Elizabeth Gilbert | How to Seize the Day

so thank you again for all of you joining us tonight I'm so excited to welcome Elizabeth Gilbert here she's one of the best-known most beloved writers working today she's been named one the most influential hundred mental people in the world by Time magazine books have been translated into over forty six languages some of you might be familiar with her little known memoir Eat Pray Love which is one of the best-selling and most influential non-fiction books of all time she's also an incredibly accomplished novelist and I absolutely love her novels her last one the signature of all things as long listed for the Bailey's women's prize in Britain and shortlisted for the welcome prize and we are talking today about her new novel city of girls which is already in New York Times bestseller of course Elizabeth is joining us say from her home where are you joining us from actually Liz Jersey and I own an old church here Oh amazing you know that I bought on Craigslist when I was in Laos I was in the South Pacific I was in Southeast Asia looking for a home and I saw it on Craigslist and I bought it without seeing it because of these windows look at these windows Oh box of light it's this tiny little perfect old eighteenth-century chapel and um this is where I'm doing my my quarantine it's not so bad when a snake your self isolating in an old church I love a proper religious experience how has it been for you let's talk about the current situation first how are you finding this all there's two levels of it for me there's the the the global my feelings as a global citizen and as a human being and there's my feelings of my personal experience of it so my feelings as a global citizen and a human being are that this is devastating and terrifying and heartbreaking the amount of suffering that people are going through not just physically but economically it's it's a nightmare and it's also inspiring to see people keep referring to this as a war I think that war is the the analogy that comes up the most often and yet we have to also remember that it's exactly the opposite of a warning and a war people are desperately trying to kill one another yeah and in this situation literally the entire world just trying to save itself in each other and so but it's still devastating but on a personal level I'm fine I'm the one person who you don't need to worry about I like my own company and my place where I am I have had maybe two interactions with human beings outside of myself in the last five weeks but I've been behind it preparing for this my whole life because I so much time alone writing or alone in meditation retreats so I'm I'm I'm made this decision that I'm not going to waste it and I don't mean by being creative or productive I mean by being really curious about what it's like to be totally alone for yeah I mean I was going to say is this the natural state for a writer anyway self isolated and and so I'm okay yeah I'm fine what we're concerned about everybody else is there anything you miss though about the outside world is it terrible that it's taking me so long I'm a New Yorker and I miss my city my city is closed and my city is hurting and I wrote back in for one day a couple weeks ago to pick up some things and and it's spooky it's very very spooky to be in the East Village walking down st. Mark's Street and being the only person on the street and yeah it's it's it's extremely surreal but I think all of you know that feeling from where to wherever it is that you may be but yeah I miss I miss my city you know a lot of people turn to you for life advice and I in particular Revere your book big magic which is just the most brilliant tips on writing so I wondered if in this period you know as you say you've been preparing for this your whole life in terms of meditation retreats I'm writing I wonder if you had advice for people out there we're kind of struggling with this being on their own all day and don't know what to do and feel like they should be productive but they can't focus etcetera etcetera I kind of have to like layers of advice and the first one is if there's anything that I could want for you all it's that you show yourselves mercy so that is so much more important than anything that you create or anything that you do or anything that you accomplish or don't accomplish for we live in such a merciless culture and it's a merciless time of the world's history for Humanity the expectations that we put on ourselves are enormous and unfair and inhumane and cruel and a lot of you are stuck at home with children a lot of you are sick yourselves a lot of you are again stuck at home with children you know a lot of you are less than ideal living situations a lot of you are struggling with work situations so so before anything like before any goals or aspirations about this I think we just have to lay down a carpet of the softest mercy that this is not what anybody asked for and it's hard and and if you don't do anything but survive this you did well that's the only thing you have to do is to get through this if you want to take it to another level and you want to see this as a strange cosmic invitation to feel uncomfortable feelings and to to feel what I was I salute and loneliness actually are like in order to know yourself better and also to know humanity better than to be more kind and understanding to people when they are in isolation and loneliness in the future to really recognize what it feels like to be house bound and to let that grow and grow your compassion you know that's a good use of the time and and but I think if the only thing you could use this time for is to show compassion to yourself every time that you feel like you're failing that you're not doing it right that you should be getting six-pack rock-hard stomach abs at the same time is writing your first novel at the same time but really condo in your home you know like expected I love you anyway just survival is perfect so let's talk about city of girls which is a pro is a perfect book for self isolation it is a proffer a big novel that you can get stuck into and it is such an enthralling book there's so many strands in it I thought I'd actually hand this over to you Liz to describe as the writer you can you can definitely describe it better than me okay thank you although you were doing it you're doing a great job I was enjoying that so city of girls is a novel that said mostly in in the 1940s in New York City at a time of actual war a time where the entire world was at war and most of New York had emptied out of nearly all of its men sent them all overseas to fight and it was really girls and women who were left to run New York City it's the story of a young girl who moved to New York at the age of 19 and she goes to live with her Aunt Peg a fantastic eccentric wonderful loving bohemian who has a theater company in midtown Manhattan a kind of shabby down on its luck theater company that puts on cheap entertainment for working-class people and bathing and who is our heroine is has been raised in a very close third respectable anglo-saxon family of private schools and and privilege and she's thrown into this world of showgirls and dancers and actors and Playboy's and glamor and a lot of sex and a lot of wildness and she takes to it like a duck to water and so the book is and the book is told from her point of view in her 90s looking back upon that time and the book is told as a letter that she's writing to a woman she has just gotten a letter from saying now that my mother is dead I wonder if you might be able to tell me what you were to my father so the entire book is an answer that she's giving to this person this stranger and we don't know who the father is and we don't know what the relationship isn't so it's a little bit of a mystery but but mostly it's about an older woman looking back on her wild youth with a great deal of fondness for her younger self there is so much going on in this it feels sort of like just you know picking out one bit of Satsuma from the horn of plenty but to pick out one relationship in this that really grabbed me it's the relationship between Pegg who's Vivian's older aunt's prob about in her forties I'm guessing and this woman who also works in the theater all of who's like her assistant and they have this very interesting relationship at first we just see it as them working together in theater and then one night Vivien sees them dancing together and they're obviously in love and and it feels like the one uncomplicated relationship in the book it's hidden and I wondered if you see them as tragic or triumphant triumphant completely triumphant for so many reasons because that's um there's a line in the book where Vivian says I never really witnessed a real marriage and my sister wrote in the margins yes she did in the original dress yes she did you know that they just belonged to each other in a way that was very simple they were not similar peg is very bohemian very wild very devil-may-care very like a spendthrift a drinker and olive is straight-laced the schoolmarm by the book by the rules but but we also discover midway through the book the incredible loyal heart that all has and the way that she will go to the defense of anybody any of her people who are in trouble and you you really can see why you could love that woman yes oh no I see it as a triumph and and not just for that reason but also because I'll have won the prize I mean peg is the one who everybody in the world loves and including her incredibly handsome playboy husband and and I live somehow with her sixth a G boxy suits and her mothball smell and her so yeah it's definitely a triumph I mean you can really tell that you have this total love for that period the 1940s New York theater world and I love how the book itself feels like a movie from the 1940s there are screwball moments there's war moments there's this tragic love moments and I wondered you know reading it I kept picturing specific actors from the 1940s in the roles you know Billy Tyrone Power you know someone else Rand Hepburn and I wondered if either first of all if there were specific references from the 40s that you had in mind writing it and if you have specific people for the characters I love that you were seeing that somewhat there's oh my god I'm drawing a blank there was a stage actress who I can't believe I'm not being able to remember her name right now I could if you'll give me one second we can come back to that right over there with me but there was there was one stage actors from the 1940s who I modeled the great leading lady and the in the book that the the actress character who comes from England and who he's the star of the show and I modeled her on on that character um that's the only person who was somewhat real mostly everybody is an amalgam of people I know my up egg is very similar to my aunt Molly who's 98 years old now and was probably a closeted lesbian for most of her life you know we just didn't like it's never been discussed but everybody kind of knows and you know various other characters are inspired by I think Billy who's the Playboy husband of Aunt Peg I kind of saw him as George Clooney being like well if anybody would have to be played by George Clooney cuz you'd have to be played by somebody who is so bad but you can't help but love them anyway so yeah but but mostly I would say it was just reading a lot of biographies from the day and studying a lot of theater history and then just kind of making a mishmash of everything now tell me if I'm wrong of course but it seemed to me when I was reading it that these specific sentences were kind of the crux of the book Vivian writes this in the letter to the younger woman says at some point a woman just gets tired of being ashamed all the time after that she is free to become who she really is now you've written a lot about letting go of fear in terms of how to live your life and embrace creativity and I wondered when you were able to let go of shame because that's a slightly different thing well that I love that you think I'd let go much much kinder to myself at 50 than I've ever been to myself in my entire life and me and Liz can now I can now say that she and I have a pretty solid friendship you know I've become a good steward of her and and as a good steward I make sure that I make sure that terrorists are not allowed in the room to attack her even if they're in here you know mostly mostly but but look I'm human and I'm vulnerable and when I feel like I have failed my exceedingly high expectations that I hold for myself I I suffer but only always it's it's been a lifetime I was raised by people who set very high standards for themselves and who set very high standards for me and who were very unforgiving of themselves they were very kind people to others but not to themselves and I think that's where we pick that up we learn that from our from our families I how often have you ever met somebody who's really kind to themselves it's a rare thing to find in the world and and so where would we have learned it you know like you have to I mean part of the the journey of shame for me has just been forgiving myself for the fact that this was never modeled to me you know and so I just sorted out on my own and and and essentially the way I've had to sort it out is to say that this is the model that I go back to again and again that all of us people who call ourselves good people or who want to be good people we have an aspiration that we want to practice universal human compassion yeah I don't I don't know anybody I'm not close with anybody who doesn't want that who doesn't want to become somebody who who can practice universal patience and forgiveness and empathy and compassion to the world so here's what I figured out a long time ago some a genius figured out that universal compassion that doesn't include compassion toward the self is not universal why it's a major block if there's a major hole in that and and you have to actually fold yourself into the universe and say that if I'm going to practice universal love and human compassion that starts at home and that starts with this that starts with anybody who's suffering and right now the person who's suffering is me because I'm ashamed of myself and I'm beating myself up and I'm being unkind to myself and that's the first person who I need to show some compassion to right now otherwise if you take yourself out of that equation there's a narcissism to it actually that suggests that you think that you're a special case that you know everyone else in the world everyone else in the world is entitled to love and forgiveness and mercy except you right so what like one of the things that can break me down out of my shame is when I asked myself what makes you says what makes you think you're so special that you're not entitled to mercy and everybody else is you know differently anyway so the narcissism of shame is something that that once I think you know doing that it took it away a little bit but you have that it in um oh gosh I remember you talking about this ages ago when I went to see one of your talks when it was about big magic and you talked about that feeling that a lot of people have creative people when they get stuck you think everyone's watching you and you have to realize no one's watching you that is so much more devastating than thinking that everybody's looking at you and judging you it's like what do you mean nobody's looking at me it's that is the biggest ego blow but also in a weird way the beginning of liberation not very long ago there's over the past few years you've had to make some very public personal announcements first that your marriage was over the phone in love with your best friend and then that she extremely sadly passed away and making any of those announcements on such a big stage would take an enormous amount of courage I think all of us here now are wondering if we would have that courage to make those announcements to the world and I wondered if making going through that process helped you let go of some of the fear or shame that you might have still had I'll tell you something very honestly I didn't do that for anybody else but myself um I didn't make those announcements because I felt that I owed information to the world or to my readers I made those announcements because it made my life easier and and there's a there's a really wonderful adage for making decisions about your life which goes like this how would this look if it was easy how would this look if it was easy so the easiest thing is to be that's parent it's just easier it's just easier because then you're not keeping various storylines straight and then trying to keep secrets which is exhausting and you're not looking over your shoulder to see what people are thinking about you or who knows what or who's going to reveal what the simplest thing for me given the fact that I'm somewhat of a public figure I mean I'm not a Kardashian but like you know thank God you know people sometimes recognize me on the street like I wanted to be able to walk down the street when Raya was I only had a very short amount of time with her and and when I found out that she was sick and that she had terminal pancreatic and liver cancer they said she only had six months to live so these were decisions that had to be made very quickly my decision to leave my marriage and to go be with her for that short amount of time meant that every single one of those moments mattered to me enormous Lee and I just wanted to be like hey everybody like everybody family friends strangers the news I just want to let you know this is happening I'm taking no questions about it um as you were off I go you know just it just made me free to be able to then instantly turn my attention back to being with her and know that I could walk into a restaurant holding her hand too bad everybody look I told you she's might you know we're together and I also so we say yeah it was to make my life easier and there was also an element of pride in how much I love Draya and how much how proud I was of the way that we loved each other and there was an element of wanting to share that sense you know like I had loved her for so long so quietly and I was finally able to be like black you know I'd always been her because she was so extraordinary and I was delighted to be able to to put it on her even more um and yeah but mostly it was just so that I could go about my life and not be wondering whose stories I needed to keep straight yeah yeah now Liz you know how big a fan I am of your previous novel the signature of all things and like city of girls first of all an excellent lockdown novel if any of you haven't read it yet it is so it's huge and it's so engrossing and you learn so much from it just like this one and it strikes me that although you're known for your very personal non-fiction writing and your you know the beautiful wedding you talk about yourself and how people go through emotions your fiction tends to be about people living lives in times and making engaged in places not necessarily this one but times certainly far removed from ours there are historical novels and I wondered if that was deliberate if there was a separation between the sort of personal mantra kitchen and the very different far away fiction yeah it is I mean I also try to write the novels that I would like to read and I always imagine that when I'm creating a novel I try to think what is the novel where if I heard about it I would be like I totally want to read that you know and and that was how I felt was signature of all things so I was so into plants and botany at that time and and I remember thinking if I heard that there was a novel about a nineteenth-century woman who co-discovered evolution with Charles Darwin and traveled all over the world and learned everything about the evolution of species on earth through studying moss I would want to read that New York City in the 1940s in the theater world I would want to read that so part of it is just me wanting to go and play in the worlds that I think are really interesting the other thing is that if you really want to know about me read the signature of all things and city of girls on the Whittaker the character in the indistinct of all things and Vivian Morris in the city of girls will tell you more about what I'm like than anything that I could ever write about myself and more and more about me through that that is there's something about being able to hide in a novel all the elements of my life that I feel like I wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable about talking openly I can put them in there disguise them massage them around a little bit play with them and turn them into something else and I can use them for for grist for stories without feeling to revealed so um so yeah they've I've heard it said that every novel is a every novel is a memoir and every in every memoir is a work of fiction so I feel like the true the truest my emotional life laid bare are in those books I've got to tell you this that when I was reading city of girls there was so much of Vivienne I could really relate to and there's a scene in it I don't want to give it away for anyone who hasn't had the joy of reading it yet but Vivian does something but well it's sort of something that hurts other people in the book I want to say bad and as we all do and the may the leading lady in it Edna he's like the main actress in the theater where they're working confronts her about it afterwards and there's the see in this speech it honestly felt like it pierced my heart so I'm not going to quote it but there's like will quote I'm not gonna paraphrase it when Edna says to Vivien Vivian's 19 Edna's ploy in her late 30s and she says to Vivian you are not an interesting person you are laboring under that misapprehension and you will never be an interesting person and I mean it sends chills down me total and you know I didn't do anything quite like what Vivian did but I definitely made mistakes when I was 19 my 20s still making them now I'm sure and if someone said that to me it would devastate me and I wondered what it was like winning that speech because like you say there is parts of you in Vivian what is it like you know having taken down like that to be destroyed you know and I needed her to be destroyed by somebody who she really really loved and respected and and I think a friend of mine once said that you're not really an adult until you have been broken hearted and until you have broken somebody else's heart that both of those things are required in order for you to have the humility to step into adulthood right and that's a moment where so Vivian's got beauty and she's got she's a certain amount of charm and she's been rich her whole life and like nothing has ever mattered you know no one and she's also been kind of neglected nobody's ever been really paying attention to her so she's been allowed to run wild and she's been running wild and and there's never been a consequence and and until you hit that wall of consequence in your life you're just gonna keep careening around doing what you want and hurting people and and consequence has to be felt and it has to be felt at a really deep level for change to come so yeah I I was I was I had chills myself it's writing that scene and I also had the worst thing that you could say to a self-absorbed young because Machat heard her in a way that she needed to be shattered but yeah it's it's I would that's the one seeing the movie though the movie rights have been sold for the book and that's that well that I'm hoping we'll be in the movie and that I am hoping a great older actress will deliver Jane are you gonna write the screenplay are you involved with it no I'm not I don't know how to write a screenplay and I'm not interested in it and I think that they're not interested in me being interested in it I think that the best my experience with Hollywood has been that the very if you're lucky enough to have any interaction with them the very best thing to do is to politely take your check and be grateful for um I can see already have loads of questions it's just a very basic last question for me which is are you working on something now at the teeny weeny beginnings of envisioning something but it's so embryonic at this point and one thought that I had is that if the quarantine goes on and it looks like it's going to for at least another month you know I've I've elephant eyes my spice rack I'm running out of things that I can do that are not writing and so it just may be that from the sheer force of the fact that there's nothing else to do I might get to work on this thing a little bit sooner than I had expected to but but yeah I've got I got a little something brewing but it's it's too soon to talk about because it's one of those things where there's a fear that if you just talk about it it'll crush it yeah I know or should I just keep going I think I just keep going but if anyone could let me know if it's actually working for them because I think it's freezing but let me see if I can find questions so someone there's been a couple of questions about from for Liz how to seize the day I know that that's how this event was pitched in some places so let's get to that soul is how do you seize the day okay so it's a general philosophy it's a general way of living more than it is a specific action and the general way of living is I believe that this planet I call it Earth's right and I believe it's a school for souls and it's where souls come to advance and it's a really hard school really really really hard school and my friend Martha Beck has this great version of her interpretation of that which is that that just before a baby is about to be born all the angels gather around the baby and they say oh my god you're about to be born and you are gonna suffer so much there's gonna be so much less you can have so many opportunities to grow through your pain and your suffering and your loss we're so excited for you and the soul just goes wait wait a minute but there's gonna be good stuff too right like love and happiness and success and joy and the Angels go like you're definitely gonna suffer and that's where the good juices like that's where the good stuff is and and so what I would say right now in terms of this particular moment in time is that instead of using the language of this is a disaster this is a catastrophe this is a war this is the world it's crazy right now I'm I actually don't think that the world is crazy right now I think that the world itself is doing what the world does it's doing the job of the world which is by all appearances and by all history we've learned the job of the world is to constantly change and to never ever ever stop changing and to sometimes do that very violently it very radically and sometimes do it more subtly but to never ever stop so the world is just doing what the world does the world is not crazy I actually don't even think that humanity is that crazy right now what I'm seeing is a lot of sanity a lot of people and by sanity I mean people in service to one another people making sacrifices people doing the right thing people trying to help each other this is I would argue that this is a rather same moment and and if you want to seize it in terms of an opportunity for your own growth I can only offer you what I'm doing for myself I am not wasting this chance to find out what it's like to be completely alone to be in isolation to have all my pacifiers what do you don't call them that in England what do you call that things yeah we've all had all the dummies pulled out of our mouths right everything that we could ever reach for them comfort that would get us to not have to think about our own selves or be in our own minds have been ripped out to me that's really interesting and that's a really interesting moment and and if you can replace the words disastrous crazy cat a cataclysmic nightmarish with interesting that's the beginning of seizing the day because that's how you regard it with curiosity don't be in such a hurry to rush through the circumstances of life that have the greatest opportunity of transforming you everybody is desperate to have the world go back to what it used to be that's all I'm hearing is everybody's like winking they'll be back what is it gonna be back when are we gonna have it back okay so first of all all I remember is all of you all doing nothing but complaining about it when you have it I'm living in a golden age you know yeah right you know if you were you had nothing but complains about it now you back that's also very human so just keep aware of that and and maybe you want to start thinking about cultivating a different sort of attitude coming forward in your life of gratitude and appreciation for what you've got that's a way to seize the day so but but mostly I would say seize it bye I'm calling this one in my life for me a freebie from God where it's like we're gonna give you two months I used to pay to do this out of my earnings to go away and be in isolation and in order to learn how to deal with myself and I heard many people over the years say how much they envied me then I got to do that well now everyone gets to do it and let me tell you that what it felt like to be in an ashram in India for 4 months and to be sitting in a meditation cave for eight hours a day in meditation is what this feels like mmm irritating agitating your sorrow comes up your rage comes up your impatience your frustration that's what it's like it's not a spa holiday you know but I would just suggest if you really want to make the most of this don't be in such a hurry to get on a million zoom parties with people to to try to replicate inside of this very special space that we're in to try to replicate normal life don't waste it find silence in yourself and see what it feels like to be still and start the really interesting job of making friends with the person who you've been running away from your entire life which is of course you yeah I think that's the most interesting way you can possibly live your life and the most interesting way you can live at this quarantine now Lauren here says I'm really struggling with motivation during isolation and also in general I spend my days staring at walls we've all been there Laura and believe me you have a tip for snapping out of it and finding the importance and urgency in creating I think maybe importance and urgency are the words that are causing you to shut down I think that you might be giving it too much importance in too much urgency and that's making you anxious if somebody's only that it was urgent then I create I think I would stare at a wall too and if somebody told me that what I had to create had to be important I think that I was also just shut down and be in a case of paralysis those those are really intense words that speak to really high expectations I would advise and counsel for a softer relationship with it and for lowering your expectations of what it is that you're meant to be creating I would also say this is one thing and I don't know whether this is the situation that she's having but a couple people have said to me I'm having trouble creating because I'm in so much isolation and solitude one of the things that I that I'm wondering when I hear that is whether in fact that's true or if the fact is quite the opposite that you've brought too much of the world into the room with you what I mean by that is if you're watching the news for four or five hours a day or staring at your phone reading the latest developments of every single twist and turn of what's happening with coab at 19 you're actually not in isolation what you've done is you've brought a disaster into your home with you that's going to cause you trauma and it's going to cause you to stress and that is the opposite of creating a creative space that's going to be nurturing and soft and welcoming you're going to traumatize yourself so I would suggest a quarantine on the news and and a quarantine I mean mimosa muss watching four or five hours of the news is going to change the virus sorry or save the world it's not we if we trick ourselves into thinking that we're being responsible citizens by staying in touch it's not actually responsible because you're hurt you're hurting yourself with that humans are not made to be able to absorb that much trauma and that many images and that many stories without actually hurting yourself so I would stop that and I would start to try to figure out what what can you bring into that space with you that's actually nourishing and it's encouraging that that you know remember that your creativity is like this very tiny delicate seed right and if you're and if you're poisoning it with toxic toxic news and toxic anxiety it's not it's not going bro I would also suggest setting a timer one of the things that people when they're when they're faced with too much room too much space and a lot of us right now in quarantine in the isolation have too much room and too much space those hours can seem very daunting in terms of how to fill them I would just say take your phone and once you've turn off all the news apps take your phone and set it for an hour and give yourself one hour a day that you're going to devote to doing whatever the creative thing is that you want to do the Internet has to be off and set it up a little bit beforehand you know clean off your desk like make it a really nice space and when that timer goes off at the end of that hour you are finished you are finished walk away even if you're in the middle of a painting if you're in the middle of a poem walk away and the rest of your day is yours just stare at the wall to do whatever you're going to do and then the next day come back for one hour so break it up into reasonable small chunks rather than looking at this as this vast time when you think you're supposed to be creating always I don't I don't ask myself to do anything creative for more than an hour at a time otherwise I get overwhelmed and and it all falls apart so that's the best advice that I can give you for now oh and also you know ask somebody to hold you accountable if you've got if you've got a friend who is in the same situation make a deal with them and say we're gonna do a creativity week we're gonna check in with each other at the end of the day we're gonna share our work holding each other accountable is a really beautiful way to to proceed in times like this - I also remember in big magic you have this section when you say you know if you're expecting to earn lots of money from your book for your creativity to bring money you're basically scaring it away it's like scaring away a cat and I think that's something that a lot of people forget really they they all want to make the big successful novel or the big successful screenplay and it's really valuable to know you can't have that kind of pressure on yourself or you'll never be able to write anything yeah and and you can't have it at any level of your career like I still can't have that kind of pressure on me and um I still don't know when I sit down whether I can do it you know what I'm gonna do what it's gonna become you asked me if I was working on they knew and I'll share with you that I actually wrote a book this year already and I haven't shared about this yet but I I I wrote a book that's based on Raya and something that I was working on last year and it's and they have worked on the beginning of the year I wrote it with every intention of publishing it and then after sitting with it for a few weeks decided that it's not for the world and and it's not to be so if my expectation going in is that I have to write a best-selling book or I have to write a book that you know I wrote a very strange book that I needed to write from my own heart but that nobody needs to read I didn't know when I was writing it that it was just for me I assumed that I would publish it but you have to be willing to allow the work itself to tell you what it wants to be I really believe that and this particular thing that I wrote earlier this year has let me know that it's work is over something that it and I needed to do for my own purposes and that it doesn't want to be read by anybody else and I'm like cool Who am I to argue you know I'll do something else you know um so you have to be willing do you have to hold it with a light hand to be willing to let it come in you'll be willing to let it go you have to have ideas that turn out well ideas that don't turn out well and and as much as you can possibly have have mercy for it the other thing just on the economic front trying to earn money from your creativity there's nothing wrong with starting to earn money from your creativity as long as it doesn't kill your creativity yeah and and smother it and and put way too much pressure on it and just keep this in mind you guys human creativity and artistic expression according to anthropologists is approximately a hundred thousand years older than human economics it's a hundred thousand years older than agriculture it's old it's one of our oldest impulses it predates all of this it's ancient it's a deep we have a deep intuitive relationship with it that has nothing to do with the marketplace long long before art was a commodity it was sacred you know our artistic expression was a way of communicating with the gods you know that's that's what it was and it was it was sacred if it was celebratory it was decorative so if you can remember that that its original purpose so when you yell at art and say I need my art to make money it's like I don't know what you're talking about that's going on so and and also I've said this before too but if you're a creative person who does make money from your creativity remember that your creativity before you made money from it was probably your first medicine the drawings and the writing and the play and the inning that you did as a child you probably did those things intuitively as a child in order to calm your own anxiety and it became your medicinal so the place that you went to feel safe and the that you went to be able to get out of your own mind I know that for me creativity was always a place that I went to feel safe and to get away from my own extreme anxiety that I had as a child if once it becomes a commodity the medicine the medicinal quality of it can be diminished in that case I would just suggest that you take up a secondary creative outlet that has nothing to do with the marketplace so start drawing start singing start gardening do something else that's creative and generative that you're not trying to sell so that you can replace that feeling of having a sanctuary that's just for you so what's your creative sanctuary then Liz because obviously your creativity has made you money and for all that we talk about Oh shame you know realizing people aren't looking at you they are looking at you and you have a book come out you know how do you get away from that sense of other people's expectations or every book must be a huge hit and I've got to top the next one I mean I want you to know that I still have that you know I think that I have to do what I have to do is be kind to Liz when she loses her sanity by thinking that she has to be something right and I do and I do I lose my sanity and I think I have to be something and then I like slowly remember that I don't so so it's a gentleness that I have to show toward myself in order to be able to handle that but I've been doing a lot of visual art lately I've been doing a lot of painting I'm not and I have these journals that I write and I've shared some pictures of them on Instagram to encourage people I love to share pictures of my art just to encourage people to do stuff they aren't good you're allowed to paint you're allowed to write poetry even if it's not very good so for me it's the the art that I create and in my journal space is probably where I can really quiet myself down the same way I used to be able to when I was 10 now we have a lot of messages from people saying how much they you've inspired them over the years and this one I thought I even read out I won't give the name I'm most not private to me so from Imola saying oh no sorry that is the wrong message saying from CJ saying oh no no sorry that's also true me but there's other must yes so someone here is saying that she's finishing her book soon the shameful finishing her book soon about termination for medical reasons and healing through creativity and her hope is that it will help someone and Liz you encouraged me to write this so thank you so much and other messages I've lost the name I'm afraid I was just looking for was someone saying that eating Eat Pray Love gave them the push they needed to leave their partner and they've been with their news she is not able to shut off from what is happening in the real world I treat clients from home so the situation was coming into my home every day how would you suggest because I'm not in this situation that you're in and most of us are not in this situation that you're in so the very first thing that I want to say is thank you for the sacrifices that you're making and the work that you're doing and again I'm just hearing the word mercy in my head in terms of finding mercy for yourself for the fact that you might not be able to create a soft gentle nourishing environment in your home right now that you are at the front of the greatest pandemic the world has ever seen these are not usual days and if you can maybe just remember that this will end and that when it ends you'll be able to have more space and more light and more grace for yourself but I think I'm just afraid that if you set yourself up like I hate to see people set themselves up so if you set yourself up with some idea that you should be if there's any should in there you know that you should be able to both be on the front lines of this massive virus as a healthcare worker and holding people's trauma holding people's pain helping people in emergency and being creative and perishing and loving it's a little bit like what I well I was things to you the other day too like a little bit the way I feel about anybody who's at home with small children I always want to make a a caveat that says if you're at home the small children don't listen to anything like you don't have to meditate you don't have to write books I wish and so mostly what I just want to say to you is I'm so sorry for how hard it is and I'm so sorry for how unfairly the trauma is being distributed where some people like me aren't getting any of it and other people like you are getting all of it and and I just want to I just want to wrap you up in love and gratitude more than I want to tell you what to do we have another message I keep losing the names they go so quickly we're getting so many messages but a message here from someone I saw earlier which I really liked which is here we go what would Liz say to someone that had a huge argument with a flatmate that was that and they were struggling with this because of the lockdown people living with evil that are struggling with fighting in the lockdown I think I put this in committed or you pray loud I can't remember but when I was in India I made friends with this monk who I loved so much and and he and I just became very close we used to he's an older gentleman we used to take walks in the garden together in the ashram and I was very heartbroken about my divorce and very heartbroken about my relationship with David and how it had all blown up and I was so tanned I was constantly asking for advice about what to do these relationships that I was in and I just remember one day I said you know please tell me what I should do about my ex-boyfriend and tell me what I should do about my ex-husband and he was wearing this long beautiful orange you know monk's robes and he said I'm going to try to answer you but first let me do this and he picked up the hem of his robes and he kissed them and then he put them back down in the ground and I said oh is that like a spiritual ceremonial thing he said no I'm just thanking God that I'm a celibate nun and I when you said your question about fighting with your flatmates I just had this thought of like okay first I'm just thanking God that I walked in with anybody right now yeah and and you know I know I keep coming back to this word mercy and it's it's such an important word it's okay of course you had a massive thought to fight with your flatmate who wouldn't like who would be able to go through something like this without that and it sounds like maybe you've been having problems with this person already anyway and now you're trapped with them uh take care of the one who is suffering the one who's suffering is you the one who is suffering is you what is what does she or he need right now that it that can be offered if you were going to be the most loving best kindest most forgiving compassionate friend to yourself what would you offer yourself right now that would be soothing and it might be that you can't make that relationship work there are a lot of relationships that just cannot be made to work that's tremendous pain that's going to put you into pain what do you need what do you need to get to that pain do you need a bath do you need some chocolate do you need a large glass of water do you need to go out for a walk at night if you're allowed out like what what's it going to take to take care of you so start the triage of emotional drama and trauma has to begin with you taking care of the patient who's right in front of you which is yourself and I can't answer for you what what that would be that you would need I can only give you permission to have that be the question um and and how can you be of service to that person who's who's truly suffering and that is you and and why wouldn't you be why wouldn't you be suffering in these circumstances it's so much mercy has to be shown in that and I don't think you have to be Gandhi and you don't have to be Mandela and you don't have to be you don't have to be some perfected human who can who can make who can make up with anybody and bring peace to every situation you just have to take care of the soft animal body that is yourself as as Mary Oliver would teach I hope I'm not mispronouncing his name I think it's Adele or Edel says and I think this is a good question cuz we're talking so much about mercy right now I'd love to hear if Liz has an image or metaphor for mercy that I can keep in my mind can I tell you how much time do we have we have five minutes so we can say a bit longer that's fine I tell a five-minute story I'm gonna answer your question with the story so when Raya was sick and dying I was her caregiver and the thing that I loved most about Raya was that she was so forgiving of people and she was really tough and she was really badass and she was really fierce and she had immaculate boundaries but she had this enormous capacity to forgive people because she herself as a recovering addict as somebody who had been a heroin addict two years earlier and a thief and a felon and a liar and a cheat and stealing everything that goes along with addiction she had done such bad things in her life and so she knew what it was to be a person a good person trapped in bad behavior she knew what that was and so she extended mercy to people when they were at their worst and me I was always way more judgmental than she was and I was always trying to get lessons from her on how do you forgive people like that when they're being awful and she would just say people can't help with it you know people can't help the way that's like they're human she would always just talk about embracing her own humanity was how she got sober and embracing other people's humanity was how she got well and and just allowing people to be what they are in that moment and not judging them so anyway I was taking care of her when she was sick and dying she was an enormous pain and she was unfit channel you may have heard of fentanyl because it's part of the opioid crisis that's happening no but it's a very powerful painkiller and she had to be on it with patches you put these patches on it would last 72 hours and that way she wasn't ripping apart her her stomach lining with so many pills and I was the charge of distributing the patches and there was this incident that happened where she was in so much pain and she was in so much pain that the patches weren't working the end the doctor kept I kept calling the doctor and he kept telling me to put more on her which was really dangerous because the more fentanyl in your system the more likely you might overdose but she was in three days of the worst pain I've ever seen a human being being in my entire life where it looked like a wounded animal had been hit up by a car on the side of the road awful man and finally after three days a nurse was able to get to her house and see what was going on and what has had happened is that I had put her patch on incorrectly so she what she hadn't been getting any any painkillers um well she was in Stage four pancreatic and liver cancer dying and she just the nurse appealed and there's this little peel that you have to peel off and I hadn't been doing it and I also hadn't been sleeping I also had been taking care of a quad also on my own but when I saw what I had done and what I had the pain that I had put her through I remember going Alex horrible and I just ran into the bathroom and locked the door and fell apart completely I didn't want her to see me but I couldn't do anything but fall apart and I just kept saying I will never forgive myself I will never never forgive myself for this and and as I lay there I started thinking about all the people in the world who have done things that they can never forgive themselves for and whether it's small things or whether it's the doctor who made a slip with the scalpel and somebody could never walk again or somebody who had that like drove with just a little too much alcohol in them and had a fatal accident or dropped the child or did you know these these awful things that happen to people and I have a dear friend whose whose baby died on her watch you know is one of these like turn your head and nightmare and I was and I thought about her and I thought about the pain I was in and I thought about the level of pain that this woman was being and I thought I'm just gonna call her Mary that's not her name but I thought do you believe that Mary is deserving of mercy and would you want her to release herself completely of blame and shame and would you want her to be able to lead a peaceful life and I answered yes and then the next question was so if she's deserving of that aren't aren't you also because if you're if you're not deserving of mercy because you made this mistake then you're saying that nobody is deserving of mercy for making mistakes and if you're not deserving of mercy for making mistake then Mary isn't either you know so you got to choose either everybody's off the hook or no one right which world do you want to live in where everyone is forgiven or no one is forgiven and take your pick you know and and in that moment I realized that if you live in a world where you're not forgivable and there's no mercy for yourself then you don't need to worry about when people die who's going to heaven and who's going to hell because that is hell I'm a world with no mercy a world where mercy is withheld is hell that's the definition of hell is the withholding of mercy whether it's to yourself or just somebody else and in that moment I realized that mercy would be the portal that would always be able to keep me connected with right even after she died because as I'm so what I did laying there on that bathroom floor sobbing I just took my own hand and I kissed myself and I said I forgive you I forgive you and in that moment I could feel the way rheya feels about people when she's to see them at their worst and she was able to say I forgive you I forgive you so the image that I use is me on the bathroom floor kissing my own hand and saying I want to let you off the hook from this because it because I don't want to live in a in a hell world where no one has allowed mercy for their mistakes and and if I'm going to know aunt Mary and everybody else who's who's suffering to be free then I have to free myself as well mmm well I think that is all we sadly have time for tonight I can't imagine going any deeper than we have I feel s perfect place to end Liz I could talk to you listen to you for days and days I wish I was isolated with you I feel like if Goods doing this has been an amazing hour for me and I can see from the comments other people feel the same I think we all take an enormous amount of this so thank you so much taking the time three beautiful books and for this amazing talk this has been incredible I am sending you love and healing energy and I hope that you don't have kovin 19 and I hope that you if you do that it's light and I hope that you survive being home with your three kids under the age of five to be with me and with us is extraordinary and I'm grateful for it and and I'm sorry I didn't get to see all the faces individually of everybody out there but be merciful to yourselves and this will pass and and it's all gonna be alright thank you thank you liz and thank you all of you for coming where it's gonna be good night from both of us now so things to everyone out there can i I

Channel: How To Academy Mindset

Views: 72,833

Rating: 4.8974986 out of 5

Keywords: liz gilbert, Hadley freeman, Elizabeth gilbert, eat pray love, city of girls, fiction, crisis, happiness, how to academy, confidence, depression, love, marriage, divorce, parenting

Id: RxV7MwwOOQg

Length: 57min 1sec (3421 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 16 2020