Elizabeth Gilbert’s Creative Path — Saying No, Trusting Your Intuition, and More

Brought to you by AG1 https://www.drinkag1.com/tim Elizabeth Gilbert (@GilbertLiz) is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love, as well as several other internationally bestselling books. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, City of Girls, was named an instant New York Times Best Seller and is a rollicking, sexy tale of the New York City theater world during the 1940s. Enjoy! Inrto [00:00] Rayya Elias and how Liz remembers her in story at The Moth. [07:17] The truth has legs. [13:10] Liz learns about her own grieving process. [15:34] Finding humor in the most difficult of times during “earth school” [21:46] Writing as Liz's “source of light” [26:04] The stories and storytellers that make Liz break out in applause [33:04] Seeking the edges of human imagination, using the word “interesting” to defuse drama and trauma, and counteracting co-dependence with sappy love songs [41:55] When working on a new project, what method of organizing and planning does she use—as learned from her ninth-grade teacher Mr. Kisco? How did it come in handy when doing research for City Of Girls, her latest book? [45:28] What present Liz endures for future Liz [50:24] What percentage of Liz’s research makes it into the final draft of a book? Does she feel what’s left over is a waste? [52:04] What does Liz take from the lessons of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations? [56:15] What has Liz learned from Martha Beck? [1:02:41] On staying true to one’s inner compass before making commitments, and how Liz phrases her “No” answers without remorse [1:13:00] The power of the simple no and other lessons learned from Byron Katie—or how to say no to even the most persistent and avoid negotiation when your inner compass tells you it’s the right thing to do [1:17:35] Liz’s perspective on psychedelics plus words of caution for anyone hoping to use them as a quick and easy fix to complex problems [1:30:58] Using The Artist’s Way to recover your creativity from its trauma [1:39:02] Liz shares an example of how she made an artist’s date. [1:45:31] How closely did the book proposal for Eat, Pray, Love match the ultimate book, and were there other titles Liz considered? [1:49:57] Liz’s take on City of Girls as a rebuttal to the cautionary tale (usually written by a man) of the woman who lives a free and open sexual life and suffers terrible consequences as a result [1:53:10] What Liz wishes her readers would notice more often [1:57:36] Parting thoughts [2:01:23] SUBSCRIBE: http://bit.ly/1dSzTkW About Tim Ferriss: Tim Ferriss is one of Fast Company’s “Most Innovative Business People” and an early-stage tech investor/advisor in Uber, Facebook, Twitter, Shopify, Duolingo, Alibaba, and 50+ other companies. He is also the author of five #1 New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestsellers: The 4-Hour Workweek, The 4-Hour Body, The 4-Hour Chef, Tools of Titans and Tribe of Mentors. The Observer and other media have named him “the Oprah of audio” due to the influence of his podcast, The Tim Ferriss Show, which has exceeded 400 million downloads and been selected for “Best of iTunes” three years running. Connect with Tim Ferriss: Sign up for "5-Bullet Friday" (Tim's email newsletter): https://go.tim.blog/5-bullet-friday-1/ Visit the Tim Ferriss PODCAST: https://tim.blog/podcast/ Visit the Tim Ferriss BLOG: https://tim.blog/ Follow Tim Ferriss on TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tferriss/ Follow Tim Ferriss on INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/timferriss/ Like Tim Ferriss on FACEBOOK: https://www.facebook.com/TimFerriss/

Tim FerrisshostElizabeth Gilbertguest

May 13, 20202h 13mWatch on YouTube ↗

EVERY SPOKEN WORD

125 min read · 24,988 words

0:00 – 4:03
Intro
1. TFTim Ferriss
  Optimal minimal. At this altitude, I can run flat out for a half mile before my hands start shaking. Can I ask you a personal question? Now would seem an appropriate time. What if I did the opposite? I'm a cybernetic organism, living tissue over metal endoskeleton. The Tim Ferriss Show. This episode is brought to you by Thrive Market. Thrive Market saves me a ton of money, and it's perfect for these crazy times. Thrive Market is a membership-based site on a mission to make healthy living easy and affordable for everyone. You can regularly save 25 to 50% off of normal retail prices with member-only prices for anything you can imagine, really, whether it's keto, paleo, gluten-free, vegan, whatever. You can sort by that. You can find all types of food. You can find supplements. You can find non-toxic home products, clean wine, dog food, just about anything. And let me give you a personal example of just how much you can save. So my last order, I ordered Primal Kitchen mayonnaise, which is made with avocado oil. It's delicious. Justin's almond butter. And the first was 25% off. The Justin's almond butter was 30% off. Rao's homemade marinara sauce, which is awesome, 26% off. All said and done, at the end of my shopping, I saved $39 on my order. So members, and I'm a member, can earn wholesale prices every day and save an average of $30 on each order. I'll come back to that. And through Thrive Gives, their one-on-one membership matching program, every paid Thrive Market membership is matched with a free one for a low-income family in need. And you can try Thrive Market a few different ways. They have the monthly membership, which is $9.95 per month. They have the 12-month membership for $5 a month, which is billed at $59.95. And right now, this is exclusive to you guys, you can get up to a $20 shopping credit when you join today. Now, remember that I saved $39 on my order. So basically, with one or two orders, I pay for the annual membership, which is pretty sweet. So go to thrivemarket.com/tim to give Thrive Market a try. You can, like I said, choose between the membership models you'd like to test out. If it doesn't work for you, you can cancel for any reason within 30 days for a full refund. And on top of that, you will make back your membership and savings, as I have, or they give you credits to make up for the difference. So it's really win-win-win all around. And I would suggest you check it out. Go to thrivemarket.com/tim. You can receive up to $20 in shopping credit. That's thrivemarket.com/tim for up to $20 in shopping credit, plus all of the other great stuff that I mentioned. One more time, check it out, thrivemarket.com/tim. This episode of The Tim Ferriss Show is brought to you by Athletic Greens. I get asked all the time, "If I could only take one supplement, what would it be?" The answer is inevitably Athletic Greens. I view it as, and a lot of you now view it as, all-in-one nutritional insurance. I recommended it way back in 2010 in The 4-Hour Body, and I did not get paid to do so. I've been using it since before that, and I use it in a lot of different ways. I travel with it to avoid getting sick or to help mitigate the likelihood of getting sick. I take it in the morning to ensure optimal performance, and overall, it covers my bases if I can't get what I need from whole food meals throughout the rest of the day. And if you want to give Athletic Greens a try, they're offering a free 20-count travel pack for first-time users. I nearly always travel with at least three or four of these one-dose bags. In other words, if you buy Athletic Greens as a first-time buyer, you now get, for a limited time, an extra $79 in free product. So check out the details at athleticgreens.com/tim. Again, that's athleticgreens.com/tim for your free travel pack with
4:03 – 8:34
Meet Elizabeth Gilbert and the focus of the conversation
1. TFTim Ferriss
  any purchase. Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss, and welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show. This was a really, really fun one to record. Each and every episode, including this one, it is my job to interview world-class performers from all different fields to tease out how they do what they do. What are their habits, belief systems, favorite books, et cetera, hopefully so you can apply and test things in your own life. My guest today is Elizabeth Gilbert. Elizabeth Gilbert is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love, as well as several other internationally bestselling books. Although her nonfiction work catapulted her to global fame, Gilbert has been critically acclaimed throughout her career for her fiction and has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the PEN/Hemingway Award, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. For those of you who don't know fiction, those are very, very big deals. Elizabeth has had an extraordinary journey. First, as an award-winning magazine journalist, she began her career writing for Harper's Bazaar, Spin, The New York Times Magazine, and GQ. She was a three-time finalist for the National Magazine Award, and an article she wrote in GQ about her experiences bartending became the basis for the movie Coyote Ugly. Eat, Pray, Love launched Gilbert into another stratosphere altogether, making her one of the most iconic and beloved writers of our time. Now with more than 15 million copies sold worldwide, that is a huge number. Eat, Pray, Love has been translated into more than 30 languages and made into a feature film, and Time Magazine named Gilbert one of the 100 most influential people in the world. Her TED Talk about creativity has nearly 10 million views, making it one of the most viewed TED Talks of all time. And this past fall, Gilbert went on tour with Oprah, speaking to 100,000-plus people along the way. Gilbert also wrote the instant number one New York Times bestseller, Big Magic, subtitled Creative Living Beyond Fear, which dives deep into her own generative process to explain where inspiration comes from, how ideas form and grow, and how to overcome the fears and suffering that inevitably arise when we push at boundaries and take a leap into the unknown. Her new book City of Girls is a novel set in the New York City theater world of the 1940s, and it hits all sorts of fantastic, fun, tantalizing [laughs] stuff that we get into in this interview, which covers a lot of ground. And, uh, what a pleasure it was. So without further ado, please enjoy this wide-ranging conversation with Liz Gilbert. You can find her elizabethgilbert.com and also on the socials @GilbertLiz on Twitter and Facebook and @elizabeth_gilbert_writer on Instagram. [static] Liz, welcome to the show.
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me.
3. TFTim Ferriss
  I am thrilled to have you, and I have, I have messages to impart. My girlfriend insisted that I tell you that she loves you, so that's-
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
5. TFTim Ferriss
  ... that's important to check in the very beginning.
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You tell her... I'll tell her I love you too. [laughs]
7. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] I, uh, have so many questions, and, uh, we are, we are gonna improvise as we go. And I thought I would begin with The Alpha Wolf, if you don't mind. And this, this was introduced to me, and for those who don't know, this is a, a Moth talk/presentation story/tearjerker/laugh-out-loud-at-moments tale, uh, that my girlfriend asked me to listen to with her together in bed, uh, before we went to sleep several months ago. And I saw that Rayya's birthday, her 60th birthday, was just a few days ago, and I, I have questions about preparing for this, for The Alpha Wolf, but perhaps you could give people some context. I've fallen in love with The Moth, partially thanks to Neil Gaiman, partially thanks to Catherine Burns.
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm-hmm.
9. TFTim Ferriss
  And, uh, this was a very strong, uh, talk o- on a whole lot of levels. But c-could you-
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm
11. TFTim Ferriss
  ... speak to, uh, who Rayya was, a little bit of context, and then how y- to how you prepared for that?
8:34 – 15:35
Rayya Elias, “The Alpha Wolf,” and choosing truth over plans
1. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm. Um, there's quite literally nothing I would rather talk about than Rayya, so [laughs] so you started in a good place for me. Um, so Rayya Elias was quite simply the love of my life. Um, she and I were friends for 17 years. Um, I was married for most of that and, um, just very slowly and very quietly over the years fell in love with her. She was a lesbian, Syrian, Detroit-raised, rock and roll, hairdresser, filmmaker, author, um, musician who had always l- wanted to live just right on the edge of life. She had been a speedball heroin junkie on the Lower East Side of New York City in the 1980s, um, was in Rikers Island, was in Bellevue, was in various rehabs and rehabilit- and rehabilitations, was homeless, was... Oh, God, she'd had such a storied life, and then she finally put it all down and she spent 19 years clean and sober. And when I met her, she was on the other side of that recovery, and she was the strongest, most extraordinary person I ever met. And as I said in that speech that I gave, in that talk that I gave at The Moth about her, which I shared a year after she died, she was the most powerful person in every room that she ever walked into, and, um, I adored her. She was my guide. She was my teacher. She was the rock, the ground underneath my feet. She was the one person in the world who always made me feel safe, and she didn't just make me feel safe. I felt... The feeling that everyone had when Rayya walked into the room was, "Oh, thank God, Rayya's here. Everybody is safe." [laughs]
2. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
3. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You know, that's what the alpha is, right? The alpha is the person who keeps the entire pack safe. Um, and, and because she was the most powerful person in the, in the room, what I always knew when she walked in was not only would she make sure I was okay, um, if anybody was preying on me in any way, she would make sure the predator was okay too. [laughs] Like, she had everybody under her wing to make sure that people were all right, you know? Um, she just had this way of handling humans like nothing I've ever seen in my entire life, and, um, I absolutely adored her. And I was a loyal wife, and I loved my husband, and, um, the three of us were really good friends, and there was no way in the world that I was ever gonna cross that line. I just kept that love very quietly in my heart, and we all just had a beautiful life together, um, until the day that she was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic and liver cancer, and I got a phone call from her saying that she'd gotten this diagnosis and that they said she had six months to live. And from that point forward, it was no longer possible for me to keep that love hidden, and, um, very swiftly after that, uh, I had a conversation with my husband and said, "I, I need to go and be with Rayya," and to not to... And no one was surprised by this. [laughs] Um, he, he wasn't surprised by it. He'd seen it for years, um, and he very, in, in one of the greatest acts of courage and dignity I've ever seen anybody do, he very graciously stepped out of the way, and, um, and we separated, and I went to be with her, and I was with her until the end of her life. So that's who Rayya was, and that's who she was to me. As for that speech that I gave at The Moth, [laughs] that talk- What I had, what I was challenged to do in 12 minutes was to try to get over the net who that person was, um, the most epic human being I'd ever met and I decided the way to do that was to tell a few stories about her, the experience of her death and dying, um, which were mostly based on ideas that I had about how she was going to become very helpless and I was going to have to be her hero and protect her versus the reality of the situation [laughs] which is that she never became helpless. Um, she remained the alpha in the entire situation. She was a really hard patient to take care of for that reason.
4. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
5. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, she absolutely refused to cooperate with my version of some airy-fairy, soft, hippie death that I wanted to, um, give to her and instead she died the way she lived, um, like a, like the badass, fierce, unrelenting warrior that she was, and it was brutal, and it was beautiful and, um, and she never stopped taking us by surprise, right, even up till the last second.
6. TFTim Ferriss
  Was it difficult for you to have the conversation with your husband or difficult to prepare for this talk, or did both come to you very naturally or something in between?
7. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, it was very natural and very difficult. Um, and, uh, you know, I was, I was only guided by, again, going back to the teachings that Rayya gave to me. One of her great expressions that she lived by was, um, "The truth has legs." And what she meant by that, and she would, she would expand on it and say it this way, "The truth has legs. It's the only thing that will be left standing in the end." Um, so at the end of the day when all the drama has blown up and all the trauma has expressed itself and everyone has acted up and acted out and, and there's been, you know, whatever else is happening, when all of that settles, there's only gonna be one thing left standing in the room always, and that's going to be the truth. And Rayya's policy of life was since that's where we're gonna end up, why don't we just start with it? [laughs] Why don't we just start with it? And I can't tell you how many times I heard her say that and how many times I heard her just go right to the center of it with people where she would be like, "Okay, put your truth on the table. Let me put my truth on the table. Let's skip the drama and let's just go to the truth because that's the only thing that's ever gonna survive and let's, let's just begin, you know, right there." And, and that was a truth. The truth of my love for Rayya was... had reached a point where it could just no longer be hidden. Um, I couldn't hide it from myself anymore and I certainly didn't wanna hide it from this wonderful man who I loved and still love. Um, and, you know, there's that adage, I think, um, David Foster Wallace said it, "The truth will set you free but not before it's had its way with you." [laughs]
8. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah. [laughs]
9. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You know, it's, it's a frightening thing but, but I felt, I just felt like the only way that I could honor how much I loved him was to honor that great man by telling him the truth and, and he honored me in return by accepting it.
15:35 – 21:46
Grief without a “plan”: rage, surrender, and the waves of loss
1. TFTim Ferriss
  What did you learn about grief, your own grieving process, grief recovery plans, anything related to grief through that experience?
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  So everything about Rayya humbled me. [laughs] That was one of her great roles in my life, um, was to just show me how you can plan till God leaves Chicago. You can plan sh-
3. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You can plan shit till things get better. You can plan till the end of days and trust me, I'm a planner. You know? I am an organized person. I have... You know, I'm-- My mom's lesson always in my childhood was like the, the, the best thing you could be was somebody who had her ducks in a row, right? Like, you know, just get it all in order, get it all organized and life, life has a marvelous way of refusing to cooperate with that. [laughs] Um, and, and so I did not... I planned to be a good, loyal wife, um, and then God or the universe was like, "Oh, that's a great plan." You know? Good... The, the way that I say it now is, "Good guess." [laughs]
5. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Good guess, Liz. Good guess. Like a really good guess, honorable guess. All done with the best of intentions, but actually that's not who, that's not your love. This is your love. Um, and I spent years just being like, "No, it's not." [laughs] No, it's not 'cause I have this plan and life's like, "Uh, yeah, it actually is. It actually is." Um, and, and the point is gonna come where that truth is gonna become bigger than your plans and, and that extended into the way that I tried to manage, I'm using air quotes now, manage Rayya's death. Um, I also went into her death with a plan. Um, we're gonna have an enlightened death. We're gonna have a, a real hospice death. We're gonna bring grief bereavement experts in here to talk... I mean, I laugh now because it's like-
7. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... you know, it's just Rayya like who's such a biker chick. It's like, "You're gonna bring a fucking grief bereavement expert in here like to talk to me?"
9. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You know? Like, "Give me a break. I'm gonna, I'm gonna go down watching football eating chicken wings and smoking." You know? Like, this is like of no interest in that.
11. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, and so she just waylaid that plan completely and, and died on her own terms and then I, I think by that point I'd given up even having the idea of a plan for grief. I just remember, I think I walked into my grief kind of like just naked and broken and just like, "Okay, what do, what do you have for me?" [laughs] And, um, and, and it just, what it had for me was so beautiful, um, and so hard. I, I found that, um, I guess I did have a plan to a certain extent because I, I still thought that I was gonna be good at it. [laughs]
13. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  This is like I, I love when I walk into really hard things like, "I'm gonna be good at this." Um, you can't be good at grief. You can't be good at it. It's, it's not something that is to be mastered. It's something that's to be survived, and it's, um, and it's something that has great lessons for you, but you certainly have to drop any sense that you've got control over it or that you can manage it. It's bigger than you, and it's bigger than us. It's a, it's a force of nature. It's a weather system. And what I learned in grief was you let it take you. You just have to let it take you. When those waves come, you have to let them break over you. If you try to resist, it will only hurt you more. And one of the things that really shocked me in my grief was how much rage there was in it. You know, I don't think of myself as a very rageful and angry person. Um, but my grief was shot through with an absolute white hot boiling rage, and I was, I was enraged at, at Rayya. Um, I was enraged at Rayya for not dying the way I wanted her to. [laughs] I was enraged at her for dying at all. I was enraged at her for leaving a whole bunch of shit for me to take care of after she died, which also felt like how our life together had been. It's like, "Why do I have to handle everything? Why didn't you arrange this? Why didn't you work this out?" She's like, "'Cause I'm not that person. You're that person. I lived in the moment. You make plans, so you figure it out," you know?
15. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
16. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, I was enraged at family members and friends who I felt hadn't shown up for her or for me in the way that I needed them to, and it was an incredibly uncomfortable feeling. I was enraged at God for taking the one person in the world who ever made me feel safe. Um, and I had a long list, a really long list for God of other people who should have died [laughs] um, instead of her. And, God's like, "Yeah, that's adorable, but that's not how we're doing it." Um, and, and I, I just, I just spun in rage for months, and it hurt. I mean, it was not like, it was not manageable. Um, it was, it was incredibly painful. And, and then finally, I remember one of my final pieces of rage was I'm enraged at my rage because it's interfering with my grieving, um, because I had some sort of idea that my grieving would be this sort of poetic, beautiful, weepy, soft lit, you know, experience.
17. TFTim Ferriss
  Right. Mi- mi- minor key music over candlelight.
18. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah, exactly. And instead it was like, it was like Sid and Nancy. It was just like, "What's going on inside of my..." You know, just violent anger toward everybody and everything. And when I had that thought, I was given the grace of an answer, and, um, the thought I had was, "I need this anger to go so that I can grieve." And then the answer came, "This is your grief. Um, and grief is the most uncomfortable experience you'll ever have in your life. And for you, Liz, the most uncomfortable thing you can ever feel is anger toward anybody, even a teeny, tiny bit. So why wouldn't you think that your grief would come as the most battering emotion that, that could possibly happen to you?" I'm really comfortable being sad, you know? [laughs] Like, I can do minor key, rainy day, sweet sadness. I can't handle anger. And so of course it came as anger, and it, and it had to, it had to in order for me to feel the, the magnitude of the loss. Um, it had to be something that was bigger than I could hold, and that's what grief is.
21:46 – 26:03
Humor alongside darkness: “If you can’t laugh at death…”
1. TFTim Ferriss
  One thing that strikes me, and there are many things that strike me, but one of the things that strikes me about your work, uh, of which I am a fan, a big fan, is how well you use humor and lightness along with the, the difficulty and the d- and the darkness. And so I'd love to chat about that for a minute. Uh, I've read about y- your, uh, I don't wanna call it position. That makes it sound too, too strange. But y- your discussions of creativity and the allure and the danger of fetishizing pain, right?
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm.
3. TFTim Ferriss
  And, uh, for instance, I've, I've read, uh, The Art of Memoir by Mary Karr, which I, is, is a book I absolutely adore, which I think touches on that also quite a lot. And what I'm wondering, I'll try not to... I'll try to make this a digestible question, is through, say, your grieving process, certainly this, this comes up in The, The Moth Talk. There are some very funny, funny moments. Do you experience those or find those in the process, say, of grieving, or is it something that you unearth after the fact when you are doing your writing, or is there another way to look at it?
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I'm just thinking of something that a hospice nurse said to me because we were cracking up one day. I, and I can't remember what it was about, but there's a lot of... Anybody who's ever been by a, a... You know, there's a lot of humor [laughs] that shows up. It's, and it is literally gallows humor. You know, it really is like, I've got a picture of, of me and, and Rayya's ex-wife and Rayya's ex-girlfriend, um, who were the two women who showed up like champions at the end of her life to help to take care of me and help to take care of her because they, they loved her so much. And it was also just such a factor of what a boss mack daddy Rayya was, that she had like every woman who'd ever loved her came back to take care of her when she was dying.
5. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, you know, and, and, and to take care of each other. And there was a lot of laughter between the three of us about just, like, handling this force of nature as she was dying. Like, can we survive it, right? She's, she's su- she's the opposite of a good patient, you know? And, and so there was a lot of humor in there. And the hospice nurse was laughing with us one day, and I said, um, I said to her, "It's amazing that you can laugh given the line of work that you're in." You know? Um, like she's a, she spends her life- working with people at, at the worst, most painful parts of their lives, at the end of their lives. And, and she said, "We have a little motto. We say if, if you can't laugh at death, get out of show business." [laughs]
7. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Like, you shouldn't be a hospice nurse if you can't find, if you can't let... You won't survive, you know? Um, and I'm sure that's what you and I are talking right now in the midst of the COVID crisis, and I've been thinking about that. I've been thinking about the, the nurses that I know, and I'm imagining that you know there's some dark-ass humor happening in those hospitals right now. [laughs] There, there has to be, in the same way that soldiers would tell you about the, the humor that happens when you're under fire. Like, there absolutely has to be or you, you just simply won't be able to survive it. So I will say that the humor's there, um, you know, in those moments. I mean, uh, [laughs] right after Rayya died, I mean, we had been through such hell with her, and literally, I mean... And her death was, was not as I say. It was, it was brutal. You know, one minute after she took her last breath, her last horrible breath, Gigi, her ex-wife, stood up, brushed off her hands and goes, "Okay, so that's done. I'm gonna be on the next flight out of here, like, at 2:00."
9. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You know? And we just... It was hilarious, but it was also just, like, what Rayya would've done, you know? Like, it, it-
11. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Because it was like, "Okay, you guys good? We good? We done here?" You know? [laughs]
13. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  We just all, like, rolled over laughing in the middle of our tears, you know? And I feel like that humor has to be shot through, um, the entirety of your life or else you, you really are not gonna make it through earth school, 'cause earth school's a hard, hard school, and it's a hard assignment. And, and I, I think the humor is the, is, is quite literally grace, you know? It's these, these pieces of grace that are shot through the n- the nightmare. [laughs]
26:03 – 33:04
Writing as stillness: creativity as “wordless oneness”
1. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah. Let's, let's talk about writing, something that, uh, uh, I, I'm, I'm fairly sure that you're fond of on some level. And, uh, I was f- I was doing homework for this conversation, and it, it seems like you decided to be a writer very early in life and that there, there, there were supporting plans but not backup plans, so to, so to speak. And the line that I found, and you can fact check or correct anything that I'm, I'm, I'm saying, but the... I'll, I'll read a quote which is from an interview you did on Read It Forward, or readitforward.com at least, and that is something you said to yourself. "This is what I do, and I'm willing to be a diner waitress and a bartender and an au pair and somebody who sells jewelry at flea markets. I'm willing not to have very nice, fancy things. I'm willing to give up going on vacation with my friends to stay home and write. I'm willing to give up everything for this because this is my source of light." How did you know it was your source of light? What did that feel like?
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  It felt like... I, I've said this before. Okay, so I'm... I would say that, like, I officially launched a spiritual journey when I was around the age of 30 and going through, um, a very bad divorce that, if you've heard of a book called Eat, Pray, Love, you already know about, but, um [laughs]
3. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] I have heard of this, yes.
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  And, uh, yeah. [laughs] It's, like, I've... A couple people read it, um, so you might know. Um, and I c- have continued that spiritual journey in what I would call traditional ways, so, um, prayer, meditation, contemplation. Um, but until very recently, so my meditation practice has only very, very recently, actually I would say only in the last two years, only since Rayya passed, um, has my meditation practice deepened to a point where I might actually say that I'm actually doing something called meditating when I'm sitting there rather than what I've done for the last 20 years, which is sit down for 20 minutes and either think a lot or fall asleep. Like, that's what my meditation practice [laughs] has usually looked like.
5. TFTim Ferriss
  Right, thinking with your eyes closed, yeah.
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Thinking with your eyes closed or just flat out falling asleep. Um, but, but every single thing that, that the scriptures and all the holy teachings promise, promised me that I would get through meditation, I've gotten through writing. Um, and I got that from a very early age. So the main thing is the silencing of the mind and, and it's really ironic because, you know, there's a state that, that the mystics talk about going into that's called wordless oneness, um, where you, where your mind, the chatter of the mind and the language of, the languaging centers of the mind go silent, and you feel yourself to be a quiet oneness with everything around you. Um, it's also called the zone. Um, you could call it serenity. There's many names for it, but I like wordless oneness because it implies an absence of, of the chatter in the mind. It is so fascinating to me that one of the ways to drop into wordless oneness, and this has actually been studied by neurologists, is by writing, y- which is ironic because that's the use of words. [laughs] It's the use of language.
7. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, but it's a different... It, it comes from a different part of the mind. Um, it comes from an intuitive part of the mind, um, more than it does from the part of the mind that I'm using right now to speak to you. Uh, so I found from a very early age, and I was a really anxious kid, that when I was writing, I could have a vacation from what I would now call the egoic self. So the egoic self never stops talking, and it never stops complaining. There's nothing it can... There's nothing you can give it that will satisfy it. Um, it's constantly looking for ways to be unhappy. It's constantly looking for, um, ways to criticize, uh, what is, um, what is around you and you yourself and everybody in it, you know? Um, and, and that is the source of all suffering, right, is that, that voice. But when I would sit down and write as a kid, and to a certain extent I got it too when I was drawing and making art, but I didn't have as much of a talent for it, um- My mind would quiet and, and something would happen where I would look up and two hours would have passed, and I didn't have to be Liz during those two hours. Now, I didn't, can't really say that I decided to be a writer. I guess I did, but it's more like I never stopped doing that, you know? Um, I think a lot of us when we're young, when we're kids, we naturally gravitate toward creative pursuits that make us feel still and make us feel calm. I think for many people, the arts are an intuitive, natural way that human beings as... And they pick it up as children, figure out that this is a way that I can feel good. Um, what tends to happen is that when you reach adolescence, you discover all the other really faster, hot-wired ways to feel good, um, which usually involves sex or substance or spending money, right? A friend of mine who's in recovery says, "If it's not a martini, it's a man. If it's not a man, it's a MasterCard. If it's not a MasterCard, it's a muffin." [laughs]
9. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You know, there's, there's always maybe-
11. TFTim Ferriss
  The four horsemen of seduction. [laughs]
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  The four horsemen, right? Man, MasterCard, martini, and muffin. It's like what... Just give me something that I can-
13. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Just give me something that I can stuff into myself so that I don't have to feel, so I don't have to endure the pain of being a human being. I don't have to feel my, my egoic self. Um, I f- it's not like I didn't do all those things, 'cause I did and do, do all those things too, but for some reason I h- I was lucky enough. So a lot of people put down the creativity when they find the man, the MasterCard, the martini, and the muffin, [laughs] the meth, what, like, whatever it is. The, the, the, the workaholism, like, whatever it is that you're using to, to numb yourself so that you don't have to feel. The creativity's a slower, gentler way to do that, so when you find the, the shortcut, you take it, you know? Um, and a lot of people c- can point to the place in their life where they stopped creating because it's when they found all that other stuff. Um, but I never put it down. So, so for some reason I was lucky enough to have the good sense in a life that has been filled with a lot of bad sense [laughs] and a lot of nonsense, I, I had the good sense to hold onto that, um, and, and to notice and, and realize that it's something that made me happy in a way that didn't come with a great price tag that comes with those cheap, hot-wired ways to make yourself happy. Um, you know, there's always a hangover and a consequence from those ways. But with writing, there isn't. It, it, it really was my place of, of stillness and, and I think in a weird way it was the beginning of my spiritual practice. I just didn't know that it was. I didn't have that language for it. I just knew that it felt good.
33:04 – 41:56
Awe in great art: “surprising and inevitable,” plus poets and novelists she reveres
1. TFTim Ferriss
  S- so let's, let's pair stillness with awe for a moment. I've also read that there are times when you'll love a sentence so much that you read that you'll start clapping-
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
3. TFTim Ferriss
  ... by your, by yourself-
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Wow
5. TFTim Ferriss
  ... where you happen to be reading, and i- I would love to know what type of writing, what writers have done that for you, if you could name even a, a few of them, and what it is. What are the ingredients that lead to that, that one-woman standing ovation?
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs] Often in the bathtub. [laughs]
7. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yay, yay. Um, well, they say that great art has to contain two features. It has to be both surprising and inevitable. Um, so that's the great paradox.
9. TFTim Ferriss
  Ooh, that's good. That's good.
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Right?
11. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah.
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  That's the paradox is that you, you have to go, "Oh my God, I didn't see that coming," and that is the only way that could go, right? Um, I'm thinking of the ending of Breaking Bad, um, where, where that whole show, but like the e- the last moments of Breaking Bad.
13. TFTim Ferriss
  Oops, spo- spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. [laughs]
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah, spoiler alert. You've had many years to watch it now, people. I won't tell you the ending. I will just tell you that I also stood up and applauded at that because it felt both surprising and inevitable. Um, so, so that's the feeling. You want your whole nervous system to kind of be like, " [gasps] Oh my God, I didn't, I didn't know that could be, and yes, of course," you know? Um, it had to be, and now it's rearranged my DNA in a certain way where I can't be the same now. Poetry tends to do it... The poets have this amazing ability to, to put that into such a tiny space where it's like the encapsulization of inevitability and, and, um, surprise. So I'll give you ex- an example of o- of one piece that I love, which is, um, a poem by T.S. Eliot called East Coker that has gotten me through some of the darkest times in my life. Some of those moments in your life where you don't know what to do, right? Where, uh, where a human being... And this is where I think human life gets really interesting. What happens to people when they reach the end of their power, right? Because especially in this culture where we live in a, in a culture that says you should be able to power through anything, um, you know, life is, it will very gen- generously remind you that you cannot. [laughs]
15. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
16. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  And it will very generously break you at times and very generously show you, as we're seeing right now in the COVID virus. We're like, "Oh. Oh, actually, there's a, there's a limit to our powers here." Um, and it's very humbling, and what do you do when you're at the end of your power? So the, the poem East Coker is one, and it gets me every single time. And-
17. TFTim Ferriss
  How do you spell Coker?
18. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  C-O-K-E-R. C-O-K-E-R. Yeah, East Coker. And there's a part of the poem where T.S. Eliot writes, "Wait without hope, for hope would be hope of the wrong thing. Wait without love, for love would be love of the wrong thing. There is yet faith, but the faith and the hope and the love are all in the waiting. Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought. And so the darkness shall be light, and the stillness, the dancing." That's a stand up and applause moment. [laughs]
19. TFTim Ferriss
  That, yeah, that is a stand up and applause moment.
20. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  And, and sometimes when people I know are grieving or they're stuck or they're broken or everything has been taken away, I will give them that poem because that says what I don't know how to say better than that, which is Right now, you're being asked to wait without hope, for anything that you hope for would be the wrong thing, and wait without love. Anybody who's been going through a horrible breakup, I'll give them that poem. Like, you're being asked to wait without love right now because love would be love of the wrong thing. And anybody who's a beginning meditator, I give them that poem because of the line, "Wait without thought, for you are not ready for thought." Um, you don't have the wisdom right now to have the correct thoughts, so you need to wait without thought. And then you will see if you do that... And the- and there's still faith, but the faith is in the waiting. The faith is in waiting without hope, waiting without love, waiting without thought. That's the definition of faith, sitting in the darkness in that waiting, and then you will see how the darkness becomes light and the stillness becomes dancing, but only every time. [laughs]
21. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
22. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You have to give up... In order to have it, you've got to give up hope, and you've got to give up love, and you've got to have faith only in the waiting. Um, so that's a line that makes me applaud. I'm... A- another author who gets me is, um... Well, another poet who gets me is, is Walt Whitman. Um, and, and Walt Whitman saying, describing himself in A Song of Myself, describing himself as standing both in and out of the game, watching and wondering at it, and also being involved in it. Um, that description of he watching himself walk through life both in and out of the game is, again, something that I think of as the highest point of enlightenment. Can you engage with your life? Can you be involved with your life? Can you feel all of the feelings? Can you fall in love? Can you lose? Can you fail? Can you grow? Can you succeed? Can you fuck up? And also watch it from a little bit of a detached distance and marvel at the game itself. Um, so that line gets me. And then as far as fiction writers go, I'm, I'm, I'm so in love with Hilary Mantel, who wrote the Wolf Hall trilogy about, um, Henry VIII and won the Booker Prize for the first two installments of it, and then the third one just came out. And, and the way that I've been describing it to people is imagine if all three Godfather movies were as good as the first two. [laughs]
23. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
24. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Imagine if Godfather Part III was just as good as I and II. That's how good Hilary Mantel is, that the third installment... Um, and I'm reading that right now, and I'm just... It's just a bow-down moment. You know, as an artist, there are a lot of writers who I look at their work and I, I admire them, but I see how they did it, you know? Um, because it's almost like a carpenter looking at another carpenter's work and being like, "Oh, okay, I see how you did the joints there, and you hid that hinge there, and that's cool. I see. Well done," you know? And then there are people, I look at their work and I'm like, "I literally don't believe that you're human." [laughs]
25. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
26. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  "I, I, I don't understand how you can even do this." And, and that's how I feel about Hilary Mantel writing about 16th century England in a way that is so intimate, um, and, and so... That you cannot read that book without thinking, "This is exactly how it happened." Um, and, and I don't know how she does that. [laughs] And I, I'm very happy to say I'm happy to never be able to do that. I'm just lucky to live on earth at the same time as somebody who can. [laughs]
27. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] Well, I, I would push back a little bit. I... And I would say that y- you have a rare ability to blend readability with wordsmithing sentences that are very memorable and really strike a chord. I d- I don't think that is easy to do. And, uh, I mean, I, I would say, [sniffs] you know, Kurt Vonnegut is, is one who comes to mind, but it's not easy to combine those two things. And, you know, I thought it was, it was, uh, it sort of... Well, I don't think. It made me crack a smile when I was reading about you appreciating sentences, and [chuckles] the quote from you at the end of this, this portion of the interview was, "It's part of the reason that the arts are around, to remind us that we're not just here to pay bills and die, that we're also here to get excited and feel wonder and to feel awe."
28. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm.
29. TFTim Ferriss
  That's easy to read, but it is something that makes me go, "Fuck. Goddamn, you're totally right." [laughs] Like, "I need more wonder and awe. I'm paying too many bills. Spending too much time on paperwork."
30. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
41:56 – 45:28
Curiosity after loss: imagination’s edge and “I want to see what happens next”
1. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I mean, this is the thing that's so incredible about a human life. Um, there are only two things in the universe so far [chuckles] that we've discovered that appear to be infinite. Um, and one is the universe itself, um, because we haven't found the edges of it. Um, and the other is human imagination because we haven't found the edges of it. Um, we, we, we haven't begun to find the edges of it. It just keeps surprising us. Um, people keep inventing new worlds and new stories and new id- it's, it's unbelievable. Um, and it's not like- You know, it's not like people have been sitting around not using their imaginations for centuries, you know? [laughs] Um, every- everybody's been in this game for a long time, and you would think, you know, you walk into, um, one of the massive libraries in the world and you see all that has been created already and you just think, "Well, that's all been done," you know? [laughs] And then somebody drops something on you and you're like, "Where... How, how did you... [laughs] Like, h- how did you find that doorway, um, in- into that world?" And it's so incredibly exciting and, and I think, um, you know, just going back again to the idea of grief, I think the, the thing that keeps me from tanking, you know, is, okay, so the most important person in my entire life is gone. First of all, that's interesting. You know? Like, I, I, I think that some... A, a good way to diffuse drama and trauma is to just start using the word interesting a lot, you know? Like-
2. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
3. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... that's interesting. That's interesting. Like, that's interesting just f- on a personal level for me that I would've said to the universe, "You can, you can literally do anything and you can take anybody. You can't take this one. Um, this is the only one I can't live without." And they're like, "Okay, that's cool, honey. We're gonna take that one." [laughs] You know? And then I'm like, "Wait, so what does that leave?" You know? Um, well, okay, apparently I can live without her because I'm being asked to and I'm being invited to. My friend Martha Beck has a really great thing that she always does as a, as a counteraction to codependence. Um, she likes to take classical sort of sappy love songs that are about codependence and just add one line to them to ma- [laughs] to make them, to put them into context. And so she'll take that song, um, for instance, this is one of my favorites. She'll go, "I can't live if living is without you, and yet here I sit eating a sandwich." [laughs]
4. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
5. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  It's like, apparently I can. [laughs]
6. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
7. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, I can live if living is without you because here I sit eating a sandwich. Like, life is going on for some reason. Um, but what keeps me here is, is first of all, I'm hungry and I'm gonna go eat a sandwich and, and, and the body wants to keep, continue living, and secondly, I wanna see what happens next, you know? Um, I wanna see what happens next. It's a really interesting world where we have not yet met the limits of consciousness, the limits of creativity, and the limits of invention, and the limits of imagination, and I don't wanna miss it. Um, so my curiosity, I think, is, is, is going to always be the thing that, that, that wins. [laughs]
45:28 – 53:37
Research and structure: Mr. Kisco’s index cards and “past Liz” helping “future Liz”
1. TFTim Ferriss
  Mm. So there's, there's the curiosity, there's the serendipity, then there's the, the organizing and the planning, and I'd love to, to bounce between those two sides of the spectrum. Uh, let's talk about the organizing for a second, and maybe we could start with Mr. Kisco. I think that's your ninth- one of your-
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs] Uh-huh.
3. TFTim Ferriss
  Do you, do you s- do you still use a- an index card or note card system during research?
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Sure do.
5. TFTim Ferriss
  Could you describe-
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm
7. TFTim Ferriss
  ... what your system looks like, please? And-
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Okay. Let's-
9. TFTim Ferriss
  ... I suppose we should probably explain who Mr. Kisco is too.
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Let's... You know what? I think it'd be funnier just not to. [laughs]
11. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Just, we just let you all-
13. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... just let that be the mystery in the back. No, I will be happy to explain. Mr. Kisco, as, as you all should know by now, was my, uh, ninth grade social studies teacher, and I, I can't believe that only Tim knows that and not, not the rest of you. Um, yeah.
15. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
16. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mr. Kisco was ninth grade, uh, Western Civ, um, teacher and really hard ass, really good teacher, really scary teacher, and he taught us how to write term papers. Um, and he taught this system that was very simple that involved index cards and a box to put the index cards in, and as you're doing your research on the topic, you put divisions in the box on different subjects and then every time you find a fact or a piece of information on a page, you would write one fact per index card, one piece of information per index card. Um, and then there was a- also a system that you would use for footnoting. So, like, if the first book, the first book I would read would be book A, um, so at the bottom of the index card I would write A and then the page that I found it on, so A23, right? So, um, and then when I went to the next book, it would be B, page 46, right? So that way you can mix up the cards and you can still remember where everything came from. Very simple. And, um, and then each card gets one fact only, and each fact goes in the filing system under whatever subject, um, whatever area is. And when you start to write, you've got all your facts at your fingertips in order. I've taken that system, which was used for researching, and I've, I've grown it into a system that I use for writing my novels, 'cause my novels are very research based. And so, for instance, this recent novel that I just wrote called City of Girls that takes place in New York City in the 1940s in the theater world and involves a young woman who moves to New York City in 1940 and gets pulled into a group of showgirls and dancers and playboys and actors and goes on a wild promiscuity bender, um, just as the war is about to begin for America. Um, that book required an enormous amount of research to be able to speak the language of the 1940s, to be able to write a play. There's a, there's a musical that's in the middle of the book and I had to figure out, like, get the language of playwriting of the 1940s correct. Um, how did people dress? What were they wearing? What was going on in the news at the time? And so I would get a big shoebox and, um, and a bunch of index cards and just dive into the research, which took me about three or four years. Um, and I would read a lot of biographies and a lot of letters, and every single idea and every single fact got its own card. So every time I had a, a line of dialogue that I wanted to put in the play, into the book, I would write it on its own card and I would put it for that character into their little section. Um, every time I found out something about... I had a little section called, um, fashion 1940s, right? So every time I found any tiny little detail, I would put it into that section that was about fashion. Um, anytime I had a detail about, like, sex, for instance, I, I needed to kind of figure out what the sexual culture was of New York City in the 1940s. What kind of birth control were people using? How were they talking about sex? So anything I found on there, I put in the, to the sex section. [laughs] Anything I found out about, um, what it was like working at the Brooklyn Naval Yards in the 1940s during the war, because my character ends up working there, um, would go into the Navy Yard section. So, so it's all very tidy and organized in box after box after box, and I-- by the time it's done, um, it's like I've got a novel. I j- I call it a novel. A book in a box, but it's really usually-
17. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
18. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... five boxes by then. Um, but it's such a great gift because when you're writing, and it really helps you, it really helps me with writer's block because as I'm introducing a new character into the story, all I have to do is reach into the box and pull out her file, and because I've been putting notes in there for the last four years, I've got, like, a two-inch thick file on this character of details of, of, of things she would say or what she's wearing or, or, um, ideas for, um, character development. And, and so it's an assistance to myself when I sit down to write that I can draw upon that and, and use it, and it makes it so, so, so much easier. And sometimes the research is tedious, but I-- part of my sense of stewardship and friendship over myself is that I try to do really nice things for Liz. [laughs]
19. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
20. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  And, um, I try to do really nice things for future Liz. You know, like I hate flossing my teeth, but I do it for future Liz as a gift.
21. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
22. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  So every night when I floss my teeth, I'm like, "I hate, I hate this, but future Liz, this is for you, babe, because I care about you and I love you." And like, um, and so when I'm writing these notes to myself... So I'll-- I might be sitting there at the New York Public Library doing research on, like, how much theater productions cost in the 1940s and, and, you know, who-- how many sets, how mu- much the sets would have cost and who would have been on hand. Like boring stuff, you know? But I'll just sit there and I'll find some really great detail, and I'll write it on a card and I'll be like, "Oh my God, future Liz is gonna be so psyched when she finds this card three years from now," because she's gonna be writing the scene and she's gonna be stuck and she's gonna reach in and she's gonna pull out this detail and she's gonna be like, "Oh, yes." Like, so and then what happens is that while I'm writing, I'll reach in and I'll find some amazing card with a great piece of dialogue on it or a great detail that really helps with the scene, and I'll be like, "Thanks, past Liz." [laughs]
23. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
24. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  "You're the best," you know? And it's like this little salute across time where, like, past Liz is like, "I got you, babe," and future Liz is like, "Thank you for looking out for me. You're the best." So, like, all of the preparation that I do is to help myself during the hard part, which is the creative, the actual creating a novel, and I wanna give myself all the help I can because I wanna suffer the least [laughs] that I possibly can. So I really do try to, like, really show up for future Liz. [laughs]
25. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] It's, it strikes me that, uh, you have a very productive, at times at least, of course, I, I don't know every detail of your entire life, but balance between this sort of egoless or ego less at least, meaning [laughs] less ego, wordless oneness, and then the very sort of, uh, egoic by necessity planning side of things, right? Where you're actually, you're actually d- [laughs] creating multiple, uh, Lizes to help-
26. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
27. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] To help, uh, sort of z- clear the decks and, and steer the ship. Uh, when you look at, say, your five boxes of cards, whether it's for the fiction like City of Girls or nonfiction, what percentage of what you have on those cards ends up making it into finished books, would you say? I'm curious kind of what makes the cut eventually.
28. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Tim, I am so happy to tell you that I can give you that percentage because I can see it very clearly, 'cause once I pull a card out, I put it into its own separate box once it's done. So when I'm finished, I can actually see how many I used, and, um, I'm really interested in that myself, and it is about a fifth. It's about a fifth.
29. TFTim Ferriss
  A fifth ma-
30. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah
53:37 – 56:15
Serving the “mothership”: ideas as urgent forces and the humility of the craft
1. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah. You know, and you definitely need all of it 'cause you don't know what you're gonna need, right? You wanna kind of overprepare. Um, and, and, and you know, all of it, w- y- I like what you're saying about the, the, the bifurcation of selves of, of, of, of the egoic-less, um, wordless wonder creator and the one who's preparing. But I actually think that, that there's a, um, there's an egolessness that's in the research as well, and that is the humility of feeling like I'm a servant to this book. Um, you know, I'm, uh, you know, I really do feel, and you know this if you've read B- Big Magic, that ideas come to us from a very mysterious outer source. Um, and by mysterious, I mean we will never know, um, why it is that ideas are formed, that ideas, um, as I like to think of them, ideas are these, um, bodiless gigabytes of consciousness of e- and they have desire and they have will, and they want to be made manifest. And, and anyone who's ever had an idea knows this. The idea itself has an urgency to it. It wants to be born. It wants to be nourished. It won't leave you alone, right? It's waking you up in the middle of the night. It's nagging at you. It's sending coincidences to you and, and, um, serendipitous, you know, reminders of it, and it just, it just starts to become sort of an obsession. It, it's, it's almost a viral infection of, of an idea coming to you and taking you over. I think it's such an honor to be given an idea, um, especially if it's a halfway decent one, that I feel like my life is in service to that. Um, and, and when I don't have an idea, um, and I don't have a thought for a book, I think of myself... I-- the, the image that I hold of myself is, is literally of a servant, um, like one of those very proud British servants, you know, who doesn't see their servitude as, as being demeaning, and sees it as a great, as a great craft, a great skill to be a good servant, right? I see myself in uniform, white gloves, hands behind my back, standing outside the door of the muse at attention, waiting [laughs] . You know, I'm like wai- it's not passive. I'm like waiting for the next idea to come and so that I can be of service to it and be ready for it when it arrives. Um, so, so there's a certain... Yeah, there's a certain humility in the research process too of just I'm just working for the mothership [laughs] . You know? I don't... And I don't know what the mothership is. I don't know where the ideas come from, but I am a grateful servant to it.
56:15 – 1:04:13
Stoicism and self-coaching: why Meditations matters, plus fear vs. wisdom writing
1. TFTim Ferriss
  So, uh, th-this may seem like a forced segue, but I'm gonna force it anyway. I don't think it's forced. You're, you're mentioning being of service. A n-number of things have come up, grieving, death, this active waiting, if, if I could give it that phrasing. One book that came up in my research, and feel free to confirm or deny, because you can't believe everything you read on the internet, but are you a fan of Meditations by Marcus Aurelius?
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yes.
3. TFTim Ferriss
  Why is that?
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yes.
5. TFTim Ferriss
  What is the meaning of this book for you? Or what, what role does it play for you?
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Oh. Um, okay, so Marcus Aurelius was, of course, the great philosopher king. Um, you know, Plato had always said that the ideal society would be a society where the king was also a philosopher. We have that right now in America [laughs] . Sorry.
7. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] I was excited to see where that was going.
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I, I kid. I kid because I love. Um, anyway, uh, Marcus Aurelius was that. He was, he was a great scholar, and he was a great leader. And, um, and he was, like all philosophers, somebody who spent his life in examination of the human condition and, and of his own existence. And his meditations are what survives of his journals, and they're so beautiful, and they're so immediate. I mean, the other thing that great art is, is that it's eternal, right? So the way that Marcus Aurelius speaks to himself in his journal feels like it could have been written yesterday. Um, he is struggling through the same eternal questions that all of us are struggling through. What is the meaning of my life? Um, how do I, how do I serve without being destroyed in service? Um, how do I handle failure? How do I handle difficult people? How do I handle, um, the limits of my powerlessness? You know, what happens when there are situations that are beyond my control? And, and he was a, a stoic as well, so a lot of it is just about, um, can I survive my emotions? Um, can I... And, and stoicism in, in that philosophical realm doesn't mean, you know, white-knuckling your way through pain and pretending not to feel it. It means achieving, going back to Whitman, achieving that sense of being both in and out of the game at the same time, uh, being, being involved and, like up to your neck in the messiness of life, while at the same time achieving a tiny bit of detachment to watch the, I guess what the, in Eastern philosophy they would call the karmic dilemma that you're in, and recognizing that there may be limitations to how much you can control that. Um, and I love the way that he speaks to himself directly in his journals, the way that he, um, that he'll say to himself, "Come on. Come on, man." [laughs] Like, "Come on, Marcus." You know? Like, "Dude, get it together." Like, "It's time." Like, "This is a moment for you to act. Um, you can go down now, or you can find your strength. You can find your resilience." Like the way that he coaches himself, um, I find that incredibly inspiring. And, and I also think, um, my friend Martha Beck, who I talk about a lot because she's a great teacher, but she has a great, a great teaching that she gives people when they're full of anxiety and full of fear. There's ways that you can learn to speak to yourself, um, that will actually mitigate that. And one of the ways that she teaches is that she tells her... coaches her clients to, um, write down, let their fear speak. So you just give your fear its, its day, right? You have to respect it. It exists. It's part of you. You don't wanna cast it away or attack it. You just open up your journal, and you invite your fear to write down everything that it's afraid of, and you listen politely and with n-nonviolent compassion to your fear as it speaks. And then once it's done and it's had its say, you say, "Thank you so much for sharing that. I'm really, I'm really grateful to, that you trust me enough to be this vulnerable and to tell me everything that you're afraid of." And then you say to your fear, "I'm now going to ask you, now that you've had a chance to speak, if you'll step aside, and I'm going to bring another aspect of myself forward, and I'm gonna ask it to speak. So if, fear, if you would just step aside for a moment, I'm now inviting wisdom into the room, and now I'm going to ask wisdom to write down what it thinks and what it suggests in this case." And it's extraordinary to see the wisdom that people find in themselves, um, that you're not just made of fear, you're also made of, of, of grace and of wisdom. And those meditations of Marcus Aurelius, it feels like that's what he's doing. You know? He's writing to himself from a place of fear, anxiety, and uncertainty, and then he's writing back to himself from a place of wisdom. And saying, "Okay, this is, okay, you, this is what you're upset about. I recognize that. I see that, and now I'm gonna ask wisdom to come into the room and this is what it would suggest." Um, so it's so beautiful and intimate, you know, to get to see, um, a great mind like that working with itself in, in, in such intimate setting.
9. TFTim Ferriss
  Well, hot damn, am I glad I asked about Marcus Aurelius.
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
11. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] And for people who have no familiarity with Marcus Aurelius, to put the philosopher label also in perspective from the leadership or w- within the sort of mesh of leadership, he was the last of the rulers known as the five good emperors, and also the last emperor of the Pax Romana, which was, uh, an age of peace and stability in the Roman Empire. So, so very highly effective, highly revered, and also highly reflective.
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm-hmm.
13. TFTim Ferriss
  And so I, I definitely second the recommendation. I would love to chat-
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  It's... Thank you so much, Tim, for, for, for putting him into... Of course, because I'm so fascinated by spirituality and philosophy, I forgot to mention that he was also a badass Roman emperor. [laughs]
15. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
16. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  He, he also had a job. He also had a really good job, really, really good job, and he was excellent at it. So yes, thank you for pointing that out. [laughs]
17. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] Of course. And-
18. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  He wasn't just a really s- [laughs]
19. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
20. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... thoughtful guy. He was also running, like, the world's greatest empire. Um, [laughs]
21. TFTim Ferriss
  He... Yeah, yeah. He was f- I mean, fascinating character, and in some ways a reluctant leader also, much like Cincinnatus and, uh, some others who Wa- George Washington comes to mind. Fascinating, fascinating guy, and I, I would love to leapfrog to Martha Beck because you mentioned this parts work, it wou- which would be one way to put it, letting the fear speak, which makes me think also of something called internal family systems or IFS, which, uh-
22. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  That's exactly what it is. Yep. Uh-huh
23. TFTim Ferriss
  ... super, super, I'll use the word interesting and also, uh, incredibly effective. I've seen, I've seen IFS, uh, mostly as used by, uh, Michael and Annie Mithoefer, who are therapists who work very closely with a nonprofit called MAPS in developing protocols for MDMA-assisted psychotherapy for PTSD. And, uh, both IFS and... Well, I don't wanna actually say this about IFS, but cognitive behavioral therapy has a lot of its roots in Stoic philosophy, which has been used for trauma and PTSD, and then IFS does as well. That's just as a bit of context for folks. And I'd love for you to speak to what else you've learned from Martha Beck. I mean, what are some of the other things that have really stuck for you?
1:04:13 – 1:14:14
Martha Beck’s intuition framework: the “inner compass,” integrity cleanse, and bonfire moments
1. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah. Well, I'll give you, I'll give you one. She's... When I met her, I met her years ago at an Oprah Winfrey event. She... When... If, if you don't know of her, she's a life coach, she's a writer. Um, she's actually the person for whom the term life coach was invented. [laughs] Um, she was the original life coach. And, and I always say, she was Oprah Winfrey's life coach, everybody. So if you just wanna, [laughs]
2. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
3. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  if you just wanna know, like, some credentials, uh, that's Martha. Um, and, uh, when I met her, I met her around the time Rayya was sick. I had, I had reached out to her weirdly, not, there are no coincidences, but, um, we had, we had met years ago, and then she wrote a book called Diana Herself that landed on my desk and I read it and I was like, "This is so dazzling, and, and I need to reach out to her personally and tell her how great it is." So that reestablished our contact with each other. Um, and then very shortly after that contact was established, Rayya got sick, and Martha was right there for us, um, and really walking us through that, in, uh, that, uh, that, that d- death and dying experience in such a, a remarkable way. Um, I, I can truly say that I, I, I, it would have been a very much more painful experience without her help. Um, one of the things that I said to Rayya about Martha once I first started having conversations with her was, I said, "I've always felt like I play the game of life pretty well. Martha took the ball and just left the arena." [laughs]
4. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
5. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Like, here I am struggling to play the game well. She's just like, "Nah, I'm not even gonna play the game by its rules."
6. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
7. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, and, and I didn't even know that you could just leave the game. And, and she's so wild off the charts, and her wildness is that she has this very strong belief, um, that your intuitive nature, um, will take care of everything. But in order to listen to it, you have to step away from trauma and you have to step away from culture. And that often means you have to unlearn every single thing you were ever taught by your family and by your culture about what is right and wrong, and you have to become a completely natural, wild, intuitive being, and you have to guide yourself purely based on, essentially what she would say is based on what your body tells you. Um, so any time that you... And that's located, like I'm putting my hand on it right now, but it's that center located between like your navel and your sternum that's often extremely emotionally reactive. Um, so if I don't wanna do something, if I don't like somebody, that thing knows. It's like a, it's, it's a compass that's never wrong. And culture and trauma and family and training have taught me to override it constantly, right? So somebody invites me to an event, and I, my sternum [laughs] navel area starts to feel sick, um, because I don't wanna do it, but my training and my culture tells me that I have to, um, that's me overriding the only navigational system that is truly my own in order to be a good member of society. Um, and or it's my fear that's overriding it because I say, "Oh, I have to say yes to that invitation because I have to network, you know, and if I say no to this really powerful person, then, you know..." So and that overrides it. Um, any time you say yes with your mind when your body says no, you will lead yourself farther and farther and farther away from your path. And so the work that Martha does is about teaching people how to trust that and only that, and she has navigated her life based on that and only that. And she started navigating it that way, um, not for fun, but because she was dying. Um, she was literally dying of several autoimmune diseases, and she was dying of being a good person. She was dying of doing everything exactly right as she had been taught by her Mormon upbringing and then by Harvard. Um, she went and got three degrees at Harvard, so she went from one really oppressive culture, which was Mormonism, into another one, which was academia, um, and the entire time was trying to be the best, good, moral, ethical person as per culture's recommendations, and she was literally dying of it. And the way that she cured herself was that she went on what she called an integrity cleanse, and this is the most badass thing I have ever heard anybody do.
8. TFTim Ferriss
  I like that.
9. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Check it. This is-
10. TFTim Ferriss
  That is amazing
11. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... this is what... Yeah, it all sounds good until you find out what you have to do-
12. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
13. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... to go on it. And she-
14. TFTim Ferriss
  It's, like, true for so many things. [laughs]
15. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Dude, it's so hardcore. Like, she, like, she got a watch. She got a digital watch. This was years ago before phones. You can do it now on your phone, but, like, you know, ask yourself if you really want to. But she, she did it because her alternative was literally to die, you know? Um, and that's often what will make people have to change. Um, she put a... She got this watch. She ti- she put a timer on it to, to have it go off every 30 minutes, and every 30 minutes, whatever she was doing, she would check and see if she was lying, and if she was lying, she would correct it. So every 30 minutes, every 30 minutes. So that means you're on the phone with your sister, and your sister's saying, "You guys coming for Christmas this year?" And you say, "Yeah, I can't wait. We're so looking forward to it." Beep, beep, beep, beep, beep. "Actually, no, I don't wanna come." [laughs]
16. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
17. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  "I don't wanna come. We're not coming." Um, next 30 minutes, another one. Beep, beep, beep. Everything, every single interaction, every single conversation, no more polite social lies, nothing. This extreme integrity cleanse, and she said it was the most amazing thing in the world. She lost every single member of her family. [laughs]
18. TFTim Ferriss
  Oof.
19. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  She lost her marriage. She lost, like, she lost the, the work path that she was on, and what she became was herself, and what she got back was her health and her wellbeing and her intuition and her instincts. And then she had a few people left at the end of that, and they were her core people, and from that, she built her entire new life that she's still living in now. Um, so it's a massively badass thing to do, but it's pretty cool. And she, she said, "You know, I've softened it a bit." She's like, "I'll tell a social lie now just to be nice." Um, but-
20. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
21. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... but it's, it... You know, she's got a new book coming out next year that's, that's all about this that I can't wait to be out into the world because it's so, um... Yeah, the amount of integrity that she lives with and the amount of integrity that she taught me to live with, um, are huge. And when you asked me, you know, was it hard for me to tell my husband that I was in love with Rayya, uh, that was directly a result of, of seeing the way that Martha lives and, and just having to be in integrity, um, at the same time as being in respect to somebody. I'll, I'll, I'll give you one more Martha Beck line that I love. She says, "There are certain moments of your life where you, where you're standing in front of a bonfire, and you have to jump. You just have to jump into it. Um, and you have to be willing to burn away everything that you've been taught and everything that you're afraid of and just do it." And she said... And I remember her telling me this with such glee. She goes, "It's such a cool moment, uh, that you're in." And, and, and she said this to me, you know, as I was leaving my marriage and going to be with Rayya. She said that, that these bonfire moments are so fantastic because there's only two things that can happen when you jump into a bonfire. One of them is that you find out that it wasn't actually a bonfire, that you f- you were afraid that it was gonna burn you to pieces, and, and it actually didn't. It wasn't as scary as you thought. You did it. You took the leap. It turned out to be kind of, like, warm and soft and easy, so it was no big deal. The other thing that can happen is that it is a bonfire [laughs]
22. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
23. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... and you are incinerated, and your entire life is incinerated by it, and that's even better because then you get to be reborn as a phoenix on the other side, completely new. So either way, you win, so there's no reason not to. Um, you'll, you'll either jump in and find out it was nothing, or you'll jump in and you'll be destroyed, and that's awesome, too. [laughs]
24. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
25. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  So when I say, when I say Martha doesn't play by the game, that's, that's what I mean. Like, that's what I mean about she's not even in the arena that we would call any sort of normal way of living.
26. TFTim Ferriss
  Right, right.
27. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  And, um, and for that reason, she's been, you know, one of the top three most influential people in my entire life. [laughs]
28. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] You're like, "Martha, do we go left, left, right, or straight?" And she's like, "We go up." You're like, "What?"
29. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm-hmm.
30. TFTim Ferriss
  "How do we, how do we do that?"
1:14:14 – 1:31:36
Saying no without explanations: inbox boundaries, Byron Katie’s “simple no,” and practicing with family
1. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, I just wanna clar- I just wanna make sure everybody knows that this is not easy. [laughs] Um, I don't wanna have any illusions for anybody that this is simple, and the closer the relationship, the harder it is. Um, the, the closer and more intimately I'm involved with somebody, the more stakes there are for me and the harder it is for me to tell the truth, and that feels like it should be, uh, you know, there's a paradox. You know? The people you love the most should be the people that you're able to be the most honest with. Well, no, because they're the people who you wanna hurt the least, right? Um, and, and so that's, that's where it's really, really hard. Um, so there's a couple layers of it, right? So if it's somebody [laughs] I now treat my inbox like it's my home because I think it's an extension of my home. So if somebody walks into my home uninvited and announces themselves and doesn't say how they got a key [laughs]
2. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
3. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... and, um, and asks for something, I delete that email, and I will delete that email even if they are a producer for Good Morning America. [laughs]
4. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
5. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  You know? I'm like, I'm, I'm just like, "I didn't invite you in." Um, there are proper channels. You know what they are. Um, I don't know how you got my personal email, and I just, I just delete it. And, and if I feel a sense in my sternum of offense, of feeling like this person has taken a liberty, I don't believe that I owe them anything. Um, I don't believe that I owe them anything any more than if I came down to my kitchen and saw people sitting at my table who I didn't know eating breakfast, I wouldn't believe that I owed the, to make them a cup of coffee. [laughs] I'd be like, "Get out of my house."
6. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
7. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Like, "You're not supposed to be here." And I don't think I even owe them, I don't even think I owe them a polite response. I owe them nothing. I, I didn't ask you to come into my house. I don't owe you anything. So that's the easiest. Those are ones are easy, and I now treat myself to doing that. I mean, I do that every day. Um, I clear my inbox out very quickly that way. And then it's ve- uh, I, I, I'm entertained when they come back later and they're like, "Just circling back," and I'm like, "Yeah, just deleting you again." [laughs]
8. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
9. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Circle back as many times as you want. You are not coming in. So that's simple. Um, if it's a-
10. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] Just bumping this up 'cause I know you.
11. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs] Yeah.
12. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah, yeah.
13. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I'm just bumping you ba- And I'm just... It's like Whack-A-Mole. It's like, I can do this all day. Um, uh, delete, delete, delete. Um, if it's, if it's somebody who I care about, um, if it's something that I'm, that I, that I'm interested in but I'm just not going to do it because I don't want to, um, I will write back and say, "Thank you so much. I'm, I'm really honored that you in- invited me to this, um, but I'm not gonna be able to do this at this time." And I don't feel a need to give a reason. Um, I think a simple no is, is really, really good, and the reason... Sometimes the reason it's good not to give an explanation is that if that person is an expert manipulator, as many of us are, that explanation will not suffice. Um, so it won't matter what you give as an explanation 'cause they can come back and be like, "Well, we can do it by audio," you know?
14. TFTim Ferriss
  Right.
15. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Or we can d- Oh, if you're... "Oh, well, we can do it a different weekend." Um, uh, just no. Um, and, and I learned a lot about this from my teacher Byron Katie, who, who teaches an amazing thing called The School For The Work, um, that's a whole, she's a whole nother, um, another being-
16. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
17. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... who's not, not at all living by the rules.
18. TFTim Ferriss
  She's extraterrestrial for sure.
19. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  She is extraterrestrial. She is n- she is, uh, the only fully enlightened human being I can, I, I, I believe I have ever met. Um, and as such, she does not have any trouble saying an honest yes and an honest no to people.
20. TFTim Ferriss
  She-
21. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  And-
22. TFTim Ferriss
  Just, just to, just to underscore that, 'cause I did a-
23. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah
24. TFTim Ferriss
  ... a, an in-person training with her. I mean-
25. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm
26. TFTim Ferriss
  ... literally no hesitation-
27. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  None
28. TFTim Ferriss
  ... no struggle, no-
29. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
30. TFTim Ferriss
  ... conflict. It's-
1:31:36 – 1:39:29
Psychedelics: visions, limits, and choosing a clear mind
1. TFTim Ferriss
  Y- yeah, this could be, this could be, like, a l- a lot of lead up for a terrible punchline. But do you have any perspective on psychedelics? Do you have any-
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
3. TFTim Ferriss
  ... thoughts at all related to psychedelics?
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah. Yeah. I would love to talk about that. Um, I do, and I've done it, and I've, I've done it recently. Um, and I've done it in controlled settings with people who, you know, are good at it. I've done it with shamans. Um, and I've gotten a lot out of it. I've also stopped doing it recently. So I'm happy to talk about both of those things. Um, and, and I don't think that that should be a condemnation for anybody's exploration of this. Um, I, I think those substances are really fascinating. Um, and my experience of it was exactly as promised, um, that it will open up your entire consciousness where you can move through time and space. You can see things that you never could have seen otherwise. Um, I was given... I had one journey with a shaman's help during the time of Rayya dying that really truly gave me what I needed, um, a piece of information that I needed to get me through to the end of her life, that I think I would have broken if I hadn't been shown that piece of information. And I, and I brought the shaman in specifically because I said, um, "I'm at the end of myself, and I need a vision. Um, I, I, I can't, I, I can't sort this out myself. This is beyond my capacity, and I think it's beyond the capacity of counselors. Um, I need a divine, I need a divine vision. I, I need to see into some other realm on this because this world is not providing the answer." Um, and I got it, and, and it was essential. I also had an experience of being told things [laughs] and shown things in that state that turned out later not to be true. [laughs] Um, and so I know that you can also... You have to be careful. Um, I also had the experience of just basically just getting high, um, you know, just basically getting high with my friends and having us think that we were having divine visions from God, but really we were just fucked up. [laughs] And, um, and really we were just, like, basically w- we weren't much more than high school sophomores sitting around being like, "You know, I think the universe is..." [laughs] You know? Like... And, um, and, and thinking that we were having these really profound experiences, and then later when sobriety came, being like, "Oh, we were just high." Um, so all of that needs to be taken into account, I think. Um, and, and I've also seen people think that they were great healers and great spiritual leaders and be a little bit deceived in that, um, and lead people into stuff that maybe they weren't ready for. Um, I think it's very hard to take a Western mind and try to make it into a 14th century Peruvian, you know? Um-
5. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs] And I think that when people go on ayahuasca journeys and they go to Colombia and they think that's what's gonna happen, there's a lot... The, the rot is deep in the Western mind. There's a lot of ego. There's a lot to untangle. And so if you bring an egoic mind into a sacred circle, I think you can go in some possibly mistaken directions. Okay, all of that is to say, people, do what you want and do what you think is best for you, and, um, and follow your own intuition on it. I followed my own intuition into psychedelics, and then, um, I followed my own intuition out of it, and I don't regret having done it. Um, I may, I may do it again. It, it's not a fully closed door. It's just that right now in my life I'm at a place where I want to have a clear mind, and, um, and I want to see whether I can manage to negotiate my life without being altered in any way. Um, and so I've stopped drinking, and I've stopped, I've stopped doing anything that alters my mind. Um, again, that might not be forever. It's just that's where I'm at as of this moment. So that's my very long answer to your question. [laughs] Um, but, but I have s- I, I do think it's... I do think they're remarkable, powerful substances. I've had great things come out of them for me, and I'm taking a break from it. [laughs]
7. TFTim Ferriss
  Thank you for answering that.
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah.
9. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah, that was just sort of a, a whisper I wanted to pay attention to, so thank you for answering that. I will underscore-
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I have no dog- I have no dogma on it, like really, really, really. A- and I, I may even do it again someday but just, just not for now. [laughs]
11. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I think I went a little too far with it, and I was like, "I'm just getting fucked up now. This is like..."
13. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I think you have to just have to be really accountable to yourself about are you using this, are you using this for transformation or are you using this for escape? And, um, and, you know, only you can know that. [laughs]
15. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah. It's... I, I do wanna underscore a few things that you said since this is, uh, this is, this is a subject and area that I spend a lot of time thinking about, have for the last six years or so, that these are very, very powerful compounds, and they create a plasticity that can be molded for the better. It can also be molded for the worse. And there are just busloads, there are arena loads full of charlatans who have messiah complex, who believe themselves to be able to reach into your soul and fix what is broken, who have no-
16. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Amen
17. TFTim Ferriss
  ... who have no, no track record, no credibility, no, uh, c- ... training that would lend itself to that type of confidence. And, um, you wouldn't go on Craigslist to find, uh, someone to perform neurosurgery on you. And [laughs]
18. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
19. TFTim Ferriss
  I would, I would suggest, particularly if you are psychedelically naive, meaning you have not used these compounds, that you take it that seriously, and that might seem like a, a very, an overstatement, but I don't think it is, uh, because there's, there is a, uh, I, I've found tremendous value in psychedelics over the years, over the past 20 years. Uh, and nonetheless, I, I like to be a, a voice of caution, uh, because th- there's a survivorship bias with the positive stories, if that makes sense.
20. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm. Mm-hmm.
21. TFTim Ferriss
  It's kind of like the mutual funds you read about in Barron's. It's like, yeah-
22. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm-hmm
23. TFTim Ferriss
  ... those are the ones that have survived. But if you have a, you know, thang- 1,000 orangutans flick- flipping quarters, like ev- eventually, or like one of them might have flipped heads 1,000 times.
24. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Wait, did you have a vision where you saw 1,000 orangutans [laughs]
25. TFTim Ferriss
  No, no. [laughs]
26. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
27. TFTim Ferriss
  That would be, that would, uh, that would be very visually arresting, though. [laughs]
28. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  That would be something that you could see in those, in those states.
29. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah, it's kind of the-
30. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um
1:39:29 – 1:45:31
The Artist’s Way and morning pages: recovering creativity and finding the next direction
1. TFTim Ferriss
  that every few years you go through The Artist’s Way course, and I'd just love to hear how you decide when it is time to do that and what role morning pages have for you. If you could speak to that.
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah, and if, uh, if, if people don't know what The Artist’s Way is, it's, um, it's a, a wonderful course that was created 20 years ago, 25 years ago-
3. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah, yeah
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... something like that, by-
5. TFTim Ferriss
  At least 20
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... a woman named-
7. TFTim Ferriss
  Mm-hmm
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... uh, Julia Cameron, and it's, it's a, it's, it's, it's based on the 12-step recovery program, actually. Um, and, but it's a way of recovering your creativity from its trauma. And, um, Brené Brown has talked about this too a lot, about what, what we call art scars that people have, um, for very good reason. [laughs] You know, many, many people were mocked, um, for their creative endeavors when they were children, and they shut it down, um, and, uh, or you were told that y- you can never make a living out of this. This isn't a responsible way to live. This is for children. Put these, you know, put away your childish things and take on the mantle of adulthood. And, and so it's a 12-week-long course, self-guided course, um, where she leads you through a series of questions and exercises that are meant to liberate your inner artist from their wounds. Uh, and, and it's also one of the f- the, the two foundations of The Artist’s Way are the morning pages, which is every morning you wake up and you write for three pages, um, anything, uh, no matter what, as soon as you wake up. And the second thing is the artist date, that once a week you take yourself on a date to something interesting alone, that you, that you go do whatever it is. Um, it could be anything from going to an art gallery to taking a walk in a part of town that you've never seen before, just some- something that you do that is entirely your own. Um, I've said this before and I'll say it again, Eat, Pray, Love would not exist without The Artist’s Way. Um, I was in a terrible depression and in a lot of pain and in a lot of emotional suffering and going through a divorce, and somebody gave me The Artist’s Way, and I did it. And one of the things that happens when you do it is that various ways she asks on almost every single exercise, she's asking you various interpretations of if there was one talent that you wish you had, you know, what would it be? If there was one skill that you would love to learn, what would it be? If there's something you wish you had studied when you were younger, what is it? If there's, if you could have five, you know, talents that you don't have now, what might they be? If you could have five s- And, and she keeps asking these questions in various ways, and you answer them again and again and again. And when you're done doing The Artist’s Way, you go back and you read through all your journals, and you see what keeps showing up, um, because that's your clue as to what the next direction of your life was. And when I did it, what kept showing up was apparently I really want to learn how to speak Italian [laughs] because it was on almost every page.
9. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  It's just like, I wish I could speak Italian. I wish I could speak Italian. And I, and this is the beautiful thing about the way that the mind hides things from us. I literally didn't know that about myself. [laughs] Um, I had no idea that it was such a big deal in my life that apparently my consciousness really wanted to learn how to speak Italian. So for no reason whatsoever, I just started taking Italian lessons, um, at, at night in, in, in night school at The New School of Social Research in New York, which I call night school for divorced ladies, because it was all a bunch of divorced women taking classes to better themselves. Um, and I was one of them. And, uh, I started taking Italian with no plan, and I fell so in love with it, and I said, I, I just, I want to master this. To master it, I'm really gonna have to go to Italy. And that was the beginning of- me creating the idea of going and spending that year traveling, starting in Italy and then going to India to meditate and then to Indonesia, um, it would have never come up. It would have never come up. So, so I can't overstate what you can get out of, [laughs] out of doing The Artist's Way. And I do it, I, I tend to do it between projects. Actually, I'm glad you brought it up because I haven't done it in a while, and I'm just looking over at my bookshelf and I see that the, the book is sitting right there and, and I may take this as an invitation to, um, to... It's a good thing to do during quarantine. [laughs]
11. TFTim Ferriss
  It is. It is, yeah.
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, to, to dedicate myself to it again. I, I... And, and find out... And the other reason that it's important, I think, to do it again and again, is you don't know what you're gonna find. Um, you know? Like, you change. The world changes and you change, and I have a feeling that if I did The Artist's Way again, it's not gonna be, "I want to learn Italian" on every page. I don't know what I'm gonna find. Um, but, but I'm curious enough to find out and, um, yeah. Why don't I, why don't I do that, Tim? Why don't...
13. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Well, thank you. Thank you for reminding me.
15. TFTim Ferriss
  You're welcome. [laughs]
16. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I'm gonna, I'm gonna take it on. [laughs]
17. TFTim Ferriss
  I, I literally have... I'm touching it with my hand because it's, it's on the table where I'm working, The Artist's Way Morning Pages Journal-
18. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Mm
19. TFTim Ferriss
  ... which is a companion volume to The Artist's Way, and I've been using it. I've kind of dusted it off and said, "You know, I think the monkey mind has had free rein for long enough. Let me [laughs] let me trap some of this in the amber. [laughs] See what's going on."
20. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  So cool.
21. TFTim Ferriss
  Uh. [laughs]
22. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  So cool. Okay, that's it. That's it. We're on. It's happening. [laughs]
23. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
24. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I, I feel it. It's a full body yes. This is the other thing I'm, I'm really into lately, is, um, getting a full body yes. You know? Somebody mentions something and your whole body's like, "Oh, yeah, that's on." Which is actually, um, going back to, it's actually why I started doing psychedelics, 'cause I heard somebody talking about it and I got a full body yes for it. Um, and I did it until I got a full body no. [laughs]
25. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
26. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, but, uh, but anyway, uh, so cool. Um, yeah, The Artist's Way, very important. [laughs]
1:45:31 – 1:48:56
Artist dates in practice: tracking the High Line before it existed
1. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah. Yeah. I've, I've been really impressed with the power of morning pages. I was introduced to morning pages by Brian Koppelman. I will admit something rather embarrassing, and that is I've never taken or created an artist date, and I would love to hear, if you have taken yourself on artist dates, what maybe one or two of them have looked like.
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  I... Okay, I'll tell you. One of them was... You know the High Line in New York?
3. TFTim Ferriss
  I do.
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, okay, so before it was created, there was an article about it in The New Yorker saying that there's this weird, strange thing, uh, uh, running up the West Side of New York City. So for those of you who don't know it, the High Line is this amazing elevated pathway, um, just one block above New York that runs from, uh, down in the Meatpacking District up until Midtown. It's expanding now. But it's what was remaining of what used to be an, an industrial railroad track that was an elevated railroad track that ran through the city, and it ran right through the middle of certain buildings in the Meatpacking District because they would bring actually livestock in, um, on those trains and they would butcher them there in the city so that the meat would be fresh, and then they would move the meat out and, um... Anyway, the, uh, it had long been derelict and falling apart, and it was one of those things that was too expensive for the city to tear down and so it just was allowed to kind of rot there. And some very forward-thinking citizens, um, including Gloria Vanderbilt and, um, some other people got together and decided to restore it and to, um, bring it to life as a pedestrian walkway. So it's this beautiful, beautiful th- beautiful gift to the city of New York. But the first time I read about it in New York in, um, The New Yorker years ago, I was living on 39th Street and 10th Avenue at the time, and it was describing where this thing was, and I realized it was right around the corner from me and, and it had not yet been opened to the public at all. I mean, the, the project hadn't even begun. But I made it a point to try to find it. Um, and it wasn't easy to find 'cause it's buried in, like, you know, it dis- the path of it disappears at times and it goes under highways [laughs] and it goes... So I spent an entire day tracking, um, as best I could what was the beginnings of the High Line. Um, and, and even climbing, [laughs] even finding a few spots to climb up and see if I could look at it and get a- above it, trying to get into buildings. So it, it became, like, a sort of Tom Sawyer adventure, um, that I took myself on for a day. So that was my favorite artist date. Um, and, and nothing comes of it. You know, this is the really great thing about these artist dates. It's not... That wasn't toward anything. You know? That wasn't because I was working on a book about New York City. You just do something that you think is interesting and curious, and you see where it takes you. Um, and that's it, and you just make a habit of continuing to do that, and it's about kind of opening up your life to, um, to following your curiosity, even if it, even if there's no cost benefit. [laughs] You know, even if it doesn't turn into some great big project or a new business or, or anything. You just, you just do it because it's fun and because, as I said before, you're not just here to pay bills and die. [laughs]
5. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs] Yeah. I will, uh, I, you know, I'll have to figure out how to make it work in quarantine, but I do need to, do need to get on that artist date. I think that would be very good for my mental health and just my-
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah
1:48:56 – 2:13:33
City of Girls themes, plus closure: resilience, female friendship, and mercy toward yourself
1. TFTim Ferriss
  ... s- spiritual health on top of that. Let's, let's talk about City of Girls for a minute. Uh, this is your latest novel, and I, I think many people know you for your nonfiction without knowing how much experience you have and how good you are at fiction. I think that's worth just saying since-
2. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Thank you, honey.
3. TFTim Ferriss
  Uh, of course. Uh, you know, Eat, Pray, Love, the 800-pound gorilla, 15 million-
4. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  [laughs]
5. TFTim Ferriss
  ... plus copies. I mean, it's just such a beast, which I, which I watched, I, I must say, with admiration, this juggernaut, because my first book came out in April 2007, and you were still dominating and continued to dominate the lists forever. And, uh, so I, I remember watching that phenomenon unfold in real time, which was really fun. So congratulations.
6. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  It was fun for me too. [laughs]
7. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah, I bet. I bet. Uh-
8. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Talk about being both in and out of the game. Like, wow, this is happening. Um-
9. TFTim Ferriss
  Yeah
10. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... I, I didn't do it, but it's happening. Wow. Um, yes. Anyway. [laughs]
11. TFTim Ferriss
  How, how, how closely... This is just a, a, a, a curiosity that came up earlier. How closely did the book proposal for Eat, Pray, Love match the ultimate book, and was, were there other titles you considered?
12. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  The title was the last thing I had, and the title... Now it's so funny because it, it turned into such an iconic... It feels both surprising and inevitable, right? That title really does seem... It's all about the title, right? But, um, but that was the hardest title I ever had to come up with. I, I had to enlist every friend that I knew. I had so many other titles for it, all of them bad. Um, I kept trying to work with puns based on the fact that all three of the countries that I was going to began with the letter I, and I was going on a spiritual experience of the self.
13. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
14. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  So I felt like there was something in there. It was so labored. So all of these titles had to do with, like, the three I's or the I, the, I... Like, In Search of I. Like, every, every... I couldn't get off that, you know?
15. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
16. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Um, and finally it was, it was a friend of mine who came up with the title [laughs] Eat, Pray, Love, and I was like, "Oh, that works." Um, just completely different. Um, but, uh, as for the proposal, um, so again, you know, this, this only works because this was my fourth book. This would not work for a first time book proposal or maybe even a second one. But it was my fourth book, and it was an editor who I had worked with, it, it, who knew me and trusted me, so I was able, I guess, to get away with this. But essentially, I just sat down and wrote him an email, um, a personal email and said, "I have this idea, um, of something that I want to do." And I, I mean, it just poured out of me as a... I think it was, like, if you were to ta- print it, it was probably a page, maybe a page and a half. Um, and I said, "I'm, I want to quit everything, and I want to go on this journey, and I want to look. I want to go to these three countries, and I want to look for pleasure. I want to discover the art of pleasure in Italy, the, the art of, of, of meditation in India, and I want to find the balance between pleasure and spirituality in Bali because they seem to be a culture that's really good at both of those things. And, um, and I want to go for a year, and I want to quit my great job at, at GQ. I want to get rid of my great apartment. I want to stop writing novels. I want to go do this." I, I'd never written anything so personal in my life. I'd, I'd up until that point been a fiction writer and a biographer. Um, and, and that was it. Um, so it was... I delivered what I said I was gonna deliver. I didn't say what I was gonna find. I just said what I was gonna look for. And, um, and, and, and they were generous enough to trust me to let me do it, to give me enough of an advance that I could pay for the trip, which was such a miracle, such a miracle. I still like, [laughs] I still remember that check coming in and being like, "This is..." Because I was recently divorced, I was like, "This is the first money I've ever made that's, that's mine, just mine, the first money I've ever made in my profession as a writer, um, that is just mine, and I get to do with it this adventure." It was, it, it just felt so incredibly miraculous, and it still does. [laughs]
17. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
18. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  It still does.
19. TFTim Ferriss
  What an incredible moment, and what an incredible feeling that must have been.
20. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah. Yeah. It's-
21. TFTim Ferriss
  Uh, y- you, you mentioned the art of pleasure. Uh, City of Girls, as you, as you mentioned, set in New York City theater world of the 1940s. Uh, there's, there's one theme that I'd love to hear you explore or expand upon a little bit that is seemingly deeply embedded in this, and that is what it means to lead a free and open sexual life as a woman without suffering terrible consequences. Can you-
22. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah
23. TFTim Ferriss
  ... speak to that in any way that makes sense to you?
24. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  Yeah. I, I mean, um, I wanted so much to, to, to tell that story and to write that story. I, as a female reader, I've gotten so tired over the years of the, the trope, the cliché of the story of the ruined woman. And, you know, classically, the story of the ruined woman is, um, woman from a nice family, respectable, good prospects ahead of her, makes a terrible decision based on passion and ends up dead. [laughs] You know? Um, it's like one false move and you are dead, and that is the message that those stories convey. I mean, that's Anna Karenina, and it's Madame Bovary, and it's Hedda Gabler, and it's Daisy Miller, and, you know, all of those novels, um, written by men, I should say. Um, w- and I love them as, as works of literature. Uh, as a, as a, as a student of literature, they're, they're some of the best m- books that have ever been written. Um, but it's depressing as a woman because, you know, it really, [laughs] it really does... They're meant to be warnings. Um, they're meant to tell women to stay in their lane. And, and then there's this other side, and let me see if I can get this over the net. There's another story that's told of women, often by women, which is still the story of the ruined woman, um, that something bad happened to a woman and her life was destroyed because of it. And in both cases, what, what it, you know, what it's saying is that women cannot survive life, um, that women cannot survive the dangers of, of being female. They cannot survive their own desire. They cannot survive their own risks. Um, they cannot survive men. And that just doesn't feel true to me based on m- the empirical evidence of how many women there are out there surviving. [laughs] Um, you know, like, I, I, I like to say if, if women could not survive the terrible decision-making that we, that we have sometimes around sex and love, I'm talking about women, our, our own terrible decision-making, um, around sex and love, there wouldn't be a woman left surviving in this world. Like, all of us have just made such bad choices about ourselves and about our bodies, and yet we're here. And yet here we sit eating a sandwich. Um-
25. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
26. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  ... you know, we're, we're here, and we're fine and, and, and, and bruised maybe, but not destroyed. Um, not destroyed. Um, I have tremendous faith in female resilience, and I have every reason to have faith in female resilience because the entire history of womanhood is the history of resilience. And um, and that's a story that I really wanted to tell, um, about somebody who... And I really wanted to tell a story about a woman who is very sexual and, um, is very sexual from a young age and then is very sexual for the entirety of her life, who's very promiscuous, um, and, and has consequences from that of, of all manner and still remains somebody whose sexuality is open and curious and who wants to engage with the world at that level. And I feel like that's a very hard book to find. Um, I, I don't think we've seen a lot of that. Um, and, and I didn't wanna tell a story about a woman who is sexual in her youth and then puts it away to be- get married and become respectable. I wanna tell a story about a woman who's sexual for the entirety of her life. [laughs] And, um, and that is my character, Vivian Morris. And, um, there's a line in the book where she says, "At some point in a woman's life, she just gets tired of being ashamed of herself all the time, and then she can become who she truly is." And I think that's the, um, that's the essence of the book. There's another line in there where she says, um, "You don't have to be a good girl to be a good person." [laughs]
27. TFTim Ferriss
  [laughs]
28. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  And that's, um, that's the trap that I think so many women fall into is, is trying so hard to be good, um, that they are not able to be who they actually are.
29. TFTim Ferriss
  Are there any aspects, portions of any book you've written that you wished readers would pay more attention to? Something that in retrospect was important to you or you think important to the reader that maybe didn't get enough space or that people just didn't take enough notice of. Is there anything where like, man, the thing that people missed or didn't pay enough attention to was this. Is there anything that comes to mind in any of your writing?
30. EGElizabeth Gilbert
  If there is, it's my fault because it's my job to be clear and, um, and, and I, and I take that on as my own responsibility. Um, and I also have, uh, a great sense of the autonomy of the reader to take away whatever they, they need and that they wanna take from it. One thing that I do think is funny, and I wrote about this in Big Magic, is the, the, the absolutely bizarre but very human phenomenon of people putting things into my books that aren't there. [laughs]

Episode duration: 2:13:45

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Intro

Meet Elizabeth Gilbert and the focus of the conversation

Rayya Elias, “The Alpha Wolf,” and choosing truth over plans

Grief without a “plan”: rage, surrender, and the waves of loss

Humor alongside darkness: “If you can’t laugh at death…”

Writing as stillness: creativity as “wordless oneness”

Awe in great art: “surprising and inevitable,” plus poets and novelists she reveres

Curiosity after loss: imagination’s edge and “I want to see what happens next”

Research and structure: Mr. Kisco’s index cards and “past Liz” helping “future Liz”

Serving the “mothership”: ideas as urgent forces and the humility of the craft

Stoicism and self-coaching: why Meditations matters, plus fear vs. wisdom writing

Martha Beck’s intuition framework: the “inner compass,” integrity cleanse, and bonfire moments

Saying no without explanations: inbox boundaries, Byron Katie’s “simple no,” and practicing with family

Psychedelics: visions, limits, and choosing a clear mind

The Artist’s Way and morning pages: recovering creativity and finding the next direction

Artist dates in practice: tracking the High Line before it existed

City of Girls themes, plus closure: resilience, female friendship, and mercy toward yourself

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