A wave of inspiration hit me while listening to this interview of Liz Gilbert, in much a similar way to how inspiration comes to Ruth Stone, an American poet Gilbert mentions in the book. My inspiration though didn’t come as a galloping horse, it turned up on the windowsill more like a warm, autumn wind coming from the West.
Of course it wasn’t the first time I heard of the author; I was a big fan of Eat, Pray, Love, the movie. Who wouldn’t be, even if Javier Bardem looked rather chubby as compared to his sexier appearance in Vicky, Christina, Barcelona! But I rejected the book big time, without even reading a page, just because people were raving about it – it’s something I occasionally do with popular books.
Movie and inspiration aside, I’ve ordered Big Magic, the book Marie Forleo interviews Liz Gilbert about, immediately. It is a self-help book for people wanting to live a more creative life and finding they cannot, it did however satisfy my curiosity and want to get a taste of Gilbert’s writing.
Big Magic read as a coach and as a creative person alike, I found Gilbert’s ideas and attitudes towards creativity (and life) insightful, inspiring and utmost empowering. I found that some of her wise words come back to me occasionally, gaining new meanings and making even more sense. Big Magic is not just about creativity, it is about attitudes we choose to have about life, our work and projects and our Life Purpose. I’ll share three of these ideas with you, with my own thoughts and comments, and let you discover the rest of Big Magic on your own:
“Ideas have no material body, but they have consciousness and they certainly have will. Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest. […] Therefore, ideas spend eternity swirling around us, searching for available and willing partners.” (p. 35)
Creative Person: We often have the impression that artists are bohemian, drunken, tragic people, who pair creativity with misery and unhappiness, necessary evils. Oscar Wilde names the artistic existence “one long, lovely suicide” (p. 205), and there’s a long list of creative minds who think alike. Gilbert’s attitude though is light, simple, motivational, inviting even, because it suggests that our states of availability and willingness are facilitators of light-bulb moments. Yes, Gilbert says ideas have their own consciousness and will, and she also says that our availability and willingness is what matters most for them to come to us. In other words, de-cluttering our lives, consciously making space for creativity and creative ideas, being curious about whatever sparks our interest (she says this towards the end of Big Magic), empowers us to have new ideas which we can choose to follow, postpone or forever forget. What’s sure, is that it’s our choice.
Coach: If we look at the Presuppositions of NLP, one of them states that “There are no unresourceful people, only unresourceful states”. The unresourceful state is what makes us unavailable and / or unwilling to welcome these ideas who would normally approach us. What’s more, Gilbert takes away the responsibility for success from inspiration, our muse, and gives it back to us; we are the ones responsible, we are at cause; making ourselves available to ideas and following through once we have one, is the first step towards creativity.
“Do whatever brings you to life, then. Follow your own fascinations, obsessions, and compulsions. Trust them. Create whatever causes a revolution in your heart. The rest of it will take care of itself.” (p. 101)
Creative Person: Before reading the end of Big Magic, I’d have said “follow your passion” but I’m not going to anymore. In the last chapter, Gilbert says it’s no the passion what we should follow, the passion that comes as a surprise, inundates us and then leaves just as fast as it came, but rather to follow our curiosity, even if it starts with a spark, a seed of interest, as long as it is genuine, it is you, and brings you joy.
Coach: And I have two answers here.
a) We all have a purpose for being here, and there is nobody else who can fulfill our mission, or at least not exactly in the same way that we’d do it. Whatever you’re meant to do, whether you will do it or not, will haunt you for your whole life. If you follow your Life Purpose, meaning taking action and working on the things that matter to you, you will discover with some amazement that the puzzle pieces will fall into place, you’ll know how to work towards your purpose and somehow along your journey you’ll feel the support of others and the universe.
b) One of the primary concerns of the unconscious mind is to continually seek more and more. So we all naturally strive to learn and develop. By following your interests, you are busying your mind and fulfilling the UCM’s need to learn with ideas you are happy to work on and which, in return, will also bring you happiness and joy.
I wrote about the third quote, part of which is included in the banner above, in the next post. As I was reading Big Magic, the idea of the trickster & the martyr had a huge impact on me, especially when remembering certain projects I’d carried out in the last few years. Therefore, I decided to give it the attention it deserves in a post of its own.
I’ve mentioned our “Life Purpose” a few times in this post, read more about it in How more choices give you less freedom and what to do about it!
