THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Miriam Schulman:
Because I was so determined not to see it because I was so firm in my belief that I wouldn’t see it. I didn’t see it. My brain was set in disbelief and I couldn’t see them, but there were literally dozens of purple feathers all around me. And this is what manifestation is really about. You need to believe and visualize and then bring what you want into your conscious awareness. Otherwise, what you want is there all the time, but you just can’t see it.
Speaker 1:
It’s the Inspiration Place Podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to The Inspiration Place Podcast, an art world inside a podcast for artists by an artist where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman:
Well, hello, this is Miriam Schulman, your curator of inspiration and author of the book Artpreneur. You’re listening to episode number 231, and I’m so thrilled that you’re here. So this is take three. I never rehearse these things even when I write out every single word I usually like. I don’t rehearse it. I just go and it’s like a cold reading. Those of you who are in the theater world, it’s a cold reading every time. Sometimes I don’t even write it out. That’s been a new thing for me. But this time, because I was having technical issues, this is the third time I’m doing it. I did not write it all out to every single performance was different. So what it’s like to be in front of a live audience. But I’m glad you’re here, and I’m going to promise to bring you all my positivity. Today, we’re talking about manifestation, what it looks like when you’re positive, and what it looks like when you’re negative.
I actually going to have three stories for you. The Purple Feathers Atory, the U-Haul Moving Crisis Story. And then probably my favorite one, because it’s the most magical, is the Cat Man of Fest Station story. Before we get there, I do want to let you know that we have begun taking pre-orders for Artpreneur and if you’ve been listening my, you said Miriam, we know that already but some of you are new. There’s some new listeners here or maybe people don’t listen to every episode. And so you don’t know that there is. And actually a video course called Artpreneur Affirmations. And you get this course absolutely free when you pre-order the book Artpreneur. There’s no other way that you can get this course. You can’t buy it. You can only get it when you go to artpreneurbook.com and order the book and then enter your name and email and order number, and we will make sure you get that right away.
I took basically every chapter title. There’s 12 chapters, and every chapter title is an affirmation like, “Choose to believe.” Or “Start before you’re ready.” And I made an art journal spread about it, but the videos are a little different. So there’s only one video where I spend the entire video talking about technique. All the other videos I spend either very, very little time or only talk about it during the first couple of minutes if I feel there’s a new technique. And I want to tell you how I did it.
Most of the time, I’m giving a potpourri of behind the scenes content, extra content and previews from the chapter. And sometimes I even read from the chapter 12, which is the last chapter I actually read the entire chapter to you. That’s probably my favorite chapter in terms of the way it’s written. I love that chapter the most. So if you want to get your hands on that, just head on over to artpreneurbook.com, order it from wherever you want, put in your name and email and the order number, and you’ll get that access to the Artpreneur Affirmation video course instantly. And now on with the show.
All right, my friend, Purple Feather’s story. My friend Patty Lennon teaches manifestation and I was taking her manifestation for grownups course. One of the first thing that she teaches. And by the way, we will link to her interviews. I interviewed her twice for the podcast, so we’ll make sure we link to them in the show notes. And this is episode 231, so you can find links for it over there. schulmanart.com/231 or you can search for Patty Lennon, Miriam Schulman on your podcast app. One of the exercises that she teach people for manifesting is basically a treasure hunt. She gave us three objects, and I’m not spoiling anything cause I do believe she changes the objects if you do this game next year, but you can play along with it this year, you can do this exercise now. So the three objects she gave us were pink light bulb, purple feathers, and a sloth.
And I was having trouble finding them. So I told my husband, “Hey, when we go out to dinner tonight, because we live in the city and we walk to the restaurant, let’s keep our eye out for these things.” It’s like, “Miriam, where are we going to see a sloth in New York City?” I said, “Come on Ron, it could be a picture of a sloth.” I was like, “All right.” We didn’t see any sloths and we didn’t see any purple feathers either. We saw plenty of gray feathers, gray pigeon feathers are like all over the sidewalk, but no purple feathers. We did finally see a pink light bulb. In fact, once we started seeing the pink light bulbs, we started seeing them over and over and over again. And I think that’s how manifestation works. Once you start believing it, the universe will easily send it to you, but no purple feathers.
And then the next day, we drove up to our farmhouse, and I thought for sure I wasn’t going to see anything else on my list. No purple feathers, no sloth. And I was really firm in that belief. So of course, well, because I didn’t believe I would, I didn’t see any purple feathers or sloths, and you might know where the story is going. On the way home from the farmhouse. We stopped by my daughter’s apartment in White Plains to visit her and the cat. And I thought, “Okay, no purple feather’s here.” But when I got home, I realized that there were actually purple feathers everywhere. Everywhere in the country, there is a three foot painting that I created. So it’s not like I didn’t know it was there. There’s a three foot painting of a purple peacock. And because I paint peacocks in my daughter’s apartment, she has a five foot painting of a… Yes, you guessed it purple peacock.
But because I was so determined not to see it, because I was so firm in my belief that I wouldn’t see it, I didn’t see it. My brain was set in disbelief and I couldn’t see them, but there were literally dozens of purple feathers all around me. And this is what manifestation is really about. You need to believe and visualize and then bring what you want into your conscious awareness. Otherwise, what you want is there all the time, but you just can’t see it. Now, sometimes the opposite becomes true. You ever notice when you’re having a bad day and you think this is such a terrible day, you keep tracking more bad things, It’s because you’re stuck in the belief that you’re going to have bad things. When you’re not feeling enough, you’re going to find evidence of why you are not enough. That happens to me, That happens to me.
I am really proud of myself that I wrote the book, but I still have moments. I have moments where I’ll see somebody I know who also wrote a book. Oh, they had so many more influencers endorsing nub, which is so stupid. It really is. Because I had a lot of people endorsing the book. But when I’m feeling in lack, when I’m feeling bad about myself, when I’m feeling not enough, I will find evidence that I’m not enough. And the opposite is true. When I’m feeling good about myself, I will find evidence of that. But here’s what I want you to know. Here’s what’s important for you, because I see this a lot with my students where they’ll say things to me like, “Oh, Miriam, there’s no art buyers in Florida, or there’s no art buyers in my town.” Nobody wants to pay those kind of prices.
And that is a purple feathers problem because when you don’t believe that there are buyers out there, when you don’t believe in the value of your work, when you don’t believe in yourself, the belief, try it, you, your art, your buyer, you will find evidence to support that lack of belief, and you will not find the evidence of the contrary. Just like, I didn’t see the purple feathers. So what’s the answer? You have to believe in yourself. If you find yourself thinking, “I’m not ready yet.” “No, I am ready for the next step.” If you’re thinking it’s not a good time, believe it’s my time.
If you find yourself thinking this won’t work for me because… Think, “The universe has my back.” If you think I don’t know how to do it, think instead, “I’m figuring this out. I can’t wait to see how I figure this out.” If you think I’ve never done this before, you can think, “I’m just beginning.” If you’re thinking this is hard, you can think instead, “I like to accomplish hard things. I like to accomplish things even when they’re hard.” So choose to believe. And by the way, that’s chapter one of the book, Not to pick up fur feather story, but that concept.
All right, so now this is the U-Haul Moving Crisis. When I first graduated college, I was a hot mess. Now, this is before I got the job on Wall Street. And this is certainly before I started painting portraits. I didn’t have a boyfriend. I was living at home with my grandparents and my single mother and my teenage brother. And this was in New Jersey. I have a sister too, but she was in college at the time. I desperately, desperately wanted to get out of my New Jersey house. I was jealous of my rich college friends whose parents were footing the bill for their New York City apartments. So when one of my friends offered to rent his living room to me… I know that’s pretty sketchy, rent his living room to me. And it was on the Upper West Side, of course, I said yes, and turned out to be an illegal sublet.
Now, because I had no father to help me, my father passed away when I was five years old, I didn’t have a boyfriend. My teenage brother, I should tell you, he was 12 and he’s pretty scrawny. He wasn’t actually going to be much help. So I rented a U-Haul truck, and I moved my childhood furniture into the apartment. Yes, I drove the truck. I was 21, and I drove the truck all by myself. But then my friend’s girlfriend moved in, and because my low paying job was on the rocks and we didn’t really have a lease, I moved out and I slept all the way back to New Jersey, which meant that yes, I rented the U-Haul truck again. And yes, I drove it myself. It was then that I made a plea to the universe plea. I was like, “This totally sucks. I really want a boyfriend.”
And this is when I actually imagined a man who would help me out in my life. I wasn’t imagining those hot guys who I lusted out after in college, because when I did that, the universe just sent me make out partners who turned out to be douches. I just imagined somebody who was very sweet, who wanted to help me. So what happened? A few weeks later, my future husband walked into that New Jersey home, the one that I so desperately wanted to leave. So I didn’t meet my husband, by the way, in a bar on the Upper West side. I met him in that New Jersey house. There’s something else there. Not different lesson. I didn’t use a dating app. We didn’t really have those back then. And he was a friend of the family. So sometimes I like to say it was an arranged marriage because my mother brought this boy man person home to my house and introduced me to him.
That’s another way of looking at it. But he literally did walk into my living room. So yes, I do believe that I manifested my husband. And 29 years later, I can truly say he’s the kindest man I’ve ever met. Now, one thing that I do want to share is that after I posted this story on Facebook, one of my friends from college says, “Oh my gosh, Miriam, I totally remember that story, The U-Haul Moving Crisis. And I remember you saying that this would be a paragraph in your future memoir.” So that is another lesson that, yeah, I imagine that someday I would write a book and here we are.
Okay, so now we are at the third story. And this one, I feel is the most magical. This one isn’t about this belief, this isn’t about… This is about how the universe will bring you things so I guess it’s similar to story number two if you want to, but I feel like with story number two, I’m going back to story number two. I feel like I left some things out. I remember I said this in one of my other two rehearsals, my unintended rehearsals when my microphone wasn’t working. So the thing about what happened with story number two is that because I had got very clear of the man I wanted to meet somebody who would be sweet and helpful when he walked into my life, I was able to recognize that this was the person that I wanted. Whereas if I wasn’t thinking that way, it would’ve been like the purple feather.
He might have been right in front of me and I didn’t see him. Do you see that? I knew what I wanted and I was able to recognize it when it came into my life. Okay, so now we’re going on to story number three. This one’s a little more magical. About 12 years ago when my son was 10 years old, he really wanted a pet. And I had said no to the snake and no to the iguana. And then he said, “How about a chinchilla?” So I was like, “All right. Well, we’ll go to the pet store, we’ll see if they have any there.” And they didn’t have any the day we went. But on the day we drove over there, the county center was having an adopt pet day. So we went inside and we came out with a cat with a little tuxedo kitten that we were not planning on adopting that day.
But you know how these things go. Like we go into the cat room and they said, “Would you like to hold a kit in?” I said, “Yes, I would. And I just kept holding different kittens.” It was super fun. And then we got a kitten. So we came home with the cardboard box, and I still remember my husband sitting at the kitchen table. My daughter’s at the kitchen table, and we have this box, and we pull out of this box, adorable little black and white tuxedo kitten and my husband was so mad. He’s like, “That’s a 15 year commitment.” And my daughter started tearing up with tears of joy. And well, it said, “I’ve always wanted a cat.” And we didn’t know it. We didn’t know that. Now, of course, once my daughter was tearing up, I always wanted a cat and everybody loved this little cat.
My husband let us keep the cat. Meanwhile, he loves the cat. So whatever. And we still have the cat. The cat lives with my daughter in the house. And it’s not because I didn’t want the cat anymore, it’s because she was so attached to this cat that when we moved, we decided to let her have the cat. But it was after we got the cat that we learned that she always wanted a cat, and she was afraid to tell us, because I’m actually allergic to cats. And that’s when I learned that inside a Ty’s closet, her door is plastered with cat pictures that she had been saving from American girl magazines. So in other words, she manifested the cat. Now, like I said, this story seems a little more magical than all the others, and that’s why I’m ending it with you. I would love to hear from you if you’ve manifested something in your life.
If you are changing how you believe in something, reach out to me. I would love to hear from you on Instagram. I do personally read my own direct messages. I’m at Schulman Art over there, S-C-H-U-L-M-A-N A-R-T or you can reach out to me by email either way. All right, so that’s it for today. Don’t forget to pre-order my book, Artpreneur, artpreneurbook.com to get your hands on the 12 Artpreneur Affirmations. The very first one is choose to believe. That’s it for now. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Stay inspired.
Speaker 1:
Thank you for listening to the Inspiration Place Podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/schulmanart on Instagram @schulmanart, and of course on schulmanart.com.
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