Ep #37: Developing a Creatively Powerful Wealth Consciousness

“Poverty consciousness can be so deep and can rule every single action of every day. It may not show up in the classical ways; fear-based concerns about money. It may show up in other ways. For instance, you might have an impoverished way of relating to yourself and to the world.

You might feel like you have no time; time poverty.  You might fear taking risks; safety poverty. Or, you could be stingy in your love for others or your love for yourself; love poverty.

However it shows up, this poverty consciousness is draining your energy in a way that you are not able to deliver to the planet what you came to deliver. Then, you can’t experience the fulfillment of delivering your unique creative payload. And if you don’t have fulfillment, it won’t matter how many millions of dollars you have or don’t have.”

That excerpt is from Guru Jagat’s book, Invincible Living. And it is the perfect introduction to our episode today. Today, we are going to talk about creating a powerfully creative wealth consciousness. So listen in and coach with me today as you create a more powerful and prosperous way of being in the world.

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, all of you beautiful creative souls and welcome back to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I’m so glad you’re back. And for those of you who are new, welcome. I’m so excited to have you. And I know we must have quite a few new listeners because I’ve seen huge jumps in the rankings all around the world, including the United States. So, thank you so much for listening. I’m really glad that this information is reaching more people and I’m excited to have you in the community and I hope to get to know many of you personally and in our Art School community.

I tell you what – it is the place to be. I think I’m most proud of creating something that I have always looked for, the kind of community and the kind of coaching that I’ve always looked for. And speaking of community, I just got back from an awesome weekend in North Carolina with my business mastermind awesome friends and colleagues.

And I took a couple of days on the frontend – my family headed to Nebraska to visit their grandma, my husband’s mom, on her farm. And so I had some extra time by myself and so I thought I’d head to North Carolina early and take advantage of the time to see a part of the country I’ve always heard amazing things about, Ashville and the surrounding area, and to get some work done and kind of get restored before meeting up and working for the weekend with my colleagues.

So I did that.  I went a couple of days early and I stayed at the Biltmore Estate, which was stunning in so many ways. The natural beauty, the architecture, the landscape architecture – talk about being surrounded by natural genius and creative genius on every level; just beauty on every level.

So, I arrived and then I found myself feeling some uncharacteristic anxiety for me. Like, I usually don’t have this feeling and it was so interesting. And once I started feeling around this a little bit, I realized it had been kind of creeping up on me for a few weeks and that it was tied to this recurring dream and feeling, association I’ve had about craving water, you know, dreams about bodies of water, dreams about just being thirsty and I just needed water.

And I had been interpreting these dreams as, like, the need for even more of my own creativity, even more space for my own creativity, and just the need to be awake and on the lookout for whatever it was that would help me, sort of, quench this creative thirst. So, water, water dreams, water dreams, and then this sort of creeping up of anxiety that, to me, felt like I was increasingly in a container that was too small and tight.

So, while I had some space, I had a long nice drive there, like 10 hours in the car by myself to think about things and then I was there and did my coaching sessions, and then I also did my own self-coaching and journaling and my own yoga and meditation, all the things that usually help me figure something like this out. But it was like something was waiting to break and there was the rumble of something coming and I just couldn’t quite get to the breakthrough.

But I definitely was feeling the shaking or tenseness that comes when you need a breakthrough. So, one afternoon, one of the first afternoons I was there, I realized part of it was I had these luxurious few days laid out where I get to just immerse myself in my work, in beauty, and was looking forward to the weekend of immersing myself in the company of the energy of my colleagues, other visionaries and big doers and dreamers.

And I was feeling a little bit of anticipating FOMO. Like, that there was so much there, so much in the area, so much that I wanted to do that I was already anticipating that I wasn’t going to get enough and that I was somehow going to miss out on something that I really needed to give myself.

So, I again did all my other things I usually do and I just wasn’t quite cracking the code on this one. So one afternoon, I went for a run. My plan was I was going to run on this path that goes from the hotel down to the big Vanderbilt House and back, so about a six-mile loop which I thought was perfect and that will certainly help.

So I got about two miles into the run and I was hearing rumbling. I’m like, I’ll be fine, I’ll make it. and then, all of a sudden, the skies opened and there was just a deluge. And I waited underneath a tree for a while and then it was clear that this was not breaking anytime soon. So then I thought, well I’ll just run back in the rain.

So I was running back in the rain and thinking about how, when I heard the rumble of the thunderstorm, how much that seemed similar to me of this, like, rumble of something I could feel coming within myself and thinking about how then the heavens opened and it just was a letdown of this rain. And then I got it. And then it occurred to me that, like, as the rain was coming down so hard, you know, there’s no escaping rain like that.

And it occurred to me that the message was, “Hey, sister, you don’t need to worry. There’s no way that you’re not going to get wet. There’s no way that you’re not going to get what’s meant for you. So just be out in the rain, enjoy running and let yourself soak it up because we’ve got you, no matter which way you turn, this is what your life is like. This I what your destiny is like. You can just relax and enjoy the run because we got you covered. Like literally, got you soaking.”

And so it was all that water that I’d been dreaming of and thirsting for and then the heavens just let loose. And then I was thoroughly soaked by the time I got back to the lobby, and also, like, so happy because the piece that came through with that message of, “There’s no way to escape what you’re really meant for, just go out and do your think and we’ve got you covered.”

So that was a message that I felt like – some messages, you know, are just for you. And you are discerning and trust yourself to know to keep those for yourself. That was a message that I felt like was for me and for anyone out there listening to this too.

So many people that I work with, they are high-achievers. They’re very contentious. You’re a seeker and you’re on a quest and you want so badly – there’s something within you that is dying to come to life, that is dying to be born.

And for those of us that have kind of been wired like that, to be such go-getters and overachievers and driving hard, for us, the message is not so much to keep pushing harder. It’s not to push harder or force. For us, the message is that our potential is not just within us but it’s something that we tap into and if we think it’s just within us then we force and then we effort and then we act like we are the only ones that can make things happen in this world.

And then we usually end up disappointing ourselves because our personal resources are limited and our energy is limited. But when we can learn to trust – and I know that is a simple, though sometimes longer, journey to figure out. But if you can begin to trust that trust works and relax into your power and relax into this collective infinite potential that is so much bigger than any of us but that wants to flow through the vessel and the conduit that we all are, then things open up. The heavens open up; outside you, over your head, and also within you, to pour through you.

So that, for sure, felt like a message that was not only for me, but one that I experienced, both at preceding tension and anxiety, which is to say I get you if you’re experiencing that. I know what that’s like. But then also that breakthrough and that message of relax into your power, relax into it. Relax into a power greater than you and trust because there is no way you will escape your destiny.  It’s the world, the heavens got you covered.

So, that was kind of a long intro for today’s topic. But then, I didn’t even realize when I started out to tell that story that it’s very related to today’s topic because we’re talking about the difference between poverty consciousness and prosperity consciousness.

So, I opened with a little bit longer quote than usual in that intro because it’s spot on. So, whether you want to approach this subject by naming it, you know, money consciousness or prosperity consciousness or abundance consciousness, what I want to offer you is that what we’re talking about is your relationship to your own experience of that abundance, whether that’s money or some other material form or whether that feels like a spiritual, mental, emotional abundance to you.

But it’s your relationship to that. It’s not the dollars that you have in the bank. It’s not the material things or the wealth. It’s your relationship to that thing and that relationship is created by a thought.

So, we’re going to do some exercises in a following podcast that take this work and apply it to the model, but I wanted to make sure to go slow and thorough and deep enough into this so that you can really embrace all that’s here because even if you just re-listen to that intro and really soak up Guru Jagat’s words many times, that’s going to move your awareness forward and your understanding about your own relationship to money and how that manifests in your results in life and your experience in life of whether you feel insecure and scarce and impoverished in any way, or whether you feel supported and flush and rich and prosperous.

Now, I know you’ve heard me talk before about how your worthiness is already established, and even after people hear that, they still then have some difficulty allowing themselves to receive more abundance and more support in life. So that’s a whole different episode season, you know, year-long coaching intensive, but I will talk about it in future episodes, how to remove your inner blocks to receiving.

For today though, I want to just – let me repeat one line from that intro. Poverty consciousness can be so deep and can rule every single action of every day. So, poverty consciousness in today’s society is most commonly and most often, most frequently summed up in the thought, not enough.

And there is a corollary to not enough, which is more. And I want to talk – there’s a nuance here because there can be a more that comes from a place of where you are completely worthy and filled up and you’re like, and the world is eternal and infinite and the universe is eternal and infinite and offers me more. And if you’re connected to that infinite potential, it will want to express more and more through you. It will nudge you to open yourself up to experience more and more of life.

And then it’s just being awake to those times when the more that you’re seeking is driven by a sense that you’re not enough and that you don’t have enough. So more is neither good nor bad. It’s just very helpful to be awake and onto yourself about the feeling and the belief that is motivating the desire for more.

But not enough, I would say, is one of the most common thought manifestations of poverty or scarcity consciousness. I’m not enough. I don’t have enough. There’s not enough time. I’m not lovable enough. I’m not creative enough.

And what I want for you – everyone I work with, everyone I don’t even know – is to experience not only their own worth and their own value and be so filled up by that, but then to have this experience of they are so filled up, their mental real estate and energy is no longer being sucked up by those survival mechanisms that are – it’s that hungry ghost, always wanting to feel secure, but instead, when you know you are enough, when you know you are supported and when you have that material foundation in place where really you can take your mind off whether you’re going to be able to pay all the bills, whether your family is secure.

Then instead, all that energy gets freed up and moves out of those lower – like if you’re thinking of the chakras – those lower survival instincts, which are still important for us but are not meant to be the whole deal of, you know, the root, the sacral, and the solar plexus. And then that energy gets to move up through the heart and through the expression of the throat and to your intuition and the crown, your higher purpose, and something even greater than us all.

So, having your needs met materially is so important. Feeling important and prosperous is so important, not only because that is what you can claim as a human being, but also because that line, she has another great line in there about, “Poverty consciousness is draining your energy in a way that you are not able to deliver to the planet what you came to deliver. Then you can’t experience the fulfillment of delivering your unique creative payload.”

So if you or so much of you is wrapped up in poverty consciousness – not only wrapped up in that – and then it is consuming and draining even more energy, so you can’t deliver what you came to deliver. Like, we all miss out and it also just perpetuates more poverty consciousness and more survival ways of being.

And then she goes on to say, then you can’t experience the fulfillment of delivering your own unique creative payload because to me, I’ve mentioned this before, in those visions I had of being a wealthy and powerful creative force of nature, yes, I’m looking into that vision and seeing beautiful surroundings and seeing that all of my needs are met, all of my family’s needs are met and that I’m able to be so generous, I’ve enough to share and enough to spare, as one of my favorite creative geniuses, Dolly Parton, likes to say.

And it’s also that having those things taken care of means I can direct myself and the full force of my energy and my ability to be a vessel towards doing the work that I know I came to do. And to me, that feels like richness. To me, that feels like prosperity.

So, I’ve mentioned potential as being this thing that is not finite within us, but is actually, the potential is something infinite and eternal and collective and universal that we can all tap into and open ourselves to and flow. And in fact, one of my clients this week was just recommending to me a book in which he talks about potential being this very thing. So I’m going to have to look that up, read that, and let you know the name of that book.

But anyway, this is how I think of this potential. It’s not just the individual potential but that our potential as human beings is truly limitless and ever-evolving. And so, a lot of the work that I do with my clients is expanding their capacity to be able to be a strong conduit and a clear channel, a clear vessel for that greater potential.

And this is why I’m so drawn to the work of different Kundalini yogis because it’s things that I sensed intuitively long ago and found more about through science and research and coaching. And then, when I came upon Kundalini yoga and discovered that they were speaking my language, it was such a great affirmation and a lot of the ways, there’s so much overlap between things that I have arrived at intuitively and through a lot of trial and error, and then things that I have read about that different writers and yogis and teachers have expressed so beautifully in their books and in their teachings.

Because they talk a lot about expanding and widening capacity as well and strengthening your capacity so that you can hold a greater charge, let’s say, a greater energy. And one way I like to describe it to my clients is that you wouldn’t take, like, a remote-controlled car and hook it up to a car battery. Nor would you take a car and hook it up to a nuclear reactor because we all know that then what’s going to happen.

Like for instance, one time when I was growing up, my brother and I shared this little Honda Accord and he tried to MacGyver the car with using a gum wrapper so that when he wired the horn to the garage door opener so that when he honked the horn when he came home, that it would make the garage door go up.

So, a lot of ingenuity there, but he did not factor for the difference in wattage. So when he tried it the first time coming home after school, he honked the horn, the door did start to go up, but then smoke also started rolling out. I can’t remember if it was from the wheel or from the car door opener. So that little experiment stuck in my mind. It always comes to mind – sorry, little tangent – when I think about this, about how we want to strengthen ourselves.

And this is what I’m always talking about, cultivating an extraordinary way of being, an extraordinary mind, body, and spirit so that we can hold this greater energy, because I do think that our potential right now – like, it’s ever-widening our capacity to hold a greater energy and that it’s not just limited and contained within us but that there is something greater that connects us all and that we can all tap into.

And I find this again and again when my clients are able, and myself as well. Yes, we have our dreams that seem individual to us, but then when we begin to understand how they are our dreams and that they also are a part of something greater than us and that’s the kind of time, during sessions, when the client and I will get chills at the same time and that, again, seems like the heavens open up and you get something greater. You get the chills. Something greater comes through.

And then those are the times too when you start to feel like something is working on your behalf, synchronicities happen, doors open. You just feel a greater sense also of resilience and strength, knowing that yes, you do your part, and it’s not all on you, that if you’re tapping into these big dreams, these sacred dreams of yours, you couldn’t do it by yourself. So it’s learning, again, how to strengthen your capacity so that you can be a strong conduit for stronger and stronger currents of energy.

And again, money, like I’ve mentioned in previous podcasts, is a currency, is a form of energy, so this is all very related to money consciousness and abundance consciousness. In Guru Jagat’s book, she also talks about how the mind has to be trained to organize your thoughts in a certain way if you want to inherit the respective treasures, whatever that may mean to you in this lifetime.

“There are yogic prerequisites to the enjoyment of these treasures though,” she writes. “You need to be strong enough and generous enough and you have to widen your capacity, perspective, nervous system, and radiance, to lay claim to the wealth of human experience there is to be had and enjoyed.”

So, what I want to do with you today is to take this specifically to your mind, that aspect of it, how you can train yourself to organize your thoughts in a certain way so that you can inherit those respective treasures, whatever that means to you, in this lifetime.

So this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. Really take this information in, apply it to your life, integrate it, and make it transformational. Lean in. Really work with me and coach with me.

I have mentioned in previous podcasts how I have all these dreams about the art babies that will be made if someone listens to this podcast and then they write their book, write their song, their career takes off. So for this podcast in particular and these money topics I’ve been covering lately, you can count on it that I am, for sure, setting intentions and planting seeds, that those of you that are out there listening and really take this in and study it and do what I’m saying about implementing it into your own life.

My intention is that you break old limiting beliefs, you break the ceiling you’ve placed on your own prosperity consciousness and that you make some real hard coin from this podcast and that you then turn around and spread that wealth into the world in beautiful abundant generous ways. That is my intention for you.

And I know that’s what can be done with this work because I’ve done it for myself and I’ve done it with clients over and over again. So here we are. Here is your assignment for this part of the podcast, should you choose to accept it.

We’re going to first bring our awareness to where our money consciousness has been. So, first, I want you to make one list that is itemizing your current money beliefs or philosophies. So, in the book again, Guru Jagat phrases it as, “Take a look at all the ways in which you engage in your world in an impoverished manner, and make a list.”

So yes, do that; take a look at all the ways you engage with the world in an impoverished manner. And again, that’s not just money. That could be that you never have enough time, that could be you’re always running out of something or other or you’re afraid of taking risks, which they talk about as a safety poverty, or you’re stingy in giving live or in giving love to yourself.

So do that, and then also, don’t forget to put in the ways in which you might have really healthy and amazing beliefs about money and your relationship with money. So it can be a helpful prompt for this exercise too where we’re listing out our money beliefs, to think of it as money being something like a person that you have a relationship with that you’re courting or that you’re dating or that you’re married to. How do you treat them? That can give you a list of money beliefs. And how do you think money treats you? That can be a list of beliefs.

What are your thoughts about making money, having money, spending money? And what are some of the first thoughts that come to mind when I say, how does money care for you?  Or how does money manifest or show up, or what’s your general experience of money in life? All of those can be prompts for this first list you’re going to make. It’s entitled, my old or current money beliefs. So you can see where this is going.

The second list – and I want you to just brainstorm to begin with, but then also keep this list as, like, an open doc, either in your journal or on your computer where you let yourself kind of meditate and drop this prompt into your psyche for the next few weeks and allow some new money beliefs, some very healthy, maybe aspirational right now, money beliefs to flow in and to start to plant themselves as seeds in your consciousness.

So, I will tell you that I did this work a few years ago after having rejected doing the work so many times because I was like, yeah, yeah I know what my money beliefs are. So don’t do that. Save yourself years and really write it out and then, when I did this work and I thought a lot about my new money beliefs and I thought, you know what, if I am really living a life in integrity, which is I’m living what I say I’m living, then I should really open up my mind to some money beliefs that would be amazing if they were true for me, but maybe I’m not quite there yet.

So, I wrote down things like, I get paid for being me. Because when I wrote that, it felt amazing. And I could feel the grain of truth in that, even if that truth was still currently not manifesting in my life. But I felt that possibility as a truth, even though my mind started to shut it down.

And then later, in addition to that, I wrote, the more that I am me, the more I get paid, which opened up a whole new level of growth opportunities for myself because I could really see actually where my potential, my earning potential, was limited by my mind telling me that the world did not value who I really was.

So that was a major act in trust, peeling back those layers. And then a major act of trust, to peel back sort of the layers of perfectionism and professionalism, all those veneers of how you’re supposed to show up in the world and just present myself, and my raw self, both in my art and in my coaching, and now, for instance, in this podcast.

But I can tell you that those single two beliefs have been game-changers for me. I make money, I get paid for being myself, and the more that I am me, the more money I make. And here’s the real beauty and gift in all of that that I didn’t even realize at the time must have been somewhere in me – something must have known – but how perfectly tat maps onto my sacred twin intention and to what I quoted in the beginning about you can’t experience fulfillment if you’re not delivering what you came to deliver.

So now that I feel more and more – and I’m still living into it, and again, it’s infinite, so I never will fully, but I’m still more and more showing up as who I really am and more and more I am getting to experience other people valuing that and valuing that monetarily.

So in that kind of fulfillment, is what is available to you – I know your mind will tell you it’s too good to be true and some people can do it but not you, I had all those thoughts too. But let me just say 1000 times if I say it one time, that’s what’s available to you. And if you commit to that’s what you’re going to experience, that’s what you’re going to create.

Another of the money beliefs that I committed to someday living my way into, although at the time it just felt aspirational and even like my mind did not even know how to register that this could be true, and that I’m still living into, is I create as much time as I want and I create as much money as I want because again, that poverty consciousness, that scarcity consciousness, if it runs through one place in your life, it runs through everything. And for so many of us, time and money are very related.

And I decided, if I’m going to commit to this, I create as much time as I want and I create as much money as I want, I realized it looked back at my old belief list in all the times not enough showed up, including I’m not enough, there’s not enough time, there’s not enough money, I’m not good enough, I don’t have enough talent, that I was committing to something that seemed so audacious and radical and if I was really going to commit to that, I also had to be not available for any of that not enough talk.

So now, I am very aware of not thinking, not saying words like I don’t have enough time, I don’t have enough money. And again, that’s a whole other podcast. I could go down a rabbit hole of thoughts and language and how to retrain your mind, but it is so true. The mind has to be trained to organize your thoughts in a certain way if you want to have a prosperous consciousness.

So, first order of business though is awareness. You can’t organize your thoughts if you don’t even know what you’re thinking. And don’t think I see you there, you, the person who thinks, “Oh, I know what I’m thinking. I don’t need to do this exercise, I don’t need to write this down.” Do your work, don’t cheat yourself out of this because, guess what, you have enough time to do this. You can’t afford not to do this. Doing this work could really be, like, one of those shifts where right now you just change your trajectory just a millimeter to the left and it sends your life like right in the direction, right towards your dream.

So don’t skip this step. You can’t organize your mind to be this creative powerhouse, creating your art, creating your money, creating everything your soul is hungry for if you don’t know what you’re thinking. And don’t assume you know. Do the work, write it out. Your old money beliefs, exhaust everything that comes to mind, even if you think you know better than believing that, if you think it’s still somewhere in there, if your dad always said money doesn’t grow on trees or who do you think I am, an ATM, whatever it is, put it on there.

And for sure, do not skip this step and don’t cheat yourself. Don’t go cheap on the money beliefs that you want to live into. It’s okay if they still feel aspirational because then that gives us work to widen our capacity and live into it. So, trust what you get, even if it feels aspirational. Trust that that’s calling you to grow into a more powerful and more powerfully creative, more fulfilled version of yourself.

Thank you so much for joining me for another episode of The Art School Podcast. If you have enjoyed this work and want to take it further, there are many different ways you can do that. There’s The Art School coming up this fall. We’re currently still taking applications for the masterclass and accepting enrolment for the open class. I also have a limited number of private coaching spots available until The Art School starts. And then those engagements will continue through the rest of the year.

And I also offer a premium coaching service. It’s a day and a half with me in person in certain select cities. And this is an intensive day. It is a transformative day.  So it’s also by application only because I want to make sure that you’ve got the right kind of foundation in place, mental, emotional, physical, spiritual, to really be able to take the energy and the information and the transformation from that day and run with it and carry it forward into the year and years beyond.

Doing this kind of self-development work and this exploration work has most definitely been, I want to say, the key to not only my creative transformation and my spiritual evolution, but also my financial evolution and success. Definitely, coaching has been the difference-maker for me. Self-coaching, all the reading I’ve done, all the seeking, studying, acquiring that I’ve done.

So if that’s been something that you have been sitting on the fence about, I’d encourage you to explore. And it doesn’t have to be with me. You can certainly set up a discovery consult with me. I’d love to talk with you. But also, listen to your heart. Trust your intuition. Maybe it’s a book. Maybe it’s a retreat. Maybe it is making time for that artist date every week. Maybe it is making time for the morning pages.

Whatever it is, I know likely if you’re listening and if you feel like there’s potential and you’re not getting traction, something’s been speaking to you and nudging and dropping breadcrumbs. So just be awake to that and listening and notice the places where maybe you’re shutting it down and not allowing yourself to do it because maybe you’re still coming from a scarcity consciousness and you don’t think you can receive that or give yourself that.

So challenge that thought. Challenge that thought and my challenge to you would be to take that step that feels scary and take that step in the direction of creating a beautiful abundant prosperity consciousness and reality for yourself and everyone that you love.

So, the quote I chose to close today – I had many to choose from and I went with this one because I think one of the things that holds us back, especially as creatives – and if you’re a woman listening to this, especially as women, although I don’t want to exclude men either because they can also have this obstacle – is that, one thing that can hold you back from owning the prosperity and the riches whatever that means for you, that are yours to be claimed in this lifetime is the fear of what other people will think or say or how they will act, or maybe they’ll reject you or abandon you.

So, this is for you, if that’s one of your fears, “Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. She will need her sisterhood,” Gloria Steinem. Again, I don’t want to limit that to just women because I know there are plenty of men out there who are also wanting to experience their fullness as spiritual beings, as human beings, and allow for the fact that prospering materially and on all levels is part of that.

So, find a community, find your sisterhood, find your brotherhood, find your neighborhood. And you can always count yourself part of this community and know that I and those with me are rooting for you. You’re not alone. I love you all. Thanks so much for listening and have a beautiful week. I’ll talk to you next time.