Meeting Elizabeth Gilbert is Big Magic
Create things nobody needs, don’t ask for permission and your creative work is not your baby
A wonderful Big Magic morning with Elizabeth Gilbert
On Friday November 20, 2015 writer Elizabeth Gilbert visited Amsterdam to promote her new – wonderful – book Big Magic.
Before you push me aside — because you want to see the video’s I made — I’ve got a little confession. Every time I see Elizabeth Gilbert I feel this nasty twitch of envy. It’s pure, plain, unadulterated creators jealousy of the worst and lowest kind: “She has written the books I should have written. Why does ev-e-ry-bo-dy listen to what she says?” (as opposed to listen to me. Yes, creators envy is pretty crazy.)
Well you get it. It’s not a pretty sight inside my mind. But it’s a creative fear many of us have to deal with. These creative jealousies give us beautiful insights in what we really need and want in our life.
Find out who you envy and what that person has, does or says that you don’t do. When you muster up the courage to look at that beautiful shadow part of yourself it is extremely revealing. There is a whole section about it in my program The Creative Journey,
Our creative fears usually wander in the realm of: I have to be unique, I’m not special enough, It’s already been done, so I don’t do it… You might recognize it. It’s the very boring stuf we come up when we seek excuses to NOT create our magic!
I’m glad my awkward jealous feelings are aimed at ms Gilbert, who is one damn fine writer. I could have been jealous of Kim Kardashian.
So, despite my feelings I was very much looking forward to meeting Liz. I got up at 5.45 am and took a very early train.
I just felt a little: “nah… let’s see.”
Paradiso was filled with hundreds of women age 30 to 60 and 3 brave men. The light was purple. I met my dear fellow B-School friends, and it felt like we were on a summer camp outing.
And well, what can I say? I loved it. Out of the writer came a stream of beautiful profoundly wise oneliners. Ample use of fucks, energetically raised middle fingers and good jokes. Combined with Zero Guru Wisdom (oh, those new self proclaimed guru’s….) a great skirt and matching boots, formed a simply irresistible combination.
My ‘Mwah.. let’s see…‘ was transformed into Happy Puppy Love in less than 5 minutes.
Since I sat front row I taped parts of the interview (by Susan Smith who is an interviewer for the Dutch Magazine Happinez) It’s not the best quality, it was pretty impromptu and my hand got numb hence the strange movements of the camera, and it’s also not the best sound quality. But at least you get a feel of what this Big Magic morning was about.
Read Big Magic, watch the video’s and then come start working on your business and actually BE creative. We both know Creative Magic happens in the interaction between realizing, feeling and doing. Somewhere in a Magical Place called: Feeling afraid and doing it anyway.
I teach you how to become friends with your creative fears, how to lean in and surrender and be gloriously imperfect! Yes, that is possible it’s a lot of fun actually because it results in living a Big Magic life.
Watch the entire talk:
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