Ep 109 Creative Evolution: Honoring Two Years & Consciously Choosing Alignment

Description: In this personal 2-year anniversary episode, Lori reflects on the evolution of The Artwork of You Podcast and the profound lessons learned through consistency, creative trust, and showing up even when clarity felt distant. What began as a space for thoughtful exploration has now become a marker of growth, self-awareness, and intentional decision-making

Lori shares the honest reasoning behind her decision to pause the podcast not from burnout or lack of success, but from a powerful need to realign her time and energy with the creative momentum unfolding in her art business. From successful art show and product lines to the unexpected rise of TikTok as a sales channel, this past year has signaled a clear call to protect her creative focus and honor what is unfolding in this season of life.

This episode is a masterclass in integrity, clarity, and listening to inner direction. Lori invites listeners to reflect on their own lives, asking the questions many avoid: Where is your energy going? What are you holding onto out of habit rather than intention? And what might shift if you gave yourself permission to choose differently?

Episode Highlights:

• A heartfelt 2-year reflection on consistency and creative growth
  
  
  
• Why success sometimes requires letting go of what’s already working
  
  
  
• The emotional and strategic reasoning behind pausing the podcast
  
  
  
• How creative alignment leads to sustainable momentum
  
  
  
• Thought-provoking questions to help listeners realign with their own priorities
  
  
  

This milestone episode stands as both a farewell (for now) and a powerful reminder that true growth often begins with the courage to choose differently.

Thank you for sharing your time with me and remember to show up in your life like the masterpiece you are because YOU are the ARTwork!!!

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Have a fabulous day!

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Transcript

Lori Gouhin: [00:00:00] I had to ask myself the same questions I ask everyone else. where do I want my energy to go? What feels true for this season in my life?

Am I spreading myself too thin? Is there something I'm holding onto out of habit rather than intention? And when I answered those questions, honestly the decision became clear. Hello my friends. I am so glad that you are here with me today because today this episode feels special. It's [00:01:00] basically the two year anniversary of the artwork of you podcast, which is crazy to even think about. And as I said back on my 100th episode, when I first started, I did not know what this show would turn into.

I really just knew that I had things that I wanted to talk about and questions I was thinking through, and ideas that I wanted to share. And two years later, here we are and I wanna take a moment to look back and also share where things are headed for me. And when I think about these past two years, what really stands out most is the consistency.

Week after week, I sat down and recorded something, whether I felt inspired or not, or whether my week was calm or often chaotic. Whether I knew exactly what I wanted to say or I had to figure it out as I went along. But somehow there was always something worth talking about once I sat down. And I would say the part that surprised me the most are the messages 

that I receive from people that I've never met telling me an episode came [00:02:00] at the right time, or help them see something differently. And it would remind me that these conversations are not just out there floating in space. They're actually reaching people. And that has meant more to me than I can explain.

And creating the show has also taught me a lot more than I expected. For example, it's taught me to trust what I have to say, and it's taught me that my voice is clearer than I think it is when I'm actually using it. And it taught me that you don't have to know everything to start something. And we talk about that a lot on the show.

You just have to be willing to show up and figure it out as you go. And so with all that said. I wanna talk about something that's been weighing on my mind, and after a lot of thought, decided that this was the best time to make this decision. I've decided to take a break from the podcast, and I wanna be clear about why.

It's not because IDT love doing this. I [00:03:00] do. I truly do. And it's not because people aren't listening. You are, the show is growing and it's not because the show isn't working again. It is, everything is working beautifully. But what's happening is that my life and business have shifted in the past year, and what I mean by that is over the past year, I feel like I stepped into a different rhythm creatively, and as much as I've tried to keep everything going at the same time, I've realized that something has to give.

Again, not because anything is wrong, but because things are going right and they need more of my focus. So it's nothing dramatic or anything like that. Nothing like that has happened. It's simply me telling the truth about what this time of my life is asking for. The past year, I would say, has been one of the most creative years that I've ever had, and it started right at the beginning of January with art sales, the very first week of the year.

And then it just continued in this steady, consistent momentum that felt [00:04:00] different from anything I've experienced. I would say in a long time, I had a successful art show. Collaboration opportunities came up. My purse line has done extremely well, and it still makes me smile because that was something I created purely out of curiosity and intention.

And TikTok of all places has become a real source of connection and sales. And now there's the Good Fortune Club and the fact that most of the subscribers are people I have never met. That still really amazes me. And so through all of it, I felt more creative than I ever have, and I've had more ideas than I can keep up with.

It's like something unlocked and the momentum really hasn't slowed down. And when I look at all of this together, not as individual wins, but as an overall direction, the message is pretty clear. My art and creativity are calling for more of my attention, and it makes sense for me to follow that. Another thing this past year has made impossible to ignore is that everything has a [00:05:00] cost in time and energy You can love a lot of things, and I do, but they don't all grow well when you're stretched across too many directions at once, and art has always been such a major part of my life. Even when coaching was the focus of my business, art was still so important, but it sort of started running in the background.

Adding coaching into the mix took up way more time and energy than I realized. And it wasn't a bad thing. I mean, I love coaching. I enjoy it, and I must admit I'm good at it, very good at it, but it does pull my attention away and. From my art in ways that I didn't see fully until I stepped back a bit and I created a waiting list and I put my attention on strategy sessions and committed to only working with clients that felt truly aligned and were really willing and ready to do the work.

And so again, at the beginning of 2025, I made the decision to put my art first. Again, not just mentally, but in how I structured my days and where I [00:06:00] placed my time. And as soon as I did, everything lined up again, sales, opportunities, ideas, momentum, and it reminded me that clarity doesn't always come from more thinking.

It often comes from taking the action that you keep saying you're going to take. And in a lot of ways, this whole shift has been me practicing what I'm always talking about. I encourage people to be honest about what they want, about where their time is going and whether their habits match their goals.

And this year I had to ask myself the same questions I had to look at my life the way I ask others to look at theirs, and admitting this to myself helped me see my capacity more clearly. If I wanna support the momentum that's already happening with my art and creativity, I have to protect my time and I have to focus it.

And that's what led me to look at the podcast. Not negatively, just realistically. And some things require a level of [00:07:00] bandwidth I don't have, if I want my art business to grow the way that it's been growing. And the podcast is one of those things. When I look at how I wanna spend my time moving forward, I realized I needed longer stretches of uninterrupted creative time, the kind where I can follow my ideas and experiment and work on new pieces and stay connected to the direction that the art is taking me.

And as much as I love doing the podcast, it's the one part of my week that requires a different kind of focus than everything else. I can't do it casually. I put real thought into each episode what I wanna say, how I wanna say it, and whether it adds something meaningful. And because of that, it takes more time and head space than people might assume a lot more time.

 And so as I looked at the year ahead, I knew something had to open up somewhere because I wanna be intentional about the kind of creative room I give myself. And the podcast is the thing [00:08:00] that made the most sense to pause for now. It's really as simple as that.

And another thing I've realized throughout all of this is that I'm making the exact kind of decision. I'm always encouraging other people to make the kind where you look at your life, honestly, and choose what actually matters to you right now, not what you've always done, not what feels comfortable, not what you think you should quote unquote, should keep doing.

I often talk about paying attention to your priorities and listening to your own direction, and being willing to shift when something in your life is asking you to, and this is me doing that. I had to ask myself the same questions I ask everyone else. where do I want my energy to go? What feels true for this season in my life?

Am I spreading myself too thin? Is there something I'm holding onto out of habit rather than intention? And when I answered those questions, honestly the decision became clear. It's one thing to talk about clarity and alignment. [00:09:00] It's another to actually follow it when it requires you to make a change that you didn't expect.

But that's part of the work. Noticing when the path you're on needs adjusting and having the willingness to do it. I had to do a lot of mindset work to believe that I'm not abandoning anything. I'm choosing in a way that supports where I'm headed. And if I'm going to talk about integrity in your decisions and being honest about what you want, then I have to do the same thing in my own life.

So what I want you to think about, especially if you've been feeling a shift in your own life, no pressure, just a moment to check in with yourself. Is there something that you've been wanting to do that hasn't had the time or space it deserves? Is there a direction or an idea that you keep thinking about?

Are there areas in your life where you're going through the motions instead of choosing something on purpose? And what would feel lighter or clearer if you just gave yourself permission to make the [00:10:00] change? Sometimes just asking the right questions opens something up. So here's what this podcast break actually looks like.

I'm not disappearing and I'm not stepping back from the things I'm creating. I'm still here, I'm still working. I'm still sharing my art, my ideas, and everything I'm building. You'll hear from me in emails. You'll still see me on social media. You'll see my work in the world. That part isn't changing. The only thing changing is that the podcast won't be part of my weekly routine for now.

I'm not putting a timeline on it or making any commitments about the future of the show. I'm just giving it a pause and the break that it needs and letting things unfold from there. If I feel called to come back to it, I most certainly will, and if it stays a completed chapter, that's okay too. Right now, I'm simply choosing what feels right again for this season of my life and my work.

And so to wrap it up, I want to say thank you. Thank you so much for listening over the past two years. Thank you for the messages you've [00:11:00] sent, the support you've shown, and the time you've spent here with me. It means so much more than you will ever, ever know. Creating this podcast has been such a meaningful part of my life and I'm so proud of what it became.

I'm grateful for every episode, every conversation, every person who tuned in and for my incredible, incredible, incredible editor, Christine Santos. And even though the show is pausing, I hope you'll stay connected with me in the other places. Thank you again for being here with me. I truly appreciate it.