Ep #90: Reconnecting with Your Vision

“Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love. it will not lead you astray,” Rumi.

If you have felt ever in your life, or currently, disconnected from the truth of who you are, or from your goals, from your dreams, from your big vision, this episode has something powerful to offer you. And, if you are still right on track, you can use this episode to help you gather momentum and continue to rise.

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 back, or for the first time possibly, to The Art School Podcast. I hope you are doing well and staying safe and healthy wherever you are. When I am recording this, it is late July 2020, hence the well-wishes for health, because we are still amidst the global pandemic, and amidst 2020, which has been quite the year.

And I took some time, some retreat time last week, although I went with my children. I went home to Iowa. That always feels like a good mind, body, spirit renewal retreat space for me. And I wanted to thank, you know, from 40,000 feet, although I stayed flat on the ground, about how best to use 2020 to shape me. Because I think it’s shaping all of us.

That’s the invitation, is that it’s changing all of us and I want to participate more powerfully in how that change is happening and I wanted to think about, midway through the year, what do I see this year meaning for me? And maybe what’s different than what I thought at the beginning of the year? And also, how can I use this to continue to become the person that I want to become, and also recalibrate our plans as family and think deeply too about what my clients may be experiencing that is very different this year than what they have experienced before.

Because I’m preparing for the Art School fall 2020, which kicks off in September, and the Art School Mastermind, which kicks off in august. And I have in place a life-changing experience and I want to make sure I have looked at it from all angles and I’m really meeting people where they are in the best possible way to take them inevitably to where they want to be.

And this is going to bring me to the topic of today’s episode because I’ve been going back over the design for the Art School course. And if you are familiar with the Art School, you’ve heard me say before that our core philosophy is cultivating an extraordinary way of being in mind, body, and spirit that make the extraordinary results you’re dreaming of inevitable.

So, my office currently looks like a bomb went off in there. I have so many papers scattered around. It is like a war room for light and love and massive creativity. And so, while I’m plotting out the next six months for the mastermind and the next 12 weeks that is the duration of the Art School, I was also then thinking about you the listeners and thinking about what piece that I’m working on now can I bring in for you that may be what you need to hear right now?

Because maybe you have continued to steadily create progress and grow and rise through the challenges and changes of 2020. Or maybe you feel like you’ve been knocked a bit off course and you feel disconnected from those goals and from those dreams and from the energy of powerful creation.

So, no matter where you find yourself currently on that spectrum, I don’t think it’s a stretch to assume that we all feel like we lose our way or get disconnected now and then. We all have slumps or dips or times when we feel like we’ve lost it. And so, this episode is something to have at the ready, to have in your back pocket so you can be prepared for those times.

Because that is one thing I do work through with my clients, is that planning to win includes anticipating the obstacles and preparing for the obstacles. Because we are planning to win no matter what. And part of this act of cultivating a way of being that is extraordinarily creative is a way of being that is very resilient.

And I won’t go into depth about what I share with my students about how to use resistance to enter flow and how to absorb the energy of obstacles and challenges and use it to increase your own creative force and strength. But a small piece that may seem too simple to be profound, but don’t overlook it, is what I wanted to share on today’s episode.

Because oftentimes, it’s these small things that are thorns in our side that we think we should just be able to get over, but we ignore and ignore, and they build up and they contribute to that dam within us that dams up our creative potential and the force with which we are able to do our work in the world, the power with which we are able to do our work in the world. And then, we start to see diminishing results, but increasing frustration or angst.

And I don’t want that for any of you. I know we all want to be as creatively powerful as possible and also actively cultivating a mindset, emotional mastery, spiritual strength that allows us to access the emotions and new levels of ourselves, discover new levels of ourselves in this process of creating what currently seems to you to be an impossible result for you.

Because again, this work is about how to become somebody who does move from the impossible to the inevitable. And again, there are so many things I’d love to share with you about this, that the hardest part about doing this podcast is choosing what to share which week. But because this has come up several times in various forms in the coaching that I’ve done with clients this week, I thought this might also be something that many of you are experiencing.

So, there’s a two-pronged approach here that I will talk about. And this is a great episode to listen to after you’ve listened to the two preceding episodes the mental discipline of creation and the art of creative visualization. Because for many of you, you can envision what you want, but then you get into the weeds when it comes to the execution of it.

And I think this two-prong approach applied over and over again in your life, like repetition so that you create muscle and muscle memory around this, and also an ease around it. It’s going to be difficult in the beginning, otherwise it wouldn’t be an issue. But apply it consistently and you will see massive changes in your life.

So, when you have in mind the vision of what you want to create and of who you want to be, but then you find yourself up against some kind of roadblock – let’s say there’s someone in your life that doesn’t approve of what you’re doing. Or I’ll use an example that comes up a lot. Let’s say you are a mother who is also a creative and you have family that you love dearly and they love you, but finding the time, not only squeezing in time, but finding ample spacious abundant amounts of time and energy for you to focus on your business, your creativity, your physical health, generating income, something that just feeds your soul as a human being can be really difficult. But it is an essential part, and it is an essential part of you living a full and honest life in this world, and also an essential part of you becoming creatively powerful.

So, the first question, first prong I want you to ask yourself is the question, “What do I really want? What do I want here?” And sometimes, you have to ask it a number of times. When I have clients who are in overwhelm or they seem like they’re confused, you know, it’s not in every scenario, but there seems to be a certain flavor to the overwhelm where I can tell this is the question that’s necessary. Because sometimes overwhelm comes up, it’s like a fog that our brain throws up because we’re afraid to own what we really love and we’re afraid to move towards it.

And a lot of times, we’re afraid to do that because of what people in our life are going to say or judge us or do. Mostly it’s going to be their opinion of us, when we follow through, when we own what we really love and then when we follow through on it.

And a lot of us would like to continue to stay in a fog, rather than have to go face to face with someone’s judgment of us and perhaps the judgment that we’re being selfish or that they don’t understand us or that we’re crazy, or that we’re not good enough to do what we say we want to do or that it’s going to take us too long or it’s going to inconvenience people, it’s not going to accommodate them, or just generally that they don’t understand it.

And I think also, we are afraid to go to that place where we believe in ourselves and we let that be enough and go through that process of they may love you to death, but they may have a ceiling for you that is not about you, but it is about their own mind and their world view. And a lot of us would rather stay in this really agonizing, but we delude ourselves into thinking it’s a comfort zone, of a fog of overwhelm, rather than cut to the heart of what we really want and who deep down we really know ourselves to be.

And then taking an emotional risk and stating that, declaring that in the world, saying, “I am a writer. I was born to be a writer. That means I need to write, that means I need an ample amount of time to write. That means I need colleagues, I need peers, I need time alone, I need plenty of time to think.” And a lot of times, the way you have to do that, the heroics are in the beginning.

The heroics are in the beginning when you state your claim, like, “This is who I’m meant to be,” but you don’t have anything to show for it yet. And that’s how you act from courage but also self-love, and that is how you lay the foundation for those inevitable results later.

A lot of times, that’s the place that people want to avoid. They want to have the evidence first. They want to have some proof, some money in the bank, to justify what they’re about to do. And if they don’t, they’ll stay instead, like I said, the brain will throw up this fog of confusion and overwhelm.

So, a way to cut to the chase is to ask yourself, “What do I really want here?” And you know. You are not confused, but the moment you’ll state it, you’ll notice the but that comes up, “But this might hurt someone’s feelings. But they might not understand. But what if I fail?”

And then that brings you to the second prong, which is coming face to face with that but and then moving forward anyway, following through Follow through doesn’t just apply when people pave the way for you, agree with you, make it easy for you, give you a loan, pay you in advance, think you’re amazing, say, “Yeah, you’re talented, this is for sure going to work,” and then just roll out the red carpet. That’s just now how it works.

And you don’t want it to work that way. Like I said, in the beginning, that’s when you are your most heroic. That’s when also you’re building muscle. And I say beginning, but it applies to every new beginning. It applies to – you might have written five books. It applies to the sixth book that you want to write but you don’t want to write it in the way that you’ve ever written before and your publisher doesn’t understand and they’re not going to signoff and your agent thinks you’re crazy. You know there’s a check in the bank if you just keep doing and putting out what you’ve been putting out.

So, this doesn’t just apply to beginners. Using that resistance and moving through it but then absorbing it in a way – this is what I’m just going to touch on the tip of the iceberg about using resistance to enter flow, seeing it as, “How can I use this to make me sharper, to make me mentally stronger, to make me more creative, to find an original path, to do something that no one else has done before? Sure, they’re saying it’s impossible. Let me see what I can do here.”

And this brings me to something else that has come up a lot in the last several weeks in Art School. And it’s the discussion about what do you do when your belief runs out. And I think it’s an interesting question because it’s a question of semantics. And I think it assumes – we often assume that belief should feel a certain way. Like, belief should give us buoyancy and belief should give us fuel.

And since there is such a strong connotation with that word, I think people feel like if they’re not feeling a certain way, that means the belief is gone. But if you just continue forward, past the feeling of belief, and put one foot in front of the other, then that is still acting in belief, then that is when you lean into the commitment. Commitment as a creative act is that decision you make ahead of time that the result is yours. That’s what makes it inevitable and that you are walking yourself home towards it, even if you have to walk on your knuckles sometimes, even if you have to walk past that point at which you feel like belief has run out.

As long as you’re still moving, it hasn’t run out. You might feel like you’ve run out of ideas, but continue on, press on, and there’s something in you that persists, and through that abyss, you’re going to find your way again. You have to sometimes feel like you’re groping in the dark, proceeding without confidence, proceeding without a map. And lean into that abyss, into the resistance and that act of faith itself. And just the humble but also powerful act of pressing on changes something within you and calls forth something else within you.

It does unlock another aspect of you, and that is one of the things that is so rewarding about this creativity with a capital C, finding places in you that you didn’t even know were there, finding new levels that you hadn’t even imagined existed for you, when you just press on, past the point when you think it should feel differently or better than it does.

I know this might sound like a contradiction to some, when I talk about cultivating, when you are being intentional, about the way of being that you’re cultivating. People might ask, “Well shouldn’t you enjoy it the entire way?” And I think what I have to say about that is this is one of those times when you need to drop all your prior language and judgments around what joy is, what fulfilment is. And then, you might find that you have just been conditioned to think comfort is the same as joy always.

Just experiment with dropping language around this aspect of meeting up with resistance. Because time and time again, when I have seen clients move through something that they had been resisting, it’s not easy, but the feeling they have on the other side, a lot of times they’ll say raw, relief, amazing. They don’t even have a word for it because it’s not something that many people do over and over again.

But if you do this consistently, come up against something you don’t want to do because you can see, because you’ve been here over and over again, the same obstacle, the same resistance meets you over and over again, you can see that this obstacle is meant to be part of your path. Maybe it even is you on a deep metaphysical level.

And once you can meet it and move through it, transmute it, become it, so many different things can happen, am all-chemical reaction, then I think the reason people are left speechless on the other side is because this is not an experience that we have often, but they are not at all saying that they are sorry they’ve done it. They are always glad they’ve done it. and then it’s being the kind of person who moves through that again and again and again so that it does become – I think it becomes like a spiritual muscle memory, a mental muscle memory, an emotional muscle memory. And again, playing with that place where you drop your language around it.

Here is an analogy or a metaphor I have for you is I’ve talked before about – I think I’ve done this on the podcast – talked about when I was training for triathlons and I wanted to learn to love to swim because I didn’t love the swim part initially. I really dreaded it. But I knew that if I wanted to meet my goals, that I needed to be a better swimmer. And I knew the best way to be a better swimmer was to be in the pool a lot.

And I knew I’d create a lot less drag both physically in the pool and also drag in my life and in my training, if I could learn to be someone who loves to swim. So, I broke down every part of the swim that created resistance for me because, in swimming, if you want to become a better swimmer, a major big domino to knock down is to learn to create less drag.

So, I took that metaphor into every aspect of swimming and thought about the drag I was creating with my mindset and where could I cut down the drag in my mindset? Where could I be more hydrodynamic with my mindset, cut through the water, cut through training, like a hot knife through butter in terms of my mindset?

And so, I broke it down into all these small pieces, all these small places where moment by moment, split second by split second, I came up against resistance because there is that big vision, yes, and then there are all these split seconds where you have an opportunity to make a decision, you have an opportunity to examine your mindset along the way and shift it.

And I became just very fascinated by doing this. and one of the places I broke down was, for instance, I hated putting on my swim cap. So, I flipped that. But the one I wanted to share with you now – I should say I transformed that, I really had to get creative.

The one I want to share with you now is, like getting into the pool. Because when you are getting into a cold pool, especially when you live in the Midwest and it’s snow-storming outside, and it’s an indoor pool but you still don’t want to get into cold water and start swimming, your body just doesn’t, I broke down, you know, dropped words, let my body slice through the water, felt that reaction.

And then, over and over again, focused on that one moment, learning to drop my judgment around my resistance to that one moment, and instead, open to it instead, instead allow myself to create a different experience of it and to experience it as sensation. And it might sound like a tedious process to go through, but I wasn’t, at that point, I kind of knew I wasn’t even just in triathlon anymore for the swim part. I was in it because it was a great context for watching my mind and seeing how I could shift my mind and how I could change my mind and how, by paying attention to my mind, I could see how that was affecting my experience. And then going back in and seeing the ways where I could shift my mind to shift my experience, and then the results I created.

And so, I use that metaphor because it’s probably distinct enough from what you’re experiencing as a creative that you can maybe have some emotional distance and then bring it back.

One of my clients this week, for instance, was saying her big vision is very clear, but she has such resistance just to opening the laptop. And I know that is a common theme because I hear from many of you, that is not an uncommon part of it. And it might seem like too small of a task to break down that part where you open the laptop and your heart contracts.

But if you are able, I promise you, if you are able to stay with yourself and have patience with yourself long enough to transform your relationship with that moment where you open the laptop, to understand what’s going on there, to look at that resistance under a microscope, play with it, see if you can drop words, drop into it, absorb that energy, move through that.

If you are able to stay with yourself through that seemingly insignificant and tedious moment, but that you know that moment is a huge thorn in your side, if you can transform that moment, you can do it over and over and over again. And I can hear also the collective protest of, “oh my god, that just seems like so much work.”

And it is. It is work. But it’s also work that works because it’s also this meta work of learning how your mind works. And once you step outside your mind and learn how it works, then you can change the program. Then you can be the one that programs, instead of having the program programming your life and your results.

Because without the patience to stay with yourself in one moment, you are not going to have the patience to stay with yourself moment after moment after moment after moment in order to make those results inevitable and to do that in a way that evolves you as a person, mentally, emotionally, spiritually, financially in all aspects.

You can continue to hustle and force your way through, but think about all that force, all that energy that’s required to force. And I think so much of that force comes from the fact that we are unwilling to back up and look at the resistance from a different angle and consider it differently and to do this work of staying with ourselves in the moment, being intensely curious, and learning how to master our mind and reprogram intentionally, you know, use our higher self, our wisdom.

This also is an act of radical self-love because in a world that just wants you to hurry up and get over it and be done with it and have the results already so that you can be worthy of love, this is a radical act, to say, “No, my life, moment by moment, the experience, the process matters to me. I’m willing to come up against discomfort and move through it over and over again and I’m also willing to stay with myself and watch and learn and transform my mind in order to transform the results I create, to transform my experience of the process, and to transform my life.

So, this brings me to the part of the podcast where I want you to do more than just listen. I want you to really lean in and work with me and coach with me. Information is awesome and so is inspiration, but it’s what you do with that and how you apply it to your life that makes it transformational.

So, please, use this information. Test it out in the world. Make lots of mistakes. Make lots of different attempts. Think about it for yourself and then integrate it and apply it and transform.

Here’s what I want to suggest you do this week. Think about that question, what do you really want? Maybe you want to come up with a range of answers from the really big, you want to win a Pulitzer, you want the book you wrote to be made into a movie, you want a home in the south of France. To maybe something smaller – relatively smaller after I said that. You want a raise at work. You want to work three days a week instead of five. You want to spend a weekend a month away at a cabin writing and know that your family is well taken care of and that you can disconnect without guilt and immerse yourself in the process.

You might want to go to something that seems small but you just haven’t given yourself, like 30 minutes in the middle of the day to look out the window and just reconnect and meditate, 30 minutes to go for a walk between meetings, rather than cram in a few more emails, a way to take in the sunshine and nature.

So, whatever it is, use this opportunity here, my invitation to spend 30 minutes giving yourself quality attention, asking yourself like you’re hanging on every word, what is it that you really want? Ask yourself like you love yourself more than anything in the world and you’re waiting for those answers with bated breath, ready to give it to this most beloved person.

And I want you to answer this without censoring, without apologizing, without being realistic, without anticipating what the naysayers will say. Because that part comes up next.

The next question is, what are the obstacles? And here’s where you can list the naysayers, whether they be out in the world or in your own mind, whether it’s someone saying you don’t have the resources or the talent or whether it’s you telling yourself you’re not good enough or your time has passed or that that’s too selfish. List it all out, anything anybody would say, and then also possibly what you think are real legitimate circumstances, physical challenges in the world.

And now, this third part, here’s where the rubber meets the road. Here’s where I want you to make the best plan that you can, to make a map from what you want that goes through those obstacles and ends up at your inevitable results. I don’t care if it’s not realistic. I don’t care if it’s not been done before.

I want you to leave no other option than you are going to do this, for when belief runs out, when money runs out, when luck runs out, how would you keep going? And to edify yourself along the way, immerse yourself in the stories of uncommon and extraordinary people who have done this. Because if you want to create an impossible dream, you need to think in ways that are, quote unquote not normal.

You will step out of the mainstream. And the price most people pay when they do that is receiving unsolicited judgment or opinions or critiques from others that condemn their first early attempts that don’t immediately make it, number one, or saying that they’re crazy or that their dream is ill-founded, that they’re irresponsible, irrational, reckless, selfish, or just that general class of dismissively calling people dreamers.

But it’s those dreamers that do that are the dangerous kind. And that’s the category in which I want you to be; somebody who dreams but follows through. Does that, feet on the ground, elbows rolled up. It’s the inner work. It’s spiritual grease, but it’s also elbow grease of following through for yourself, with yourself, through all the minor resistances, not trying to gloss it over, not waiting for it to feel easier or pave the way, but the way you make it feel easier is by changing, transforming from the inside.

To be somebody that can absorb that resistance, meet it in a different way, look at it through different eyes, experience it, even as a different person. This is work that I do with my clients, right, being her now, transforming how you think about yourself. Your self-concept will absolutely transform how you encounter those obstacles and that resistance.

And at the same time, it’s the difficulty of it that grows you into being somebody who is stronger than you ever knew imaginable, that helps you tap into gifts and access places within yourself that you did not know were available to you.

Remember, if you want to do uncommon things, extraordinary things, you have to think and feel in uncommon and extraordinary ways. And then it comes back full circle again, right? Then you have to do and follow through on those uncommon things, and then it becomes – it is difficult, yes. But that’s why most people stop. And that’s why it’s uncommon and extraordinary.

But we are all about normalizing the extraordinary. We are all about believing in human potential and that we leave too much of ourselves and our lives on the table and that we can access so much more and we don’t have to do it from a place of doing violence to ourselves. We do it from a place of knowing what it really is to love yourself and to love your life and to stay with yourself through all of it, the entire way, as you move from the impossible dream to it being your inevitable reality.

Thank you so much for listening to another episode of The Art School Podcast. I really appreciate each and every one of you listening. If you have enjoyed this podcast, if it’s helped you, if it’s helped you move the needle, if it’s helped you have a better day, if it’s meant something to you, the best thing you can do to pay it forward is to share, is to subscribe, and go into iTunes and leaving a review is a huge help. It helps me reach more people with this work and helps the work spread.

I also, this year, would love to see this audience grow. And I’m going to be devoting more and more time and attention to continuing to improve what I offer here, to make it more valuable for you as a free resource. And so, an- ask that I have for all of you is that if you have never shared this podcast before, if you could share this one or share one that you’ve loved and share it once, but maybe share it three times, that will be my big ask for you this week. And again, I might not ever get to tell you thank you in person, but if you do that, please know that I am very grateful, very grateful. And, as always, so grateful that you spend your time with me, tuning in and listening every week.

When you’re ready to take this work more deeply and dive in and be immersed in an extraordinary community of uncommon, brilliant, powerful creatives, then there are two opportunities to do that again this year.

At the beginning of August, we’re launching the Art School Mastermind, six months of being immersed in this work, six months of moving from impossibility towards creating that dream as the inevitable result in your life and becoming somebody who does that on the regular, who masters these meta skills of moving from conception, impossible dream, to follow through, execution, and living into that reality inevitably.

The second opportunity kicks off in September with the Art School. So, the Art School is my original and classic program. The mastermind includes the Art School and then also includes three additional months of advanced and intensive coaching with me and your fellow masterminders.

The classic Art School program, which is 12 weeks long, kicks off the beginning of September. So, this is 12 weeks where, at the beginning, you come in and define what result you want to create in 12 weeks, and also define, as best you can, the way of being that you want to cultivate in order to make that result inevitable.

And some people come in with a well-defined goal or objective, and other people use the group, use my coaching and use this process of discernment to decide what they want to create in those first couple of weeks. And then we get to it.

And again, I follow this approach that I came up with years ago after doing this myself about the sacred twin intention. Because I’ve always been a high achiever and overachiever and I could muscle and force my way and exhaust my way to a result with the best of them.

But I knew that there was something different, a third way available to me, a better way. And I wanted to go about my creative career in a way where I didn’t only create art and didn’t only create a living from making art and transform myself into an artist and a thriving artist, but also an artist who thrives on all levels, holistically, mind, body, and spirit.

I didn’t want to just be forcing my way and continuing to be in a mind-made prison while creating beautiful art. I wanted to evolve and grow as a person and love making art and love the life I made along the way and also become somebody who just loves being in my own skin and in my own head and in my own life and in the world.

And so, with the sacred twin intention process, what I teach is that that sacred dream you have also calls out who you are yearning to be in the world, what your soul is longing for, and that we use these two in tandem. And that these two in tandem are essential to helping you create the life and live the life that you were meant to live while also thriving on all levels; relationally, spiritually, financially, mentally, physically.

I really believe that for you to be powerfully creative, you need to look at the whole human, the whole picture, and tap into the potential that’s available to you, to optimize your experience of life on all levels. That’s the key to seeing what you’re truly capable of.

To close today’s podcast, I have another quote to share with you, but I really wanted to put it side by side with that first quote from Rumi. So, Rumi wrote, “Let yourself be silently drawn by the stronger pull of that which you really love. It will not lead you astray.”

And then a later great poet, and some would say mystic, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you into something else is the greatest accomplishment.”

I love both of those quotes, but I think they are so much more powerful when you have actually done this work of working to be yourself in the world or you’ve done the work of allowing yourself to be strongly pulled by that which you really love and you’ve come up against the rub of the world or resistance from the world.

Don’t let that mean something has gone wrong. Know you’re on the right track. Use all of it to get stronger, to get sharper, to become more loving, and keep following through, keep coming through for yourself. Have a beautiful week, everyone, and I will talk to you next time.