January 30, 2025 • 58 mins
In this episode I had the rare and wonderful opportunity to interview a personal hero of mine, the author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love, writer, true creative and teacher, Elizabeth Gilbert. We discuss why the idea of 'purpose' is incorrect and making us confused and anxious, how to identify your calling, the difference between a career, hobby, job and calling, and how she managed setbacks and failure.
We also discuss the creative process, her wisdom for imposter syndrome and how to let go of your worry and anxiety and have an authentic, true human experience. Listen now!
Find Liz here: https://www.elizabethgilbert.com/
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here
back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. If you have been a
long time listener of the podcast, you will know that
(00:21):
there is one ted talk I reference probably three to
four times a year, and it's titled Your Elusive Creative
Genius by Elizabeth Gilbert. This ted talk entirely changed how
I thought about success, how I thought about inspiration, failure,
and on a deeper level, what it really meant to
(00:42):
be human. When Elizabeth or or Liza she's more commonly
known as, released her book Big Magic, it once again
changed my life and it is firmly one of my favorite,
probably most read books of all time. When I was
first really getting listeners with the podcast back in twenty
twenty one, someone asked me who my dream guest would be,
(01:04):
and I said Liz, because of that book, because of
how incredible her mind is, because of all the books
that she has since written, and all the wisdom that
she really has to share. And it was a huge dream.
Back in twenty twenty one one that I really never
thought was going to happen, but now in twenty twenty five,
it's somehow finally come true. And I couldn't be more
(01:28):
excited to have Liz on the podcast to discuss how
to find our purpose, how to keep making and creating things,
dealing with failure, managing success, and the best advice she
has for people in her twenties. This episode is so
very special to me and will forever have a place
in my heart. But I also just hope you all
enjoy it and you learn something all right. Without further ado,
(01:51):
I want to welcome on Liz Gilbert to the show,
to the Psychology of your twenties. Liz, can you briefly
introduce yourself and tell us about your work?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
First, I'm so happy to be here and honored to
be here talking to you. My name is Liz Gilbert.
I'm known, I guess professionally as Elizabeth Gilbert, but that
feels weird to introduce myself that way. I'm the author
of Eat, Pray, Love, and Big Magic and the Signature
of All Things, and City of Girls and a bunch
(02:22):
of other books, and I also have I'm a fiction
and nonfiction author. But I also spend a lot of
time teaching, and I don't teach writing because I don't
know how. But I teach a sort of general spirit
of creativity, what I call creative living, a way of
living where I simply define it this way where you
(02:47):
make your decisions based on your curiosity rather than your fear,
and that ends up becoming a very creative life. So
I'm sort of known also for that as being a
teacher of creativity kind of spirituality.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
That would be an amazing job title to have a.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Teacher teacher of creativity and spirituality.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, I'm like, all right, so new career path unlocked.
That sounds amazing. I think great, let's change the vision
board up. I think I said this in my introduction,
but most people know you for Big not for Big Magic,
for Eat Pray Love. Probably. I think I was a
little bit too young to really understand Eat Pray Love.
(03:28):
But I did really understand Big Magic, and it was
just such a beautiful book that I continue to reference
to this day. Do you remember, you know, in the
interest of understanding purpose, do you remember when you kind
of realized, like, oh, I'm going to be a writer.
I'm going to be this creative, curious person. This is
(03:49):
my calling.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, And I'm really glad you used the word calling,
because I would love to just launch in with some
thoughts that I have about the word purpose and how
how much anxiety that word causes. Can we can we
just start with.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
That up absolutely, because it's something obviously a lot of
people listening to this like in their twenties, and the
amount of them that email me being like, I don't
know what my purpose is.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Oh God, okay, let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Please get into it.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
My honeys, my sweeties, you have been so terribly misinformed.
This is my opinion. Everything I'm saying is my own opinion.
Take what you like and leave the rest. But I
will throw out into the void and it will land
on whoever it needs to land on. That there's this
(04:44):
thing called purpose anxiety, and I scarcely know anybody who
doesn't suffer from it. And I know some of the
people who appear to be at the very very very
top of a purpose driven life and have apparently achieved it,
and they also still suffer from purpose anxiety. And the
reason that everybody suffers from purpose anxiety is because everyone
(05:08):
in Western contemporary culture has been told this same theology,
and it really is theology. And you've been told vary
it's of this from the time you were born, and
you've heard it in every graduation and commencement speech and
in every self help book, and no one who's ever
questioned whether it even makes sense or whether it is
even true. But here's the theology. Everyone is born with
(05:30):
a unique purpose that is completely their own and totally
unrelated to anybody else. It's one thing that only you
can do. Nobody but you can do it. So already
that creates anxiety and me because there's eight billion people
on the planet, and so what I'm supposed to find
something in me that is that no one else can
(05:51):
do like that doesn't the math don't even add up
on that, right, And you should. You should know it
from the time that you're born, and you should always
know what it is. It should be extremely clear what
it is. And then your job is to devote your
entire life to that one thing too. And if you
miss the boat and it's too late and you haven't
(06:13):
gotten on that, you should be extremely anxious and ashamed
of yourself that you don't know what it is. I mean,
this is what people are taught. And then you must
become the master of that thing. You must devote an
enormous amount of time, attention, and money to mastering whatever
that thing is, that unique spark that nobody else has.
And then you must monetize it, because if you make
your money doing anything other than the thing that is
(06:35):
your unique spark and purpose, then you are a failure.
And it's not enough that you must monetize it. You
must become the best at it, and you must also
create opportunity for others, and you must then change the
world through your purpose. This is what literally everybody is
told and no wonder everybody is full of anxiety about it.
(06:56):
And I mean, if we can just break it down
for a minute, it's for well, it comes from a
place of enormous hubris and arrogance to portend to believe,
like to think that you can know what you are
here for, when we don't even know what this is,
this planet, consciousness, this experience, like we don't even know,
(07:18):
We literally have no idea what's going on, and like
why your soul was dropped into your particular body and
born into your like we can't know, and anybody who
pretends that they know you should be very suspicious of them.
So there's an enormous arrogance. Also, can you hear how
self centered it is. Purpose theology comes from Western men,
(07:39):
and so it's all about I have to be incredibly important.
I actually have to be the most important, and I
have to change the world in my own image. And
this whole idea, even that you have to change the world,
there's a tremendous arrogance in that too, because I think
at this point, if you look around the planet, the
world is pretty clearly saying like I wish you people
(07:59):
would stop changing me.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah you've done take a break, Yeah you've done enough,
and that's time led.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
The most purpose driven lives are the people who have
perhaps done the most damaged to the planet and to
other people. So everything about it is so distorted and
and and it's all it does is cause people to suffer.
And I've met and I've met the people who are
living at the top of that game, and they are
not relaxed, they are not at peace, and they never
(08:28):
know whether they've done enough, Have they changed the world enough,
have they made a big enough impact? Oh and if
you're thinking great, I can't wait to die, because then
this will this whole purpose anxiety thing will be over.
You're also supposed to leave a legacy, right, So it
like never ends. The self centeredness, the arrogance, and the
anxiety of purpose theology never end. So what I am
(08:49):
gently here to offer as a counterpoint to a purpose
driven life is a life of presence, because the other
thing about a purpose driven life is that it constantly
has you in the future. You can't live a purpose driven,
anxiety driven theology without always being locked in the future
(09:11):
of like, who am I going to become? What am
I going to do? What is my impact going to be?
Who am I going to affect? And you completely miss life?
You completely miss life. I mean, my favorite spiritual teacher
Byron Katie says, if you want to suffer, get a future.
So this obsession with the future will bring you nothing
but pain. So the contrary position to take is a
(09:33):
life of presence, which is simply being a witness to
the extraordinary, unknowable, miraculous strangeness of being a human being
on this planet and observing it and being like this
is so I mean, because it is objectively interesting. It's
(09:53):
not safe this planet it never has been for people.
But it's a really interesting experience.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
It definitely is.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It's a really interesting experience to be who you are
in your culture that you were dropped in at this
moment of history. And I think that experience itself would
like a few people to relax and observe it and
actually be like this is wild, Like this is absolutely wild.
And I don't know what I am, and I don't
(10:25):
know who I am, and I don't know where I'm going,
and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing,
but it is very interesting to be here. And if
you start from that perspective and you begin to follow
the track of your curiosity of what's most interesting, you
will have an interesting life. You may not have a
(10:48):
life that certain kinds of people would look at and
say is successful.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But I'm not interested in those kinds of people.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I'm not part of the conversation.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Like I have a friend who says, everybody's got a
brother in law named Phil Who's like, yeah, but what
are you doing?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Like what are you doing for your job? Like what's
your plan?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Must be nice to take you know, must be nice
to you know, Like just everyone's got back in their life. Yeah,
and fil must be ignored.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Phil must be ignored. It's so funny, Like I see
this on social media all the time, where it's like
often some young woman or young man like exploring some
creative side of them, making our posting just for fun
whatever it is, writing just for fun, And there's always
someone in the comments being like, must be nice not
to have work a full time job, like must be
(11:39):
nice to take a break, And I'm like, well, yeah,
it is really nice. I'm sure it is really nice
for them.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
In fact, it is, thank you, it's yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
In fact, it's lovely, Like I get it all the
time with people, Like people will come across like the
podcast and come across like my online presence and we'll
be like, wow, you call that work, you call that whatever,
like and get really upset with me, and I'm like, honestly,
all I'm hearing there is a desire to have what
I have, Like you think that your reality of needing
(12:07):
to prove yourself and work hard and never take a
day off and always be like thinking about your family
and thinking about everyone else like that doesn't actually sound
particularly desirable. So I often like that's how I try
and treat it, and like, I just feel kind of
bad for those people who are raised again with the
theology that you have one purpose and if you haven't
(12:30):
found it, bad luck, time to be miserable and just
work the ninety if.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
You have wasted your life. You know, it also treats
life rather than being a miraculous, mysterious, unknowable gift. It
treats it as something that must be earned, that you
must earn your place, You must earn your right to
be here. And whatever created you doesn't seem to think so,
because it just dropped you here. It didn't seem to
(12:55):
think you had to earn your right to be here.
And you know, I also I would love to just
take a moment and talk about these four different things
that people often amalgamate into one thing and that also
causes anxiety. And the four things are hobby, job, career,
and calling. So I just want to take a moment
(13:17):
and distinguish between these four things. Okay, So a hobby
is something that you do because it's fun and you
like it, and that's the thing that you post on
social media and people are like, must be nice to
take a pottery class.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, it is nice. You know, and hobbies.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Actually bring an end to anxiety, like huttering about making
things for no reason, doing something simply because it's a pleasure.
Until very recently, everyone had hobbies and most of life
was just people doing stuff because they liked doing it
and it was fun. And it doesn't have to be monetized.
You don't have to be the best at it, you
(13:52):
don't have to become famous at it. My biggest suggestion
to people who are in purpose anxiety is to get
a hobby that has absolutely no connection to anything productive
and enjoy it, because life is also meant to be enjoyed,
So that's a hobby.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
A job.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
A job is a thing that, unless you are a
trust fund baby or landed gentry, you have to have.
But here's the thing, you don't.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Have to like it.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Like I've had so many jobs in my life that
I didn't like. You don't have to like it. It
doesn't have to be your purpose. You don't have to
be great at it, you don't have to come It
doesn't have to consume your entire life. It's just a
thing you have to do to make some money so
that you can go home and have hobbies.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Right like that, I love that thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Get a job, you know, just get a job.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
It doesn't like like and it's like, don't give your
heart to it. Deliver thirty percent at work, you know,
like they'll never know, Like a job is a place
where you can go and just phone it in and
they'll never know.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yes, I always say to people. I'm always like, just
act your wage, like, act your wage, like if.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
You act your wage exactly, like.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
If you're getting paid minimum wage, minimum worm perfect.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
And this goes totally against capitalism purpose anxiety to say
that in theology, But just to show up, do the
least you can do to get to keep your job,
and then have your life be outside of your job,
with the things that you're curious about, the things that
you enjoy, the people that you like being with. So
that's a job. It's not the same as a hobby.
The next thing is a career. So a career is
(15:23):
a job that you're passionate about, right, that's all a
career is. Don't act like your job is your career
if you're not passionate about it, Like, don't try to
make a job into a career. If you're just like,
this is just my job. You know, But if you
are passionate about it and you feel like this is
what I'm here to do, and I'm here to serve
(15:43):
humanity in this way, then you pour yourself into your job.
So a career is a job that you pour yourself
into because it brings you so much love and satisfaction.
And it doesn't even matter how much they pay you. You
would want to do it anyway, and like you really
do show up for But you don't have to have
a career, like you do have to have a job,
(16:05):
but you don't have to have a career, right, And
if you are in a career and you don't love it,
you should quit and get a job. Yeah, I love
Your career is to start your life.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Just go get a job.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
There's lots of jobs. Just go get a job, and
then have hobbies and then have friends. And then the
final thing is a calling, and a calling is something
that you feel you are compelled to do because it's
a spiritual fulfillment and not everybody has one, and not
(16:39):
everybody needs to have one. And if you have one,
you'll know because you already have it. And if you
don't have one, you don't have to go out there
searching for it, because don't worry about it. It's something
you can't create. You can't create a calling. You either
like higher power gave you one or didn't, and maybe
one will come later or maybe it won't, So you
can just relax about it. And if you've got a calling,
then you devote yourself to it, and it's got absolutely
(17:00):
nothing to do with whether you're being paid or not,
and no one can ever take it away from you.
I can lose my career. So my calling is to
be a writer, and I knew that ever since I
was nine years old, but it wasn't my career until
I was thirty. But through that entire time before it
became my career, it was my calling. So I did
it while I had jobs. I did my calling. Nobody
(17:23):
wanted me to do it, nobody paid me to do it,
nobody was interested in me doing it, and then over
time it became my career.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
My career can be destroyed.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
AI can take my career away, people can fire me,
the world can decide it doesn't want to read a
Liza with Gilbert books anymore. Like, there are so many
ways I can lose my career. I'm not in control.
Of that, and I'm aware of that, and if I
ever lose my career, I'll just go get a job
and go back to having hobbies. But nobody can take
my calling away. Nobody could stop me from writing when
(17:55):
I wanted to write even though they weren't paying me to,
and nobody can stop me from writing now if my
career folds. So that's the difference between a hobby, a job,
a calling, and a career. And it's so important to
know the difference because we live in a culture that
has pushed them all together and said that you should
you should have one thing that's all of that, and
(18:17):
it isn't It isn't true. So I just want to
just clarify that for everybody.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I can honestly feel the anxiety fading from people right now,
because that is probably the biggest serious slash dilemma of
questions that I get, which is, how do I know
what I'm meant to do? How do I choose between
these two jobs that one I'm more passionate about, one
I'm less passionate about. How do I, you know, get
the spark back for life? And honestly, I think a
(18:44):
lot of the questions come back to that distinction between
these four very distinct when you think about it, categories
of being and categories of existing. I actually when I
first started the podcast, it was very similar, like if
it's this weird thing where I just knew that this
is what I was meant to do. It was a calling,
and I genuinely had no listeners. I recorded it in
(19:07):
the back of my car, and I always tell the
story of like in the first episodes, you can literally
hear like trucks going by, you can hear birds in
the background because I'm recording it on my phone, and
it really didn't matter who listened. I just felt like
I had to do it. There's an analogy that you
have in your book and also in your ted talk
about how an idea will sometimes just be dropped in
(19:29):
your lap and you kind of have to make a
contract with it and it kind of appears out of nowhere,
right and it's just like, oh, oh my god, I've
just had this brilliant idea. Some spirit has given it
to me, the wind has shifted and brought it to me.
And I just love how you say it's like whatever
it is is trying to find the person who's going
to make it reality, like it's going to try and
(19:51):
find the best conduit for it to be real. And
I honestly felt that about the psychology of your twenties.
It was like, people ask me how I came up
with the idea, and I'm like, I genuinely have no idea, Like,
I have no idea. It just came to me, and
I just knew I had to do it. But I
do think that my relationship with it changed when I
started making money and when it did become the thing
(20:11):
that paid my bills, that allowed me, you know, it
became a job, a hobby, a career, and a calling
all it was. And I'm sure that was probably the
case with writing for you as well. What happened when that,
when that shifted, when the dynamic shifted entirely.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Well, yeah, when money is introduced, it changes everything. And
it's not that I'm anti money. I'm very delighted that
I can make my living doing this. I think the
really important thing that that I have that I had
to remember, and I've had to carry this through my
entire career, is that well, I mean, it doesn't matter
(20:55):
what your career is. This is and I'm just thinking
this is actually the truth no matter what you're doing,
whether you're a civil engineer or a or a painter,
like it doesn't you know, nothing is promised. You know,
nothing is promised and nothing is owed. Nowhere was there
some sort of contract, either a social contract or a
(21:18):
spiritual contract that said you're assured this, you get to
you know, like this will continue, or you're allowed to
have this, like you know, we're seeing that that as
societies are breaking down in unions of raid and like,
none of this is promised. And you can get angry
about that, or you can just be a Taoist about
it and sort of just go with the flow of
(21:42):
energy of reality. And there's a beautiful line that I
quote to myself all the time. That's from the Bug
of a Gita, which is this ancient Indian Hindu spiritual text,
and there's a line in there where one of the
gods says to one of the heroes, you are entitled
to the labor, but you are not entitled to the
fruit of the labor. And that is something that is
(22:07):
hard to land on modern years, because we have a
lot of sense of entitlement and it's like, well, I
worked really hard, I should I worked really hard. I
therefore should That's the that's the calculus of capitalism, you know,
Like I worked hard, and therefore I should have this.
And the actual reality of life on earth is nobody
(22:28):
told you that.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
I mean, some people told you that who don't know
how the world works. The way the world actually works
is like it shrugs. It's like the world, you know,
the universe is a little bit indifferent. You know, the
universe is a little bit like, oh, maybe you'll have it,
maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have it for a while,
maybe you won't. You know, Like I love that about
like the sort of classical Indian theology and ideas of
(22:53):
God is like God is much less a sort of reasonable,
reigning judge than a kind of batty old lady who
lives on the top of a hill and has money
and gives it to some people who don't deserve it
and gives it to other people who you know, and
like makes promises and doesn't keep them and is a
little bit senile. And it's like that's the actual reality
(23:14):
of life, you know. And so I'm not entitled. I'm
not entitled. I've had books canceled, you know, like I
had a book canceled two years ago, right before it
was published, you know, and it was like, wow, I
could freak out about this and be like, I worked
for four years on this. This is a tragedy for
me that this book isn't being published, or I can
(23:37):
live in accordance with reality and be like, well, that's interesting.
That is objectively interesting that that happened. That is not
what I expected. I think so much of life is
just that is not what I expected. That's interesting. And
the difference between living a life of anxiety and living
a life of creativity. And my friend Martha Beck just
(23:57):
recently wrote a book about how the antidote for anxiety,
the opposite of anxiety is not relaxation, it's creativity. It's
creativity is the only way out of anxiety. And the
only way into creativity is to live from a spirit
of that's interesting, rather than a spirit of like, what
a nightmare. It's also a drama free life, to live
(24:21):
from a place of like, that's interesting. Oh, somebody broke
up with me who I thought I was going to marry.
That is interesting. Wow, I really wanted kids and I
can't have them. That is really interesting. The person I
love the most in the world died who I thought
was going to be like my anchor forever. That's interesting,
(24:42):
you know, that is so interesting? What am I going
to do now?
Speaker 2 (24:46):
So on the.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Video game of life? Like what is my next move?
And the next move? If you want to have a
life without a lot of anxiety, is what would be
the most interesting thing I could do now?
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I also a very equal quote, which is the opposite
of anxiety is trust, and I think that also comes
into play here where you can be thrown like the
most awful, terrible circumstances, but if you trust that you
are going to make it through, maybe if you trust
that you are capable of finding a route out, of
(25:20):
finding your way back to a life that you really
love and that you want, you will make it through.
Most of the time, Like self trust is just such
like I don't know, it's just such an antidote to
so much. It's an antidote to imposter syndrome. It's an
antidote to a lot of anxiety. And I really want
to link back to what you were saying before of
(25:41):
you know, God, the universe is somebody old lady like
living on the top of a Hill just giving out money,
because I see this a lot with people in their twenties,
where it's like, if I work X amount of hard,
I will receive why amount of reward. And I always
think about it in the context of people studying for exams, right,
very common thing that you do during this decade. Someone
(26:02):
could study the exact same amount of hours of you
as you have the exact same content and get a
completely different grade, could understand it completely differently, and sometimes like.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Luck, somebody can study a lot less than you and.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, exactly exactly, and it's like, okay, so we all
think that it's just hard work, and it was actually
something I had to really accept where I was like,
it's okay for a bit of this to be luck.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Like it's actually okay, sure.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, And I kept worrying. I'd be like, well, luck
isn't luck isn't promised. So if my life has been
given to me by luck, like as soon as the
tables turn, I could not have my life anymore. So
I'm going to use hard work as an insurance. And
eventually you have to kind of let that go because
it makes you feel like every single thing that you
do is tied to how much you want it and
(26:49):
how many hours you're willing to put into it, which
is not true.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
It's just simply not It's all based on the devastating
wish that life would be fair and sensible, and there's
very little evidence that I have seen to support that
it is either of those things.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
But it is once again interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
The batty old lady who lives on the top of
the hill, who's half seen aisle and holds all sorts
of power and forgets your name, like promises you in
inheritance and then that's.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Name, yeah, is like I already gave it to that Poste'm.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Sorry, give it to the gardener, like you know, like wait,
but I'm your grandchild.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well are you? You know? Like it's it's so.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
And this is why I think that the manifestation theology
is a bit dangerous. This idea you made a sort
of joke about vision boards, and vision boards can be
really sweet. And there is something about that. There is
a it's not that you're helpless, there is a there's
a push and a pull. There's a part that you
have control over and there's a part that you don't.
And the way I describe it in neat prey love.
(27:49):
It's like a circus trained circus acrobat riding on two
horses at the same time, you know, like one foot
on two horses around a ring. And the play that
I feel in my own life between my own will
and what can only be called destiny or fate is
I've only got a foot on one of those horses,
you know, and the other one it looks like it's
(28:11):
running right alongside me.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
But at any moment, anything could.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Happen, you know, like anything could happen that changes the game,
and how do we hold our equanimity? And they're both
running at full speed, by the way, you know, And
the really good acrobats are the ones who are just
like and they're sparking, and there's sparkly leotard with.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
A big smile like and a plume of like here
we are, We're on the ride, you know.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So it's yeah, but there's there is no promised outcome.
The outcome is not promised. You're entitled to the labor,
but you're not entitled to the fruit of the labor.
And if, gosh, if there's one thing that could make
you happier than anything else, it would be to release
any sense of entitlement to anything, because the most depressed,
(28:57):
outraged and anxious that I have been in my life
has been when I didn't get what I want and
I had to suffer through some sort of a tantrum
about it for however amount of time until I surrendered too.
You're not You ain't getting it.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Don't matter how much you want it, you ate.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
You cannot make that person love you. You cannot make that
person love you. You cannot change the past, you cannot
change people's opinions of it.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
You can't.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And so I think the reason I'm a lot more
serene in my fifties than I was in my twenties
was because in my twenties I was still pretty sure
I could get what I wanted if I tried hard
enough and worked hard enough or manipulated enough, and I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, that's a lesson. That's a lesson in that we
all learn eventually. And I always think about it, as
have you seen the Harry Potter films?
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yep? Of course, do I not have eyes?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Sometimes if you've got to ask, because there'll be people
who are like what No. I always think about this scene.
It must be in the first movie where they're going
to find the Philosopher's stone, and they fall into this
pit of vines that like choke them and like just tightening,
and every time they like struggle against it and they move,
it just gets tighter and tighter and tighter. And it
(30:17):
must be like COMIONI or someone realizes, like if I
just relax, they'll let me go, They'll let me go,
and I will just fall straight through. And it is
such a hard thing to do because naturally you want
a good life and you want to be happy, and
you want to find love, and you want to feel
(30:37):
like you're here for a reason. Obviously, like you can't
know what that is. So sometimes you do just have
to do the opposite of what every single instinct in
your body is telling you to do, and that is
to just relax. And I think that there is a
difference between like survivor like survival instincts and an instinct
for living. And I think our living instinct and our
(30:59):
life is instinct is to relax and is to just
have a little bit more fun. But we're confusing that
with our survival instincts, which are like no run produced
like hit scream somewhere along the way, like those have
gotten crossed, and so now we just feel a lot
more panicked about everything, and we think that small things
are going to cost us our life, you know, not
having a job that we love, not having people like us,
(31:23):
like all these things are a lot more going to
be a lot more costly than they actually are. That's
just how I see it. And when I relaxed into that,
it felt a lot better. I want to ask you
about a bit of a turning point in your career
and in your life, and it was the success of
E Prey Love. Julia Roberts starred you in a movie.
(31:46):
That's probably something that only three or four people can say.
But what happened afterwards? You know, you wrote this book,
it was it's beautiful, it became incredibly popular. How did
you manage or deal with the expectations that you may
be experienced for your next book or for after that,
(32:07):
the initial fame and maybe past.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Oh what a great question.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
So do you know I mean, I'm talking like I
know anything about mathematics, but do you know the principle
of absolute value?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I'm going to just throw it out there and explain it.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
But like, imagine that you're looking at a number line,
and there's a zero in the middle, and then the
positive numbers go out in one direction, positive one through ten,
and then the negative numbers go out in the other direction,
negative one through ten.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
So pick a number three, right, So there's a positive
number three and there's a negative number three right on
that line. But they share the same absolute value. So
the absolute value means the distance from zero. So there's
a zero in our emotional life, which I would describe
(32:59):
as just sort of like are like stability, constancy, a
sense of belonging, a sense of balance. That's zero, that's
point zero, right, And then there are these horrible things
that happen on the negative side of the scale, and
there use wonderful things that happen on the positive side
of the scale. Here's where things can get really confusing.
(33:22):
Sometimes it makes sense that when a horrible thing happens,
a divorce or an illness, or a death, or a
terrible breakup or massive disappointment or a natural disaster, it
makes sense that you would be really shook by it.
But it doesn't make sense that you would be equally
shook when a wonderful thing happens. Because we're trained to
(33:45):
think that the wonderful. Things are great, But to your
nervous system, there's an absolute value of distance from zero.
If zero is what I'm used to, what I am
accustomed to, and what I am normal to, and a
really big in the positive direction, a number ten. So
Eppray loves a number ten on that. It's like you
(34:05):
just wrote I heard the other day that it's like
the second best selling memoir of all time. You know,
it's like, yeah, so famous, Like yeah, Julia Roberts, you're
a millionaire now Julia Roberts is playing you in a movie.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
You're a famous.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
You never have to get a job again, you know, like, yeah,
all this stuff has happened. This is a ten, this
is a plus ten. The absolute value is it's ten
steps from zero, which has the same impact on my
nervous system as if there was an earthquake or a
death in the family, because it has taken me so
far away from what I thought was normal. Right, So
(34:44):
it's really important to understand and to expect in life
that really good news things can also shake you to
the core because it's a long long way away from normal.
So what happened was I had to get back to neutral.
I had to get back to zero. And the only
way that I could do that was that I took
(35:05):
a year off, almost a year off from doing anything
in public, and I started a garden. I literally had
to get back. I had to get on my knees
in the ground because I felt so ungrounded.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
People were telling me all sorts of things.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
About who I was and what I was and what
my cultural importance was, and so I just had to
get down to the level of the earth and I
gardened for a year. I didn't do any speaking events,
I didn't teach, I didn't write anything, and I grew vegetables.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
That's how I got over it.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
And after a year in the garden, I remember it
was like wintertime and I was raking up the leaves
and composting things, you know, calloused hands and like just
dirty clothes is what did it? And I was and
then I heard in my head the first line to
the next book. It was like it's like the leaves
(36:01):
were falling, and like a leaf fell into my mind
and it was the first line to the next book.
And I was like, Okay, I think I'm ready to
write again. So you have to whether you've had a
hugely positive massively fantastic, big new crazy thing happened in
your life, or a hugely negative, massively horrible, big new
crazy thing in your life. You've got to learn how
(36:23):
to ground, and it's very hard to do in this
day and age, especially with the constant distractions of everything
that's on your phone. But you've got to kind of
get like low to the earth and like go to
the beach and go on the ocean, like it's you
have to get kind of animal, you know. It's like
I've got to get with elemental back down to the
(36:46):
waters like fire and water and earth, because and you
have to remember the sort of element of yourself rather
than all the kind of crazy information that people are
telling you about you.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
I remember when the Psychle Oldivia twenties was becoming really
really popular and it was going viral and it was
just thousands of people listening to it all the time.
I remember never being more miserable and like crying constantly.
I would call my partner Tom, and I would call
my mom and my dad and just be like, this
(37:18):
is gonna get taken away from me. How do I
adjust to this? And I remember exactly the moment when
I was like I'm gonna be okay. And I went
back to where I grew up, which is Crumbin in Queensland.
It's paradise on Earth. And I went on this hike
and I found a mango tree that had dropped all
these exactly. And it's so funny you were saying that
(37:39):
because I literally remember picking up a mango and like
I didn't have a knife or fork, and I just
like ripped it open with my hands and like was
eating it. And I was like, oh my god, I'll
always have this, Like I can come and find this
mango tree if anything terrible happens.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
And yeah, Earth, yeah exactly, you belong What is Mary
Oliver has a poem your part in the belonging of things?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yes, yeah, great.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Great success and great failure can lose your sense of belonging.
But if you get close to nature, you'll remember that
you belong here.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
I love that story.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
It was amazing. I still remember the taste of that
mango like it's very vivid. But and I went back
actually recently in the mango tree wasn't there, so I
guess it just appeared when I needed it. It's actually
something you may not know, is that to celebrity name
drop in here, Taylor Swift actually referred one of your
Ted talks. Do you know this?
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I did hear the head.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
You do know this, okay? And I feel like what
was so interesting was she was saying referencing you and
her creative process and being like the drive to keep
creating even when people hate what I've done, even when
I've failed, even when I've you know, not had the
success that I wanted. I just have to create. And
(38:59):
I always like that analogy as well, like not to
not that anyone's theory about how they should live their
life requires proof, but you know, seeing that her creative
processes continue to evolve and allowed her great success, I
feel like she's kind of onto something. And I mean,
you know that's came from you. So I think when
it comes to like imposters in him and feeling like
we're going to fail because we've had some success, or
(39:21):
feeling like we need to now do things for other people,
true creatives really understand that again, it's not just a job,
it's not a profession. It's a calling. And whether you
have zero readers, zero listeners, zero viewers, or a million,
hopefully like what you're creating will be the same. But
within that journey, how have you dealt with failure? I
(39:46):
know you talked about you had a book canceled. I
don't even know what that means. To be completely honest,
neither happened.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
I wrote a book that was set in Russia and
a novel that was set in Russia, and when I
announced it, there was an enormous outcry from Ukrainians saying like,
you know, how could you be doing this right now
and pulling the world's attention to Russia when we're being
killed and murdered. And actually, I'm it made a lot
of sense to me when I heard. So when I
(40:16):
say that it was canceled, that's a dramatic way to say.
I like drama. I'm an artist, but it's a dramatic
way to say. I mean, it was quite dramatic because
it was like trending on Twitter, and you know, they, yeah,
you thousands of people are hating me and telling me
that I work for Putin and that I'm awful and
going on Goodreads and putting one star reviews for a
(40:37):
book that wasn't even published yet. So there were thousands
of one star reviews saying like this is the worst
book in the world. We hate this book, you know.
I mean, it was you know, it was a dramatic moment.
But I grounded myself. I have practices that I do
and spiritual practices that I've learned over the years to
ground myself so that I could actually listen to what
(40:58):
they were saying rather than feeling that I was being persecuted.
And when I listened to what they were saying, it
made a lot of sense to me, and I was like,
you know what, I get it. I'm going to postpone
this book. So it just we just decided not to
publish it. Someday maybe it'll be published. But it became
very simple. Once you're grounded, the decisions become very simple.
When you're in anxiety or fight, flight or trauma, you
(41:21):
don't have access to your reasonable mind and everything feels
like it's on fire. So that's why it's so important
to learn how to ground. But I was going to
say one other thing about the creativity. I think part
of the thing is that I know how creativity works
through my nervous system and through my mind, and I
know that my fear center is the oldest part of
(41:42):
my conscious mind. So before we had anything else, when
we were evolving into these humanoid forms, we were given
this incredible capacity for fear and alarm. My friend Martha
calls it fifteen puppies in a snake. So are fifteen
puppies in a cobra, Which means if you're in a
room and there's fifteen pups and a cobra, your attention
(42:02):
is going to be on the cobra, you know, Like
if it isn't, you're not going to live long. If
you're the kind of person who's like, oh, there's about
the poppies. You know, like you your mind will be
and until that cobra is taken care of, you will
not see those puppies, you know. Like that's reality of survival.
That's the survival gene that you were talking about.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
We all have that.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
We're only here because our ancestors paid attention to the cobras. Right,
So this is deeply embedded in my brain that I'm
looking for things all the time that are going to
kill me. I'm looking for things that are going to
go wrong. It's it's wired in my creative mind. Only
came in online about one hundred thousand years ago. Our
shared creative mind, but based on what anthropologists and scientists believe,
(42:46):
so it's new. The other one is billions of years old.
The fear center is billions of years old. It's just
been evolving and evolving and evolving. Even tadpoles have it,
you know. But so whenever I create something, the creative
impulse comes and says, I want to make something that's new.
My fear center, its number one job is to never
(43:06):
let me do anything new, because it has to assume
for my survival that anything new has the potential to
kill me. So my fear only wants me to do
what it does every what I do every day, because
my fear is like, it's safe if you do this.
No one has died yet from you doing this. So
(43:27):
when I introduce into my mind I'm going to do
this new thing, my fear freaks out and it's like,
you cannot do that.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
That will kill us. We don't know.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
My fear is not allowed. My fear's job is to
not let me do anything where it doesn't know what
the outcome is.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
And creativity is nothing but doing.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Things where you don't know the outcome is. That's all
it is, and that never changes I mean, I've written
ten books now and I still don't know what the
outcome is going to be. When I start writing a
book and I still have my fear saying you can't
do it.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
I've got to shut it down. You're going to die.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
And so the fact that I know that that's what's
happening from an evolutionary standpoint makes it easier for me
to be like, oh, this is a natural process that
my fears is saying these things. But my more evolved,
more recent part of my brain, the Liz four point zero,
actually would really like to try to do this thing.
(44:19):
And I need to tell my fear that it's unlikely.
No one has yet died from my books, so it's
unlikely that somebody will die.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Maybe a severe paper cut, but yeah, that's about it.
I think we're already it.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Fell on someone's head off a bookshelf, but I think
that's about, yeah, the worst damage that it's.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah, I want to talk about now that we're on
the theme of writing books. You literally, like three days
ago announced all the Way to the River, and I
watched the video that you've put out explaining it. Semi
cried about it, not to like make myself seem like
too much of a fan. But can you explain the
(44:57):
premise of this book for people who may not know
what went into making it.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
So this is a memoir, and it's about my relationship
with my best friend in the entire world ever, whose
name was Raya Elias. And we were friends for gosh,
we're friends for sixteen years, fifteen or sixteen years, and
then we very gradually over the course of that friendship,
(45:25):
we fell in love with each other. And I was
married to somebody who I loved very much. I was
married to a man. She was gay, I wasn't or whatever.
I don't even know what that means. I don't even care.
And she was then diagnosed with terminal cancer. And at
the time of her diagnosis, I.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Was no longer able to.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Knowing that she had six months to live, I was
no longer able to continue just pretending that this was
my best friend, and I needed to find my voice
to her and to my now ex husband that I
need to go meet with this person in a different way.
And she started to call her death the river, and
(46:13):
she said, I want you to walk with me all
the way to the river. And I did, and that
may sound to people who are listening to it who
don't know the story like a very romantic story, and
there were aspects of it that were very romantic.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
It was also an insane journey.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
She was a drug addict in recovery who went back
into active drug addiction before her death in a way
that just ripped the rug floor and ground out from
under both of us. I fell into a state of
totally toxic codependency and love addiction with her. It was
a hell of a time and it was a hell
(46:50):
of a story. And it's taken me seven years to
write it because it took me this long to heal
from it and to find my grounding again after that
and to even understand what had happened. And in many ways,
it's a book about how lost we can get from ourselves.
Raya got very lost from her grounded center during that time.
(47:12):
I got very lost from my grounded center during that time.
And it's a book about recovery and resilience and finding
your way back to back to your center after having
been through a time of such drama and trauma.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
When you were writing it, did it feel most like cathartic?
Like do you feel like you've wrote it more for
yourself than for an audience, or is there something you're
kind of hoping that people are going to get out
of it.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
I always feel, I mean, I write things in order
to understand my life, and I write my way into understanding.
So it was absolutely cathartic that said, it's the book
I didn't want to write. You know, interesting are parts
of that story that I was like, I just still
want that to not have happened that way, Like I
still want and I know we all have this in
(47:58):
our lives, like chapters of our life where it's like listen,
I've reconciled with it and I've moved on, but like,
don't think I still don't wish it went a different way,
you know, that I had gotten a different outcome or
that they had gone in a different way. But it
is a lot of the books about surrender as well,
and surrendering into reality. So yeah, I wrote it for myself,
(48:18):
but I also I think that it's part of my
destiny to be a person who has things happened to
her there are really hard, and then interprets and translates
those things and puts them out in public to say,
(48:39):
like here, has this ever happened to you? If so,
here's some thoughts I have on this, you know, here's
some things I've learned from this, And I think that's
part of what I'm I think that's part of what
I'm meant to do. So even as I was writing
the book and exposing these absolutely horrific aspects of her
and me, or it's like, this is exactly the stuff
(48:59):
I don't want people to know about me. This is
exactly like this is counter to image management.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Is to write a book like this.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
And my friend Glennon Doyle, the writer Glenn and Doyle,
read it when it was a manuscript and said, this
is the most what did she say, the most self
accountable thing I've ever read, Like this is a masterclass
in self accountability. But that's also what I feel. I
really want to be a very self accountable person. I
don't want it because the opposite of being self accountable
is being a victim. And you know, that book was
(49:32):
a forensic effort for me to try to is a
forensic effort for me to try to be like, what
was my part in this? You know, like how did
I I do feel that a multiple points in our lives.
We will find ourselves saying how did I end up here?
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Like?
Speaker 3 (49:51):
How did I end up in this? How did I
end up in this toxic thing? How did I end
up in this dysfunctional relationship? How did I end up
in this abuse? How did I end up in this
self abnegation and self betrayal?
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Like?
Speaker 2 (50:04):
How is that me? You know? And it's very easy
to end up in.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Those sorts of fields of confusion and not so easy
to find serenity and clarity again, but it's findable.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
So this is the book helps people.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Reya always wanted me to tell the story and said
it'll help some people, and so.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
I'm hoping that it will. And when does it come out?
That's probably the first thing I should have had.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
September ninth of twenty twenty five. So it's it's it's coming.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Right around the corner. It's going to be an amazing
that maybe very dark and deep Christmas present for someone.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Last morning, I have been told by those who have
read it.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
A friend just texted me yesterday and I gave him
a copy and he said, I've been with your book
all day and I'm He's like, I just keep going
back and forth from laughing my head off to cry
my eyes out, and I'm like, well, that feels about right.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
That's exactly what that time felt like to me.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
So yeah, sounds like life. That's giving me a hurt. Well,
I want to thank you so much. Now I want
to ask you one final question. This is the question
I ask all of my guests, and I want to
see what your answer is going to be. So, what
is your biggest piece of advice for people in their
twenties or the thing you wish you knew when you
were in your twenties? You know it is a big one.
(51:21):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Okay, for me, I'll give two because they're separate.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
My biggest piece of advice is again I'm going back
to the blog of a Gita. It is such a
I mean, wisdom texts, Ancient wisdom texts are so handy
because they are the distillation of millennia of human experience
and wisdom. So it's not an accident that I keep
(51:46):
reaching for this seven thousand year old text.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
And quoting from it.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
But one of the lines in there is it is
better to live your own life imperfectly than to live
a perfect imitation of somebody else's life. And that sounds
like it could be a meme on Instagram right now,
but it is that is deep, deep wisdom. It is
better to live your own life imperfectly than to live
(52:13):
a perfect imitation of somebody else's life. I did a
pretty good imitation in my twenties of a lot of
lives that I had seen modeled for myself, and it
almost killed me, and for me personally, it would have
What I wish I had known is to avoid romantic
immashment at such a young age. Even though it was
(52:33):
the thing I wanted more than anything, and longed for
more than anything, and hunted more than anything, it actually
took me the farthest away from myself, especially as a woman.
It made me be in a constant state of response,
especially to men, where from the minute I woke up
in the morning till I always lived with somebody. For
(52:54):
the minute I woke up in the morning till the
minute I went to bed at night, I was aware
of him. I was responding to him, ape shifting around him.
I was trying to deliver. I was trying to deliver
some version of myself that would be pleasing. And it
was a part time job. I mean maybe a full
time job. In order to get from him, whoever the
hymn was fill in the blank hymn, in order to
(53:15):
get from him love, validation, acceptance, and affection. I turned
myself into all sorts of people, and I gave all
this time energy that I wish I could have every
single minute of that time back, every single minute of
time that I spent trying to get somebody to love
(53:36):
me the way I wanted them to love me. I
would like every single minute of that time back. And
do you know what I would do at that time.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Nothing. I would just sit.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
Around looking at things like reading books, walking around, eating
mangoes off the tree, smelling pine cones, jumping in water.
I would do nothing of any value if I had
every minute of that time left. But the amends that
I'm making to myself is that for the next half
of my life, I'm keeping it all. I'm keeping all
(54:09):
that time for myself and to do nothing with.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
I think that's an amazing philosophy, an amazing philosophy to
have the center romantic partners in your twenties. Honestly, it's
a great tip. So I want to just thank you
one more time for coming on the podcast and for
sharing all of your wisdom. I honestly feel like I've
just done an hour of therapy, free therapy, So thank.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
Me too to gain Yeah, it works both ways.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Yeah, I was so light and I am.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
I hope it's not patronizing for me to say this
to you, like sister to sister, woman to woman.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
I am so fucking proud of you.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Oh my goodness, I am wow proud of you.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
For creating what you created out of your own imagination
and out of your own creativity. And I will I
will tell you something. What you have and what you are.
Nobody can take away. Nobody can take away what you
have and what you are. You did this and I
am so so proud of you for it.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
Oh my goodness, thank you so much. That genuinely probably
made my year. What a what a highlight. I appreciate
it so much, and you also have Sorry, I just
need to gain my words back. You have. You're in
Australia at the moment for some amazing live shows and
a workshop in Sydney, I believe.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, I'll make.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
Sure I leave tickets for that. But what cities are
you visiting while you're while you're down on.
Speaker 3 (55:35):
I'm going to Sydney Melbourne. Sorry Sydney melms brizsy.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Oh she's a local. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
And Hobart, which is the one that I demanded to
go to. I'm so sorry. Perth, don't at me. I
really really really wanted to come to Perth, but they
didn't have a venue available that would have been the
right size for what we needed.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
So wasn't it. Will do it.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
But I have a fascination with Tasmania, and I also
make it a point whenever I do these tours to
try to go to places people don't normally go. And
so if you're in if you're in Tasi, calm because
it's gonna be great. And Adelaide as well. So Adelaide,
(56:21):
and if anybody's listening to this in New Zealand, I'm
going to Auckland as well. Not to say that I'm
lumping you together with Australia and New Zealand. I fully
recognize your your absolute beautiful autonomy and separateness, but well,
well I'm in the neighborhood. I'm also to Auckland, so
so please come and if you've never I feel like
I'm on the tourism board for Tasmania right now. But
(56:41):
if you've never been to Tasmania, like I came there
ten years ago and I'm obsessed with it, and I'm
going back to the Museum of Sex and Death because
it's the most incredible place like I've ever been to.
I feel like it's the most wild thing I've ever
seen a human create. Is that entire like the whole
city is beautiful. So there's still tickets left there, There's
still tickets left in Adelaide. I think there's a few
(57:04):
tickets left in Brizzy. But but come and come and
join us. It's going to be more like this.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Yeah, which relates. Yeah, tidbit. I was literally in Hobart
like three days ago because my best friendly then yeah,
and I got her ticket to your show, so hopefully
she loves it. It's honestly magical. I saw a white
I saw an albino stag. I picked like fresh blackberries
off of the trees, like just like only a kilometer
out of the city. It's beautiful. Go to preachers the bar.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
It's the best, Okay, And thank you, sweetheart for sharing
me with your audience and and everybody out there listen.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
It's uh it's all going to be all right.
Speaker 3 (57:45):
Just just just relax and just relax as you're being
tormented and tossed about in wild seas.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
I feel like that summarizes it. Just surrender us. So
surrender was the theme of this episode, and I want
to thank everyone for listening. If you've made it this far,
what's our emoji for the day, Let's choose the Earth.
Can If you've made it to this part of the show,
drop an Earth emoji in the comments so that we
can talk and chat about your thoughts, feelings. Maybe you'll
questions your qualms about this episode. Make sure that you're
(58:18):
following along on Instagram at that Psychology podcast. And until
next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself,
and we will talk very very soon.
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners, Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here
back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. If you have been a
long time listener of the podcast, you will know that
(00:21):
there is one ted talk I reference probably three to
four times a year, and it's titled Your Elusive Creative
Genius by Elizabeth Gilbert. This ted talk entirely changed how
I thought about success, how I thought about inspiration, failure,
and on a deeper level, what it really meant to
(00:42):
be human. When Elizabeth or or Liza she's more commonly
known as, released her book Big Magic, it once again
changed my life and it is firmly one of my favorite,
probably most read books of all time. When I was
first really getting listeners with the podcast back in twenty
twenty one, someone asked me who my dream guest would be,
(01:04):
and I said Liz, because of that book, because of
how incredible her mind is, because of all the books
that she has since written, and all the wisdom that
she really has to share. And it was a huge dream.
Back in twenty twenty one one that I really never
thought was going to happen, but now in twenty twenty five,
it's somehow finally come true. And I couldn't be more
(01:28):
excited to have Liz on the podcast to discuss how
to find our purpose, how to keep making and creating things,
dealing with failure, managing success, and the best advice she
has for people in her twenties. This episode is so
very special to me and will forever have a place
in my heart. But I also just hope you all
enjoy it and you learn something all right. Without further ado,
(01:51):
I want to welcome on Liz Gilbert to the show,
to the Psychology of your twenties. Liz, can you briefly
introduce yourself and tell us about your work?
Speaker 2 (02:02):
Yes.
Speaker 3 (02:02):
First, I'm so happy to be here and honored to
be here talking to you. My name is Liz Gilbert.
I'm known, I guess professionally as Elizabeth Gilbert, but that
feels weird to introduce myself that way. I'm the author
of Eat, Pray, Love, and Big Magic and the Signature
of All Things, and City of Girls and a bunch
(02:22):
of other books, and I also have I'm a fiction
and nonfiction author. But I also spend a lot of
time teaching, and I don't teach writing because I don't
know how. But I teach a sort of general spirit
of creativity, what I call creative living, a way of
living where I simply define it this way where you
(02:47):
make your decisions based on your curiosity rather than your fear,
and that ends up becoming a very creative life. So
I'm sort of known also for that as being a
teacher of creativity kind of spirituality.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
That would be an amazing job title to have a.
Speaker 2 (03:04):
Teacher teacher of creativity and spirituality.
Speaker 1 (03:07):
Yeah, I'm like, all right, so new career path unlocked.
That sounds amazing. I think great, let's change the vision
board up. I think I said this in my introduction,
but most people know you for Big not for Big Magic,
for Eat Pray Love. Probably. I think I was a
little bit too young to really understand Eat Pray Love.
(03:28):
But I did really understand Big Magic, and it was
just such a beautiful book that I continue to reference
to this day. Do you remember, you know, in the
interest of understanding purpose, do you remember when you kind
of realized, like, oh, I'm going to be a writer.
I'm going to be this creative, curious person. This is
(03:49):
my calling.
Speaker 3 (03:51):
Yeah, And I'm really glad you used the word calling,
because I would love to just launch in with some
thoughts that I have about the word purpose and how
how much anxiety that word causes. Can we can we
just start with.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
That up absolutely, because it's something obviously a lot of
people listening to this like in their twenties, and the
amount of them that email me being like, I don't
know what my purpose is.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
Oh God, okay, let's get into it.
Speaker 1 (04:21):
Please get into it.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
My honeys, my sweeties, you have been so terribly misinformed.
This is my opinion. Everything I'm saying is my own opinion.
Take what you like and leave the rest. But I
will throw out into the void and it will land
on whoever it needs to land on. That there's this
(04:44):
thing called purpose anxiety, and I scarcely know anybody who
doesn't suffer from it. And I know some of the
people who appear to be at the very very very
top of a purpose driven life and have apparently achieved it,
and they also still suffer from purpose anxiety. And the
reason that everybody suffers from purpose anxiety is because everyone
(05:08):
in Western contemporary culture has been told this same theology,
and it really is theology. And you've been told vary
it's of this from the time you were born, and
you've heard it in every graduation and commencement speech and
in every self help book, and no one who's ever
questioned whether it even makes sense or whether it is
even true. But here's the theology. Everyone is born with
(05:30):
a unique purpose that is completely their own and totally
unrelated to anybody else. It's one thing that only you
can do. Nobody but you can do it. So already
that creates anxiety and me because there's eight billion people
on the planet, and so what I'm supposed to find
something in me that is that no one else can
(05:51):
do like that doesn't the math don't even add up
on that, right, And you should. You should know it
from the time that you're born, and you should always
know what it is. It should be extremely clear what
it is. And then your job is to devote your
entire life to that one thing too. And if you
miss the boat and it's too late and you haven't
(06:13):
gotten on that, you should be extremely anxious and ashamed
of yourself that you don't know what it is. I mean,
this is what people are taught. And then you must
become the master of that thing. You must devote an
enormous amount of time, attention, and money to mastering whatever
that thing is, that unique spark that nobody else has.
And then you must monetize it, because if you make
your money doing anything other than the thing that is
(06:35):
your unique spark and purpose, then you are a failure.
And it's not enough that you must monetize it. You
must become the best at it, and you must also
create opportunity for others, and you must then change the
world through your purpose. This is what literally everybody is
told and no wonder everybody is full of anxiety about it.
(06:56):
And I mean, if we can just break it down
for a minute, it's for well, it comes from a
place of enormous hubris and arrogance to portend to believe,
like to think that you can know what you are
here for, when we don't even know what this is,
this planet, consciousness, this experience, like we don't even know,
(07:18):
We literally have no idea what's going on, and like
why your soul was dropped into your particular body and
born into your like we can't know, and anybody who
pretends that they know you should be very suspicious of them.
So there's an enormous arrogance. Also, can you hear how
self centered it is. Purpose theology comes from Western men,
(07:39):
and so it's all about I have to be incredibly important.
I actually have to be the most important, and I
have to change the world in my own image. And
this whole idea, even that you have to change the world,
there's a tremendous arrogance in that too, because I think
at this point, if you look around the planet, the
world is pretty clearly saying like I wish you people
(07:59):
would stop changing me.
Speaker 1 (08:01):
Yeah you've done take a break, Yeah you've done enough,
and that's time led.
Speaker 3 (08:07):
The most purpose driven lives are the people who have
perhaps done the most damaged to the planet and to
other people. So everything about it is so distorted and
and and it's all it does is cause people to suffer.
And I've met and I've met the people who are
living at the top of that game, and they are
not relaxed, they are not at peace, and they never
(08:28):
know whether they've done enough, Have they changed the world enough,
have they made a big enough impact? Oh and if
you're thinking great, I can't wait to die, because then
this will this whole purpose anxiety thing will be over.
You're also supposed to leave a legacy, right, So it
like never ends. The self centeredness, the arrogance, and the
anxiety of purpose theology never end. So what I am
(08:49):
gently here to offer as a counterpoint to a purpose
driven life is a life of presence, because the other
thing about a purpose driven life is that it constantly
has you in the future. You can't live a purpose driven,
anxiety driven theology without always being locked in the future
(09:11):
of like, who am I going to become? What am
I going to do? What is my impact going to be?
Who am I going to affect? And you completely miss life?
You completely miss life. I mean, my favorite spiritual teacher
Byron Katie says, if you want to suffer, get a future.
So this obsession with the future will bring you nothing
but pain. So the contrary position to take is a
(09:33):
life of presence, which is simply being a witness to
the extraordinary, unknowable, miraculous strangeness of being a human being
on this planet and observing it and being like this
is so I mean, because it is objectively interesting. It's
(09:53):
not safe this planet it never has been for people.
But it's a really interesting experience.
Speaker 1 (10:03):
It definitely is.
Speaker 3 (10:04):
It's a really interesting experience to be who you are
in your culture that you were dropped in at this
moment of history. And I think that experience itself would
like a few people to relax and observe it and
actually be like this is wild, Like this is absolutely wild.
And I don't know what I am, and I don't
(10:25):
know who I am, and I don't know where I'm going,
and I don't know what I'm supposed to be doing,
but it is very interesting to be here. And if
you start from that perspective and you begin to follow
the track of your curiosity of what's most interesting, you
will have an interesting life. You may not have a
(10:48):
life that certain kinds of people would look at and
say is successful.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But I'm not interested in those kinds of people.
Speaker 1 (10:58):
I'm not part of the conversation.
Speaker 3 (11:00):
Like I have a friend who says, everybody's got a
brother in law named Phil Who's like, yeah, but what
are you doing?
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Like what are you doing for your job? Like what's
your plan?
Speaker 1 (11:08):
Like?
Speaker 2 (11:09):
Must be nice to take you know, must be nice
to you know, Like just everyone's got back in their life. Yeah,
and fil must be ignored.
Speaker 1 (11:17):
Phil must be ignored. It's so funny, Like I see
this on social media all the time, where it's like
often some young woman or young man like exploring some
creative side of them, making our posting just for fun
whatever it is, writing just for fun, And there's always
someone in the comments being like, must be nice not
to have work a full time job, like must be
(11:39):
nice to take a break, And I'm like, well, yeah,
it is really nice. I'm sure it is really nice
for them.
Speaker 2 (11:45):
In fact, it is, thank you, it's yeah.
Speaker 1 (11:47):
In fact, it's lovely, Like I get it all the
time with people, Like people will come across like the
podcast and come across like my online presence and we'll
be like, wow, you call that work, you call that whatever,
like and get really upset with me, and I'm like, honestly,
all I'm hearing there is a desire to have what
I have, Like you think that your reality of needing
(12:07):
to prove yourself and work hard and never take a
day off and always be like thinking about your family
and thinking about everyone else like that doesn't actually sound
particularly desirable. So I often like that's how I try
and treat it, and like, I just feel kind of
bad for those people who are raised again with the
theology that you have one purpose and if you haven't
(12:30):
found it, bad luck, time to be miserable and just
work the ninety if.
Speaker 3 (12:34):
You have wasted your life. You know, it also treats
life rather than being a miraculous, mysterious, unknowable gift. It
treats it as something that must be earned, that you
must earn your place, You must earn your right to
be here. And whatever created you doesn't seem to think so,
because it just dropped you here. It didn't seem to
(12:55):
think you had to earn your right to be here.
And you know, I also I would love to just
take a moment and talk about these four different things
that people often amalgamate into one thing and that also
causes anxiety. And the four things are hobby, job, career,
and calling. So I just want to take a moment
(13:17):
and distinguish between these four things. Okay, So a hobby
is something that you do because it's fun and you
like it, and that's the thing that you post on
social media and people are like, must be nice to
take a pottery class.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Yeah, it is nice. You know, and hobbies.
Speaker 3 (13:31):
Actually bring an end to anxiety, like huttering about making
things for no reason, doing something simply because it's a pleasure.
Until very recently, everyone had hobbies and most of life
was just people doing stuff because they liked doing it
and it was fun. And it doesn't have to be monetized.
You don't have to be the best at it, you
(13:52):
don't have to become famous at it. My biggest suggestion
to people who are in purpose anxiety is to get
a hobby that has absolutely no connection to anything productive
and enjoy it, because life is also meant to be enjoyed,
So that's a hobby.
Speaker 2 (14:05):
A job.
Speaker 3 (14:06):
A job is a thing that, unless you are a
trust fund baby or landed gentry, you have to have.
But here's the thing, you don't.
Speaker 2 (14:14):
Have to like it.
Speaker 3 (14:16):
Like I've had so many jobs in my life that
I didn't like. You don't have to like it. It
doesn't have to be your purpose. You don't have to
be great at it, you don't have to come It
doesn't have to consume your entire life. It's just a
thing you have to do to make some money so
that you can go home and have hobbies.
Speaker 1 (14:30):
Right like that, I love that thinking about it.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Get a job, you know, just get a job.
Speaker 3 (14:35):
It doesn't like like and it's like, don't give your
heart to it. Deliver thirty percent at work, you know,
like they'll never know, Like a job is a place
where you can go and just phone it in and
they'll never know.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
Yes, I always say to people. I'm always like, just
act your wage, like, act your wage, like if.
Speaker 2 (14:54):
You act your wage exactly, like.
Speaker 1 (14:57):
If you're getting paid minimum wage, minimum worm perfect.
Speaker 3 (15:00):
And this goes totally against capitalism purpose anxiety to say
that in theology, But just to show up, do the
least you can do to get to keep your job,
and then have your life be outside of your job,
with the things that you're curious about, the things that
you enjoy, the people that you like being with. So
that's a job. It's not the same as a hobby.
The next thing is a career. So a career is
(15:23):
a job that you're passionate about, right, that's all a
career is. Don't act like your job is your career
if you're not passionate about it, Like, don't try to
make a job into a career. If you're just like,
this is just my job. You know, But if you
are passionate about it and you feel like this is
what I'm here to do, and I'm here to serve
(15:43):
humanity in this way, then you pour yourself into your job.
So a career is a job that you pour yourself
into because it brings you so much love and satisfaction.
And it doesn't even matter how much they pay you. You
would want to do it anyway, and like you really
do show up for But you don't have to have
a career, like you do have to have a job,
(16:05):
but you don't have to have a career, right, And
if you are in a career and you don't love it,
you should quit and get a job. Yeah, I love
Your career is to start your life.
Speaker 2 (16:16):
Just go get a job.
Speaker 3 (16:18):
There's lots of jobs. Just go get a job, and
then have hobbies and then have friends. And then the
final thing is a calling, and a calling is something
that you feel you are compelled to do because it's
a spiritual fulfillment and not everybody has one, and not
(16:39):
everybody needs to have one. And if you have one,
you'll know because you already have it. And if you
don't have one, you don't have to go out there
searching for it, because don't worry about it. It's something
you can't create. You can't create a calling. You either
like higher power gave you one or didn't, and maybe
one will come later or maybe it won't, So you
can just relax about it. And if you've got a calling,
then you devote yourself to it, and it's got absolutely
(17:00):
nothing to do with whether you're being paid or not,
and no one can ever take it away from you.
I can lose my career. So my calling is to
be a writer, and I knew that ever since I
was nine years old, but it wasn't my career until
I was thirty. But through that entire time before it
became my career, it was my calling. So I did
it while I had jobs. I did my calling. Nobody
(17:23):
wanted me to do it, nobody paid me to do it,
nobody was interested in me doing it, and then over
time it became my career.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
My career can be destroyed.
Speaker 3 (17:33):
AI can take my career away, people can fire me,
the world can decide it doesn't want to read a
Liza with Gilbert books anymore. Like, there are so many
ways I can lose my career. I'm not in control.
Of that, and I'm aware of that, and if I
ever lose my career, I'll just go get a job
and go back to having hobbies. But nobody can take
my calling away. Nobody could stop me from writing when
(17:55):
I wanted to write even though they weren't paying me to,
and nobody can stop me from writing now if my
career folds. So that's the difference between a hobby, a job,
a calling, and a career. And it's so important to
know the difference because we live in a culture that
has pushed them all together and said that you should
you should have one thing that's all of that, and
(18:17):
it isn't It isn't true. So I just want to
just clarify that for everybody.
Speaker 1 (18:22):
I can honestly feel the anxiety fading from people right now,
because that is probably the biggest serious slash dilemma of
questions that I get, which is, how do I know
what I'm meant to do? How do I choose between
these two jobs that one I'm more passionate about, one
I'm less passionate about. How do I, you know, get
the spark back for life? And honestly, I think a
(18:44):
lot of the questions come back to that distinction between
these four very distinct when you think about it, categories
of being and categories of existing. I actually when I
first started the podcast, it was very similar, like if
it's this weird thing where I just knew that this
is what I was meant to do. It was a calling,
and I genuinely had no listeners. I recorded it in
(19:07):
the back of my car, and I always tell the
story of like in the first episodes, you can literally
hear like trucks going by, you can hear birds in
the background because I'm recording it on my phone, and
it really didn't matter who listened. I just felt like
I had to do it. There's an analogy that you
have in your book and also in your ted talk
about how an idea will sometimes just be dropped in
(19:29):
your lap and you kind of have to make a
contract with it and it kind of appears out of nowhere,
right and it's just like, oh, oh my god, I've
just had this brilliant idea. Some spirit has given it
to me, the wind has shifted and brought it to me.
And I just love how you say it's like whatever
it is is trying to find the person who's going
to make it reality, like it's going to try and
(19:51):
find the best conduit for it to be real. And
I honestly felt that about the psychology of your twenties.
It was like, people ask me how I came up
with the idea, and I'm like, I genuinely have no idea, Like,
I have no idea. It just came to me, and
I just knew I had to do it. But I
do think that my relationship with it changed when I
started making money and when it did become the thing
(20:11):
that paid my bills, that allowed me, you know, it
became a job, a hobby, a career, and a calling
all it was. And I'm sure that was probably the
case with writing for you as well. What happened when that,
when that shifted, when the dynamic shifted entirely.
Speaker 3 (20:32):
Well, yeah, when money is introduced, it changes everything. And
it's not that I'm anti money. I'm very delighted that
I can make my living doing this. I think the
really important thing that that I have that I had
to remember, and I've had to carry this through my
entire career, is that well, I mean, it doesn't matter
(20:55):
what your career is. This is and I'm just thinking
this is actually the truth no matter what you're doing,
whether you're a civil engineer or a or a painter,
like it doesn't you know, nothing is promised. You know,
nothing is promised and nothing is owed. Nowhere was there
some sort of contract, either a social contract or a
(21:18):
spiritual contract that said you're assured this, you get to
you know, like this will continue, or you're allowed to
have this, like you know, we're seeing that that as
societies are breaking down in unions of raid and like,
none of this is promised. And you can get angry
about that, or you can just be a Taoist about
it and sort of just go with the flow of
(21:42):
energy of reality. And there's a beautiful line that I
quote to myself all the time. That's from the Bug
of a Gita, which is this ancient Indian Hindu spiritual text,
and there's a line in there where one of the
gods says to one of the heroes, you are entitled
to the labor, but you are not entitled to the
fruit of the labor. And that is something that is
(22:07):
hard to land on modern years, because we have a
lot of sense of entitlement and it's like, well, I
worked really hard, I should I worked really hard. I
therefore should That's the that's the calculus of capitalism, you know,
Like I worked hard, and therefore I should have this.
And the actual reality of life on earth is nobody
(22:28):
told you that.
Speaker 2 (22:28):
That's true.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
I mean, some people told you that who don't know
how the world works. The way the world actually works
is like it shrugs. It's like the world, you know,
the universe is a little bit indifferent. You know, the
universe is a little bit like, oh, maybe you'll have it,
maybe you won't. Maybe you'll have it for a while,
maybe you won't. You know, Like I love that about
like the sort of classical Indian theology and ideas of
(22:53):
God is like God is much less a sort of reasonable,
reigning judge than a kind of batty old lady who
lives on the top of a hill and has money
and gives it to some people who don't deserve it
and gives it to other people who you know, and
like makes promises and doesn't keep them and is a
little bit senile. And it's like that's the actual reality
(23:14):
of life, you know. And so I'm not entitled. I'm
not entitled. I've had books canceled, you know, like I
had a book canceled two years ago, right before it
was published, you know, and it was like, wow, I
could freak out about this and be like, I worked
for four years on this. This is a tragedy for
me that this book isn't being published, or I can
(23:37):
live in accordance with reality and be like, well, that's interesting.
That is objectively interesting that that happened. That is not
what I expected. I think so much of life is
just that is not what I expected. That's interesting. And
the difference between living a life of anxiety and living
a life of creativity. And my friend Martha Beck just
(23:57):
recently wrote a book about how the antidote for anxiety,
the opposite of anxiety is not relaxation, it's creativity. It's
creativity is the only way out of anxiety. And the
only way into creativity is to live from a spirit
of that's interesting, rather than a spirit of like, what
a nightmare. It's also a drama free life, to live
(24:21):
from a place of like, that's interesting. Oh, somebody broke
up with me who I thought I was going to marry.
That is interesting. Wow, I really wanted kids and I
can't have them. That is really interesting. The person I
love the most in the world died who I thought
was going to be like my anchor forever. That's interesting,
(24:42):
you know, that is so interesting? What am I going
to do now?
Speaker 2 (24:46):
So on the.
Speaker 3 (24:46):
Video game of life? Like what is my next move?
And the next move? If you want to have a
life without a lot of anxiety, is what would be
the most interesting thing I could do now?
Speaker 1 (24:58):
I also a very equal quote, which is the opposite
of anxiety is trust, and I think that also comes
into play here where you can be thrown like the
most awful, terrible circumstances, but if you trust that you
are going to make it through, maybe if you trust
that you are capable of finding a route out, of
(25:20):
finding your way back to a life that you really
love and that you want, you will make it through.
Most of the time, Like self trust is just such
like I don't know, it's just such an antidote to
so much. It's an antidote to imposter syndrome. It's an
antidote to a lot of anxiety. And I really want
to link back to what you were saying before of
(25:41):
you know, God, the universe is somebody old lady like
living on the top of a Hill just giving out money,
because I see this a lot with people in their twenties,
where it's like, if I work X amount of hard,
I will receive why amount of reward. And I always
think about it in the context of people studying for exams, right,
very common thing that you do during this decade. Someone
(26:02):
could study the exact same amount of hours of you
as you have the exact same content and get a
completely different grade, could understand it completely differently, and sometimes like.
Speaker 2 (26:12):
Luck, somebody can study a lot less than you and.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
Yeah, exactly exactly, and it's like, okay, so we all
think that it's just hard work, and it was actually
something I had to really accept where I was like,
it's okay for a bit of this to be luck.
Speaker 2 (26:27):
Like it's actually okay, sure.
Speaker 1 (26:28):
Yeah, And I kept worrying. I'd be like, well, luck
isn't luck isn't promised. So if my life has been
given to me by luck, like as soon as the
tables turn, I could not have my life anymore. So
I'm going to use hard work as an insurance. And
eventually you have to kind of let that go because
it makes you feel like every single thing that you
do is tied to how much you want it and
(26:49):
how many hours you're willing to put into it, which
is not true.
Speaker 3 (26:54):
It's just simply not It's all based on the devastating
wish that life would be fair and sensible, and there's
very little evidence that I have seen to support that
it is either of those things.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
But it is once again interesting.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
The batty old lady who lives on the top of
the hill, who's half seen aisle and holds all sorts
of power and forgets your name, like promises you in
inheritance and then that's.
Speaker 1 (27:17):
Name, yeah, is like I already gave it to that Poste'm.
Speaker 3 (27:20):
Sorry, give it to the gardener, like you know, like wait,
but I'm your grandchild.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
Well are you? You know? Like it's it's so.
Speaker 3 (27:28):
And this is why I think that the manifestation theology
is a bit dangerous. This idea you made a sort
of joke about vision boards, and vision boards can be
really sweet. And there is something about that. There is
a it's not that you're helpless, there is a there's
a push and a pull. There's a part that you
have control over and there's a part that you don't.
And the way I describe it in neat prey love.
(27:49):
It's like a circus trained circus acrobat riding on two
horses at the same time, you know, like one foot
on two horses around a ring. And the play that
I feel in my own life between my own will
and what can only be called destiny or fate is
I've only got a foot on one of those horses,
you know, and the other one it looks like it's
(28:11):
running right alongside me.
Speaker 2 (28:13):
But at any moment, anything could.
Speaker 3 (28:15):
Happen, you know, like anything could happen that changes the game,
and how do we hold our equanimity? And they're both
running at full speed, by the way, you know, And
the really good acrobats are the ones who are just
like and they're sparking, and there's sparkly leotard with.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
A big smile like and a plume of like here
we are, We're on the ride, you know.
Speaker 3 (28:35):
So it's yeah, but there's there is no promised outcome.
The outcome is not promised. You're entitled to the labor,
but you're not entitled to the fruit of the labor.
And if, gosh, if there's one thing that could make
you happier than anything else, it would be to release
any sense of entitlement to anything, because the most depressed,
(28:57):
outraged and anxious that I have been in my life
has been when I didn't get what I want and
I had to suffer through some sort of a tantrum
about it for however amount of time until I surrendered too.
You're not You ain't getting it.
Speaker 2 (29:14):
Don't matter how much you want it, you ate.
Speaker 3 (29:17):
You cannot make that person love you. You cannot make that
person love you. You cannot change the past, you cannot
change people's opinions of it.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
You can't.
Speaker 3 (29:29):
And so I think the reason I'm a lot more
serene in my fifties than I was in my twenties
was because in my twenties I was still pretty sure
I could get what I wanted if I tried hard
enough and worked hard enough or manipulated enough, and I couldn't.
Speaker 1 (29:45):
Yeah, that's a lesson. That's a lesson in that we
all learn eventually. And I always think about it, as
have you seen the Harry Potter films?
Speaker 2 (29:53):
Yep? Of course, do I not have eyes?
Speaker 1 (29:57):
Sometimes if you've got to ask, because there'll be people
who are like what No. I always think about this scene.
It must be in the first movie where they're going
to find the Philosopher's stone, and they fall into this
pit of vines that like choke them and like just tightening,
and every time they like struggle against it and they move,
it just gets tighter and tighter and tighter. And it
(30:17):
must be like COMIONI or someone realizes, like if I
just relax, they'll let me go, They'll let me go,
and I will just fall straight through. And it is
such a hard thing to do because naturally you want
a good life and you want to be happy, and
you want to find love, and you want to feel
(30:37):
like you're here for a reason. Obviously, like you can't
know what that is. So sometimes you do just have
to do the opposite of what every single instinct in
your body is telling you to do, and that is
to just relax. And I think that there is a
difference between like survivor like survival instincts and an instinct
for living. And I think our living instinct and our
(30:59):
life is instinct is to relax and is to just
have a little bit more fun. But we're confusing that
with our survival instincts, which are like no run produced
like hit scream somewhere along the way, like those have
gotten crossed, and so now we just feel a lot
more panicked about everything, and we think that small things
are going to cost us our life, you know, not
having a job that we love, not having people like us,
(31:23):
like all these things are a lot more going to
be a lot more costly than they actually are. That's
just how I see it. And when I relaxed into that,
it felt a lot better. I want to ask you
about a bit of a turning point in your career
and in your life, and it was the success of
E Prey Love. Julia Roberts starred you in a movie.
(31:46):
That's probably something that only three or four people can say.
But what happened afterwards? You know, you wrote this book,
it was it's beautiful, it became incredibly popular. How did
you manage or deal with the expectations that you may
be experienced for your next book or for after that,
(32:07):
the initial fame and maybe past.
Speaker 2 (32:11):
Oh what a great question.
Speaker 3 (32:12):
So do you know I mean, I'm talking like I
know anything about mathematics, but do you know the principle
of absolute value?
Speaker 1 (32:19):
I'm going to just throw it out there and explain it.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
But like, imagine that you're looking at a number line,
and there's a zero in the middle, and then the
positive numbers go out in one direction, positive one through ten,
and then the negative numbers go out in the other direction,
negative one through ten.
Speaker 2 (32:37):
Right.
Speaker 3 (32:38):
So pick a number three, right, So there's a positive
number three and there's a negative number three right on
that line. But they share the same absolute value. So
the absolute value means the distance from zero. So there's
a zero in our emotional life, which I would describe
(32:59):
as just sort of like are like stability, constancy, a
sense of belonging, a sense of balance. That's zero, that's
point zero, right, And then there are these horrible things
that happen on the negative side of the scale, and
there use wonderful things that happen on the positive side
of the scale. Here's where things can get really confusing.
(33:22):
Sometimes it makes sense that when a horrible thing happens,
a divorce or an illness, or a death, or a
terrible breakup or massive disappointment or a natural disaster, it
makes sense that you would be really shook by it.
But it doesn't make sense that you would be equally
shook when a wonderful thing happens. Because we're trained to
(33:45):
think that the wonderful. Things are great, But to your
nervous system, there's an absolute value of distance from zero.
If zero is what I'm used to, what I am
accustomed to, and what I am normal to, and a
really big in the positive direction, a number ten. So
Eppray loves a number ten on that. It's like you
(34:05):
just wrote I heard the other day that it's like
the second best selling memoir of all time. You know,
it's like, yeah, so famous, Like yeah, Julia Roberts, you're
a millionaire now Julia Roberts is playing you in a movie.
Speaker 2 (34:19):
You're a famous.
Speaker 3 (34:20):
You never have to get a job again, you know, like, yeah,
all this stuff has happened. This is a ten, this
is a plus ten. The absolute value is it's ten
steps from zero, which has the same impact on my
nervous system as if there was an earthquake or a
death in the family, because it has taken me so
far away from what I thought was normal. Right, So
(34:44):
it's really important to understand and to expect in life
that really good news things can also shake you to
the core because it's a long long way away from normal.
So what happened was I had to get back to neutral.
I had to get back to zero. And the only
way that I could do that was that I took
(35:05):
a year off, almost a year off from doing anything
in public, and I started a garden. I literally had
to get back. I had to get on my knees
in the ground because I felt so ungrounded.
Speaker 2 (35:19):
People were telling me all sorts of things.
Speaker 3 (35:20):
About who I was and what I was and what
my cultural importance was, and so I just had to
get down to the level of the earth and I
gardened for a year. I didn't do any speaking events,
I didn't teach, I didn't write anything, and I grew vegetables.
Speaker 2 (35:38):
That's how I got over it.
Speaker 3 (35:39):
And after a year in the garden, I remember it
was like wintertime and I was raking up the leaves
and composting things, you know, calloused hands and like just
dirty clothes is what did it? And I was and
then I heard in my head the first line to
the next book. It was like it's like the leaves
(36:01):
were falling, and like a leaf fell into my mind
and it was the first line to the next book.
And I was like, Okay, I think I'm ready to
write again. So you have to whether you've had a
hugely positive massively fantastic, big new crazy thing happened in
your life, or a hugely negative, massively horrible, big new
crazy thing in your life. You've got to learn how
(36:23):
to ground, and it's very hard to do in this
day and age, especially with the constant distractions of everything
that's on your phone. But you've got to kind of
get like low to the earth and like go to
the beach and go on the ocean, like it's you
have to get kind of animal, you know. It's like
I've got to get with elemental back down to the
(36:46):
waters like fire and water and earth, because and you
have to remember the sort of element of yourself rather
than all the kind of crazy information that people are
telling you about you.
Speaker 1 (36:58):
I remember when the Psychle Oldivia twenties was becoming really
really popular and it was going viral and it was
just thousands of people listening to it all the time.
I remember never being more miserable and like crying constantly.
I would call my partner Tom, and I would call
my mom and my dad and just be like, this
(37:18):
is gonna get taken away from me. How do I
adjust to this? And I remember exactly the moment when
I was like I'm gonna be okay. And I went
back to where I grew up, which is Crumbin in Queensland.
It's paradise on Earth. And I went on this hike
and I found a mango tree that had dropped all
these exactly. And it's so funny you were saying that
(37:39):
because I literally remember picking up a mango and like
I didn't have a knife or fork, and I just
like ripped it open with my hands and like was
eating it. And I was like, oh my god, I'll
always have this, Like I can come and find this
mango tree if anything terrible happens.
Speaker 3 (37:53):
And yeah, Earth, yeah exactly, you belong What is Mary
Oliver has a poem your part in the belonging of things?
Speaker 2 (38:05):
Yes, yeah, great.
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Great success and great failure can lose your sense of belonging.
But if you get close to nature, you'll remember that
you belong here.
Speaker 2 (38:14):
I love that story.
Speaker 1 (38:16):
It was amazing. I still remember the taste of that
mango like it's very vivid. But and I went back
actually recently in the mango tree wasn't there, so I
guess it just appeared when I needed it. It's actually
something you may not know, is that to celebrity name
drop in here, Taylor Swift actually referred one of your
Ted talks. Do you know this?
Speaker 2 (38:37):
I did hear the head.
Speaker 1 (38:38):
You do know this, okay? And I feel like what
was so interesting was she was saying referencing you and
her creative process and being like the drive to keep
creating even when people hate what I've done, even when
I've failed, even when I've you know, not had the
success that I wanted. I just have to create. And
(38:59):
I always like that analogy as well, like not to
not that anyone's theory about how they should live their
life requires proof, but you know, seeing that her creative
processes continue to evolve and allowed her great success, I
feel like she's kind of onto something. And I mean,
you know that's came from you. So I think when
it comes to like imposters in him and feeling like
we're going to fail because we've had some success, or
(39:21):
feeling like we need to now do things for other people,
true creatives really understand that again, it's not just a job,
it's not a profession. It's a calling. And whether you
have zero readers, zero listeners, zero viewers, or a million,
hopefully like what you're creating will be the same. But
within that journey, how have you dealt with failure? I
(39:46):
know you talked about you had a book canceled. I
don't even know what that means. To be completely honest,
neither happened.
Speaker 3 (39:54):
I wrote a book that was set in Russia and
a novel that was set in Russia, and when I
announced it, there was an enormous outcry from Ukrainians saying like,
you know, how could you be doing this right now
and pulling the world's attention to Russia when we're being
killed and murdered. And actually, I'm it made a lot
of sense to me when I heard. So when I
(40:16):
say that it was canceled, that's a dramatic way to say.
I like drama. I'm an artist, but it's a dramatic
way to say. I mean, it was quite dramatic because
it was like trending on Twitter, and you know, they, yeah,
you thousands of people are hating me and telling me
that I work for Putin and that I'm awful and
going on Goodreads and putting one star reviews for a
(40:37):
book that wasn't even published yet. So there were thousands
of one star reviews saying like this is the worst
book in the world. We hate this book, you know.
I mean, it was you know, it was a dramatic moment.
But I grounded myself. I have practices that I do
and spiritual practices that I've learned over the years to
ground myself so that I could actually listen to what
(40:58):
they were saying rather than feeling that I was being persecuted.
And when I listened to what they were saying, it
made a lot of sense to me, and I was like,
you know what, I get it. I'm going to postpone
this book. So it just we just decided not to
publish it. Someday maybe it'll be published. But it became
very simple. Once you're grounded, the decisions become very simple.
When you're in anxiety or fight, flight or trauma, you
(41:21):
don't have access to your reasonable mind and everything feels
like it's on fire. So that's why it's so important
to learn how to ground. But I was going to
say one other thing about the creativity. I think part
of the thing is that I know how creativity works
through my nervous system and through my mind, and I
know that my fear center is the oldest part of
(41:42):
my conscious mind. So before we had anything else, when
we were evolving into these humanoid forms, we were given
this incredible capacity for fear and alarm. My friend Martha
calls it fifteen puppies in a snake. So are fifteen
puppies in a cobra, Which means if you're in a
room and there's fifteen pups and a cobra, your attention
(42:02):
is going to be on the cobra, you know, Like
if it isn't, you're not going to live long. If
you're the kind of person who's like, oh, there's about
the poppies. You know, like you your mind will be
and until that cobra is taken care of, you will
not see those puppies, you know. Like that's reality of survival.
That's the survival gene that you were talking about.
Speaker 2 (42:21):
We all have that.
Speaker 3 (42:22):
We're only here because our ancestors paid attention to the cobras. Right,
So this is deeply embedded in my brain that I'm
looking for things all the time that are going to
kill me. I'm looking for things that are going to
go wrong. It's it's wired in my creative mind. Only
came in online about one hundred thousand years ago. Our
shared creative mind, but based on what anthropologists and scientists believe,
(42:46):
so it's new. The other one is billions of years old.
The fear center is billions of years old. It's just
been evolving and evolving and evolving. Even tadpoles have it,
you know. But so whenever I create something, the creative
impulse comes and says, I want to make something that's new.
My fear center, its number one job is to never
(43:06):
let me do anything new, because it has to assume
for my survival that anything new has the potential to
kill me. So my fear only wants me to do
what it does every what I do every day, because
my fear is like, it's safe if you do this.
No one has died yet from you doing this. So
(43:27):
when I introduce into my mind I'm going to do
this new thing, my fear freaks out and it's like,
you cannot do that.
Speaker 2 (43:34):
That will kill us. We don't know.
Speaker 3 (43:35):
My fear is not allowed. My fear's job is to
not let me do anything where it doesn't know what
the outcome is.
Speaker 2 (43:41):
And creativity is nothing but doing.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
Things where you don't know the outcome is. That's all
it is, and that never changes I mean, I've written
ten books now and I still don't know what the
outcome is going to be. When I start writing a
book and I still have my fear saying you can't
do it.
Speaker 2 (43:56):
I've got to shut it down. You're going to die.
Speaker 3 (43:58):
And so the fact that I know that that's what's
happening from an evolutionary standpoint makes it easier for me
to be like, oh, this is a natural process that
my fears is saying these things. But my more evolved,
more recent part of my brain, the Liz four point zero,
actually would really like to try to do this thing.
(44:19):
And I need to tell my fear that it's unlikely.
No one has yet died from my books, so it's
unlikely that somebody will die.
Speaker 1 (44:27):
Maybe a severe paper cut, but yeah, that's about it.
I think we're already it.
Speaker 3 (44:31):
Fell on someone's head off a bookshelf, but I think
that's about, yeah, the worst damage that it's.
Speaker 1 (44:36):
Yeah, I want to talk about now that we're on
the theme of writing books. You literally, like three days
ago announced all the Way to the River, and I
watched the video that you've put out explaining it. Semi
cried about it, not to like make myself seem like
too much of a fan. But can you explain the
(44:57):
premise of this book for people who may not know
what went into making it.
Speaker 3 (45:05):
So this is a memoir, and it's about my relationship
with my best friend in the entire world ever, whose
name was Raya Elias. And we were friends for gosh,
we're friends for sixteen years, fifteen or sixteen years, and
then we very gradually over the course of that friendship,
(45:25):
we fell in love with each other. And I was
married to somebody who I loved very much. I was
married to a man. She was gay, I wasn't or whatever.
I don't even know what that means. I don't even care.
And she was then diagnosed with terminal cancer. And at
the time of her diagnosis, I.
Speaker 2 (45:46):
Was no longer able to.
Speaker 3 (45:49):
Knowing that she had six months to live, I was
no longer able to continue just pretending that this was
my best friend, and I needed to find my voice
to her and to my now ex husband that I
need to go meet with this person in a different way.
And she started to call her death the river, and
(46:13):
she said, I want you to walk with me all
the way to the river. And I did, and that
may sound to people who are listening to it who
don't know the story like a very romantic story, and
there were aspects of it that were very romantic.
Speaker 2 (46:26):
It was also an insane journey.
Speaker 3 (46:29):
She was a drug addict in recovery who went back
into active drug addiction before her death in a way
that just ripped the rug floor and ground out from
under both of us. I fell into a state of
totally toxic codependency and love addiction with her. It was
a hell of a time and it was a hell
(46:50):
of a story. And it's taken me seven years to
write it because it took me this long to heal
from it and to find my grounding again after that
and to even understand what had happened. And in many ways,
it's a book about how lost we can get from ourselves.
Raya got very lost from her grounded center during that time.
(47:12):
I got very lost from my grounded center during that time.
And it's a book about recovery and resilience and finding
your way back to back to your center after having
been through a time of such drama and trauma.
Speaker 1 (47:26):
When you were writing it, did it feel most like cathartic?
Like do you feel like you've wrote it more for
yourself than for an audience, or is there something you're
kind of hoping that people are going to get out
of it.
Speaker 3 (47:37):
I always feel, I mean, I write things in order
to understand my life, and I write my way into understanding.
So it was absolutely cathartic that said, it's the book
I didn't want to write. You know, interesting are parts
of that story that I was like, I just still
want that to not have happened that way, Like I
still want and I know we all have this in
(47:58):
our lives, like chapters of our life where it's like listen,
I've reconciled with it and I've moved on, but like,
don't think I still don't wish it went a different way,
you know, that I had gotten a different outcome or
that they had gone in a different way. But it
is a lot of the books about surrender as well,
and surrendering into reality. So yeah, I wrote it for myself,
(48:18):
but I also I think that it's part of my
destiny to be a person who has things happened to
her there are really hard, and then interprets and translates
those things and puts them out in public to say,
(48:39):
like here, has this ever happened to you? If so,
here's some thoughts I have on this, you know, here's
some things I've learned from this, And I think that's
part of what I'm I think that's part of what
I'm meant to do. So even as I was writing
the book and exposing these absolutely horrific aspects of her
and me, or it's like, this is exactly the stuff
(48:59):
I don't want people to know about me. This is
exactly like this is counter to image management.
Speaker 2 (49:09):
Is to write a book like this.
Speaker 3 (49:10):
And my friend Glennon Doyle, the writer Glenn and Doyle,
read it when it was a manuscript and said, this
is the most what did she say, the most self
accountable thing I've ever read, Like this is a masterclass
in self accountability. But that's also what I feel. I
really want to be a very self accountable person. I
don't want it because the opposite of being self accountable
is being a victim. And you know, that book was
(49:32):
a forensic effort for me to try to is a
forensic effort for me to try to be like, what
was my part in this? You know, like how did
I I do feel that a multiple points in our lives.
We will find ourselves saying how did I end up here?
Speaker 1 (49:50):
Like?
Speaker 3 (49:51):
How did I end up in this? How did I
end up in this toxic thing? How did I end
up in this dysfunctional relationship? How did I end up
in this abuse? How did I end up in this
self abnegation and self betrayal?
Speaker 1 (50:03):
Like?
Speaker 2 (50:04):
How is that me? You know? And it's very easy
to end up in.
Speaker 3 (50:09):
Those sorts of fields of confusion and not so easy
to find serenity and clarity again, but it's findable.
Speaker 2 (50:19):
So this is the book helps people.
Speaker 3 (50:20):
Reya always wanted me to tell the story and said
it'll help some people, and so.
Speaker 1 (50:25):
I'm hoping that it will. And when does it come out?
That's probably the first thing I should have had.
Speaker 2 (50:30):
September ninth of twenty twenty five. So it's it's it's coming.
Speaker 1 (50:36):
Right around the corner. It's going to be an amazing
that maybe very dark and deep Christmas present for someone.
Speaker 2 (50:44):
Last morning, I have been told by those who have
read it.
Speaker 3 (50:47):
A friend just texted me yesterday and I gave him
a copy and he said, I've been with your book
all day and I'm He's like, I just keep going
back and forth from laughing my head off to cry
my eyes out, and I'm like, well, that feels about right.
Speaker 2 (50:56):
That's exactly what that time felt like to me.
Speaker 1 (50:59):
So yeah, sounds like life. That's giving me a hurt. Well,
I want to thank you so much. Now I want
to ask you one final question. This is the question
I ask all of my guests, and I want to
see what your answer is going to be. So, what
is your biggest piece of advice for people in their
twenties or the thing you wish you knew when you
were in your twenties? You know it is a big one.
(51:21):
I'm sorry.
Speaker 2 (51:21):
Okay, for me, I'll give two because they're separate.
Speaker 3 (51:25):
My biggest piece of advice is again I'm going back
to the blog of a Gita. It is such a
I mean, wisdom texts, Ancient wisdom texts are so handy
because they are the distillation of millennia of human experience
and wisdom. So it's not an accident that I keep
(51:46):
reaching for this seven thousand year old text.
Speaker 2 (51:50):
And quoting from it.
Speaker 3 (51:52):
But one of the lines in there is it is
better to live your own life imperfectly than to live
a perfect imitation of somebody else's life. And that sounds
like it could be a meme on Instagram right now,
but it is that is deep, deep wisdom. It is
better to live your own life imperfectly than to live
(52:13):
a perfect imitation of somebody else's life. I did a
pretty good imitation in my twenties of a lot of
lives that I had seen modeled for myself, and it
almost killed me, and for me personally, it would have
What I wish I had known is to avoid romantic
immashment at such a young age. Even though it was
(52:33):
the thing I wanted more than anything, and longed for
more than anything, and hunted more than anything, it actually
took me the farthest away from myself, especially as a woman.
It made me be in a constant state of response,
especially to men, where from the minute I woke up
in the morning till I always lived with somebody. For
(52:54):
the minute I woke up in the morning till the
minute I went to bed at night, I was aware
of him. I was responding to him, ape shifting around him.
I was trying to deliver. I was trying to deliver
some version of myself that would be pleasing. And it
was a part time job. I mean maybe a full
time job. In order to get from him, whoever the
hymn was fill in the blank hymn, in order to
(53:15):
get from him love, validation, acceptance, and affection. I turned
myself into all sorts of people, and I gave all
this time energy that I wish I could have every
single minute of that time back, every single minute of
time that I spent trying to get somebody to love
(53:36):
me the way I wanted them to love me. I
would like every single minute of that time back. And
do you know what I would do at that time.
Speaker 2 (53:43):
Nothing. I would just sit.
Speaker 3 (53:48):
Around looking at things like reading books, walking around, eating
mangoes off the tree, smelling pine cones, jumping in water.
I would do nothing of any value if I had
every minute of that time left. But the amends that
I'm making to myself is that for the next half
of my life, I'm keeping it all. I'm keeping all
(54:09):
that time for myself and to do nothing with.
Speaker 1 (54:13):
I think that's an amazing philosophy, an amazing philosophy to
have the center romantic partners in your twenties. Honestly, it's
a great tip. So I want to just thank you
one more time for coming on the podcast and for
sharing all of your wisdom. I honestly feel like I've
just done an hour of therapy, free therapy, So thank.
Speaker 3 (54:33):
Me too to gain Yeah, it works both ways.
Speaker 2 (54:37):
Yeah, I was so light and I am.
Speaker 3 (54:39):
I hope it's not patronizing for me to say this
to you, like sister to sister, woman to woman.
Speaker 2 (54:44):
I am so fucking proud of you.
Speaker 1 (54:47):
Oh my goodness, I am wow proud of you.
Speaker 3 (54:52):
For creating what you created out of your own imagination
and out of your own creativity. And I will I
will tell you something. What you have and what you are.
Nobody can take away. Nobody can take away what you
have and what you are. You did this and I
am so so proud of you for it.
Speaker 1 (55:11):
Oh my goodness, thank you so much. That genuinely probably
made my year. What a what a highlight. I appreciate
it so much, and you also have Sorry, I just
need to gain my words back. You have. You're in
Australia at the moment for some amazing live shows and
a workshop in Sydney, I believe.
Speaker 2 (55:30):
Yeah, I'll make.
Speaker 1 (55:31):
Sure I leave tickets for that. But what cities are
you visiting while you're while you're down on.
Speaker 3 (55:35):
I'm going to Sydney Melbourne. Sorry Sydney melms brizsy.
Speaker 1 (55:42):
Oh she's a local. Oh my goodness.
Speaker 3 (55:46):
And Hobart, which is the one that I demanded to
go to. I'm so sorry. Perth, don't at me. I
really really really wanted to come to Perth, but they
didn't have a venue available that would have been the
right size for what we needed.
Speaker 2 (55:59):
So wasn't it. Will do it.
Speaker 3 (56:00):
But I have a fascination with Tasmania, and I also
make it a point whenever I do these tours to
try to go to places people don't normally go. And
so if you're in if you're in Tasi, calm because
it's gonna be great. And Adelaide as well. So Adelaide,
(56:21):
and if anybody's listening to this in New Zealand, I'm
going to Auckland as well. Not to say that I'm
lumping you together with Australia and New Zealand. I fully
recognize your your absolute beautiful autonomy and separateness, but well,
well I'm in the neighborhood. I'm also to Auckland, so
so please come and if you've never I feel like
I'm on the tourism board for Tasmania right now. But
(56:41):
if you've never been to Tasmania, like I came there
ten years ago and I'm obsessed with it, and I'm
going back to the Museum of Sex and Death because
it's the most incredible place like I've ever been to.
I feel like it's the most wild thing I've ever
seen a human create. Is that entire like the whole
city is beautiful. So there's still tickets left there, There's
still tickets left in Adelaide. I think there's a few
(57:04):
tickets left in Brizzy. But but come and come and
join us. It's going to be more like this.
Speaker 1 (57:11):
Yeah, which relates. Yeah, tidbit. I was literally in Hobart
like three days ago because my best friendly then yeah,
and I got her ticket to your show, so hopefully
she loves it. It's honestly magical. I saw a white
I saw an albino stag. I picked like fresh blackberries
off of the trees, like just like only a kilometer
out of the city. It's beautiful. Go to preachers the bar.
Speaker 3 (57:35):
It's the best, Okay, And thank you, sweetheart for sharing
me with your audience and and everybody out there listen.
Speaker 2 (57:43):
It's uh it's all going to be all right.
Speaker 3 (57:45):
Just just just relax and just relax as you're being
tormented and tossed about in wild seas.
Speaker 1 (57:57):
I feel like that summarizes it. Just surrender us. So
surrender was the theme of this episode, and I want
to thank everyone for listening. If you've made it this far,
what's our emoji for the day, Let's choose the Earth.
Can If you've made it to this part of the show,
drop an Earth emoji in the comments so that we
can talk and chat about your thoughts, feelings. Maybe you'll
questions your qualms about this episode. Make sure that you're
(58:18):
following along on Instagram at that Psychology podcast. And until
next time, stay safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself,
and we will talk very very soon.
Host
Jemma Sbeghen
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