Releasing Fear and Moving through the Higher Vision with Ekaterina Popova

In this special Article, Artist and Coach, Katerina Popova will lift your spirits and to give you the motivation, inspiration, and hopefully fresh energy to finish this year strong! 

The other day I woke up and it just wasn’t feeling like myself. There is nothing wrong in my life. I’m healthy. I have a beautiful family. I, my business doing fine, but just irrational fear once in awhile, washes over me. And this could be related to my art, my finances, my business, even my health. And this isn’t an article to tell you about all the issues I deal with.

But I wanted to share those because so many times we see each other online. We see other people that maybe we admire and we think, and feel “Oh my gosh, like, how are they holding it together? How comes they’re never going through this? Am I the only one who has these crazy thoughts, doubts? Am I the only one having body image issues?”

And the truth is you are not alone. I am not alone. And the more we think about the fact that even as an evolved, ascended, strong mindset leader, we still have days where silly thoughts creep into our head and ruin our days. And the best way to deal with this, is by not suppressing them!

So the more I fight, the more I say, “Oh my gosh, no, no, no, no, no, no! I need to be positive” And they don’t let them be processed. The harder for me, it is to keep moving forward and to feel better. So what I have been learning this year, partly thanks to The Manifestation Babe Academy by Katherin Zenkina, who I joined earlier in 2021. It was a three-four month program, all about manifestation! And one of the things that we learned from the beginning, which I’m so grateful for is when negative thoughts, feelings, pains, old traumas come up and we start to feel them or feel like we’re reliving or feel like we’re regressing.

Let it come to the surface, and release!

It’s actually a good thing, and allowing them to come to the surface so they can be released is actually the best thing you can do to move forward. So, arguably when the negative thought the negative feeling, the fear that maybe you thought, “Oh my gosh, I should be over this by now! Why is this coming up again?” I thought I moved past that when it comes up, it actually is coming up from the depths of your subconscious and it wants to come out and be let go, because when we acknowledge it, that means it’s no longer in a subconscious and it has moved to the conscious where it can be acknowledged and released.

I certainly have accepted this because now when those feelings come up from me, now you hear things like heal it to feel it, it makes a lot more sense. So for example, you know, the thing that I have been dealing with recently is body acceptance. And that’s something that I have dealt with ever since I was a little girl. In fact, there was an episode where Charuka and I talked about it. Part of it is due to cultural conditioning about certain, you know, bodies being more attractive than others. And so, and so, but part of it is just my own struggle with accepting my body. And every year I do a lot of healing work. I do a lot of self-love.

You know, I try to move past it. I’ve realized that I, you know, I can accept myself. I can love myself. And the thing is, is sometimes it comes up. So what I learned is to just acknowledge those fears, those feelings, and that anger which sometimes that I have, let myself process it, maybe write down what’s coming up for me so that I can release it and move on and ask myself where it’s coming from. Whether it’s comparison or something that I’m just holding on to, because sometimes we hold onto old patterns for comfort as well.

But… How does it connect to my art career? What does this have anything to do with my studio practice or my art business?

The answer to that is everything!

Because if we don’t feel good, it’s really hard to confidently show up and share our work with the world to share our story, to confidently exhibit our paintings or sculptures or collages. And it really affects everything when I’m feeling good. I feel beautiful. I feel loved. I feel accepted. I can show up a lot easier and I don’t have as many doubtful thoughts stopping me.

So I encourage you: If you are going through a season where maybe things are coming up, that you know, maybe they’re new, or maybe they’re things that you thought you should be over by now. I encourage you to just pause! Don’t suppress them. Don’t push them down. Don’t try to override them with positivity, but just really feel them.

When you’re done feeling them, send them away! Send them some love and release them! They had their role. They were in a way projecting you at some point in your life and they are no longer needed. So thank them for their service and released them. Now, this also can happen when we somehow spin out of control during a slower season.

So for example, if we’re not selling as many paintings as we’d like, if things are a little bit slow or spin out of control and start saying things like, “Oh my gosh, I lost my edge. I’m never going to be able to do it again.” Or, you know, “something is wrong.” — Nothing is wrong! There are slower seasons in our lives, and this can just mean a lot of things.

It could mean seasonal things like holidays. It could just mean that we need to grow our audience. It has nothing to do with you or your work hasn’t changed. It hasn’t become terrible oldest sudden. Um, sometimes there’s outside factors or if you believe, you know, in the universe like me, sometimes I think.

We are being prepared for the next big thing. And we really have to trust the process.

So when things are slow or things aren’t working and to fight that negative self-talk or those fearful thoughts that come in, I know I really try to reflect on all the other times that it worked. And I do this all the time, even with non-art related things, for example, I’m training for this really crazy race in the fall.

And I’m not in top shape of my life right now. I’m in the early stages of my training and it’s taking me a while to, to get back to where I was, or even past to where it was before. And when I, for example, run up a big Hill that I used to be able to finish. And right now I can not, my mind gets really discouraged and like, Ugh, you know, am I even going to be able to finish this race, my even going to be able to do this?

And I tried to remember, yes, it it’s taken me a few months last time, but I have been able to do it. I’ve done it before. I’ll do it again. You know, the art sales happen before and they will happen again. So just remember that our, our mind loves to spin out of control and to make up stories and make things absolute when really it’s just a temporary place that you’re in or a temporary moment in time.

All right. So now that we’ve addressed fearful or negative talk or, you know, maybe recurring patterns that. Come up from time to time that make us feel like we’re in a funk.

How do we get out of that funk? How do we move forward after we’re done feeling the feels and releasing them, and then also acknowledging that things are temporary?

Well, so what I’ve been doing is after I’m done processing the emotions and not fighting them or being in the fear for a little bit, just to, to let my body go through what it thinks it’s going through. I then try to get back to a place of my higher self. My higher self is the optimal version of me, the version of me that it knows everything is possible.

That knows I have a unique purpose in this life, no matter what’s going on around me. And so when I channel my higher self, I can then show up from a place of worthiness from a place of. It’s already happened for me. It’s already all working. This is part of the process. I can trust this process and I’m going to be doing my best, even when things aren’t working in my favor, even when it looks like nothing is happening or it looks like maybe I’m leaving regressing.

So then I take inventory. And for example, in terms of all right sales or our opportunities, I just asked myself, what, what do I want? A lot of times, the answer’s really simple. Like, Oh, I would love to sell a painting a week, or I would love to sell the rest of my older inventory and move on from that, just to clear some space.

And when I acknowledge my desires, then I can take action from a place of desire, not from a place of panic and desperation. So moving through the process looks something like. I am going to post older things for sale, and I’m going to share them in my stories on Instagram. Maybe I’ll send a newsletter and then I’m not going to attach any feeling to any, even if nothing happens from it, even if no one buys anything, but usually when we go through the pain from like, when we processed the fear and all the crazy thoughts that come in our mind. And then after that, we focus on the desire and take action. Something magical does happen. So there’s just this past week, you know, it was kind of feeling a little low. There was, like I said, there were no reasons for it.

Sometimes my brain just likes to make up crazy stuff. So, I decided I didn’t want to stay in the place of fear and doubt. And I wanted to move into experiencing my desired outcome, which was finding new collectors, meeting new people, sharing my art with the world and releasing the old paintings that I had in my studio.

Well, so I did not reinvent the wheel. I just took the basic action steps, which I tell my clients to do. Send a newsletter, sharing your stories, show up, do it all.

The trick to this is to just not leave anything on the table, do it all to the best you can!

Show up fully and don’t wonder, you know, what if now the funny thing happens is that when we show up fully and we don’t try to hold back and we’re not afraid of being annoying or salesy or sharing too much.

Usually then we get someone’s attention. So, I ended up selling a piece from my older work after doing all the steps. Like I tell my clients, did I sell all my paintings? Did I have an overnight like million dollar revenue stream? And Phil, I did not. I sold one painting. Put that to me. It was just a really beautiful sign from the universe that whatever I’m doing is working and I’m on the right path and sometimes things. Aren’t bombastic. Sometimes we don’t have sellout studio sales, or we don’t have, you know, people fighting over our pieces, but it’s still working and we have to honor any format that it comes in, even if it’s just a tiny thing. So changing our internal dialogue too. Wouldn’t it be lovely where I would love to, for example, I would love to sell a painting a week.

I would love to clear my studio so I can have space for new artwork. Just changing that instead of saying, Oh my gosh, no, one’s buying my work. Something must be wrong. Or, uh, I should, I should have this. Or I should like removing that should, that will just give us so much more internal peace and, and just put us in a state of wonder.

And then finally moving through the process. I always always feel better when I focus on the bigger vision. So. For example, if I have a big bill due and my sales have been really slow, sometimes it’s, it’s really tempting to panic and to feel like, Oh my gosh, it’s not working, huh? Phony. I can just make enough to pay this bill that can work.

You want to take action and you want to make sure you’re, you’re taking care of. But usually it’s a lot easier to meet our quota, to meet our goals when we’re focusing on something way bigger.

So for example, say your monthly expenses are 5k, but your dream income is like, I don’t know, 20K a month. Just start visualizing what it would be like to be in the 20K month and just relax into knowing that you have a surplus. It doesn’t happen right away. Sometimes it might take a little bit to build momentum, to build your income streams, to build your collector base or, you know, whatever art business you have, but just by feeling that relief of your bigger goal.

You were going to not worry about the little details. You’re not going to panic over sharing too much. Or, you know, if, uh, if you don’t have the same client, by as much as they used to, you’re going to like go off those little details and really step into a bigger vision. So these are just, this episode is basically just summary of how I overcome my mental blocks function. Difficult seasons where my mind plays tricks on me. And I just show my brain. Sometimes I have to reason with it, like a little child. I have to show it that. Things are still okay. Things are moving. We are not maybe in the fastest season of growth right now, or maybe it’s just a mental drainage. Like we just too tired or maybe something happened in your life where you need to take time away.

Just to remember that everything is working behind the scenes for you. I truly believe that the universe is always conspiring in your favor, so you never have to worry or fear. If you have the energy to take action, then absolutely take action. But there are also seasons we’re doing nothing is okay as well.

And just knowing that once you have the strength and the energy to resume again, you’re going to do it with just flying colors and fireworks. Thank you so much for listening to this little episode, I hope that it lifts you up. And I hope that we all continue to show up and to be brave enough, to sit with our fears, to sit with our thoughts so that they can be released and we can move into our higher vision and really become the best versions of ourselves.

Where can you find Kat?

Instagram: @katerinaspopova @theartqueens @createmagazine

Website: https://createmagazine.com and https://www.katerinapopova.com