Ep #212: A New Way to Play to Your Edge

Play to your edge. What comes up for you when I say that? Perhaps it’s a mix of things. If you are like I was, and still can often be, sometimes it’s a mixture of excitement, like you want to grow, you want to evolve. You want to see what’s possible. You want to be an example of what’s possible.

And then, perhaps, there’s also a recoil, where you’re already dreading what you’re anticipating play to the edge means for you; overwork, exhaustion, so much stretch, trying to be more than you currently are and feeling deficient all the time.

What I want to offer you in today’s episode though is a different kind of play to the edge invitation. What if playing to your edge means deeply trusting yourself? And what if deeply trusting yourself means rest, means letting things be easy and fun sometimes? What if playing to your edge can mean you don’t have to be on top of things all the time?

You don’t have to be on. You can be irresponsible, lazy. You can simplify. Come and play with me today at your edge and see how that can help your creativity take off and let you find the joy and peace and the absolute gold that’s to be found in the alchemy of surrender.

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. This is going to be a very meta episode. This is me showing up for you at my own very edgy – feeling very edgy today. We had a wonderful Thanksgiving. Today is the day after Thanksgiving. And I kind of just wanted to take today off.

But I didn’t have my podcast done. And interestingly enough, what I have been playing with in my own inner work – and it translates to my coaching and to my art and writing – is trusting myself, trusting the process, trusting my audience. So many episodes to come from this that I want to share with you.

But today, I thought, if I were being so vulnerable and so honest and so aligned and walking my own talk, what would I do? What would playing to my edge look like in terms of this podcast episode? And frankly, it would look like not doing it because I’ve got family here and I’ve had to start and stop this recording so many times because my kids are home and the dog is running in and out of the house.

And my kids are playing, but then they’re fighting, and the dog is barking. And for me, there’s nothing quite so frustrating as wanting to be in flow and then getting in flow and starting a thought stream, and then having to stop and lose it.

I think I started and stopped the last episode I tried to record for you about 10 times. And so then, after I asked everyone to go outside for just 10 minutes so I can speak to you in peace, I thought, what’s going on here? Why do I keep getting interrupted? And what is this other feeling nagging inside of me?

And it’s that, yeah, I want to play to my edge. I want to be very vulnerable and real with you. And I want to do this work with you real time, side by side.

So, there is such a part of me that says, “You can’t just do a short episode. That would be lazy. That would be irresponsible.” And there’s also this part that I am often working on and allowing myself one to two-degree shifts, and sometimes I make a quantum leap, and other times I go back, and always reminding myself to have a lot of grace and compassion in the process.

And that’s allowing myself to trust, like trust that what I’m creating is helpful, trust what I love to talk about, and trust that the beauty that I love is what I do. You know the Rumi quote, “Let the beauty that you love be what you do.” That’s what I’ve always wanted this work to be about.

And then, sometimes, old habits take over, old habits of fearing that it won’t be understood or received, or that the beauty that I love and then how I do it I not enough.

And so, as I’ve been doing a deep dive into my own desires for transformation and growth, I have come up with that my edge is really embracing the places where I want to simplify and I want to rest, in order to unleash an ease within me.

Because the places where I trust deeply in my one-on-one practice, within the Art School and within the mastermind once I’m working with clients, that, to me, is the juice. That’s where it is. That’s the place of incredible loss of self-consciousness and flow and feeling like I’m really in the moment, present, channeling, and not thinking about myself but also really damn sure this is what I’m supposed to be doing, and that I love it.

I’m looking for more and more ways to bring that into all aspects, including the podcast. Because quite honestly, I still get nervous recording this, or there’s just a hitch, or I don’t feel quite as mystical – that’s the word I wanted to say. So, I’m just going to say it. I don’t feel quite as genius. I don’t feel quite, again, as myself.

And so, I thought this episode, I will play to my edge and trust that letting it be simple and easy and also letting myself then slide back into my Holiday weekend is just the medicine that I need and perhaps that example will be useful for you as well.

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. I mean, truly, I am coaching myself as I am coaching you, recording this today.

Here are some places where I believe my next breakthroughs are. Similarly, I believe these are the reasons why I haven’t yet made it to that moonshot financial goal of $2 million a year.

I believe that these are also the reasons why, while I have been more and more prolific with writing and with painting, why I feel like I’m still stemming my own tide, I am my own bottleneck.

And so, before I get into that, I just want to back up and share this story that I’ve shared here before, I believe, for sure I’ve shared it with the Art School and in the mastermind.

And that’s like, back in the day, when I was doing triathlons, and I was doing them competitively. I wanted to qualify first for semi-pro status and then I wanted to make it to the Olympic trials.

And my bike and my run were right on, right there. And the swim, not so much. I didn’t grow up a competitive swimmer. I grew up swimming and I was a lifeguard, but I was not fast. I was at the middle of the bottom when it came to racing and triathlons.

And so, I thought, well, what is a way to increase my speed, to become a stronger swimmer? And although I didn’t have this saying at the time, I intuitively knew what is the Art School philosophy now, that doing that would be the way.

So, the Art School philosophy, it’s the way of being, it’s cultivating an extraordinary way of being that makes your extraordinary results inevitable. So, I thought an extraordinary way of being would be, yes, to be a strong swimmer.

But if I were someone that loved to swim, wouldn’t I swim more and wouldn’t I just be so obsessed with swimming that I would want to learn the ins and outs and nuances of it and become like a fish in water?

And so, I looked for all the ways that I could learn to love swimming. Because I knew that would make me the best swimmer that I’m able to be, that I was able to be at that point in my life.

And so, I raised my awareness. I have this language for it now. I wasn’t a coach then. I didn’t have this language back then. But I raised my awareness by looking for every nook and cranny in that swim training experience where there was an opportunity for me to fall in love with it.

And some of the portals to falling in love with it were actually becoming very aware of the places I dreaded, even the slightest bit of dread, even the places where my brain was like, “Oh, come on, just get over it. We don’t have time to rest on this detail. Can’t you just get on with it?”

So, everything from getting up early in the morning, because that’s when I used to go. I was in law school at the time, and so I would get up at 4:30 so I could swim before going to class. I learned to love that.

I learned to love jumping in the cold water when it’s freezing cold in the middle of winter. Indoor pool, but still cold. I learned to love what I used to think of as the monotony of swimming back and forth. I transformed that into this beautiful meditative life-giving flow experience and way to change my state.

And so on and so forth until the last thing that I realized I just hated, dreaded about swim training was I would wear a swim cap, and I just hated that. And so, I learned to love that too, including by – I’d put on a hair mask before I put in the swim cap, so I was like, this is basically like a spa treatment that I’m also getting while swimming. And it also then kept my hair from ripping out when I put the cap on and off.

I paid such close attention to every minor detail because my brain also wanted to protest, including the swim cap, being like, “You don’t get to love everything. Can’t you just get over it? Do you have to love everything?”

But I was looking at it as this mindset challenge and it became a game. I guess I gamified it too, really, and it became satisfying to look for these places where I had even the slightest bit of dread kind of energy, and turn it instead into something that either was neutral, or that I found value in and found rewarding, or even looked forward to.

I’ve been doing that kind of evaluation in other places in my life. And it’s so fascinating. So, one of the things I’ve discovered is that common threads around places where I feel like I’m the bottleneck, I’m not allowing myself to let the beauty that I love be what I do, some places are things where I think I need to do it a certain way still, where there is a should, like I should do it this way, I shouldn’t do it that way.

So, for this episode, for instance, I shouldn’t do an episode that’s about playing to my edge and about that edge being letting it be easy. I shouldn’t do an episode about, you know what, I’m just going to make today a break. I’m going to take it off today.

Or conversely – not really conversely, but along those same lines – I should always be on. That is a deep one that I didn’t realize was there as strongly as it is, and actually I know keeps me from my best work. And also keeps me from growth because if, deep down, or even not so deep down, consciously, I’m fearing that I always have to be on, how exhausting is that?

And it’s another way of saying, I have to somehow be more of what I already am, that I somehow have to prepare extra on top of just what I am and who I am and what I do and the beauty that I love being what I do.

And when I think about creating these episodes, I mean, this creative genius work, this soul-making work, this work around what it means to really be the artist you’re meant to be and live the life you’re meant to be, this is the stuff that I just live and breathe and love day in and day out, the stuff of being one part a contemplative, like a modern-day contemplative, and taking what I’ve learned from those contemplations, my own and then also study and research. I geek out over that.

I love to read. I love to learn. I love trainings. I just signed up for a training that will help me be an even more powerful coach when it comes to working with the unconscious and includes integrative hypnosis. Because oh my gosh, I would do that if no one paid me for it ever. And I’m clearly paying to learn because that is just the stuff I geek out over.

And then, coupling all of that learning then with being my own best client and my own test subject, seeing like, does this help me channel the art that I feel I’m here to make? Does this help me to live a life that’s meaningful where I feel like I’m channeling the essence that is then my own medicine? And maybe medicine for the world?

I think there is a desire there for that to be so, a dream, and then also not being attached to that. I know another place where my edge is, is not having to prove. And I feel like there are areas in life where I have been doing that either unconsciously and naturally, and maybe not noticing the water I swim in.

Or I’m aware of it and very grateful for it. For instance, in coaching, particularly starting with one on one, that’s just an area where I love to swim in those waters and feel very comfortable. I always love learning more, and then also, I know how good I am, so much so that I can drop it and just be in the moment and be present.

And I love the conversation, the mystical element that happens in the moment too, where there’s always these other energies and currents that come through. There is always a golden thread to follow. And so, being in that place of unknown and following the golden threads, that’s just work, play I relish, live for, and love.

Does it feel scary sometimes? Are there some times where I’m like, whoa, where is this one going to go? Yes. But it also feels more like maybe the exhilaration a surfer has of riding a big wave, where you’re not in control, and yet, you’re moving with something and you’re sensing it and you merge with it, and something incredible always comes at the other side.

So, that I feel very comfortable with. It took me a while to find that same level of comfort and trust with groups, but that has also benefitted from practice and conscious practice, deliberate practice, and deliberate trusting.

The places where I think there’s an edge though are places like the podcast, and also my art and writing. I still find myself often feeling like I have something to prove, like it’s an energy in there, like I have to prove this is useful for you, even if you never sign up for anything with me, I sometimes still feel like, because I wasn’t making art or writing books, not one of these people like Liz Gilbert who always knew they were going to be a writer and nothing else, or was drawing nonstop and painting nonstop from the age of five, sometimes my late bloomer and feeling late to the show and not having a formal education in it has sometimes made me feel – not made me, but I have that energy for sure of feeling I have something to prove.

And so, that’s what I’m working with. Because for me, what is the opposite of needing something to prove, but a release of that, no attachment, and instead, again, letting the beauty that I love be what I do, and then no attachment, trusting myself, trusting the process that deeply, and also trusting you that deeply, that if it resonates with you, it does. And if it doesn’t, it doesn’t. And that that’s all good.

This can feel like a giving up of sorts. That’s another episode, another practice that I do and I’ve done with clients. It’s very powerful, an intentional, conscious giving up in order to let the fuller self emerge.

So, what I’m giving up here in this episode with you, the need to be on all the time, the need to perform, the need to convince, the need to be understood, the need to be liked, the need to measure up to 27,000 external, impossible standards at the same time. And when I’m giving that up, what I’m allowing is a return to letting the beauty that I love be what I do. Because it’s in that space, even as I say those words, where I can feel my own essence return. I can feel a recentering.

I know many of you might ask then, “Well, does that giving up of those things, does that mean that you’re also giving up the dreams that you have for your art, for your writing, for your business, including income?”

And I’m not. And this is also though me walking my talk and saying the sacred twin intention that I do this in a way where it’s who I am, it’s my way of being that’s of paramount importance, you know, what you would call the process goal. Who do you become by engaging with the process?

That, to me, that spiritually informed aspect, that very human aspect, that has to be honored. And I don’t want to have a blowup in success if it comes at the price of where I have to leave myself, I have to perform, I have to convince.

want this to be about true self-actualization, like the true emergence, being safe in the world, and that it comes from a place of deep naturalness. For you, what might playing to your edge look like? If you’ve done everything about stretching and you’ve worked, could playing to your edge look like letting go of certain things? Could it look like giving up? And what would you be giving up? What would you be releasing an attachment to?

Finally – and I think this is a really juicy one – when you ask yourself, what would playing to my edge look like in terms of being more myself, more free, liberated than ever? Because I do think surrendering to the innate self is an essential aspect of this alchemical process.

So, when I ask you that, what might you need to surrender or let go of in terms of playing to your edge – and if something comes up immediately but you shut it down with, “Oh no, not that,” explore the not that. That’s where the impetus for this episode, when I explored, what do I need to let go of and where can I practice that, immediately what came up was the podcast, and immediately my mind was like, “No, anywhere but the podcast. We can’t do that in the podcast.”

And so, here you have it. What actually turned out to be a longer episode than I anticipated on letting go and playing to my edge. May this help you give yourself permission to play and explore and move past your own edge.

Thank you, everyone, for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. There is so much going on these days. There are so many ways to work with me. There is the Secret Door Community. We’ve had our first call. That was so much fun. There are free calls. There’s also the opportunity to start the Art School right now, even though the official Art School doesn’t start until February.

In alignment with this desire just to let myself be as natural as I want to be, I’ve decided that anybody who joins now, I’m just going to start working with them. No need for this official iron curtain, like I can’t work with people until February. I just want to start helping you now.

We can have a transformation in the first 15 minutes that we talk. And then, you have all of these extra weeks with me and in the support of the container to implement the work.

I mean, a lot of changes to the Art School this time, with the interest of having it be as spacious and luxurious as possible, so that your central nervous system is quieted, so that you come from a relaxed place, knowing that you’re supported and that there’s no overarching sense of, “Oh, I have to make the most of this. It’s going by so quickly.”

I want you to relax into the process and be deeply taken care of, deeply nurtured. I know, in that space when you are feeling safe, that that actually is an edge for most people. That actually is the next frontier. When they have given up fear and insecurity and move into safety, that’s what they fear, ironically.

But it’s in that space when people are in sanctuary, deep sanctuary, it’s a sacred space in which that creature, that creative self does emerge. It has so much to say. It has so much to create. It has so much to give. It’s naturally prolific and genius AF.

And so, that is an opportunity that I wanted to create this time around with the Art School. We are also accepting applications for the Art School Mastermind. And I’m doing a bunch of calls on informational sessions as well as just kick-ass laser coaching on anything that you want.

One of my goals this year is to help people create as many transformations as their heart desires, being my natural, badass, beauty-loving self, doing what I love and loving what I do. So, you’re invited to all of that and the best way to stay current with that is to be on my newsletter list.

I will not spam you. Of course, it goes without saying. And the way to sign up for that, you can go to the show notes, you can go to my website, www.leahcb.com to sign up for the newsletter, to sign up for the Art Schools. You can also send us any questions about all of this to support@leahcb.com.

I want to close with those lines from Rumi, “Let the beauty you love be what you do.” And then, ask you to go into your week, to contemplate, “Do I believe that’s possible for me? And where does the edge of my belief come? Where do I think my belief that that’s possible, where does that run out? Because that, my friends, is your edge.

And I do believe that your self-actualization, your greatest art, the life you’re meant to have and the artist that you’re mean to be is just beyond that. And paradoxically, it might not mean moving out or pushing towards. It might mean giving up, surrendering, and going within and letting everything you are be what you do, or don’t do.

Have a beautiful week, everyone. And I look forward to talking with you next time.