Big Magic
Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear by Elizabeth Gilbert. Riverhead Books, New York (2015). Also available as an audio CD set.
Consider reading this if your inner Compass points you towards a new endeavor and you are dragging your feet because you’re afraid.
The main premise: Elizabeth Gilbert’s central messages are that (1) we are all creative beings and we live most fully when our creativity is expressed but (2) we may be inadvertently squelching our creativity, (3) which we can change. In six sections that she sees as the ingredients for creativity, she shares her brief, relatable, and inspiring stories and reflections of wrangling with fear that threatens to thwart her own creativity and productivity.
I love this book because Elizabeth Gilbert’s writing is compelling, honest, and often funny and given her success as a writer, I appreciate her openness in sharing her struggles and triumphs associated with the creative process. Here are just a few of her concepts or tales that are worth checking out: fear as a backseat companion; leveraging “the trickster” over the martyr; the “shit sandwich” (and our quest to identify what we’d so love to do that we could overlook its lousy elements). The author doesn’t offer the 3 easy ideas to guarantee a financially rewarding creative life but her embrace of trying to live creatively amid life’s messiness is contagious.
This book informs our pursuit of purpose in life because living with purpose requires authenticity and authenticity is at the heart of the creative life. The “guts” of our inner Compass (that is, our values, strengths, sources of personal meaning) are highly individualized and thus, point us all in unique directions. Living with authentic purpose means acting on your inner Compass, which might look very different than that of your best friend, parents, or former Sunday School teacher. Acting on what’s true for us takes courage and is simply a creative act.
Elizabeth Gilbert is a writer with many articles, short stories, and over 7 books to her credit. Her best-known book is Eat, Pray, Love.
What about you? Consider sharing a recommendation and something about how it has helped you live with purpose.