Book Review: Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Big Magic: Creative living beyond fear’
Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Big Magic: Creative living beyond fear’ is a highly inspirational read that demystifies the creative process. She…
Elizabeth Gilbert’s ‘Big Magic: Creative living beyond fear’ is a highly inspirational read that demystifies the creative process. She challenges a lot of the conventional wisdom about creativity.
Even though I find some of the spiritual discourse a lot bit off-putting, I like how she distills core lessons from her own experience and those of other people she knows to make a compelling case for leaving fear behind and going after your goals.
I loved it when she said that we ought to measure our worth by the dedication to our paths rather than by our successes and failures. This is pertinent as she describes how she walked from one rejection to another as well as the challenges of success: it’s not permanent! She notes that ‘learning to endure your disappointment and frustration is part of the job of a creative person. Frustration is not an interruption of the process; frustration is the process.’ She further notes that ‘failure has a purpose. It asks you whether you want to go on making things.’
Crucially, she counsels against the pursuit of perfection ‘… because nothing I’d ever beyond criticism.’ As such, she calls on us to create, put our work out there, receive the criticism and keep moving. She views, the drive for perfectionism as a corrosive waste of time.’
Another key insight for me is that most of us fail to create because we’re afraid of what people will think of us. She reminds us that ‘… nobody is thinking about you … people are mostly just thinking about themselves.’ Their attention may be drawn to you for a moment, if you succeed or fail spectacularly and publicly, but soon the attention reverts to where it’s always been: on themselves! That shouldn’t stop you from creating and sharing your craft with the world.
In a world where we’re constantly told to follow our passion, it was refreshing to see her argues against passion and in favour of curiosity. She notes that the pursuit of passion can be debilitating… because sometimes it’s just not there. Curiosity, however, is more accessible. If we pay attention to what we’re curious about, we’ll be able to keep moving, even when we’re not feeling inspired.