Ep #39: The Sacred Work of Money Mindset

Here is something I know to be true; if you can create anything in your life, you can create money. Art for art’s sake is wonderful. If art is your prayer, your meditative practice, a relaxing hobby, that is wonderful.

And if you want art to be your profession and support you in making a living and support you in being able to have the freedom to create the kind of art and life that you want to create and experience, art can also do that. If you want to make money from your art, you can. If you want to make a lot of money from your art, you can.

Again, if you can create anything in your life, you can create money. In this episode, if you are one of those people who want to make a living, a flourishing thriving living from your art, I’m going to encourage you to begin looking at what may be missing from your business mission and your sales plan and learn to apply your creative genius in order to be at your most powerful and abundant.

At the same time, and always, I will also encourage you to take tremendous care of your inner world and your physical wellbeing. You are trying to create a much richer life and you need to be strong in mind and body and so well supported in order to make that happen.

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.

Hey there, all of you beautiful creative souls. And welcome back. Happy August. It is August 1^st when I’m recording this. I’m recording actually two episodes for you today because this next week is my family’s annual week on Lake Michigan. So we’re getting ready to head up and out, which is always wonderful.

And I’m also just really grateful that this career, that I’ve created a schedule that allows me the flexibility to do that, that I’m able to create a schedule where I’m recording these episodes ahead of time for you so things are running like clockwork and I can relax and enjoy next week. So that definitely, to me, is feeling very abundant.

So, I hope you enjoyed last week’s podcast, the interview with Ashley Longshore, and the week before that was an episode on prosperity consciousness. So this is the third in that little mini three-part series about prosperity consciousness and money mindset and being powerfully creative when it comes to creating financial and material abundance and support in our lives, because to me, money work is sacred work.

And I’ll just pause here for a moment and say that if money doesn’t seem to be the area in which you need work, if you are just really thriving financially and you don’t find you have to think about it too much, then use money not literally, but as a metaphor for what other areas in your life are you wanting to feel more abundant, or what areas in your life do you have challenges with scarcity or a poverty consciousness, like I referred to in the prosperity consciousness episode, areas in which you feel there’s not enough love or you don’t have enough people in your life who understand you and really get you and know you and see you, if it’s a lack of community, if it’s a lack of downtime.

So, money is just one vehicle for abundance. And so if dollar bills and numbers in the bank account are not the area that you need to work on, just translate this into an area in your life where you are wanting to experience more support, safety, security, richness, resources, freedom.

Okay, so we’re coming back, money work, and that’s why money work is sacred work, because it really is essentially – it comes down to those universal human needs that we have and how we see money helping us to meet those needs in this world. And money work is sacred because it requires we ground ourselves, not only in taking responsibility for all of our thoughts and emotions around money, but also taking full responsibility for our bank accounts, our bills and obligations, and what we want to experience, create, and contribute in this life.

And these things aren’t lesser than or distasteful to our creative work or somehow a departure or distraction from it. But they’re actually part of the engine and the system and the fuel that can help our creative lives get off the ground and soar.

So it’s so important that we know how to be amazing businesswomen and men, as well as amazing artists. So you may have heard the Andy Warhol quote before and you likely have even heard it from me about how making money is art and working is art and business is the best art.

So, some might argue that Andy Warhol wasn’t the most talented artist of his generation, but he certainly was one of the most successful. And he expected to be. And you could say he was one of the most successful because of his expectation that he would be, because he was unavailable for anything else.

So that is, again, something that he and Ashley Longshore, if you reference last week’s podcast, definitely share in common. Just being unavailable for anything other than that they will be successful.

So, if most artists, people would argue, aren’t making money, then they might say to you, well then why should you believe that you will? Because believing that you won’t will ensure that you don’t make money. Let me say that again; believing that you won’t make money is the fastest most sure route that you will not make money.

Psychologists have studied that your expectations determine your future. So it’s not your current circumstances that determine your future, but your expectations determine your future. So, for your future reality to be different, you have to change your money mindset and the business practices and habits that flow from that.

To me, money work is also sacred work because it goes straight to the heart of our beliefs about our worthiness and our value. It goes straight to the heart of our beliefs of the value that we create, contribute, and offer to the world. And these beliefs affect what we allow ourselves to dream or not to dream, to do or not to do in the world, and who we allow ourselves to be or not be.

So, cleaning up your money act is such an essential part of getting out of your own way, and then also having the financial resources to create more powerfully going forward. And I want to be sure you are reminded to not beat yourself up though if you know that this is your area of work, because there is already too much shame around money, and that needs to go.

Shame and self-criticism and self-loathing around money experiences or habits in the past, it saps your energy, your imagination, and other resources that would be so much better used if they were channeled into constructive creative goals, if they were given a constructive creative direction. And that we can give our minds by beginning to ask, how can I meet my money goals?

And notice how important inflection is there, because a lot of times, when people first come to me if it’s a financial area that they’re wanting to work on, they say it more like, how can I meet my money goals, as if it’s hopeless. Instead, ask how can I meet my money coals?

Because we know that the mind is like a heat-seeking missile and a creative machine, so when you ask it in that first way, like you’re just throwing up your hands, the brain is like, nope, s h doesn’t think we can. So it just goes in a loop of asking the same helpless despairing question. Instead, give that money-making creative superpower machine the direction of, okay, how can I meet my money goals. And it will seek to answer that question. So ask an affirmative question, give an affirmative positive direction and you’re going to increase your chances of getting an affirmative constructive positive result.

So, as I said in the intro, I know that if you can create anything in your life, you can create money.  And it’s not a formula, but it is a mindset and a process. And for me, it has been a powerfully transformative process on all levels. And if I can do it, you can do it. Because I know it hasn’t been easy for me, so I know I’m not a unicorn, and even though it hasn’t always been easy and I have struggled and, in the past, I wrestled with the imposter syndrome concern that I’m just not good at making money or that I can’t make it without half-killing myself in the process or jeopardizing other of my core values, family values, health, integrity, I have overcome that.

Those are obstacles that are merely myths that we have been conditioned to believe and they’re the kind of thought that creates a mind-made prison. And if I found my way out, so can you. And so here’s the unsurprising spoiler alert that getting rid of these beliefs of mine that I had about how I wasn’t wired for success or that success would come at too greater cost was what was necessary for me in order to actually finally be financially successful.

So again, as I said in the prosperity consciousness episode, the first part of this process is getting really clear about what your money story is so that you can learn how to change your story about money, so discovering what is currently getting in the way of making more money and removing those blocks can free you to earn more.

So, what you want to do is to create a future mindset where making money is as natural as creating the art that you want to sell, for instance. So don’t say that it’s your bank account or your lack of clients or customers or the market or the economy or that people just don’t pay money for that kind of art that’s holding you back. That is only you telling you no. So you take your power back because no one is better equipped to create great businesses and money than creatives, though that’s not usually what we’re taught, nor what society believes, but that is true.

And I see this over and over again. Artists are natural entrepreneurs. As creative thinkers, artists are flexible and innovative and ingenious. They have so many ideas and they know how to take raw materials, the raw materials of life and the mundane and things other people don’t see the value in, and they make something glorious and new and valuable and magnificent from it.

And an artist approaches every new project with curiosity and a problem-solving that is more creative and doesn’t stay mired in the energy of a problem, but instead is able to pivot and try something new and sores on the wings of revelation, rather than just, again, staying mired in the swamp of the problem.

And it’s an artist’s natural process that is the secret behind how to succeed on the business side of art because making money requires great creativity, and artists, creatives, you know you already have this naturally and in great abundance.

As I said earlier in the episode, creating money this creative way, this intuitive artistic creatively powerful ay is not so much a formula as it is a process.  And just like an artist has to create art in order to live into their process and refine it and also have it unfold and learn through trial and error and self-discovery, so it is so with the process of making money.

And if I were to try to give you a simplified roadmap to the creative process as it applies to creating anything, this is what that meta-summary or that bird’s-eye-view would look like. You have a desired result that you want to achieve, so have that be clear. And if this were a formula, that would go on the right side of that equals sign. And then before that, in order to create that desired result, you must first have a clear intention, such as I am creating amazing art, I am creating $250,000 in my art business this year, whatever it is for you. And then you pair that with an elevated emotion.

So this is, again, where the formula is not a formula because it’s unique to your own experience. So for instance, I’ve talked about how, for me, being relaxed is a very elevated emotion. When I am deeply relaxed, that feels deeply powerful to me, and that’s also when other channels of emotion open up, joy and – flow is not usually described as an emotion, but that experience of flow is hard to sum up in a single emotion. And that, for me, is one of my most powerful emotions, states of being, from which to create.

So, having the ability to cultivate those emotional states is what I talk about so often about cultivating a way of being that becomes something you can call up on command, and also just becomes your natural resting state, your habitual way of being. And that requires training and focus and immersion and attention and practice.

It’s not something that you can just think about once and are forever changed, although that first thought is necessary to open the door, and so is learning more about it begins to lay the groundwork for change. But then you have to do the training of really practicing being somebody who embodies that emotional state and can embody it while they marry it with that clear intention, in order to create their desired result.

So, when it comes to making money, you want to choose, on purpose, the emotion that you want to be in around making money. And too often, when people think about creating money, they automatically toggle to fear or panic or overwhelm or pressure or stress because, to most people, when I say you can be relaxed and you can make money, their minds, their eyes go blank and their minds go blank, like what, no?

Relaxation, too often, we associate with doing nothing or being entertained. And for many of us, we’ve associated making money with grinding and pressure and stress and anxiety and overwhelm. But that is just default thinking. That is non-purposeful thinking and that is just the result of not knowing that you can train yourself to create in a more powerful way.

So again, having a clear intention married with an elevated emotion helps you to achieve the desired results. So you want to be really clear on what you’re creating and also the how, how are you creating, and take back all of your power to be in control of that response and not just default to, well of course I’m stressed out, I have all this work to do. That’s abdicating your creative power and your responsibility for your emotional and mental state.

And again, you can’t just flip a switch, though apparently some people can and that’s instant enlightenment. But for the rest of us, think of it as training, as a physical training. Think of it, the metaphor I’ve used again and again, is the way an Olympic athlete would train physically, mentally, and emotionally to prepare themselves to be at the top of their game, to be world class.

And then here is something else that seems like one of the world’s best kept secret kept from artists; the way to make money you already know, because it’s the way and who you are in your most powerful mode creating your art.

So, I’ll give you an example from a workshop I recently taught to my Art School clients around making money. This is part of our summer workshop series for The Art School. So though the full Art School doesn’t begin again until the fall, I’ve been doing these one-month workshops. The theme of July’s workshop was creating money as a creative.

And here’s the really interesting thing; a lot of the people that come to me that are artists and creatives and want to make more money, I’m not the first coach that they’ve come to and it’s not the first program that they’ve enrolled in. And so they say, I’ve tried everything, I’ve done all the things, I’ve done it everybody’s way they’ve told me to and it’s not working. So, understandably, they’re frustrated, they’re tired, they’re discouraged, and they’re exhausted.

So then I ask, but have you done it your way? And it takes everyone back because, well, what do you mean, my way? And your way as an artist – if someone has had success creating anything else in their life before, whether it’s a relationship, whether it is a work of art, whether it was getting a degree that was fairly easy for them – if you think about something you’ve created in your life before and you’ve had some success with, that’s the sort of process that you use as a jumping off place and as leverage for doing it again and then just amplifying that experience and that process.

So here’s a specific example from a woman who is a beautiful sculptor that was in this workshop. And we’ll call her Lisa. So, Lisa creates these sculptures, figures, that take your breath away. And she sells them successfully and she offers classes in her studio and they fill and she’s increased her prices there with classes. But she’s looking for ways to increase her income that will support her in just being able to focus more and more on making her art, on making these sublime sculptures.

So she’s also experienced some frustration with that, like she doesn’t see how it can be done. So when I asked her what her process is for making art, and I helped her lay it out by we walked through the self-coaching model. It’s just a way of organizing your thoughts and your process and seeing how it flows out. So I asked her to plug it into there.

So if we have, in her self-coaching model for creating art, that in the result line, I asked her, so when you begin creating a sculpture, what if your desired result? And she says, well, a beautiful piece. So then I asked her, so as you are creating your sculpture, do you ever think, I don’t think this is going to work? Is this working out? Is your thought process all along the way this obsessive self-conscious second-guessing looking over your shoulder judging wondering if this piece of clay is actually going to turn into a face, or what’s your process like?

And she said, well, I just know it’s going to be a sculpture, I just know what to do. I said, do you think about, oh gosh, how do I form a nose and how do I make this nose different from the ear, just that sort of neurotic self-talk? And she’s like, no, I just know, I just know what comes next and it flows from there.

So then I had her walk me through what her model would be like for creating money, and that model is, well, she knows what her result will be, she knows what the desired result would be, but the thoughts are more like, I don’t know if this is going to work, I don’t know how to do this, I’m not sure this is working, I’m scared this won’t work.

So she has the desired result, but there’s no intention. It’s more like, is this going to work? I don’t know if this is going to work. And the emotion is definitely not an elevated emotion, but it’s rife with anxiety and self-doubt and second-guessing and then pressure, and then it just spirals in a loop from there. The pressure creates more anxious thoughts, the anxious thoughts create more pressure, the anxious thoughts create self-doubt, the self-doubt creates more self-doubting thoughts. And then it goes in this loop that never leads to the desired results because it can’t.

So, as you’ve heard me say before, we’re cultivating a way of being, a way of thinking, feeling, and acting in the world that makes your desired results inevitable. But in order for those desired results to be inevitable, you have to be clear and precise about what thoughts and feelings you’re cultivating, because those are going to lead to very different actions.

So then, I had Lisa come back to her model for art where it was one where she trusted the conclusion that there would be a sculpture at the end of the process. And I said, how do you know that because you just start with a lump of clay? And it’s so fascinating because this happens with artists over and over again. They have no problem having a very simplified thought model and mind for creating art. It’s just, I know this, and I know that, and there is a peace to it and a simplicity to it and the sense that they’ll be guided.

And they also intuitively know, if I say, so do you obsess about is this an ear or is this a nose, I don’t know if it’s too close, they start to laugh because they automatically get that if you’re in that kind of energy, the end result is not going to be pretty. It’s not going to have life to it and it’s not going to have just that energetic feel or flow to it.

So here is what I offered Lisa. And here is what I offer all of you. And this is what I have done myself and this is what has led to my success as an artist and my success as a coach is finally leaning into that thing that I was born to do and I somehow just know to do is to trust and is to trust that process.

So, for Lisa, I said, take this model, this beautiful model that you have for creating these exquisite sculptures that just take your breath away, and try that on as your thought model for creating money as well. So, for her, for instance, let’s say she wants to create an additional $100,000, so that’s her clear desired result. So I said, now then if we are piggy-backing off the creative process that works so well for you, this is how that would work.

You think the same way about making money, about the creative process of making money, as you think about creating a sculpture. You assume that the end product is done and then you follow that sense of being guided with thoughts like, I always know what to do, what to do next always comes. Even if there is a pause, even if there is a point at which there seems to be something I don’t know about or I’m a little bit unsure about, I don’t panic, I don’t doubt that a sculpture isn’t going to turn out. I might walk away for a little bit and I come back. But the energy that’s there is one that’s quiet, it’s deep, it’s powerful, it’s relaxed, it’s trusting. It does require practice to cultivate that, but you can do that, and it’s worth doing that.

And the other thing that is also implicit in this approach that I want to point out and make explicit, express, and obvious is that with our process of developing as artists and creatives, we give ourselves time and grace. And then, when we’re already so good at this process of making art and then we jump over and want to improve our process and our power when it comes to creating money, we want it to happen like that, yesterday, and then we’re very hard on ourselves that we haven’t figured it out yet.

And so that was something that was implicit in Lisa’s process too was that no doubt, when she first sat down with her first lump of clay, it most likely did not – I’ll have to ask her now, but I really doubt it resembled what she creates now.

So her process and her ability and her skill and the way she’s able to weave, like, her spirit now into the forms she creates was something that she understood came with time and a lot of touching of the clay and a lot of molding of the clay and many iterations. And this is a place where I see too many creative entrepreneurs giving up too early or making the process harder on themselves and creating needless suffering and struggle for themselves where it doesn’t need to be is that it takes time to develop this money mindset. It takes time to create these new results in the world, especially when you have to unlearn other habits. It takes time and it takes grace because it’s certainly not a process that’s aided by you being hard on yourself or thinking it shouldn’t take the time that it’s taking.

But here is another big secret; it’s not so secret, but it is the key. If you know that your desired results you create with a decision and a commitment, if you make yourself unavailable for anything else, then yes, I will make a breath-taking sculpture, sublime art someday if I just keep at this, if I just keep putting myself in relationship with that process, that will happen.

And similarly, yes, if I desire to create any amount of money, if I keep putting myself into relationship with that process, if I keep that aspect, that result in mind while also staying very attuned to that sacred twin intention of who I want to be and how I want to be as I create this – so that’s talking about the clear intention and the elevated emotion if I want to be relaxed and powerful as I create this, if I want to be joyful and loving, if I want to feel rich and connected and like a creative genius and like I live in flow every step of the way, if that’s what I practice then imagine the inevitable results that come from that, whether that is sex, seven figures in the bank or whether that is you become a stunningly powerful gorgeous prolific artist, the process is the same.

So, my creative beautiful genius friends, lean into these natural born strengths of yours.  Lean into your creativity and your intuition. Harness that, banish the thoughts that say that that doesn’t apply when it comes to making money. Send that far away. That does yourself such a great disservice. Harness that and turn that process, that power, that meta-skill that you have, turn that now to the process of creating the material abundance, money, support, wealth, resources you need so that you can be free and on fire and feel so fulfilled and alive as a creative being in this world.

So, this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to take this information, do these assignments, think about them, take them for walks, talk with your friends, journal, but take it in, really think about it. Question things I’ve said. Ask how it applies to your life. Lean in. Make this information transformational by coaching with me.

And here’s how you can do that this week. Think about your dream model for your creative process. So you can enter this many different ways. And I did a podcast on dream modeling, so you might want to reference that to aid you in this. But essentially, you can enter it many different ways.

So, for instance, you might have a really clear picture of a desired result in your life. And here’s the thing that I’ve come to see is so often the case with desired results, it’s like they’re keys. Like, once we have that desired result, then we’ll have the key to unlock the door to enter a world in which we get to be who we already know ourselves to be.

It’s like that desired result will then give us permission to think about ourselves and believe about ourselves something that we are already longing to think, believe, or feel. That is the great clue that desired results give us.

And for me and so many of my clients over and over again, when you plumb desired results, when you dive beneath the surface for what that really means to them, usually what people are after is freedom and a sense of safety, security, and the sense that they can like who they are, that they can love themselves, that they can love being them, that they can love being in their life, and that they can trust the ideas they get, they can trust their instincts, they can trust that they are good and that they can trust that their work will come to good.

So, knowing that then informs the way of being that you want to train yourself in. knowing that informs how you need to think now. So for instance, for my example from my workshop with my client Lisa, one of the things she thought that additional $100,000 would give her was the ability to think, I’m a good businesswoman.

And when I asked her, when you say, I’m a good businesswoman, why is that desirable? Why is that something you want to say? And she said, well then I can trust myself and I can know that I’m good at this. Which is entirely what she knows how to do from her creative model. It’s the extra $100,000, yes, would be awesome, you can do a lot with that. And then the way you create that though is by thinking those thoughts, I know what I’m doing, thinking the thoughts of a good businessperson.

The thoughts of a good businessperson are so similar to the thoughts of a good artist. I know what I’m doing, I’m good at this, if I make a mistake, no big deal, I just back up, figure it out as a data point, I start over again, not the end of the world, things take some iterations but essentially I trust myself. I have confidence in myself. I have faith in myself and in this process. This is no mystery. I know how to do it. This is not something that was just inherently not given to me at birth but it’s something, like anything else, like having a growth mindset, I can have a growth mindset around money and I can figure this out.

So for her, that $100,000 meant all of those things. And it also meant the security of, I can create, I am powerful, I can create what I need in this world in order to support myself and surround myself with the support so that I have more freedom to be an even more powerful creator.

So again, for you, I want you to think about a desired result that you want to create. And so because this podcast and the last three have been so much about prosperity consciousness and abundance, perhaps the one you want to focus now is around a certain level of prosperity or abundance, maybe something that challenges your mind around where you currently are so that you have this invitation to pass through a portal to a whole new world where you experience something that you didn’t think you would experience in this lifetime.

So, have your desired result in mind, have it be clear. And if it’s around money and abundance, make it a clear number. Have all the numbers, all the commas, all the zeros. That part is really important. if you resist doing that part, 99 times out of 100 it’s because there’s some part of you that fears you’ll be so disappointed and hard on yourself if you don’t get it.

So, bring all that up, write it down, and be really clear about what the number is. And now look at that desired result, hold that, and then look through other places in your life where you are able to do something and create a certain result effortlessly.

So, for instance, for me at one point in my life, it was no problem at all for me to workout every day, in fact, do really intense workouts, like I’ve talked in earlier podcasts, it was one of the things for me where it was harder not to workout than it was to go on a 16-mile run or a 100-mile bike ride. And so I thought about that.

I’m like, well I know how to create a certain result in my life, which at that time I wanted it to be a race time in my life and I’m really good at that. And so what is my thought process around that?

And a key insight I had there was that I loved not only the result, not only the fast race time and the medal and the win. I absolutely had trained myself to love the process of training. So I leaned heavily into that when I was a new artist. I knew that I had to train myself to love every aspect of learning to be an artist, even when you’re doing this – I was a recent law school graduate and I was making art that looked like kindergarten art, I had to learn to love myself and learn to love that process.

So then I used that again to this process of creating a successful business and to creating financial success. I look back and I must love every aspect of this process, including the times that seem like, quote en quote, failures.

I look at it as information, I’m excited to get up and do it. I’m excited to get better at it. I trust that I will get better at it. And just as I do with my art and coaching, with every single coaching session, I don’t know where it’s going to go, I just know everybody has an in and it’s going to go somewhere amazing. And likely, it’s going to go somewhere so amazing that it surprises the both of us.

I trust that every single time, when I first open a session, even if there’s no indication that it’s going well in the first 15 or 20 minutes, I still know because I’ve decided ahead of time that that’s the process and I trust and lean into it and feel around until I find that thread that leads me to where I need to go.

And it’s the same way with a painting. I start off with a blank canvass. More often than not, I don’t know what it’s going to be, but I assume that the fact that I’ve started and that I have this feeling that there’s a painting to be made, that is like point C, and I’m at point A. Therefore, it assumes a B road through it. It assumes that there is a way from where I am to the creation of the painting.

The poet Robert Bly said this once about his process with writing a poem. He said he saw a log on a walk through the forest, it reminded him of his dad, and then he knew there was a poem. So, he saw the log, he thought of his dad, he knew that there must be a way through because he felt an instant that between that seeing of the log and thinking of his father, that the path between that was a poem. So even though he didn’t know what that poem would be or what the heck was the relationship with the log and the father, he just felt that and knew that and followed that thread all the way through.

So that’s your assignment. Think about the result that you want. And the second part is to think about a place where you have an awesome creative process. And if you feel like you don’t have any awesome creative processes, think about a place that’s awesomer than what you’re currently using to create money.

And if you don’t have that yet then think about, again, my dream model podcast episode, think about what would be a process that you would love. What would be a process that would require strength from you, but also grace, that would require dignity and courage and that you could also fall in love with. So, when in doubt, using that feeling of falling in love with the process is gold and is rocket fuel for creating those dream results in your life.

Thank you so much for tuning into another episode of The Art School Podcast.  I so appreciate you listening and I love hearing from you in emails and reviews. So if you have time, I’d love it if you’d leave an iTunes review.

And if you’d like to take this work deeper, we’d love to have you join us in the fall session of The Art School. So, the open class and the masterclass are filling up and I am so enjoying getting to know everybody that’s in this community. If you haven’t heard me say it before, so much of what The Art School is about, it is a course, yes, and it is a coaching program, yes, and it is also a training and an immersion in you becoming who you know you can become, in you cultivating extraordinary ways of being; so extraordinary mindset, extraordinary physical, mental, emotional, spiritual wellbeing and strength so that those dream results in your life become the inevitable result of who you are.

I was just talking to a podcast. We had both heard Margaret Atwood say things at different times and we were laughing about how we had heard her being interviewed and a question that often comes up for her is how is she so prolific? And in both of our experiences, hearing her response, it was she kind of looked at them taken aback and dumbfounded and she’s like, “Well, I only write like one book a year, you just do the math. One book a year and it adds up. I don’t really think of that as prolific.”

So we were laughing because we’re like, right there is someone who has normalized an extraordinary way of being. That is someone who has really cleared the path, or it’s always been clear, who knows from resistance to her creativity and so it flows. So that for her, I don’t know what she would think prolific is, two books a year? But one book a year and at her pace and at the caliber of her writing is truly extraordinary.

And so that is what we are about and what we’re doing in The Art School. How can we normalize extraordinary ways of being? And it begins by being in an environment where it is not only safe, but encouraged and the norm for you to be unapologetic about your big dreams and for you to be unashamed and unapologetic and so out there with who you know yourself to be and what you know yourself to be capable of.

And then it’s also an environment where we’re going to say, okay, now what do you need to think? How do you need to feel? What do you need to do to follow through on this, to live in alignment with who you really know yourself to be? And how can we make it normal that it becomes harder for you to not do your creative work in the world, it becomes harder for you to not make the money that you’re capable of making in the world than it is to procrastinate, than it is to hold back, than it is to settle?

So we’re normalizing extraordinary ways of being, mind, body, and spirit that inevitably lead to extraordinary results. It’s an extraordinary community. What else can I say other than it’s also a lot of fun and life-giving and fulfilling and life-changing?

So, I would love to have you join us. You can find out more by going to my website www.leahcb.com/the-art-school . Or just go to leahcb.com and you’ll see the little link that takes you to The Art School page. You can read more about it there. You can also sign up for a free discovery consult with me while I still have some openings for those in the coming weeks. We start September 3^rd, and again, we’re filling up. I would love to talk to you about joining us for The Art School fall 2019.

So, in closing, the last thought I wanted to leave you with was to really pull out from my client Lisa’s model, her creative model, because it’s something I hear over and over again from artists and I do think it is one of the go-to core power thoughts and beliefs for creating anything in your life. And that is, it’s almost a nonplussed, “I always know what to do. It’s no big deal. I just do this, and if it doesn’t work out, I try something else and do that.”

So for you, think about how you can bring in more thoughts like that to areas of your life where you might be currently trying to apply too much pressure or force or overextend yourself, and instead, see if there isn’t power to be called back and ground to be gained and peace to be had by trusting and finding the words that resonate with you. I always know what to do. I always figure it out. Things always work out. There is always a way. And there’s no way that I’m not going to figure this out.

Have a beautiful, powerfully creative week, everyone, and I look forward to talking to you next time.