weekend was creating a knowing within you that your creative genius is real and that your ability to tap into it – one member shared the phrase, “Tap into an ability to have a beyond normal sensory contact with knowing and with a certain kind of wisdom and energy,” that that is a legitimate intelligence.

It’s different than the rational, logical intelligence that many of us are trained in. And the Art School is full of people trained very well, very highly-educated in the sciences. We have doctors, people in the healthcare industry, also fulltime artists, also engineers, people with engineering backgrounds, high-level business strategists, entrepreneurs, business owners.

These are people who know how to function out in the more mainstream society and have worked there and have created success there. And now, they are looking to develop that part of their gift that, in the polite culture, company of mainstream society has been scorned, have been relegated to maybe the land of, like, fairytale, or for sure second class, if not lower.

And so, it is about reclaiming that innate creative genius. It is about reclaiming the legitimacy of the intelligence that comes from the soul, what I have called in prior episodes in my work as a self-organizing intelligence.

When I was first thinking about this retreat and sensing, feeling my way into what the theme was to be, The Big Leap, the book by Gay Hendricks and the themes of living in your zones of genius immediately came to mind. And it felt so appropriate for where we are in the world right now because we also took time this weekend acknowledging the pain and suffering in the Ukraine, sending prayers and love to the Ukraine, as well as dollars. And I also want to encourage any of you to do what Glennon Doyle encourages people to do, harness your heartbreak, and harness your heartbreak into help, help in whatever way you can, send as much money as you can, pray, be kind here at home, be kind to yourself, be kind to others. And again, harness that heartbreak into real help.

What does this have to do with The Big Leap, zone of genius, living from your creative genius? I think it is all about a leap in consciousness, that we are at a place in the world where we need to make leaps in consciousness. And if we are not giving ourselves permission to do that in our own personal lives, if we are not giving ourselves permission to have these conversations and explore how it is done in our micro-communities, who do we think is going to do it on the macro level?

We are the ones that will save ourselves from the grassroots, from the bottom-up. Clearly it’s not coming from the human hierarchy of leadership, the top-down. Those individuals too have to be part of the grassroots effort. But again, I think having these conversations, beginning with what a radical shift it is to declare that you, as an individual, can do something so audacious, so radical-sounding, perhaps some will say delusional, but it’s not.

As declaring that with your life, with your time here on Earth, you are about moving humanity forward, moving consciousness forward. And the way I approach Creativity with a capital C is that it is about human consciousness. It is about consciousness. And it is about learning to be better humans, learning how to live better, learning how to be better humans to one another.

And again, beginning with ourselves and beginning with these small communities. And it is to move away from a permission-based paradigm where we are waiting to be anointed by some sort of outside quote unquote authority to declare that we are holy, sacred, special, smart, good enough to do this, to be the ones doing this work.

So, you have to choose yourself and you have to declare your own sanctity, your own authority and agency in your own life. So, the intention that I held for this retreat, that I always hold for this group, and that I hold for all of you, is that by moving more and more from your zone of genius, which for me I translate into living from your soul, from what one of our beautiful members said, living from your essence, your essential self, that that is healing work.

And the root of the word heal means to make whole. And that is this work of reclaiming our genius, acknowledging that we are born geniuses and the process of living de-geniuses us. And knowing that that process is reversible.

How is it reversible? By first, again, acknowledging and owning our sacredness, the sanctity of creativity, consciousness, and then owning that it is valid and valuable. Acknowledging, being aware that the mainstream world tends to really value one kind of intelligence, that kind where we are always thinking, always analyzing, always strategizing, coming from the rational mind.

And I am not here to disparage or throw shade on the rational mind. And I also know that this is the time to reclaim the validity of the different kind of intelligence that also is available to humans, different kind of capacity for wisdom and knowing and truth that is an innate human capacity that we have so much more potential for than we are currently tapping.

There’s a quote that is often attributed to Albert Einstein, whether he said it or not. It seems like something he might say because he also talked about how great discoveries are made in leaps of consciousness. And that quote is, “The intuitive mind is a sacred gift. And the rational mind is a faithful servant. We have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.”

So, we have a created a society that honors the servant, the rational mind, which is meant to be a faithful servant, serving the gift, the gift of the intuitive mind. But as the quote says, we have forgotten the gift.

And I think not only have we forgotten the gift, but we have done so much to make it illegitimate, to make it something worthy of our disdain only, of our scorn, of our skepticism, of our distrust. Which I think is no coincidence then, one of the number one areas that I work on with clients is reestablishing an unconditional trust with themselves.

Which is another flavor of the energy of unconditional love. So many people struggle to trust themselves, to even get to trust themselves enough to get to know themselves more. So many people struggle to even consider that they might have a sacred gift, which we all do. And that’s why this process is about creating whatever it is you want to create in the world, whether it’s knowing you can trust yourself to create the amount of dollars that you want to make, know that you can trust yourself to create the kind of art that takes your own breath away and turns the heads and souls of others.

And that all begins within yourself. That all begins with what seems to us such an audacious bold choice of choosing to trust, choosing to love ourselves, choosing to believe that we do have a gift, choosing to remember the gift of the intuitive mind, which I think I’m talking about the same thing when I’m talking about Creativity with a capital C.

That when I say creativity carries with it the essence of who you really are, when we are in creative contact with that aspect of us, we are flowing who we really are, we are flowing our own original medicine. It nourishes and heals us. It nourishes and heals the world through the artifacts of that experience of flowing that creativity.

Art being an artifact of that experience of having been in a state of unconflicted creativity, where you are flowing that which is essential, which is essentially you, and also I would say greater than the small I.

But then this all sounds very spiritual, right? Which is another way that it has been disparaged and scorned in society, that society has become so materialistic, only believing and trusting what is material rather than asking the question, from what does the material ever flow?

I saw a quote when we were in D.C. on the wall of the Spy Museum that we took the kids to. And it said, “War begins in the minds of men.” And so does peace. Any possibility begins in the minds of humans, including art, including any result you want to create in your life, whether it’s a ham sandwich for lunch or whether it is a stellar career as a creative, whether it is making contributions to the world with your life’s work that heal and expand others.

That begins in the minds of men. But too often, we’re thinking that begins in the rational mind and not acknowledging beginning in consciousness, in creativity, in that intuitive mind, that gift.

So, one of my intentions always in the Art School, and particularly doing a deep dive into it in this mastermind weekend is to reacquaint people with that gift, with that different kind of intelligence that comes through, with their Creativity with a capital C, with their essence.

And when I say reacquaint, I don’t just mean entertain the idea of. I mean have an actual experience of it, just as real as if you were to grab your left hand with your right hand, just as real as if, all of a sudden, someone that you’ve known your whole life was sitting next to you and you reached out and hugged them. Like that kind of acquaintance, where we’re not just removing from entertaining our gift, entertaining Creativity with a capital C, intuition, the ability to know things that our rational brains have no way of knowing, the ability to acquaint with that kind of gift in such a way that you move from entertaining it as something you might be making up, therefore you don’t really trust it, you don’t really think it’s real, to the kind of acquaintance where you absolutely know it’s real.

And so, if you want more of my thoughts on the importance of making this connection, of knowing something is real, you can revisit the podcast and episode I did right around the beginning of the year 2022 about the most important connection that you can make.

So, part of the process of re-geniusing is restoring the knowing and the honoring of creativity as being something that is an innate genius, as a different kind of intelligence apart from the rational mind. And part of re-geniusing is also restoring the knowing and the owning that this kind of gift, this creative genius, the Creativity and Consciousness with capital Cs are powerful and are valuable.

And now, those statements taken alone can just too easily been throw-away statements because we can say, “Sure, that sounds right, creativity, consciousness is powerful and valuable.” But do we believe that in our own lives?

Because if we really believe that in our own lives, we should be like ninja jedi master geniuses already at creating exactly the results that we want in our lives, in alignment, in congruence with our own internal process, our own value system, our own mechanisms, and in a way where we are not jumping through the hoops or climbing the ladder, the hierarchy of the permission-based culture.

That meaning you can commit to the result that you’re creating and decide that you’re going to create it in a way that is in alignment with you, which is in a way of saying, you’re going to create it in a way that fulfills you, that lights you up, that brings you joy and meaning even through the challenging parts and through the adversity.

And I know that saying creativity is truly powerful and valuable is a radical thing to say because of the amount of resistance that clients often feel when they move from saying this statement as, “Sure, I’d like to be on board with that. I’m on board with that,” to really owning it in their own lives and not creating exceptions or conditions for when that doesn’t apply.

So, what is one of the most common exceptions and conditions our brains give us for when creativity is not actually powerful and valuable? When it comes to moving our creativity into the world, providing value for others, meaning for others, and in exchange for money, in the marketplace.

And so, this is where marketing, quote unquote marketing is really sacred work. This is where money is really sacred work. Because for thousands of years, it has been denied to us that we have this innate gift that anybody could possibly value in the world.

How could something that just comes through us be part of our essential nature, be valuable to anyone? If you think of it, most of us descended form peasants, many of us descended from slaves, from servants, from people who were relegated to the fringes of society. How dare we possess a sense of dignity and honor in our life where we would honor and value our own ideas so much so that we would have the audacity to assume that they might be valuable, meaningful to the world, to others. So much so that others would actually pay us for this.

We’ve come from thousands of years of being taught to not only discount our own essence and the value of the creativity that comes through us unless someone else deems us or anoints us as valuable or good enough. But we’ve also been taught to deny our own connection to the divine, and that that is something we can only seek through outside mechanisms of approval and, again, being anointed.

So, all of this to say, don’t be hard on yourself. And all of this to say too, there is a process for re-geniusing, that re-geniusing for me, again, is not about just getting yourself smarter. It is about reclaiming your essence and the power and the value of that essence. And then here is where I think, I know, the subline is to be found in the mundane and the practical and the pedestrian.

This is where money work is sacred work. Because I want my clients and I want all of you to not only reclaim your creative genius as something that is true and right and good in yours. I want you to also reclaim that it’s powerful and valuable in the world. I want you to reclaim your place, its place in the world.

And for many of you, you are being called to do that in your dreams, in your goals, and in your visions of creating a living doing what you love. Now, not all artists are called to create a living doing what they love. Not all artists are called to move their work into the world, into the marketplace, into the greater social sphere.

Not all artists and creatives are called to move their vision into the world in such a way that they receive not only adequate monetary compensation for it, but really something that feels really, really amazing and good to you.

But for those of you that are, making that not the holy grail, but making that a byproduct of doing this work, owning your genius that is powerful and valuable, not only in your own private little inner world and in your more closer inner circle, but also in the world, being that audacious, being that creative and knowing that you can do it through your own internal process.

So what are some specific examples of this? So, let’s say you’re someone who writes and writes and writes and you have stacks of stories and poems and books even, but you say, to this point, “I just do this for myself.” And yet truly, there is a part of you that maybe you do do it for yourself. And maybe also you do it for yourself and you’re really beginning to feel, or you have always known you want your work to be published. You want your work to be read widely. You want your work to be beloved and read by millions, even.

If that’s you, then your work is restoring re-geniusing, not only knowing that your creativity is part of your innate genius, but knowing that that same creativity, you can trust it and you can trust yourself to apply your creative process to create that result of books read wildly and widely by so many, by millions, and that you make a living so you can keep writing books, keep telling stories this way.

But it’s beginning from the inside out, and not needing publishing and not needing a wide readership, not needing those external markers to anoint you, to give you permission to own that sacred gift. The work begins by owning that knowing, really doing that inner work. And then the external manifestation that becomes inevitable because you are embodying fully that way of being of a prolific AF artist who also applies that genius creativity to commercial success, like that commercial success, those external things become inevitable byproducts of who you have become.

And if you’re listening and you’re like, “Oh but I’m not a writer. I’m a painter or I’m a coach…” some other kind of creative entrepreneur, just extrapolate from this example. Notice where you are resistant in any way to moving your belief and your trust and your creativity and your creative process and expanding that to learn how to apply it to creating other kinds of results.

A book is a kind of result. A poem is a kind of result, a byproduct of creative flow, a painting is a result, a byproduct of your essence, of being in your essence, of communing with creativity, with consciousness, with the divine, with flow.

Those are results that come from being capital C Creative and being in communion, being in your essence, your uninhibited, your unimpeded essence and flowing that. And also for some of you, you’re still working on having more of that experience with your creativity, of learning how to be more uninhibited, of learning how to more naturally find your flow and create from there.

And that’s beautiful and powerful work as well. It’s all a part of the same process. And you take this process as well and apply it to also creating money. And what I want to say here is that it is okay if today, as you’re listening to this, you experience fear or resistance or just a block in your mind or a feeling in your body that that can’t happen for you, that you’ve tried already and it hasn’t worked.

Instead, you’ve felt like it sent you backward and hurt your relationship with your creativity. That’s okay. That is not a problem. Let this work be a continuum. Let this work of moving from reacquainting with a knowing of your creative genius, let that be healing work and don’t make it be linear.

We were talking this weekend how really this work appears to be a spiral, but then all of a sudden, there are also leaps. And not to succumb to the part of your brain that says it’s just not in the cards for you.

I’m going to talk more about how to do that in upcoming podcasts. It’s something we focus on in the Art School as well. But this is a conversation that you have to stay in. And this is why I often use the metaphor of the Art School being an Olympic caliber training facility for your artist’s soul, for building that network of neurons in your mind, that network of neurons, building that mind, that way of being of an affluent artist, of someone who is prolific and who also creates prolific success, who creates prolific art, who is prolific in their life’s work, creates prolific opportunities, and creates prolific compensation.

We break that down and focus on building the neural networks, unwiring the parts of the brain, deconditioning the body that creates other paradigms, paradigms of struggle and sadness and frustration and angst and broke banked-ness, lack, and scarcity, and instead building the neural network, building the brain, wiring the brain to be someone who is a master at creating from their essence, who is a master at finding flow, and then can apply that not only to their art, their life’s work, their particular medium can also extend and apply that to creating a place in the world, whether that’s a place in the market, whether that’s a place where their work connects with others who love and value it, to a place in the world where they celebrate and love their own work and feel connected with the people that are their people to connect with.

We are building again the brain of an affluent artist. We are building the way of being, the mind and the entire picture, the entire holistic picture of mind, body, and spirit of the affluent artist that make the results of affluence and great artistry inevitable.

And so I said this particular episode would be giving you this high-level framework of what this is about, interspersed with some specific examples. Some stories to strengthen your faith that this is also possible for you.

During one of our sessions this last weekend, one of our members wrote in the chat in big letters during a particular – it was off the hook sparking the energy and deep dive coaching, and it was just going so fast and so deep. And everyone was in it and you could feel the energy crackling.

And one of the members wrote in the chat in all caps, “This is CrossFit for the souls, bitches.” And I love that because it is. If you think, CrossFit is a community think. You, together, go farther. And also, having bringing that sense of candor and humor and lightheartedness is also part of the magic.

Keeping it fun while also going deep. Keeping it fun, also being profound. Being able to go to places where anything is on the table. You name it, shame, repeat patterns that you’re like, oh no, not this again, failures, disappointment. We bring that up, celebrate that, talk about that, it is part of the human experience, and we’re able to do that because we know we’re capable of working with it and performing the kind of alchemy that conscious conversations, conscious containers, conscious communities like this, conscious creativity can do.

The kind of alchemy where you take something that has been so shameful and you feel like you can’t – I don’t want to say it’s been so shameful. You’ve been believing it’s so shameful. And you bring it up, and you bring it to the light of this kind of conscious conversation and conscious coaching, and it is transformed.

That energy is released and liberated and you’re able to make gold of the things that you thought were your shittiest failures and shortcomings. And the part of you that you were hiding from the world, which also brings me to my next point.

The part of you that’s hiding from the world because in this high-level presentation framework of this idea, the part of you that you’ve been hiding from the world so often for this community, for my clients is that creative genius part.

And why is that? Well, if we go back to that Albert Einstein quote, where we live in a world, a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift, someone else said that quote is attributed to Bob Samples had written a book, The Metaphoric Mind: A Celebration of Creative Consciousness, which I’ve not read the entirety of. Just excerpts of.

And he was talking about a lecture that Einstein had given and was linking Einstein to this expression. And Samples took it further and said Albert Einstein called the intuitive or metaphoric mind a sacred gift. He added that the rational mind was a faithful servant. It is paradoxical that in the context of modern life, we have begun to worship the servant and defile the divine.

So this brings me back to where we’re hiding our gift and why this is important to talk about in the framework of re-geniusing, restoring your knowing, that creativity is your innate genius and it’s powerful and valuable. Because if we live in a society that has defiled that, defiled that gift, has scorned it, of course we hide it.

If you are someone who came up in a very traditional education system, and let’s say you work with very successful companies as a strategist. I mean, I’m thinking of one of my clients who is a high-level business coach and she helps her clients add a zero to their six, seven, eight-figure businesses without the hustle. And she comes at it from a holistic perspective.

She is brilliant and has been doing this for 20 years, has an amazing track record, works with people who are creating companies, selling companies, creates successful serial entrepreneurs. And so when I ask someone like this, how do you do what you do? Oftentimes their response will be practicality is what they do.

I talk to my clients, the surface level things. I’m like, no, but how are you able to do that? How are you able to arrive at the idea that helps them create these leaps, these major improvements, elevates their business and their life?

And then the most common answer is then, “I don’t know, I just do it.” And that to me, then I always never leave it there. We always poke around and prod around because that to me is just a manifestation of how we have been conditioned to forget and deny the gift.

Because God forbid that we are working in something like the financial sector, or working with tech companies, and we own that the reason we are so brilliant, the reason is not only because of our education and our pedigree, but it is because we have an intuitive gift that we are able to tap into our intuitive mind.

You can feel the risk inherent in that. When I’ve done this own work for myself and I think about what is my x factor, what is my genius, what makes me able to create art, work in my craft as a coach in a way that no one else does, as I’ve done this work myself, I can feel myself approaching the answer but then backing off because it feels dangerous.

It feels there’s a sense of risk in owning what I know to be the truth and that it is tapping into the intuitive. It is tapping into knowing that is far beyond what my years on this planet and what my I want to say superficial, my traditional education has been. It has been an ability to tap into a field of energy, a knowing, a sense that is beyond normal sensory contact that we call legitimate.

And allowing myself to know things that, according to society, I shouldn’t be able to know. Because nobody has given me that information. No one else has taught me that information. And so I want to bring this out to highlight for you so that you can begin to see the places where you are, without knowing it, denying your own x factor.

Denying what your own sacred, intuitive gift is because that gift can help you create anything. And there is such power in being able to acknowledge it, name it, and own it.

So this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to lean in and really work with me, coach with me. So for you, I want you to lean into what is that x factor for you. I want to invite you to contemplate, to explore what gift might you be denying and to have a really courageous, vulnerable conversation with yourself and perhaps other conscious creative others about why that is.

Maybe you’re a doctor, maybe you are an esteemed professional in a traditional professional setting, surrounded by people with PhDs and pedigrees. And to acknowledge that yes, you’ve been able to do all that but really, what you sense is your true gift is something intuitive that would be scorned in those kind of circles.

Just have that conversation with yourself. If you feel risk because you’ve built a career in a society that worships the rational mind but defiles the divine, but really something in you feels a yearning to own your sacred, intuitive, divine gift and connection, just notice that.

And ask yourself though, at what point does the worship of the rational mind become an upper limit? At what point does living from that space only deny not only you, the experience of living in your genius, from your soul, creating and contributing from your essence, but it also denies the world of your essence, of a you that is creating from this place where you have reached deeper.

You have gone beyond the rational and you’ve learned to instead integrate the rational as a faithful servant, but you are creating unstoppered, unfiltered, uninhibited, unimpeded from a pure flow of essence. And what are you then not receiving back to you by being nourished, by coming from, living from that creative flow, but then also what if everything you’ve created so far, coming strictly from the rational mind, what if that is – and I don’t think what if I’m willing to bet on this.

It is just a fraction of what you’re able to create, who you are able to be, what you’re able to do when you have re-geniused, restored this knowing and owned that your creativity is powerful, is valuable, and that you can tap into and create from that place, and there are no conditions on how far you can take that and in what context you can use and apply that.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. One of my favorite things lately has been to hear from those of you who I’ve never worked with personally before, either one on one or in the Art School.

But to hear how you are taking this work, taking it out for walks, taking it on your commute, turning your car, your minivan as people have said, was it Glennon Doyle? Someone has said making their minivan their monastery. Absolutely, anywhere you go in life, you can use that space as an opportunity to build the mind, build the way of being.

The brain of an affluent artist, the emotional wherewithal, the spirit, the psyche of a creative powerhouse, and I want to empower you in all ways that I can to do that. To create lives, art that you love from the inside out.

So again, one of my favorite things has been hearing how you’re using this work and where you’re listening. That is to say keep tagging and sharing. The best place to connect with me on social media is Instagram, @leahcb1 and you can #TheArtSchool, #TheArtSchoolPodcast. And for sure, tag me as well, whether you’re listening to an episode or you’re tagging me in a photo of your art.

Also, the free Facebook group. We’ll have that link in the show notes. The Art School one is a free group that you can join on Facebook. You just have to answer the questions so that we know you’re not a robot. And that’s a great place to connect with likeminded others and to stay in this conversation.

It’s like staying in the Olympic training room, staying in the creative badass powerful community of conscious conversation, conscious creativity. It is a very conscious container and the information and the energy there is definitely next level, and I’ve been told elevates every area of life. And that is also a free resource.

And if you are interested in working with me in the Art School and in the Art School Mastermind, please visit the link in the show notes to go to my website, www.leahcb.com and you can sign up to be on the waitlist for both of those.

We’re opening applications again soon for the next round of the mastermind, and so be on the lookout for that. You can also sign up for my newsletter so you are sure not to miss a thing.

So to close, again, I wanted to give you the framework that this episode is to share with you from a high level the concepts that we cover always in the Art School. It’s an ongoing theme. And to also pull out some specifics and to have a longer conversation about this process of re-geniusing that we are about in Art School.

I think another way of describing this process of re-geniusing is to pull from those words, whether it’s Albert Einstein or Bob Samples about how in modern life, we have begun to worship the servant of the rational mind. Not begun. We do worship the servant of the rational mind and defile the divine.

And at the heart, the spirit of what we are doing in the Art School, yes, creating the mindset, the way of being of affluent artists, creating the ability, the knowing in people that whatever they name as their desired goal, dream, or vision, helping them do exactly that and then some. And then being able to do it on repeat.

But what it is at the heart and what is the spirit of that really is capital-C creating a new paradigm. We are also society. We can also create a paradigm that restores the relationship between the intuitive and the rational. We can restore within ourselves and then within a community, within a paradigm like the Art School, and then we can move it out into other realms.

This paradigm where we are allowing ourselves a vast enough concept as humans to make room for honoring our soul, honoring our psyche, honoring our essence, acknowledging that that is powerful, valuable. Not only in our own quiet immediate prayer life, churches, studios, but we can build also a society that honors and values that, that allows the intuitive to also create powerfully in the world, that we can create a society that heals this relationship and restores, like the divine, the creative, the intuitive, to the place of honor and also restores and edifies the rational, the analytical mind to a place of the faithful servant so that that faithful servant, our mind is working for us in our life.

Working to heal us, working to heal our individual selves, our families, our country, our society, so that we have this marriage of a heart-mind relationship within ourselves, and we see that reflected in our greater world.

That’s what it can mean to be an artist. That’s what it can mean to be a creative. Have a beautiful week everyone. I’m wishing you peace, praying for peace in your lives, in the Ukraine, in the world, and I look forward to talking with you next time.