Liz Gilbert | INBOUND 2019

welcome to inbound 2019 thank you all for coming and thank you for joining us for our first session with Liz Gilbert before she's up on the main stage thanks for being here I'm sorry oh well doesn't even leads from here on doesn't even begin to matter so I want to get started first with you wrote Eat Pray Love and I know you posted on Instagram today that it's the 16th anniversary today of your flight to Italy that's right so I want to know I know like what brilliant timing it's time o'clock that's crazy this time o'clock that kind of language is why they pay me the big bucks for writing and it was it this time o'clock so I'm at the beach all night that I'm very very relaxed can you give us a reflection on your I mean certainly eat Pray Love is probably what you're most known for in terms of your writing but a reflection on that time and what that meant for you and how that trip and that book has sort of gotten you to where we are now today in your love well I'll tell you this um a few years ago I guess four or five years ago was the tenth anniversary of the publication of the book and I hadn't read it since I wrote it and I went back and read it because they asked me to write it forward and what I was struck by the most the biggest difference between how I feel in my own self now and how I felt then is that I was so ashamed I was so ashamed that I had left this marriage I had was so ashamed that I didn't want to have children I was I felt like I had failed epically at what a woman is supposed to be which is understandable because I'd only ever been shown one story and it's the story that just isn't it less so now but when I was growing up there was just the one story and all the women in my family had that story and they'd all gotten married young and had kids and had houses and so I just repetitively you know reflexively entered into that my mom got married at 24 my sister got married at 24 I got married at 24 it's like you know 15th grade it's like what you do you just you know like there was no thought about it it's just what you and then and then my life started to fall apart because my nature didn't do well in that environment not in that marriage not in that home not in what was expected of me and I fell apart and had no there comes a point if a friend of mine always says it comes a point in woman's life where she everybody's life where you either have to stop lying or die and and so Eat Pray Love was the beginning of me stopping lying but I but I was so embarrassed and when I read the book again I just saw so much apologizing that I was doing and what really struck me was this one moment when I was in Italy at the very end of the Italy section where I'm having the best meal that I'd had in Italy and Sicily and I can speak Italian now and I'm happy and I'm relaxed and even there I'm apologizing and what I said it shocked me and it hurt me when I read it at my age now I said I know I can't live like this forever I promise Who am I even talking to I promise that someday I will be a respectable civilized person again but for now just let me have this one beautiful perfect meal and it made me like weep to read that because Who am I bargaining with you know like how about you have a couple more really beautiful meals and like that should be the that should be the goal and also this every time I've tried to be civilized it hasn't really worked and it doesn't and it doesn't seem to suit me so so I wish that I could have gone back and said to that 34 year old young woman you're actually closer right now to being on the right track and then any of the other stuff that you've tried before and you don't need to apologize to anybody for that you had that have had that revelation had the time to take that trip and learn all the things you learned have had that time since to do that you know generally speaking the average person doesn't necessarily have the opportunity to take a year off and think about these things or finds themself in that way right knowing what you know from your own experience do you have like tips or tricks or ideas of how somebody who can't just take off to Italy or India or Bali or anywhere else you can recognize those things in themselves okay two points one is that I think it's based initially in a sense of whether or not you have agreed on a kind of cosmic level that you accept the responsibility of being the steward of this being right so this took this is taking me a really long time to figure out is the major difference between how I treat myself how I speak to myself internally how I choose how I spend my hours is for some reason that I will never know then none of us will ever know like whatever governs whatever the literal is going on in this planet I have no idea like what put me like gave me this one to take care of gave me this being this body this mind this spirit these talents these mental illnesses these obstacles this family this culture this moment in history dropped me in and said we're gonna give you this one and and I'm and I've gradually come to think that they must have thought that I could take care of it and and so the biggest transformation of my life was the accepting where I just said I I accept that and I take stewardship over this one and that's gonna mean different things for every single person in terms of what that looks like for you but what it looks like for you is honoring the growth and they and and the evolution of this soul in any way that you can and that for me has also meant the next thing which I'm gonna be talking about in the main stage which is learning how to set priorities and boundaries about what what matters to you because I have a lot of people I mean I'll sort of joke about this on stage too but a lot of people will come and say like I don't have time to do any of that stuff and I'm like do not make me pull your phone out and look at your screen time like do not because I will bust your ass I know like I write like come on and I do it too like it's like most of us won't even look at that screen time thing cuz it's shocking right where's your time going what are you doing with it my friend Glennon Doyle who some of you may know and follow mother of three unhappy housewife went into her closet started blogging and realized that if she wanted to be a writer there was only one thing she had to do and that was go to bed at 9:00 o'clock every night that was it she was like this is what matters to me I have to go to bed when my kids go to bed that way I can set the alarm for 4:30 in the morning wake up an hour and a half before everyone in the house and right if I care about that that's what I'm gonna do right but she's like it was a sacrifice I don't get to watch TV which is the home run for a mom it's like you know it's like the end game i won I survived another day like Law & Order and you know but she just decided to sacrifice that because there was something she cared about more but that's stewardship that's your stewardship looks like yeah and and it's a beautiful thing once you decide to say yes to it I don't want to like get into too many of the things that you're gonna talk about on the main stage and spoil that but I know you know especially in big magic another one of your books which focuses heavily on creativity and sort of your journey towards that and finding that and being able to identify that in your life there's a correlation that you've identified between courage and creativity and so how do you define the relationship between those two things okay I first of all I want to distinguish between courage and fearlessness we live in a culture that fetishizes this idea of fearlessness I don't fetishize that idea I don't romanticize it I have no interest in being fearless I've met a few people in my life who I would genuinely describe as fearless and they were sociopaths they're sociopaths like you you know you look into their eyes and you see something very important it's missing I'm that screen and they are a menace to themselves and to other people fear is an intrinsic part of our nature and our biology and our evolution in our minds and so and it's also a kind of a violence I think and this whole sense of self stewardship means that I try very hard not to practice violence against myself in any way and insisting to me that I have to be fearless as a kind of violence against myself because I'm not and so courage is fearlessness is like I don't I don't feel that feeling you know in which case I do not want to be your friend I don't want to work with you like you're not a human being who I want to interact with courage is I feel this feeling and I'm going to do this thing anyway and what that has meant for me has been approaching my fear with a very gentle loving almost maternal kindness which is also not taught in this culture which is very merciless culture so instead of shaming myself from my fear or abusing myself from my fear or you know following the bumper stickers that say like beer and the ass punch it in the face show it like what is this like Navy SEAL training I'm trying to write a poem you know like it doesn't have to be that violent it's just addressing the fear acknowledging it welcoming it allowing it to exist allowing its that phenomenon to have its expression yeah and saying okay sweetheart now I'm like kind of like the way my sister talks to her very self-absorbed 19 year old daughter I'm gonna give you five minutes to complain and then you have to go do something else right it's like that's how I talk to my fear tell me what tell me what it is I'm gonna listen to you and now we're doing this I can't tell you how much of my life is me saying to my fear I hear you I respect you I understand you and now we're gonna go do this yeah and and it's it's just a very different tone than I think what any of us were taught you've referenced the sort of the culture that we're all a part of and that we live in and probably most people here and impound are coming in a business capacity you know it is a business event and so how do you you know how do you navigate everything that you're talking about for yourself as a personal individual and also for yourself as someone a part of a larger context that is a company with colleagues with people who have different levels of authority than you that people have different decision-making powers but you have to play a part in that and still want to live into all these different ideals doesn't you know like how do you do that and relate to everybody around you at the same time I think it must be very hard mm-hmm and I want to say that very candidly and not blow smoke up your ass and be like you should just be able to glide through your corporate job floating on a sort of meditative space three inches above the carpet you know like I don't think that is very easy and I think the culture in those worlds must be very competitive with enormous expectations and a lot of scarcity a lot of a sense that there's just not enough for everybody and you've got to get yours and and and to live and breathe inside of that culture I think must be really hard but what I was thinking about when you said that is that I used to be really afraid to come and talk to corporate audiences and I used to turn down jobs because I was like I'm not I was a waitress you know I was a waitress and then I was a novelist and now I'm like spirit lady and and we love you for and I've never had a real job and I'm embarrassed like I don't know like I would think I was so intimidated to come and talk the first time I gave a TED talk yeah you know and I'm looking out there in the audience at like robotics engineers and literally Bill Gates and and I'm like I'm gonna talk about fairies and music you know um but it was a very cold room it was tough tougher a tough crowd but but then over the years what I've learned is come on like you telling me that all the people that you work with and you are not also people who are terrified and ashamed and struggling with your addictions and your divorces and your bankruptcies and your troubled children and your aging parents and and all of it you know like there's no such thing to me anymore as a corporate audience you know I don't it's it's just a room filled with human beings who are all trying to figure out how to do this thing that literally nobody knows how to do and so like this spiritual teacher who I love ROM but Ram Dass always says be a spiritual person but also embrace the Incarnation you know embracing the Incarnation to me means okay so I work here you know um okay so this is my job it's not entirely Who I am but this is pretty interesting for some reason this is where I've landed okay so I live here okay so this is my family members I also know that I'm made of light and that I'm a piece of God and that I literally made of Stardust and this is my job and I have a 400 K and and both of these things are true yep you know and to dishonor one I don't think is honoring the other I don't think that to be a spiritual person means that you leave all of that in in Buddhist teachings they call that place the marketplace you know the the true great masters are the ones who can walk through the marketplace and the home just you know and not just keep it in the in the ashram or the monastery so that's why I actually you know I spent four months in an ashram but I had no interest in ever going back I met people there who had lived there for 10 20 years and to me I felt like no I'm supposed to live in the marketplace I'm supposed to be rolling around my incarnation is to be immediate contact with everything that's happening at the same time and to be fascinated with it and not to be in seclusion so I don't know if that helps but I would I would just say to remember you say one more thing about this there's a poet who I love named David white who's an English poet who's very beautiful and very spiritual and he was he was speaking one time in Seattle and I had a reading that was filled with the kind of audience that he normally speaks to which is like poetry people and at the end of the night a guy in a suit came up to him and said I am the vice president of HR for Boeing and I want to hire you to come and work for Boeing and be our poet laureate and our poet in residence because I'm in charge of the souls and the spirit of 25,000 people who have hopes and dreams and fears and aspirations and emotions and I don't have big enough language for that because and truly it was almost as if this man rightfully saw his work as some kind of a human ministry and he just said it's the language of HR isn't human enough for what I do so we need a poet and and and and it was so great because David was like I'm Irish and I'm a poet I'm meant to be anti-authoritarian like I am the definition of against the man but he said I was so moved by the chance to be in the midst of that many human beings and he speaks about it very eloquently about how it's changed him in his view of the world and his B of corporations and his view of of humanity so I'm yeah we're all just trying to walk ourselves home right or walk each other home I mean I guess a little bit on that note like you said you're the spirit lady now you know that's what a lot of people look to you therefore you've been doing that for a while how do you been in the spirit lady gig for a bit now yeah but how do you continue like where do you continue to find inspiration and drive and new sources of passion and invigoration in for yourself to be able to you know share with all of us I'm not I'm an inveterate student so this is my favorite time of the year because it's like new lunchbox time right it's like new pencil box new lunchbox new school outfit I was that kid and I'm still that kid and so my life has been nothing but being a student and and so I'm always looking for teachers so I can just throw out some names of some teachers who who who have changed my life recently it's Byron Katie I don't know if anybody's familiar with the work of Byron Katie she's extraordinary Ram Dass has been a great teacher to me there's a meditation teacher who I've recently discovered on that great app Insight timer which I gotta tell you has taught me more about meditation than four months in an Indian ashram which is also to answer your question about hey I can't go to India okay you can't go to India but like it's on your phone the greatest teachers who have ever lived you've got this this satellite driven every teacher who's ever lived is on your phone and in this guy's name is Mooji and he's he's Jamaican and lives in Indian has the world's most reassuring voice and is a really really great teacher Rob Bell I don't know if anybody knows Rob Bell he's a minister who came out of the evangelical Christian tradition but then found that he just couldn't bear the dogma but didn't want to lose the spirit and he's become a refuge for a lot of people who whose intellects have outgrown the religions that they grew up with but who still longed for the base note of faith and trust and in something bigger than themselves and he's a brilliant brilliant teacher very science-based but also very spirit based he's great and so I I mean I go to these people's workshops and like sit in the front take notes and go home and read and read their books and I'm I'm never going to stop doing that in terms of that I mean I am taking this to mean these are people whose work you admire and look to you and you that listen to read maybe do you have mentors in your life that are a more personal relationship and you know how has that what role has that played in your being and your work I have some but but I think most of my best teachers I've never met and even when I went to the ashram in India the Guru wasn't there away from home and she's not here you know and they're like yeah but she's here in spirit I'm like well I could do that but that's I think it's also true I think it's like as an autodidact I feel like I grew up in a family and I think the greatest thing about my family and we only have our stuff believe me but the thing I really love about the the way that my parents live is that they have very little respect for formal teaching or authority they really do believe that you can learn it yourself and so I grew up in a house where like for instance like they don't have respect for things like you have to get a permit to do that to your house they're like no we don't we're just gonna we're just gonna put the electricity to herself like yeah you know sometimes you wish that they you know my mom's sewing up my dad's face when he almost chopped his nose off with a with a chainsaw she's like I'm not there are people for that I was so or I could probably do that you know I'm nice but but they my mom came from a farm in Minnesota my dad's from a Yankee upstate New York upbringing my mom literally taught herself how to swim as a teenager with a book called how to swim and and that I think defines so much of my whole life I don't have a degree in writing um I I never the greatest teachers and writing that I ever studied with are not only people I've never met they're dead you know Charles Dickens taught me more about how to write a novel Walt Whitman taught me more about how to appreciate language than any classroom I could ever be in and so so my mentors are really on my bookshelves and I feel like that's really liberating I have a friend recently who I got frustrated with because we had I'd taken her to a Byron Katie retreat as a gift to her because she was really struggling and we did it got her this nine-day retreat and at the end of it but it's a flash-forward a year later and and the Byron Katie work like all work is about showing up for it you know like it's not you can't just sit in the audience and get a transmission of it unless you're very grace like you've got there's a project and there's a program and you do it and you show up for it and my friend fell apart and started crying because she was like I miss Katie and I just want to be inter present I just want to be in her presence and it was like the way to be in her presence is to do the work she taught you how to do everyday which you could be doing but you don't you know you could be or to listen to her free podcasts which you could be listening to every day but you don't or to go on watch these infinitude of videos that's how you be with her it's not about being in the physical presence of the person so you had to answer your question I think most of my mentors are virtual and they were virtual even before we had the internet which has made it even more easy mm-hmm so I don't really accept obviously as I yell was yelling at my very best friend and saying I don't have a lot of patience for this self-pity um when all of this is free and available at your hands and I know how you spend your time I know how you spend your time and you're not doing any of this stuff and you're expecting your life to be changed by going to a $5,000 retreat instead of doing the work every single day which is unfortunately the only way it ever works you keep saying that and I keep thinking of all the reality television that I watch and maybe my time isn't best spent doing that yeah I don't know we it's also just it's so funny because I feel like we're taught to work our asses off to give and give and give to the workplace so hard that at the end of the day all you can do is watch reality TV and and so I think it's I think it's challenging because I think you're you're also living in a culture that says it's normal to work an idea or work week so who has the energy in that culture to be like I'm gonna do a 90 minute meditation class now you know it's like no I'm gonna put I'm gonna put a microwave baked potato in my face and watch people fake scream at each other you know like butt butt and there's so there's limits but I also think there's a lot of grace and self accountability there's a lot of grace and I don't you know I've said it before and I'll say it again and I've said it about myself and I'll say it again about myself I've never seen any person's life transformation that did not begin with them getting sick of their own that is it it's like you get sick you stop being able to co-sign your own after a while and you're like look am I gonna do this or not you know I'm am I gonna blame my job my boss my my president my mom my ex-husband my kids my like who you know food like I remember just waking up one day is saying to my depressed lazy self who's who are you blaming your life on today you know and when are you gonna stop and and and when are you gonna take full stewardship over this so so there's nothing wrong with reality TV there's nothing wrong with reality issue there is something wrong with saying I can't do that because of these 27 obstacles because you all know that like I can drag up examples of people who have a lot harder life and I'm you know and I won't do that to you but we all know this is this is the case you know so just choose choose choose and any think the most important thing is whether or not you want to live in constant creative response you know um the opposite of a victim is a creator you know a victim is like I can't I can't I can't it's all beyond me and a creator is like well that's really interesting what just happened to me how am I gonna now what now what this is how the world is it's totally unfair and now what yeah you know and if you just stop before the now what then you know long boring ride of life really yeah when you think about like what's next are there things that are sort of on your career bucket list if you will that you want to see happen for yourself not really I have to say I mean I've like I mean I love my work and I and I but something in me has changed where I I would have said 10 or 20 years ago that that my purpose in the world was to be a writer I always felt that as a kid I always pursued that it's my passion it's my vocation it's very holy to me it's very sacred to me and I'm very grateful for it but I don't anymore I'm not purpose directed in that way anymore at this point truly I feel like writing books is a hobby you know and it's a it's a hobby that I really like but it doesn't feel that much different than like you know like drawing in my bougie journal or like it's just a creative expression to me and a lot of this was was born out of watching the love of my life my partner ray Elias passed away at the age of 50 for a year and a half ago and being with her through the last 18 months of her life I feel like my my real aspiration at this point is to just be loved in the room in whatever room I'm in and and that became something that was very clear to me while when Ray was dying and there comes a point that all of us reach and it's a very difficult one where you reach the end of your power with something and mortality has a really good way of showing us that like Ray I reached the end of her power I reached man at the end of my power to be able to even help her be out of pain at certain points to help her be out of fear and and there was there's nothing we hate more than powerlessness but when you surrender into it it can be a very beautiful experience when you've actually done all you can and you reach the end of your power if you've ever any of you have ever sat in a 12-step room the reason those places feel so sacred is because they're filled with people who reach the end of their power and and it's there's something kind of magnificently holy that happens when people admit that and and and what I felt in that room and Ray is dying was all I can be now is love that's it that's all I can be is love I can't I can't fix any of this but when she looks up I want her to see love in the room and and once I got a taste of being loved in the room I was like why would would be anything else you know um like why would I ever put that away and if I'm the only person in the room then I have to be loving the room to that person you know that's my assignment like clearly the one who you're supposed to be taking loving care of right now is this one because you're the only one here so um so that's my aspiration going forward is only that and only to learn more and more how to be that and and everything else is just kind of how you spend your time which is more about the kind of embrace the Incarnation thing but that's the thing that feels really important to me I mean it's a beautiful message and I think it probably could be the answer to the question I'm about to ask you but knowing that we're headed down to the main stage and you're gonna share all these amazing things with everybody that's here at inbound is there one key thing that coming here you want this audience to take away from what from your time with us yeah yeah I don't know it's so hard it's the hardest thing that there is in the world and that's the whole thing that I'm going to be talking about on stage but it's if if you can try to relax it's gonna be better and and I know that seems impossible I know that seems impossible but that's what I want to try to talk about and that's what I always want to try to bring you know I'll say it on stage too but martial artists know that the most relaxed person in the room is the one who has all the power and and so even if you see it from a standpoint of sheer ambition or aspiration or climbing or or like try it try it out that way you want to have power be the one who's relaxed the PERT because you know tension is a constriction of your entire being and even your eyes like when you're tense the whole world kind of pin it just sort of pins down and you can and and to be able to be relaxed not is not just going to make your life have more value but it actually makes you have 360 degree vision where you can see what other people who are very stressed can't and you can see where there might be a solution that other people can't see and you can see where there's no solution and so there's no reason to even have this battle so it gives you a tremendous equipoise and and I think it's I think that it would be very revolutionary for all of us to relax and it's not what you think it is it doesn't mean spa weekend it's something at the cellular level and and and that's what I wish for all of you to be able to find and that's what I want to talk about tonight well I'm super excited to hear it I'm pretty sure I can speak for everybody here we're so blessed to have you at inbound thank you so much for being here [Applause]

Channel: INBOUND

Views: 30,195

Rating: 4.8350515 out of 5

Keywords: the inbound studio, inbound studio, inbound, innovative, leader, thought, inspiring, inbound19, inbound2019, marketing, sales, growth

Id: Bla8guMdnHc

Length: 29min 2sec (1742 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 24 2019