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This is the discipline of freedom with Aish, busier, we turn imagination into action, fear into fuel, and your story into strategy so you can build a life and business you love while growing. The legacy you're proud to carry. Expect the magical and the practical, the seen and the unseen. Woven with design, thinking, branding, astrology, and somatics.'cause we all need power that's rooted in our body. Solar, rifts, candid conversations, and spiral of success stories that move you from one day to today. Listen, breathe and take one meaningful step. The process begins now. I've been thinking about this topic for a long time and I haven't been on here for a little while because I've been reimagining. I have a beautiful astrologer friend down here on the far south coast called John Letheridge and we often meet and we talk about astrology Bitcoin life and everything else. I mean, we're both, intuitives. He's Triple Water, I'm Double Water and Fire. And so, we've both lived these lives of artists, of creators. Certainly unconventional lives, lives that we've created ourselves. Sometimes it's been hairy and other times it's just all gone our way. Astrology gives us this, it's a study of time and light. And, consequently, it's a study of cycles. You know, each of the planets as they move around. In this solar system, they will, transit your natal chart, which you could call it your fate, and then other people will say what you do with that fate is your free will, and I say when you know your birth chart. It's an invitation to choose your adventure so, you know where the strengths and weaknesses are, you know where the planets are working easily for you, and some that you actually have to draw their magic out, or you have to draw that potency. I like the word potency rather than potential. Anyway, so this is all leading to the point of Something that I learned years and years ago as a designer, you know, in graphic design, everything works off a grid. And that's your constraint. Now you can break free of the grid, but you must respect the grid. I went to see the Coco Chanel, exhibition a few years ago in, Melbourne with this friend of mine. It was absolutely gorgeous. I mean, she was an amazing, designer. And you immediately know a Coco. You know, in the same way that, you know, a Gaudi building. Or the way that you can, a Picasso. So, there's a language an artist or a designer uses, and what it's really around is about the space, I use that all the time, don't I, it's around, can you find your own signature, and it's not actually finding your own signature, it's unfolding your own signature, because what we're doing is we're kind of stripping away all the conditioning and all of the beliefs and everything that has been imposed upon us. Through our education, like we pop out of that room and, we're kind of going, looking and thinking, Oh my God, is that all they've done? And then, we're told how to behave, we're told when to cry, we're told when to laugh, we're told about appropriate behavior. I have this great story of my beautiful young niece, we're at the age of two, and we're teaching her about please and thank you. And she goes what? You know, what is this light stuff, is what she used to call it, and I'd say, please and thank you, it's, it's polite to ask and receive in this way to show your appreciation and to show that you're being respectful in your communication, and she said to me afterwards, what? Every time? And it's so curious because in Spanish, they don't use please and thank you all the time. they think that we're overly uptight in the Anglo world where we use it again and again and again. And in Spain, if you say, a café, that's it. And if you say, a café, por favor, it means my coffee is taking too long. So, what I really want to talk about today is how constraints liberate. And we can thank Coco, Coco Chanel, for the freedom of movement in our clothes. She looked at men swaddling around in their sports clothes, women in corsets, and thought, fucking hell, no wonder women are so anxious, repressed, angry, disembodied, and, just apart, disempowered, and occasionally in the need of smelling salts. Like, we're literally bound to behave. So Coco A good feminist and a designer and a super sharp entrepreneur knew that constraints liberate. She ruled Parisian haute couture for about six decades. And she always used the same silhouette. So you knew a Chanel design as soon as you saw one. This also applies to the most successful artists, lawyers, banks, builders. They learn their craft. We always go through this apprentice. journeyman worker and then we become masters and you're repeatedly applying and refining the rules of your craft to mastery to whatever you're working on. So people don't hire, buy or recommend a deal of all trades. They want you because you're exceptional at your thing. So how do you become even more? magical, even greater at your thing. Last week I was in conversation with a ceramic artist who despite her committed practice, and many people have committed practices, her accolades and her successful sold out shows, she was frustrated. Which is she was surviving versus thriving. And this is also, you know, the journey every time you're trying to create something. In every project, you know, first it's like, oh my god, the spark of an idea. And then you go into the nitty gritty of trying to bring that to life. And you're going to meet yourself and meet obstacles within Now, exceptionality. if that's even a word, comes from constraints. Creative liberation lives here too. It means saying no to most things, to embody your great thing. So we walked and talked through her work and it became clear she was always trying new forms, making it hard for viewers to connect her work, with what they'd seen and felt before. I've been so guilty of this myself. I've thrown out the baby with the bathwater several times in my life starting from scratch again and again and again. Art. Creativity. Like business, it builds on itself. The past is always present and the future is here too. So, let's pause on that one for a moment while you allow it to drop into your body. The past supports the present, and it supports it in a much greater way, the more that you allow yourself to integrate. I really believe in zero waste, that everything has happened for a reason. And, as Steve Jobs says, we have to live forward, but we can only connect the dots going backwards. So if we own everything that we've done and integrate it, which means, of course, we've integrated all our shadow. And of course, as long as we live, we'll be working on that one. But the present supports the future because it's the only place you can start from. So think of it like an ecosystem where some things will be composted for the sake of the greater good, which is your vision. And we really need to keep our vision in our sight at all times. You know, and asking that question, Is this helping me towards this greater life that I want to build? And, you know, it's not just work. If you're unhappy in other areas of your life, it will feed into your work. You'll be distracted. It's only when we're really accepting of all that's going on. And able to bring joy to it, then we can really, really focus on what it is that we want to do. Now, some things are foundational, and there's always foundational principles no matter what your art is. There's foundational principles in business, there's foundational principles in design, there's foundational principles in growing things. And mastery comes when you know and trust what to keep. What to develop and what to compost this is at the center of the cycles of creation. So what you're really doing in each iteration each cycle and each evolution is that you're compounding the deep trust that you've developed in your soul's journey. You're embodying the skills and the confidence while mastering the mindset to realize your unique vision. I listened to a podcast the other day, by Andy Aleman, who's wonderful. She has a business called we, we, she was talking about that, despite having a business turning over, I think four or 500 K a year. When she went to work with her most recent mentor, it was her mindset that she needed to work on. It was her confidence. So there's all this evidence that she's doing a great job. Like so much evidence that she's doing a great job. And yet, Until such a time as you embody that, you don't trust that you can do it again. You will still be in a scarcity mindset. And when we're in scarcity mindset, we're scattered. So what we're doing is we don't stop before starting and being really clear on the outcome we want on a task, in a project, in a relationship, in anything. What we're doing is we're taking what we get. What we want to do is get into the space of choosing the clients that we know will do the work, the clients who are aligned with our values, the clients who see in us something that they need to learn to get to where they want to, so that they can see and implement that change to realize their vision. If you don't know where you're going. You'll likely get there. So, As our conversation unfolded, so did her passion for the sculptural aspect of her ceramics and the way she could use them to tell stories. So, what she was doing was layering different textures, lines, and colors to bring the viewer on a journey. There are so many ways to tell the stories. It was on every surface of her work, whether it was in a bowl, a cup, a vase, a landscape, or a garden sculpture. Rich narrative was her thing, but she hadn't seen it. And this was her aha moment. The forms were simply containers for these stories. We're all storytellers in one form or another. And we're all creating transformational journeys, but we need to be clear where we're beginning and where we're taking our people so for her, the choice was now to choose one form that she could make again and again. There's her constraint. I'm choosing one form. People will know and expect that form. That form can change size. Possibly might even change shape, but basically it's the one form because it's about telling these stories with different textures, different lines, different colors So these would hold the ever changing stories. And this is the Discipline of Freedom, which is the title of this podcast. and the challenge for all creators who so love the process of creation and have more ideas than they have hot dinners, they lose sight of their mission and their vision, often at the expense of making money, often at the expense of making rent money. So this is a form of distraction, it's a form of self sabotage, which can be found in your 12th house. It's a form of being seen and being judged, which could be found where your Leo is, what house your Leo is in. I certainly have that, being seen and being judged, my Leo's, my north node, sixth house. I go into that wanting it to be perfect or overthinking before I put anything out there. Oh, my God, how it has kept me stuck. Anyway, defining constraints is the first step. That's why I loved graphics. I just love it. So working with them requires discipline. Creative freedom also lives here. It demands deepening your relationship with yourself and with your materials through the process. And best of all what it does is it brings your audience and clients on the journey too. You'll always be ahead of your audience and your clients. You're always, the one who's bringing them on the journey. You're the one who's the guide. Can you feel the big inhale and exhale in the liberating simplicity of this approach? In my brand strategy workshop I talk about you want people to remember you for one thing, like one core idea. For me, it's helping people fall in love with their vision. For me to help people fall in love with their vision, I need to Bring them on a journey so they see themselves differently. Because when you see yourself differently, you behave differently. And when you feel yourself differently, because you can see yourself differently, you can imagine yourself differently. And this totally blows your whole world apart. Because You get to see yourself through another filter. And that opens up a whole world of possibilities. And when we open up that whole world of possibilities, you then come back to what you're most skilled at, what you're most gifted at, what you're most experienced at, what you're most qualified. And the problem that you're so uniquely qualified, skilled, and experienced, that you see in the world, so again, one big inhale, one big exhale in the liberating simplicity of this approach. I'm excited to see what emerges for my ceramicist. And if you need help to find your one core idea, DM me, or email me, I'm on Instagram, and I am bloody brilliant at pattern spotting, and story spelling. So I hope you enjoyed this. Thank you for being here If this episode activated something in you, a spark, a remembering, a desire for more aliveness, your next step is identity alchemy. It's my signature initiation where you reclaim your core identity, anchor your future self, and build the inner architecture that makes everything else in your business inevitable. If you're ready to rise into your fearless future. Your most magnetic self sourced expression. Identity alchemy is waiting, aim for you. You'll find the link in the show notes, and until next time, stay devoted. Stay daring, and keep practicing the discipline of freedom. The music is by AOD and you can find them on Spotify. Once more, the links are in the show note. until next time, Thank you for listening.