14. "Cracking Into Creativity" - Leaping 25-Years-In And Coaching The Rest Of Us To Do The Same, With Yale Prof. Astrid Baumgardner

Astrid Baumgardner is a New York City-based career coach, author of the book Creative Success Now and teaches creativity and entrepreneurship at Yale University's School of Music where she coaches students on career (and life) success.  She's given a TedX talk on the topic, and leads frequent workshops, lectures, you name it - all in the name of helping others make life and career choices based on their values, strengths and passions.  But - for an important twist - Astrid also made her own life leap, which really came to focus in a time of personal and physical crisis, 25 years into her career.  

In Ep. 14, Astrid delves into:

• What sparked her own life leap after 25 years
• The questions we should all ask ourselves
• What mindset is (and isn't!) helpful
• Why we should all unlock and cultivate our inner creativity when making life and career changes - and how to do it

Check out Episode 14 and others on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Google Podcasts!

And learn more about Astrid Baumgardner at www.astridbaumgardner.com, on LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram @astridlrb.  Learn more about her book, Creative Success Now, and watch her TEDx talk, Cracking the Code on Creativity.

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Transcript

[00:00:00] 

Astrid Baumgartner: Because if you don't believe in yourself and you don't put out those big dreams, no one's gonna do it for you

Life Leaps Podcast: Welcome to Life Leaps Podcast. Hear inspiring stories of ordinary people who made extraordinary life changes. What drove them, what almost held them back. Insights for the rest of us considering life leaps big or small, because hearing someone else do it reminds us that we can too.

Happy Wednesday, everyone. Today. We're with Austria. Baumgardner a New York city-based career coach, author of the book, creative success now. And professor of creativity and career entrepreneurship at Yale. They'll university's school of music where she coaches students on career and life success. 

Austrians, give it a TEDx. Talk on the topic and leads, frequent workshops, lectures, you name it all in the name of helping others make life and career choices based. On their [00:01:00] values, strengths and passions. But for an important. Twist. Austria also made her own life leap, which really came to focus in a time of personal and physical crisis. 25 years in to her career. 

Today, we'll hear about. Austria its own leap. And the guidance she has for all of us on what questions we should all be asking ourselves. Selves. What mindset is, and isn't helpful and why we should all. 

 be unlocking and cultivating our inner creativity. When making life and career changes. 

Life Leaps Podcast: this whole journey of mine literally started about 15 years ago, and it's filled with a lot of detours and experiments and up and down.

Astrid Baumgartner: It's by no means a straight line curve to quote unquote dream job, but I honestly never would've predicted the outcome because I was a lawyer. I grew up in a household with immigrant parents, let's strive for the American dream 

 and when it came time to go to college and pick a career, the [00:02:00] message was, do something practical.

 So I decided to become a lawyer, which sounded like a good way. Women who were just then entering the profession to do something meaningful.

 women were now being hired by law firms, I thought, let me give this a go. I'll do it for a few years and then go off and try to save the world. Well, that didn't work out so well. I just stayed in law for way too long and with an itch to do something different.

 When did the itch begin? 

Astrid Baumgartner: it started. when my children were little, because I had two children while I was, in big law in New York. And it was really very stressful. I felt like I wasn't doing a good job as a lawyer or as a mom. 

 as a lawyer, I was pretty frustrated because. It just didn't seem the right fit and I couldn't pinpoint what the problem was. I also felt that it wasn't doing anything meaningful. I think I have a real huge value around service and doing something meaningful and having a sense of purpose in my life, and so I started volunteering for arts organizations.

[00:03:00] And I finally decided to leave law when my children were getting ready to graduate from high school. And I thought, I've gotta do, this is my time.

right? I wasn't gonna make the revolution when the kids were little, but now that they were leaving, I felt this was the right time. So I did that and I went to work, for this, for the French Institute, Daniel says as Deputy Executive Director. And then I left that and was a consultant, and then I was kind of lost.

I was doing all this stuff. and figuring I had one more big gig left in me. I didn't know what that was. And then I got terribly sick in 2007 and literally almost died and, woke up in the hospital.

I was in a coma for almost two weeks and I woke up and it was my birthday 

. Wow. 

Astrid Baumgartner: and I knew it was my birthday because my mother, God bless her, came to the hospital room. I was in the ICU with a chocolate cake. I thought, oh my goodness, it must be my birthday. But I couldn't talk. I couldn't walk. I was really a.

but I knew cuz it was my birthday, I'd come back for a reason. And I felt[00:04:00] that I discovered what that reason was about six months later cuz I had a lot of surgeries in and out and I was recovering from another major surgery six months after I left the hospital. And, . I was sitting on my couch lying on the couch and I heard a voice, and this sounds really weird, but it's really true.

The voice said, Austrian, you need to get up off that couch and help people with their difficult life transitions. And I didn't know what that was. I called my very dear friend who said, oh, easy. That's life coaching. And that's how I discovered life coaching and did some research and figured, wow, this is like the perfect fit for me because I love helping people.

 And it's not giving advice. It's not at all. It's about helping people find their right path and encouraging them and being the accountability partner and providing resources and inspiring them. That's what I learned in coaching school and the people I wanted to work with were the creatives. 

So, , I journaled. I journal every day, 

Life Leaps Podcast: I wrote in my journal in five years, so this was 2008 [00:05:00] and five years. By 2013, I am teaching at a major conservatory like Juilliard or maybe even. So I woke up the next day. I read this journal entry and said, okay, time to get started. 

Astrid Baumgartner: You started by going to coaching school, taking classes about how to help others with life changes. Right. 

I had a group of coaching friends and we had a mastermind group. I had my friends from coaching school. I did all these free workshops for them, and I experimented with coaching and anyone who would accept to be coached. , it helped me to create both a business and a teaching arm. And I also discovered my own creativity because honestly, when I grew up, I thought of myself as the good student, right?

But I didn't think of myself as especially creative. But here I am creating something new. and my da, I have an interesting definition of creativity I view creativity as solving problems with.

Life Leaps Podcast: Hmm.

Astrid Baumgartner: [00:06:00] if you're solving problems, it means you're creating something new, right?

because there really weren't very many people doing what I was doing. coaching and training people in the arts on how to create successful lives. So this was really inspiring and fun for me, and I loved it. 

 And at some point in there you end up using your skills more officially. with students at Julliard and Yale, 

Astrid Baumgartner: So I have had quite a few friends who were on the Julliard faculty.

I said, listen, I'd love to come in and do some career workshops with your students. I started doing that, the career office of Julliard then hired me to do a whole slew of these workshops and how do you make a leap? you try things out and literally what I didn't know, I researched, I studied, I practiced, I would do workshops with my coaching group. 

And now my story of how I got to Yale is also an interesting one.

 networking. 

we have a summer house near the Norfolk Chamber of Music Festival in northwest Connecticut. Very involved there. And so I knew the folks and the director at the time was the Deputy [00:07:00] Dean of the Yale School of Music. The conservatory at Yale University. So I approached him and I said, I've been doing a lot of career workshops at Juilliard, and I'd love to come to Gale and do something for you.

He said, your timing is excellent because we really do need someone to start a career initiative. So come. So I was invited to do some guest lectures, and I remember my first time going to. Going to Yale, I was pretty intimidated, right?

this is the big time, and I remember. I was alone in the room where I was gonna be doing these workshops. I was hard to do four of them. So I went into the lady's room and looked in the mirror and I said, I am here to do service. I am here to help these students discover what makes them great and how they can go at and share that with the world.

And honestly, over the course of these four, workshops with these students, I really discovered this is what I wanna do. And so the dean and the deputy dean invited me to, create a course.And after my fourth of those guest lectures, I went in for a meeting with them thinking that, okay, maybe [00:08:00] someday they'll accept my proposal. They said We'd love it. We'd love for you to come teach the year, the semester long class. And by the way, we'd like you to head our new Office of Career Strategies.

Life Leaps Podcast: So April of 2011, I signed my contract and I'm three years ahead. This was three years after my journal entry, which I think is pretty cool. ahead of schedule. Yes,

Astrid Baumgartner: It was, two years ahead of schedule. so then I've been at Yale ever since, So I'm a big believer in journaling cuz I think it helps to clarify your ideas and consolidate your ideas. And it also puts out to the universe if you journal about something and then take the actions, you're more likely to have it happen.

 You first started sharing your writing through a blog. 

Astrid Baumgartner: So what's interesting about this is that early on I felt that because I was doing something different, I wanted to share. So I started a blog, which is a pretty easy low stakes thing that one can do.

You just put your ideas out there and it really took off. [00:09:00] And over the years I realized that I had developed a process and the blog really helped me to crystallize what was my process, So my process really involves three things. How do you create a successful career, a successful life?

First of all, you need the right mindset, and that mindset I define as one of positivity and perseverance. until you hit on the thing you love and being proactive. the second thing that's really important is to know yourself, your authentic self. And by that I mean your values, your passions, your purpose, and your strengths.

And then master the skillsets of success. And it all starts with allowing yourself to dream big because nobody's going do that for you. And then breaking it down and taking those actions as these ideas became more and more clear to me, and I had more and more data, if you will, through my blog, I decided it was time to tackle one of my life goals, which was to write a book.

 I think creativity and success depend on being willing to experiment and try things out, and being resilient enough to say, Ooh, [00:10:00] that did not work.

Let me try something new. , 

And you launched your book, creative success. Now how creatives can thrive in the 21st century, like right on the Eve of COVID. Right. 

Astrid Baumgartner: think it was John Lennon who said, Man plans and God laughs, right? So that's exactly what happened because my book, we launched my book in early 2020, and the plan.

was to go do book promotion for the rest of the year. that didn't happen. cuz the pandemic came slamming that whole thing down in March. so there I was sitting in my home and I have to just say the pandemic taught me a lot. But I was very lucky that my husband, I and my daughter and her husband were all able, we lived together in my house and we all were able to work.

I'm very grateful for that. I continued to,

together as a family like that, That was huge. 

And so I was sitting there at home and I decided, what the heck, let me tackle another one of my life goals. and that was doing a TED talk. 

I realized I needed help and so I hired [00:11:00] a coach to help me both crystallize my idea and how to do a TED Talk speech, which is a very complicated process that took months. Again, not outta the gate. my speech, I think I have 39 drafts. Okay.

Life Leaps Podcast: I was gonna say, you made it look easy. Okay. You were like

Astrid Baumgartner: Let me tell you how I practice every day. Whenever I went to the grocery store in my car, I would practice different sessions, cuz you have to memorize the thing. Yeah. I felt I had a message and I wanted to get the idea out there.

The idea that we all. The capacity to be creative. And my talk was tap into that, discover what that is, and then actualize it because it will make your life better, more fulfilling, and ultimately happier. So that was a really, that was wonderful and I'm really happy I did that. 

And you told me another big decision about your career emerged from the pandemic. 

Astrid Baumgartner: Was a decision to stop running the career office at Yale. So at that point, I was nine years into it. [00:12:00] And really what spurred this on was I felt that I needed to learn something new.

 What I did was to enroll in a certificate in the Science of Happiness, run by an absolutely brilliant, charismatic professor named Tall Ben Shahar. tall, is an organizational psychologist. Got his PhD at Harvard and was on the Harvard faculty for many years teaching their most popular course, a course in positive psychology and positive leadership,

 And it sounds pretty airy fairy, except it's all based in research and science. Plus it's very interdisciplinary.

got my certificate last August and it's been life changing for two reasons. First of all, cuz I've learned. In much greater depth, a new approach to how to cultivate greater happiness in one's life and to teach others how to find their happiness and live their happiness.

So my latest offerings and what I'm doing, Which I love is working with leaders in their organizations and how [00:13:00] leaders themselves can bring greater happiness to themselves and to their organizations.

And I really have refined my mission in this regard, and that is to bring more happiness to the creative space because I think the creativity and the arts are just so important to the way we live. So that's my leap, which was a very long one. And I will just say I did not have the benefit of having a life coach, and I think that coaching can really help.

there's no crystal balling what should I do with my life, but there's process that can help you and I feel that I'm sorry I wasn't around to coach myself, and I'm happy I can do it for others. So you don't have to take 25 years to figure out your path to your ideal job.

Life Leaps Podcast: Wow. Thank you for all of that,Astrid, I will say, when you tell your story now, Even the leaps, it all sounds like very natural. oh, I decided I wanted to do this, and then I went and we did this, and then, but I know that probably when you're in those moments, there's a [00:14:00] lot of uncertainty.

There's a lot of self-doubt. There's a lot of okay, there's 17 directions I could go. Which of them do I choose? Can you tell us a little about the times that you were scared and you, and you had doubt and you, you know, where, where.

Tell us the lost Astrid as well 

Astrid Baumgartner: Oh, absolutely. okay, starting with law. So I initially was in big law firms in New York City doing litigation and so theoretically you're going on trial, but you really aren't. It's mostly motion practice and papers that you go back and forth. And I knew this was. A lot of sitting at a desk and the first part of my career, first nine years, I worked for five different law firms thinking, oh, it's the firm.

It's not me. Five or four or five. Yeah. And I was not happy as a lawyer. It wasn't the right. First of all, it wasn't fulfilling. Secondly, in terms of the way my brain works, I'm a very creative person. I love reading and thinking about lots of different things and then putting 'em together in a different way and strategizing, [00:15:00] and I'm also very collaborative.

I nurture people. the thing I did the best in these law firms was I worked very closely with associates and trained people and ran summer programs cuz that's what I love doing is, nurturing people and encouraging people. And the adversarial aspect of love was very distasteful to me.

So I got you. , right? It so not fulfilling. So off sense of purpose, personality-wise, not the right fit, not the right way. I cultivate relationships. Not the right way, I think, and not the best use of my strengths. Youknow, when I became a coach and started learning about how to assess people, I realized that my strengths, I have, one of my top strengths.

I've taken six strength assessments every time. Two things come up, positivity. , right? I think it's a little hard to be optimistic when you're dealing with big time cases where people are hurling terrible accusations. It's, it's hard to be the voice of positivity. 

So [00:16:00] analysis, I would. Not my strongest suit nor a synthesis and strategy. just that which I discovered when I started volunteering at these different arts organizations was first of all, yeah.

Life Leaps Podcast: it sounds like you have a very clear idea now. oh my gosh. Those were not my, those were not my strengths. That was not what made me thrive. And if I'm not thriving, then what am I'm not fulfilling what I really could be giving back to the world. Not to mention myself, but it took you 25 years to figure that out,

Astrid Baumgartner: It did, and there's a lot of frustration in there. There's a lot of sitting at your law desk going, I can't take this. Like for example, I mentioned that I decided to make the transition when my children were, my son was graduating from high school and my daughter was in 10th grade. And I remember sitting at my desk at work going, if I don't make a change when these kids are out of.

I don't even know what I'm gonna do with myself. I feel so lost. I just can't do this anymore. And it was very frustrating to figure out my next steps. I remember [00:17:00] my Pam teacher at the time had a friend who was on the board of Carnegie Halls, very smart lady. And so she introduced us and this woman who was this little tiny lady who was so terrifying, she would stare at me.

She goes, okay, so what do you wanna. I'm going, I don't know. I just wanna do something in the arts. what do you mean you wanna fold napkins at the gala? And I'm going, I really dunno. And now I know the answer to that right now I know what to do with that, which is when you don't know, go out and experiment.

Conduct life experiments. I'm a big believer in that. And I would say my positive nature allowed me to. right after the freak out of, I don't know what I wanna do. I don't, I I remember after that lunch that I had with her that day when she was yelling at me, what. . I went, I don't know, but let me explore and it took me a while to calm down.

Okay, let me just say that, but let me explore three different areas, right? So I made a list of three different areas that I was curious about. One was French. I was a French major. I've been speaking French since I was a [00:18:00] kid. I love France. I love traveling in France. I figured, let me do something in French culture.

So that was one bucket. Another. , I don't even know how to run. I've been on boards, but what is it like of boards of nonprofit? But I don't know what it's like to work at one, so let me go talk to people who work at nonprofit organizations and see what that is. And then I flirted with maybe be a lawyer for one of these nonprofits, but that, that just ended very quickly.

I realized I wanted to get out of law and do more.

Life Leaps Podcast: the day, you're still doing law , even if you're doing it for a better cause, you're

Astrid Baumgartner: Yeah, I remember. Yeah. remember at one point I had an option of going to work at a publishing company cuz I was a lit major, and I love, I thought reviewing contracts all day, that doesn't sound very interesting. I'd rather write the book or, be the publisher.

Life Leaps Podcast: Ooh.

Astrid Baumgartner: Yeah.

Life Leaps Podcast: That's powerful. 

Astrid Baumgartner: yes, there was a lot of angst and 25 years is a long time. You have to be pretty optimistic and resilient to keep going. then I [00:19:00] would get these flashes, like every move was a little better, like leaving one, going to the, I was the deputy executive director at the French Institute.

Armstrong says, right away. That was much better because I love French culture. I think it's just a beautiful, they just, the art, the literature, the music, it's just so rich and so wonderful. And of course they run , the school. So I thought, this is great, and I learned how to run a business.

I had six departments reporting to me, and I will tell you, talk about terror. I had no idea what I was doing at first. I had done a lot of management at my French law firm cuz it was a small office. . I didn't know how to run a staff and so boy, oh boy, did I make mistakes that first year?

And I mentioned to you, I'm very collaborative. I always have friends at work. The first year I was there, everyone was terrified of me and I'm not so mean, but they just were terrified of the fact that I definitely raised the standards of performance there. And people were really afraid of getting fired.

And then after a year they realized that I was just trying to make things better. And [00:20:00] then I started to develop work friends. But it was a lonely first year. You.

Life Leaps Podcast: and Astrid, I think you just flagged something else that's really important, which was that every change you made, even if it wasn't your final landing space, like the first place you left after, it sounds like first you left between law firms, but the bottom line is you kept making changes to try and find a shoe that fit, 

you kept pushing to make the changes and like you said, every time it got a little bit better. I do think that's really important to understand that there's a progression and if you, I mean look, maybe you're the luckiest person on earth and the very next leap you next lesson or takes is where you're meant to be for the rest of your days.

Maybe, but probably. . And so I think it's really important what you say about life experiments, both in your personal life to help you figure out what you want But you took a lot of professional leaps too to get where you wanted to go. You didn't go straight from, the fire into the Holy

Astrid Baumgartner: Yeah. No, e exactly. And in fact, when I work with clients who are [00:21:00] looking to make a change, I, I say this to them, I say, you might not get the right job on the first go at it might be a, an improvement to set you up for success for the next one. , and I think that's really important. It really is a process.

 So I love Matisse's, my favorite artist, and so I know his work pretty well. Matis. Definitely had a process. Matisse, this genius did not sit down and execute these phenomenally gorgeous paintings right off the bat. 

They, there's this one painting that I saw at the Metropolitan Museum years and years ago.

It's this woman, very elaborately dressed with this gorgeous skirt that has ruffles and all these wonderful patterns and textures in the background. there was maybe, I'm gonna say 27. Photographs of the process, which, and the whole point is I think a lot of people, a lot of people in the creative space get very stuck on the need to be perfect.

And here's Matisse who says, I'm gonna try this out. Okay. We [00:22:00] need more pattern here. Less texture here. This color. Ooh, that color doesn't work. , not beating himself up, but just photographing each one of these things ultimately so fascinating. And to me that's the whole point of doing a life experiment.

in retrospect I can say what I did at the time, I had no idea. But it's literally narrowing your search to one to three areas, cuz I think otherwise you're too overwhelmed. And then going out and trying out different things and reflecting very. , what do I like? What works, what don't I like? So you can then discard it.

And I think a really powerful book that people can read about this is, it's called Working Identity by, Armenia Ibarra, who's a professor at the in, business school in Fulltime, no, France. And she wrote this book about 39 case studies. of people who made career switches mid-career. So these were people who were in their mid thirties, had already had a body of experience and then transitioned to something else.

So the first thing was, , they [00:23:00] all took at least three years to make this the switch. And the second thing. Yes, exactly. And it was all a question of building on experience. Upon experience. Upon experience. I'll just share my favorite one. I resonated with this one. A professor of Spanish literature at a big university, a tenured professor.

Okay. So this woman was in her mid thirties and a colleague at the business school asked her to translate something from Spanish into English. And she was really interested in the. . So she said to him, I'd love to help you out on one of these cases. It sounds fun. So she did, and she really liked it.

And so she decided to enroll in a class at the business school in, I can't remember what it was, but she took a class and said, I really like this. And because she was older and more mature, she buddied up with the professor. And same thing, she said, I'd like to work on a case with you. So they did a project together and at this point she'd now done two projects, took the class, and on her summer off she went and interned at a consulting [00:24:00] firm.

And found that she really loved it. So the point was, over the course of two or three years, she had these different experiences that she built on and ultimately left the university and became a management consultant.

Life Leaps Podcast: Astra, Do you think part of it also is looking at the experiments that you've unknowingly already made, the steps and leaps you've unknowingly or unthinkingly already taken and like connecting the dots As long as you have the right mindset.

Astrid Baumgartner: Absolutely. everything I'm telling you today about my previous experience is all a result of my looking back and saying, ah, no wonder I like this. Oh, no wonder I didn't like this. Absolutely. In fact, it's a technique that we've learned in our happiness program called journaling and restoring, which is to look at your life and make sense of it and create your own.

I'll just share with you that I never really thought about my pivot to this happiness work. And, sitting down and thinking about what I wanted to say today, I realized, yes, it happened in the pandemic. [00:25:00] my, my intuition said, you're done with the career office and you need to learn something new.

Remember tall? Oh, when he started that institute, oh, that's what I wanna do. Absolutely. So in terms of mindset, absolutely. this is a big part of my book. This is a big part of my process. two, two big things. It's positivity because, if you wanna go out and create success for yourself.

By the way, when I use the word success, , it's holistic. It's not just having a great career, but it's also your relationships and your health and wellness and your personal development and your sense of fun and family and your finances. It's just, it's holistic, right? So however you define success, gotta believe in yourself.

right? Because if you don't believe in yourself and you don't put out those big dreams, no one's gonna do it for you. And one of the great ways to do this is to, just, just explore what you're like at flow, flow, that whole experience where you're. Pumping out at a really high energy level, you're doing something you love, you're really engrossed in it.

Time is [00:26:00] going by and you don't even notice it because you're so immersed in what you're doing. And often that means that you're doing something that's challenging, but not too challenging, not so hard that you give up and not so easy that you're bored, but it's literally that's sweet spot of. Your level of skill meets the challenge at hand.

And so you're constantly trying to meet that challenge and that's where the flow experience comes from. So that's something to think about, to notice throughout the day, throughout the week, what are those experiences that put me at flow and to understand what you're like at flow and then to use that as a confidence booster.

Cuz let's face it a lot. . Yeah. A lot of this takes a lot of confidence to go out and do all this, right? So that to me is the start. And the other thing is you have to be open and curious. it's called the growth mindset, which is a big concept, which I just love. I always teach it and share my clients of,accepting that your talent and intelligence are the starting points of your success.

And in order to be able to thrive, you need. Go out and try new [00:27:00] things and accept the fact that you're gonna make mistakes and what can you learn from those mistakes. So it builds in openness and curiosity and resilience. And I think that's really essential. And I think that when people are going out and doing their life experiments, it's really important to have that open, curious mindset, and not to worry about.

Figuring it out because already you're stuck already. You block your creativity, if you allow that openness. Yeah, very much You can't be creative when you're really, so when you're worried, it shuts down that creative instinct or that creative part of you. So I think that doing these life experiments is inherently a very creative thing to do because you're going out into the unknown and doing something new and trying to create a new life for yourself.

And I think the spirit of being open and curious. A couple with this positivity can really help.

Life Leaps Podcast: I love it. And that was two big takeaway moments I've had from listening and re-listening to your TED Talk was, of course, was first the moment of flow, like we've [00:28:00] all heard or many of us have heard of Being in flow, but actually taking a moment to cultivate that feeling and then use that as a frame of reference where, okay, this is how I can feel.

I now know what this feeling looks like. I've cultivated a muscle, recent muscle memory of what that feeling looks like and feels like throughout myself and. in what other parts of my day, my job, my relationships, whatever. Am I feeling that looking back and then of course moving forward as I try different things, in what moments of those new things do I feel that, and then reminding myself and saying, oh, okay, make a note.

That's a good thing. That's something I want more of. How do I build something around that and do more of it? How do I, And then the things that don't make you feel that way, they make you feel the opposite. Maybe you okay, I'll disregard those as much as possible for the moment. . and I also loved in talking about mindset.

I, as you were talking about mindset just now, I had this memory of seeing the screen on your TED Talk where you had a bunch of jumbled letters. I remember when you showed the letters, I was like, oh my gosh, I need to quickly see what those [00:29:00] mean. I don't know. And then you broke them out on the screen and you said, here's one version of these same letters.

And it was, creativity is nowhere with, the appropriate spaces in the words. And then you said, now look again, and you clicked a button. With the shift of a single letter, the w it read Creativity is now here. And I was like, oh, . I just thought that was such a powerful illustration, of a very simple way to illustrate such a huge point.

So

Astrid Baumgartner: Yeah. Thank you. Yeah,

Life Leaps Podcast: is very helpful,

Astrid Baumgartner: thank you. You just summarized flow better than I could have. That was great. And that's exactly right. capturing those moments. And what I encourage people to do is, to literally do a meditation. Now that's a word that I think triggers a lot of people. I don't know how to meditate.

I don't have time. It's a centering exercise that takes you two or three minutes where you just close your eyes. and go back to one of these flow moments and just picture yourself. What are you doing and what are the colors and the shapes and involving all your senses in [00:30:00] that experience until you actually capture that feeling in your heart and in your gut of what it's like to be at flow.

And then, Create language around it. So what do you like at flow? And I love doing this exercise in groups with my students or in workshops cuz people then share their words and it's anything excited, confident, calm, out of body experience, on fire, on autopilot, youconnected, whatever it is.

Generous, fantastic, passionate, right? And then creating a little affirmation that says I am. And just use five of those words.

To remind you that you are capable of this. And what's great about this affirmation, this whole exercise, is that it comes from your actual experience. I didn't say, well, Karen, pretend you're at flow.

This was your actual experience. And what I suggest to people to do is every day pick one of your flow words, write it down or Send yourself an email. That word, what does that word mean to you? What does that look like? What actions can you take to manifest that characteristic?

[00:31:00] So that's a way of building up more flow because you can train yourself to be more at flow, and that's one way to do it.

Life Leaps Podcast: I love it and obviously this has only been a bite sized, slice of all the things you have to share and offer 

For everyone listening, I'm gonna put in the show notes to this episode  All the ways that you can find Austria Baumgardner. 

Life Leaps Podcast:  But thank you for sharing that slice with us today.

Astrid Baumgartner: And thank you, Karen, for doing this work. I Everybody has a unique path and all of you out there who are thinking about making a change.

Yeah, tap into those unique assets of yours and go out and create what it is that you dream of, and then go out and make it happen.

Thank you all for being here. We're a brand new podcast, so if you enjoyed it, go ahead and follow rate and review us in your podcast app so that we can know what you liked and others can find us. It would mean a lot. Last but not least, we'll keep you posted on brand new episodes each week when you follow us on Facebook or [00:32:00] Instagram at you Guessed it like LEAPS podcast.

Life Leaps Podcast: Till next time.

next Wednesday on Life Leaps Podcast.

karens-studio_karen-and-marco_marco-sxkuhsreq_2023-feb-20-1622pm-utc-riverside: I was trying to justify my failures when everybody at home already knew that I was gonna go back as a failure.

 And they were right. So long story short, The homeless guy is actually giving me money. 

 he said, you can do two things with this. 50 pounds. You can take a cab or take the metro to heat and go back. Oh,  Why don't you go and look for a job?  you can stick with me and 

 And see what happened 

Life Leaps Podcast: Till next time.