2 years ago, I was a depressed, identity-less artist who had not created any work of substance that I was proud of for over 10 years. After diving head-first into personal development, mindfulness and manifestation practices, I can proudly say that I've come out the other side with purpose, flowing creativity and a zest for life having created over 100 drawings AND turned them into a product!

Part of my process was reading (well...listening to audiobooks) and listening to a ton of podcasts, where I slowly unblocked a bunch of limiting beliefs and pieced together a new story for myself. Here are the top 3 quotes that I still have running in my head today. 

"Superman's is not coming" -Erin Brockovich

I heard a podcast interview with Erin Brockovich explaining her book, Superman's Not Coming, which is actually about the grim circumstances of our nation's water supply, but when I heard this phrase, "superman's not coming," I couldn't shake it and couldn't help relating it to my own personal circumstances. What I took from this was, if I'm unhappy, it's my fault. It's not anyone else's responsibility to make me happy, it's my job, and I've been stuck in a self-pity spiral looking to others to notice my unrest and do something to help me...when this whole time that job has been for me.  I need to take responsibility for anything I don't like in my life, communicate it with those close to me and make a plan to fix it. I found myself wallowing in my misery. I had built this grand story in my head that I could not create art because I was too tired from our daughter waking up at night, there was no time because I had all of the stay-at-home-mom duties...etc. I blamed society, the patriarchy, my husband. It felt SO good to point fingers and blame everyone but myself...because that meant I didn't have to do the hard work of fixing it. This quote, "superman's not coming." hit me at just the right moment to open me to ask questions like:

• what if you're the problem Leeanne?
• if time is the issue, what if you changed the style of art you make to suit your situation in this season of life?
• if space is the issue, what kind of art could you make that could fit in tuperware under the bed?
• what would if you spoke up and told your husband this was important to you?

Everyone's lives are busy. No one is a mind-reader and even if they love you deeply, they're not spending their day analyzing and re-evaluating how to shift their daily tasks around to get you what you want. We have to have the courage to take responsibility for our dissatisfaction, communicate what we need, find expanders who are in similar situations as us to prove that it is possible despite our sob story, put systems in place and then consistently work to maintain those systems so that we can uphold our vision of the type of life we're looking for. 

"...when we live in a world that has come to fetishize passion above all, there’s a great deal of pressure around that." -Elizabeth Gilbert 

We all know that paralyzing feeling when we want to start something new. It's this burning desire to start coupled with the crippling fear holding us back because of the PRESSURE that has built up around it. This is exactly how I felt when I had finally worked through the block of being able to create while caring for my daughter. Just as I was patting myself on the back for pulling myself out of my victim mentality, I came up against the worry that what I would make wouldn't be good enough. There I was, with time, space and permission...but I was terrified. I love how Elizabeth Gilbert encourages us in this podcast to follow the bread crumb trail of curiosity versus trying to aggressively hunt down and capture our passion, or thinking that we should even know what our passion is when we start. She says that a lot of time we're looking for some big sign from God to "show us our passion," but it really doesn't work that way. Curiosity is gentle, and very subtle. It's easy to overlook and dismiss, but if we can open ourselves to recognizing a tiny little thing that we're interested in and see it through for a while, detached from the outcome and just follow it a little ways to see where it will take us, often times our passion develops from that journey. This podcast was absolutely pivotal in getting me started to create art again and if you're feeling stuck, I highly recommend giving it a listen. 

"Vibrate higher daily" - Lalah Delia

As my journey progressed and I was starting to create and learn more and more about manifesting the life of my dreams, I stumbled across the concept of energy. One manifestation leader I really connected with was Lalah Delia, where she talks about the vibrational frequency that we hold, that the things around us hold, and our future state holds. Doing the work to bring ourselves from a low vibration to a high vibration is no joke and requires daily commitment. This word daily really stuck with me. This is actually the name of her book, Vibrate Higher Daily, which is a really great read. What I took from reading this is that there are no short cuts. We can't just read about manifestation and wake up tomorrow with everything we desire. We have to not only become that high vibe person through thoughtful personal development work, but we have to maintain it with practices that keep us elevated every day - well...most days. This is partly what led me to the 100 Epic Days concept where I decided if I wanted to truly change my energy and thus change my life, I needed a little push to help develop a daily practice. When we show up consistently, transformation is inevitable.

Well, there you have it, those are my top 3 quotes that absolutely changed my life this year. I hope that was helpful! Take care everyone as we continue the work!