Ep #164: The Most Important Connection You Will Make This Year

Happy New Year’s Eve and Happy New Year’s. I know this comes out a little bit earlier than actual New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day. But I am recording this with that season of your life in mind. Although, I do believe that harnessing the possibilities of transformation and extraordinary creativity and change are possible any day of the year.

I also know this time of year can be frustrating for some because you’d love to feel up and positive, but sometimes the holidays can feel heavy. Sometimes, reflection feels less than inspiring at the time. But what I want to offer you today is an invitation, a portal into the energy of possibility.

And in particular, I want to offer the most important connection that I believe you can make in order to create whatever it is that you most want. No matter the time of year, no matter the year, no matter the season of life you currently find yourself in, I want to remind you that your dreams, your visions, your goals are there for a reason. They are there for you and they are absolutely possible. This is not just conjecture. This is what actually works. It’s worked for me and it has worked for my clients.

I’ll also share a bonus powerful affirmation that has really helped me and my clients in creating lives that we truly, truly love, from the inside out and from the outside in.

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. I hope you are doing well this season. And if you’re struggling or feeling heavy, if you’re feeling a mixture of both, which sounds like a lot of people I’ve talked to, I am wishing you and yours so much comfort and intentions that rest and deep nourishment and strength and true love, and also moments of joy and peace and delight and solace and comfort find you.

And the image that keeps coming to me is that you just wrap yourself in these energies, like the thickest, warmest, softest quilt. It’s time to cocoon, this time of year, in this part of the world anyway. But I think those kinds of energies no matter what hemisphere you are in, or what time of year.

And if you celebrated Christmas, I wish you a merry Christmas. Even though, as I’m recording this, we are still pre-Christmas here. My children are so excited and home from school now, and also still talking about getting to talk to all of you in last week’s episode.

They were so tickled with that. And then also, like, overcome with nerves at the last minute. I mean, one of them – I won’t say which one – was hiding underneath one of the art tables I my studio just overcome, I think, with a bout of shyness, as if all were on him, even though we’re alone here in my studio. It was a little too much.

But they really enjoyed it and they were very proud to do that little bit of an introduction and clip for you. So, thank you for being on the receiving end of that.

Also, if you listened to last week’s episode, you know that I was not feeling well and barely had a voice. It’s back. I’m feeling better. It’s not COVID per all the tests that I took. But still, keeping to myself, taking it easy, easier to do so now that we’re on break as well too.

So, I also, in addition to just my voice and the mechanics of that, I’m feeling quiet. I’m feeling a quiet energy. And I want to honor that. And it’s interesting how one honors that when one also has a podcast to record. But you know what? I also had a bonus call with the early enrollees for my mastermind for the next year.

So, while the mastermind doesn’t officially kick off until January, for those who that enrolled early and opted into the early enrollee bonuses, I’ve been doing one-on-one calls and then we did a group call for December. And I was feeling quiet energy going into that too. But I just trusted it and it was such the right thing to do because there was a magic that unfolded already on that call that was so peaceful and deep and meaningful and palpable.

And other members also said too that they were feeling something similar, a quiet energy. And also sensing a depth and a vastness and sensing big things to come. And so, I was thinking about that in regards to this podcast, how am I conditioning that I am aware of and I see is that, “Oh, New Year, got to get the energy way up and do a very excitable podcast.”

But I know that excitement is a wonderful energy, is a beautiful energy. But there’s also an ability to channel enthusiasm, like that en theos kind of energy that is also powerful and deep and quiet, and that there’s something like – I want to use the word foment – also something in this fallow time of year, something deep that happens in the sacred darkness – I talked about the fruitful darkness.

And I want to also be an example of honoring that while also talking with you on my podcast. And I think it’s too a useful conversation to have this time of year because there, again, is a lot of conditioning around how you should feel around the new year, how you should fee revved up and that that’s what you need to go into a new year and to make all your dreams come true.

And that just isn’t true. I just am here to say, no, you don’t have to feel that organic equivalent of having drank a case of Red Bull but somehow not feeling jittery and ready to go and conquer the world and start it on fire.

I think there is a power available to us, I know, that comes from a place that’s deeply rested, deeply nourished. There is such power in the big quiet, majestic, depth, I think, of a mountain kind of energy. Because I know, from this place, this is one of the places where I can really touch a sense of what’s possible, that maybe I can’t even put a name on yet.

And that was something a lot of my masterminders were feeling as well. Many of the women in this group, at this point, I have already had the honor and privilege of working with in depth already, and I have seen them create magic and miracles and epicness and sometimes almost unbelievable turnarounds and achievements in their life.

I know them to be powerhouses and I know them to be also wise and big-hearted and it was really beautiful to hear how some of them were articulating, yes, they have the goals that are easy to articulate, like a seven-figure, like an eight-figure business, like a new body of work, of creative work.

And also, there was something that they were wanting to honor and not put a name on. It didn’t feel right yet. It felt like it was too big. It felt like being in this space where we could collectively share the sense of something big coming through, and also collectively have this understanding that there can be a power in not naming it and in knowing the right kind of energy to be in, in which to usher it in.

And it is not always, and in this case, not that rev oneself up, go out, conquer the world, wrestle it to the ground and nail it down. It’s creating room for something so much bigger than what we can currently name or even see because it’s something that we haven’t experienced before.

And I am really grateful to have clients who are wise and courageous and mystical and also pragmatic and creative enough to understand it. This is how this works. This is a legitimate part of the creative process.

So, I promised in the intro that I would share with you what I believe to be one of the most important, if not the most important connection you can make in order to create whatever it is that you’re dreaming of and that you want. And here it is.

It’s making the connection that it’s real. One of the most important connections you can make, whether you’re thinking about it in terms of your neural circuitry or between your mind, body, an spirit, or between the fifth dimension and this 3D dimension, between your imagination and your creative human self is to know that if there’s something you’re envisioning that you’re dreaming of, that you just know is possible for you, even if you’ve been through periods of doubt and failure, even if you’ve been through decades of it, the most important work you can do is establishing that connection that that dream, that vision is real.

Now, there is so much I want to go on to say about this. and I also have this feeling that the podcast should end after I say, “The most important connection you can make is that this goal or dream, this vision, this knowing is real.” Because I know that the other connections that have to be made after that are connections within you.

And I can offer ways to help you make those connections – and I will in an upcoming episode. And I also do not want to remove the power of considering that one single statement. I have spent hours with that single statement. If this were really real for me, what would change in my life? And I will go on to say that once you make the connection, things do change.

Now, to my dear skeptical friends out there, I love you. There are so many people that I admire who have brilliant intellects and brilliant hearts and are creating amazing, epic things in the world, who also love their skepticism. And I see that and honor that and honor everyone’s way, their own way and their own process. And I also, from my perspective, it can seem like skepticism is a block to making this connection that things are real, that no matter how much someone is able to create, I just wonder, what would they be able to create though if they removed that skepticism that says, “You know how much change is really possible?

What I do think is wise is to remove any shame about change you haven’t yet created, creations you haven’t yet been able to bring to life and removing all of that shame. And again, those are things I’ll speak about more in an upcoming podcast.

But I don’t want to rob you of the time, the opportunity, and also the real work and magic and miracles and transformation that take place within yourself when you give yourself the opportunity. And here’s why I brought up skepticism. Give yourself just some minutes, some hours, maybe even some days where you put your skepticism down for a little bit and let yourself really go there.

Just imagine, if I did know this to be real, if that were a connection, a new neural network in my brain, just like at one point in humanity, a new neural network was made for the world being round or the solar system not revolving around the Earth, allowing your mind, your inner being, your cells to be rearranged around, “This is real, this thing I’m dreaming of, this life that I sense for myself, the possibility of more.”

Even if you can’t articulate it exactly, see it exactly, you will sense it. you will sense it. And giving yourself time and space to let that sense of the more, the feeling of the more, some of that energetic touch you’ve had of something more, of another door being opened to another world and another possibility, letting that be real for you. How would life change?

If you take time for anything this new year, and again, whatever day you’re listening to this, this can be the beginning of a new year, take time for this. Take time for, “The most important connection that I can make here is that this is real.”

Take It for a walk. Journal. Meditate. Use your mind at a different level. Use more of your mind. Use more of your being to establish this connection. You can aways pick up your skepticism later, although maybe you’ll find you don’t want to.

So, while I do think that one connection can change everything for you, I know it can change everything for you. I see that connection being made for my clients and I see that moment as being the moment where everything changes.

I also promised in the intro something else, something that I’ll also go into greater depth in future episodes. But this one is also something that came up on the mastermind call, this early bonus one that we had just this week.

And this was something that can be your guiding intention, that can be more than a mantra. It can be a portal. It can be an ally. It can be a prompt in helping you move into this life, this reality, this new reality, this new energy, these new possibilities that you’re sensing.

And it is this phrase, “I love my life.” I know I surely have mentioned this on this podcast before. I know I have in the Art School. It’s so simple and so profound. And some members, people that I have worked with before were sharing in this last Art School how using and returning to that one phrase and really exploring what that means for them, what is a life they love, what is the energy of, “I love my life?”

And here again, as I’ve said it before in this podcast episode, but if you’re taking notes, take note of when I’m talking about your energy changing. Because when you make the connection that what you’re dreaming of is real, you can make a connection intellectually, but you’ll know you’ve really made the kid of connection that I’m talking about, the one that is creative, the one that creates new realities, new energies, new results, transformations in your life when you feel the energy change.

And so, sometimes you go about it the other way. Sometimes you go about learning how to shift your energy. You’re feeling into a new energy and seeing if you can focus yourself enough to maintain and sustain that, and using the phrase, “I love my life,” is an energetic, a whole being, mind, body, and spirit emotional tool.

Because your conditioning might be saying, “Yeah, I will love my life if and when X, Y, and Z.” But if it’s not moving you, it’s probably not actually true for you. And also, I know it to be true that the more people love their lives where they are currently, right now, not post you having stayed committed to your resolutions and bringing everything to life, but the more you can really learn how to move into a way of being where you can say and you can feel, “I love, love, love my life,” the more powerfully creative you will be, the more powerfully you’ll be able to create new results and new external markers of your creative prowess.

It is possible to experience such a great change like this. It is possible, no matter where you are in your life, that there will be a day when you feel this and know this to the depth of your being, where you’re not just trying that on, you’re not just trying to make the connection happen, but the connection comes up from within you.

I love my life. That is truly possible for you. I have seen it. I have known it myself and I have seen other people move from a place of not believing that was possible for them, to allowing themselves to want to want it, to allowing themselves just to want it, to allowing themselves just a sliver of a doorway opening that it might be possible for them, into full blown, they can’t hold it back, they’re just radiating.

And just this last week, I again, with this mastermind call, where I had the opportunity to hear people say, “This work has been life-changing. The work that we have done in the Art School has been life-changing.” That is what I want you to know is possible for you too.

And when I thought about this podcast episode and I thought about two things that you can take into the new year that will help you create the kind of life changes that you most want, what I wanted you to know is that, first of all, all of this is possible. And what makes it possible are, one, the most important connection you can make is that it’s real. Whatever it is that you’re dreaming of, it’s real. That future that you sense is possible, tat future self that you feel is really the most true, fullest expression of who you really are, it’s who you’re meant to be, that is absolutely true.

And secondly, the thing that I see being one of the most powerful, impactful things for my clients is using this simple but profound phrase, “I love my life,” and working with that back and forth. What does that mean in terms of what they’re thinking and their mindset? What does that mean emotionally? How does someone who loves their life move through challenges and adversity and failure? How does someone who loves their life transcend their upper limit, move beyond those places where we have limitations. Take that big leap, and live in a place where they’re like, “I love this. I feel more like myself than ever.”

That is something another client said this week, that even in the past six months, she has felt more of herself in terms of more like her future self, like she imagined her future self feeling – not only feeling, but it starts there. But being and creating and getting the results that match what she had been envisioning her future self, what her future self’s life would look like, what kind of results she’d be getting, the kind of things that she would be doing and experiencing.

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.

This is your simple and yet not so simple coach with me invitation. Do what you need to do to make that connection real and embrace this as possible for you, even if you’re not yet feeling it, trust me that you can live into a place where one day you wake up and it’s organic, it’s exuberant, you will feel like it happened overnight. But you and I will know that it didn’t happen overnight, where you can truly feel welling up from within you, “I love my life.”

Know that that is possible for you, that that is the truth that’s available for you, and it will likely surprise you with the ways that that manifests and with your truth and what being in love with your life, how awesome that can be, how wild, how simple, how profound, how deep, and how everyday and also how exquisite and extraordinary. But nothing less than that for you in the coming year and in the coming years, that everything you can dream of is possible and that, most of all, the greatest truth is that you love, you love, and you love your life.

And without one ounce of shame, for the times when you don’t feel that way – I don’t feel that way all the time. But I do feel that way in ways that I never knew were possible more and more of the time. And not judging ourselves either for those times that we don’t – again, this is getting into later episodes.

But know that the voice that I want to be, the energy that I want to share is one of so much grace for ourselves, so much space to drop the shame and embrace the possibility of loving our life, at the same time, being present and loving and compassionate for ourselves when we’re experiencing intense energies that feel anything like love.

Again, one of my core intentions with this particular episode is to paint a picture of the possibilities for you. And more than that actually, to help pave and carve a pathway to your own possibility.

So, it’s walking the line of balancing being clear to say, I’m not erasing the human condition or difficulty. And at the same time, it’s not pulling my punches or understating the immense transformations and change and healing and manifestations and, you know, to get specific relationships healed, businesses turned around, creative dreams checked off, radical differences in the way people move about their creative work, incredible financial success, all of these things, healing on every level.

Truly, in my client’s words again, life-changing experiences, life-changing work. That’s possible for you too. No matter where you are, no matter how much you are or are not feeling that possibility right now, all you need is, as a Course in Miracles says, a little bit of willingness and an open door.

And I’m hoping episodes like these provide you with even more than that, they provide you with an infusion of the kind of idea that your mind can then latch onto and stay with and focus on. There are also reasons why I’ve created things like the Possibility Immersion that did last year, all the videos of that are available in a digital course format. It’s available for purchase on my website.

Because I see so much of the challenge of this work is people staying in that energy. Their mind will latch onto an idea, but then it can be hard to summon or muster or stay in the energy. And that’s one of the things that I’ve really worked on and that I also do really well and that my clients also say is one of the reasons they come back to working with me. It’s that the energy is different.

And it’s getting that component down in your life, focusing your mind long enough, learning how to be with your emotions, and then really changing the energy in your life. That is completely possible for you. It’s possible to feel and experience and create something so differently than where you are now.

And if where you are now is amazing, it’s completely permissible and possible to amplify that. And that’s something else we were talking about in the mastermind this week, that this is really an exciting, exciting group because everyone in this group is at that amplification stage.

They’re beyond working to get to the stage where they’re amplifying. Things are rolling. Things are humming. They’ve done the work. It’s good. And it’s now like, “Oh, this is good. What else can we do? How else can we amplify this? How can we really have fun with this? What would be wild? What would be magical? What would be amazing? What could be even better than what we could possibly fathom right now?”

That’s available to you too. So, don’t hold back. I have a really great story that I’m just dying to share with you, but I’ll save it for next week about really how magical and how good and how amazing it can be and what it’s like to then balance that with the difficult parts of being human too and how to allow that amplification and expansion and, as Gay Hendricks says, moving beyond an upper limit. So, another story that I hope will inspire and empower your own journey as you make your way, carving your own pathway to possibility, learning how to create that connection from, “I’m imagining it,” to, “Oh no, I know this is real, this imagining, this visioning, this dream is real.”

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. And you know something else that I know is real? A million downloads. It’s real. I’m making the neural network and I am also loving the fact that this is like a network of observers kind of experiment effect in process.

If you’ve never heard of that before, I can talk about it more in a future episode. But I think this is a fun opportunity to tap into our collective creativity in a really fun way. I know I’ve heard from others of you who are sharing this intention with me, waking up to the day when this podcast has had more than a million downloads and has reached that many years that many times. And it’s so fun to play along with you in this.

So, if you would like to join this effort and help me move the podcast beyond that million-download mark, the best ways to do that are to share, share, share, share and then also subscribe and leave a review.

Thank you so much for being here, being a part of this audience and listening. And I thank you for helping me to also grow this audience in a magical, organic, really fun way. If you would like to take this work deeper and learn more about working with me, you can do so by going to my website, www.leahcb.com. Make sure you sign up for my newsletter. I share things with that community that I don’t share anywhere else, including fast action bonuses. So, bonuses for the community that, again, I don’t mention anywhere else along with so many other resources.

Also, our mastermind kicks off officially January 18^th, 2022. So, if you want to be in a room full of brilliant, big-hearted creatives who are thinking big and allowing space for what they can’t even fathom yet, holding space for themselves, for each other, if you want to be in the kind of room where the energy is so high, the coaching is so next level, the community and conversations are so elevated that whatever you’re thinking about, it’s going to happen, if you want to be in the room where the baseline is you’re loving your life and life is good and now you’re just ready to amplify and play and you have a creative dream that you’re so excited to bring to life, then you will want to apply for the Art School Mastermind.

There will be a link in the show notes. You can also find it by going to my website, www.leahcb.com, go to the work with me tab, scroll down to find the mastermind, or go directly to www.leahcb.com/theartschoolmastermind. Again though, link in the show notes.

You can also find information and links on my Instagram and connect with me there @leahcb1. This group is already off and running, creating some pretty epic results before we even begin. So, that’s kind of a fun energy to be in, is when people are like, “Hey, what are we waiting for?” Let’s have some mastermind massive magic before we even start.

So, if this is calling to you, I would encourage you, highly encourage you to apply. If you know this is the year where you make that most important connection between what you’ve been dreaming of and knowing that it’s real and you want to see evidence of that in the world, and you really want to be coming from that place of, “I truly love my life. I didn’t even know that this was possible for me,” kind of energy, then you should apply right now to be in this room, to be in this round of the Art School Mastermind.

So, in closing, this is for my listeners out there who really do geek out in the most fun ways about this time of year, or who are listening to this, again, any time of the year, any season of your life but are wanting to open another portal of possibility for you, who are wanting an energetic infusion and also maybe just to realign with your dreams and what’s true for your life.

So, spend some time journaling. I would use these two inroads as journaling prompts. First, how can you make the connection between what you’re dreaming of and that it’s real? What would it take for that connection to be made? What would that feel like? Reach for that with your mind. Let yourself do automatic writing about it. Let yourself do morning pages about it. Let yourself write your heart out for an hour. Let yourself go for a walk and reach for it, reach for it with all of your being until that connection gets made.

Google videos of neurons learning and making connections and watch those on YouTube. Watch the little – I think they’re called dendrites, my neuroscience is escaping me right now – reaching for one another as a connection attempts to be made and look at that a-ha moment where the connection is made, a bridge is literally formed. That’s what you’re aiming for, creating bridges in your brain, in your entire being between, like, “Imagine this. I think it’s possible. Oh, it is possible for me. This is really my life.”

And then, using this other phrase which is also a bridge-builder between wherever you are and wherever you want to be, “I love my life.” And really doing what you need to do, journaling, meditating, walking, talking with someone who has a big enough heart and mind to hold space for this, how does your energy change when you’re really there?

And when you’re really there, what does your life really look like? Not how do you think it should look in order to get to that place someday. But honestly, truly, from your soul, skip the conditioning of your brain. What would it look like?

This is a grand invitation for you. I hope you take me up on it. I cannot wait to hear from you. And maybe you can use that as a little seed to drop into your psyche that someday you will write to me and say, you know, “This episode, I took you up on that. I decided I, no matter what, am going to make that connection that what I’m dreaming of is real. I’m going to figure that out and I’m going to write to you, Leah, and I’m going to tell you about the process. And I’m going to write to you and tell you what it’s like to really have experienced and be living from this energy of, I really do, I love my life.”

That and nothing less is what you can have. It’s what you’re built for. I hope you have a beautiful week, and a miraculous, amazing week, even. And I look forward to talking with you next time.