Elizabeth Gilbert is the much loved author of Eat Pray Love, amongst other books including my favourite book called Big Magic, and in today’s post I’m going to be talking with you about my reflections on her speaking tour that I was very excited to go to on February 5th 2025 here in Melbourne. Elizabeth is a joyous speaker and she talked about curiosity, purpose, calm, and presence, and I can’t wait to share these insights with you.

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So I absolutely love Big Magic. It’s this fantastically light hearted book about living a creative life, about devoting your life to things that you love, and doing that in the face of challenge. It’s a book that a lot of people read and re-read, and I think you can take something different away from it for your own life each time you read it. If you haven’t read it yet, please do yourself a favour, you can use my Amazon Affiliate link here if you like and get the paper copy so you can fill it with sticky notes and go back and re-read all the best parts.

Now, I don’t follow Elizabeth’s online content really heavily, and yet I saw an ad maybe a bit less than a year ago for this speaking tour that she was doing in Australia, and I was so excited, and I clicked on the ad and I saw it was on my birthday.

Honestly my first reaction was oh no I can’t go, I usually have dinner with my family on my birthday. And, because it’s a school day I’ll barely see the kids that day and that might be disappointing, but after about 3 seconds of all that rubbish, I heard the real feelings in my heart and realised that it would be an amazing way to spend my birthday. So I spoke to Evan and told him that it felt like magic that it was on my birthday and that I had to go. And I was willing to go by myself, but Evan immediately offered to come with me and so we bought two tickets and I was so excited to be going!

The Disastrous Beginning

So the actual day came around and it actually ended up being quite a difficult day, because my sister fell over and hurt herself really badly and I had to take her to hospital, and she was going to babysit all the younger kids, so the baby and my two primary school aged kids.

So already there were these two times when I could have easily told myself, oh it’s too hard, it’s too hard to buy tickets to a show on my birthday on a school night, and now it’s too hard to go out tonight, because my sister is unwell and we don’t have a babysitter, and all the things. And I think this is such an important theme in our lives where we can convince ourselves of things because they seem easy, or they seem selfless, or because we don’t want to cause too much inconvenience, or anything right. But then this creates regret, because we didn’t truly listen to what we wanted and then act on that.

It would have been really easy to cancel and not go and just kinda give up and stay in. But I try to pay attention to what’s important to me, and I try to do that where I can. I have to say that as a Mum, sometimes our needs can come last, and if you read or listened to last week’s episode with Samantha Sutherland, you can really see how you have to really watch yourself and whether you are making sure that you get quality leisure time. And so when there’s no real reason not to do something, even when it feels like there are barriers, then I have to go for it. So we did find a babysitter and we managed to leave right on time after feeding everyone and saying goodbye.

The Anticipation!

So we travelled in to the CBD and I actually took Big Magic in with me and I read a couple of parts that I had bookmarked, while Evan was driving, and I hadn’t read it for a while so it was really nice to get myself into that headspace. Elizabeth has such good stories and so many important messages and so it’s such a good book to dip in and out of once you’ve read the whole thing.

One of my favourite messages in Big Magic is that creativity firstly is something that we all have, we are all creating things and exploring, but also that even though creativity feels meaningless, which it is when you compare it to a life-and-death issue, but it’s also incredibly meaningful, and it adds the beauty to our lives that we desperately need. Elizabeth wrote that she finds it thrilling that she can engage in creativity, because then it’s not just all about life or death scenarios, it’s a delightful gift that is in complete opposition to death and destruction and survival mode.

She wrote that creativity means that “we still have enough space left in our civilisation for the luxuries of imagination and beauty and emotion, and even total frivolousness.” So this is a permission slip from Elizabeth to be creative, to spend time making things and enjoying beauty and experiencing wonder, and I love that.

So I was traveling in with Evan, and I gave him a quick rundown of who Elizabeth Gilbert was because he didn’t really know much about her, and thought if she talks about part of her life then it’d be good if he had a little bit of background. But in fact you didn’t really need to know her background to understand and enjoy the talk, because it was more about her perspectives on purpose and presence and it was really enjoyable whether you knew about her life or not.

So we got into the venue, the Town Hall which is a beautiful space by the way, I had not been before, and we were towards the back. I didn’t read all the parts of the ticket and didn’t realise that it was first come first serve for seating, otherwise I would have probably had dinner even earlier. But it didn’t really matter, we could see and hear so it was all good.

Elizabeth Gilbert Comes on Stage

Elizabeth started by making the point that creativity is not the same as creative living. I think that what some people think of as creativity is a usually narrow definition and used to mean like being an artist, and lots of people say things like oh I’m not creative, I don’t paint. But if you think about creativity from the lens of cognition for a minute, like I do as a former neuropsychologist, I think of creativity as idea generation, so it’s about coming up with ideas, finding creative solutions, generating and choosing options for your life, your lifestyle, and choosing what things and experiences that you want to surround yourself with.

Elizabeth said that creative living was a way of living where we make decisions based on creativity, which I take to mean this generating and choosing ideas, rather than making decisions out of fear. And when we make decisions out of fear, we are living from a scarcity mindset. We’re saying to ourselves well, there’s not enough of something, something might run out, and so I need to act with haste and desperation, rather than making decisions based on creativity, and curiosity, and morals. When we have a mindset of scarcity, where there is not enough to go around, then things become a competition. We feel like we have to be the best.

Elizabeth said there’s this desperation to be important, as if that’s our measure of success, and anything else is a failure. We will somehow miss out if we aren’t the best. And she made the link between this idea and finding your purpose.

Purpose and the Journey

Now I’ve spoken a little bit about purpose, it’s one of the three parts of the Intentional Life Framework that I developed for my online course TIMEWISE, and in that Purpose for me is about the purpose of what you are doing – why are you doing what you’re doing. It’s not about asking what’s your life’s purpose, because I would argue that most people don’t know this, not many people know early on in their lives or even later in their lives what they were put on the Earth to do, as if we are only here for one thing. I believe that purpose is important because we want to explore what we really love and then link that to our everyday lifestyle to make sure we’re making time for that.

But Elizabeth talked about how this idea of purpose puts pressure on people and creates purpose anxiety, where we have to strive to find out what our purpose is, what our one and only purpose is (as if we are single-faceted and have only one purpose), and how we must then spend our life being the absolute best at it, and we must make money from it and be the ultimate success! Right? Talk about pressure.

And if we keep striving and striving then when will it end? When are you done? It reminded me of one of my favourite things to say which is that there is no destination. There’s only the journey, we get to what we think we are striving for, and it just doesn’t end. Life just goes on and there’s no parade. And so we have to focus on the journey, we have to creatively craft the journey because that’s our life.

This idea reminded me of something I heard from Dr Rick Hanson quite a few years ago now. He did a podcast episode on Aspiration Without Attachment, and I’ve never forgotten it. It actually is in his book Resilient as well, and he defines it as “to dream big dreams and pursue them with commitment while also being at peace with whatever happens.” So you can have dreams, but don’t be fooled into thinking that success means to be the best at your one and only life’s purpose.

And so after Liz made a mockery of purpose and being driven to succeed, she gave us the antidote. And the antidote wasn’t to have no purpose, it’s not just oh forget having any sort of goal or thing in the future to look forward to. The antidote was actually presence. That to be present in the moment is to live your life.

Liz said “the present moment is here waiting to be adored.” Isn’t that beautiful?

Being present to your life means living less in the past and in the future, and more in the moments that are actually happening to you, because they are fleeting, they won’t be here again.

Paying Attention

She actually said “I love the word attention” because it speaks of being bound to this moment. Anything that we are attending to in the current moment is our experience. Now I love that she mentioned attention, I speak a lot about attention as one element of your cognition, and I have a couple of podcast episodes about focusing and about meditation and mindfulness, and so this really spoke to me. Instead of striving for a future so we can feel important, the important moments are the present ones which require our full and divided attention. And Elizabeth said it’s a deliberate choice to be present.

I think that there isn’t really a single magic bullet to help you to be more present, I think that we can work on ways to develop our mindfulness skills, like mediating and getting more sleep and things like that, but it’s really about practice over time. It’s about catching your mind wandering, and also working on your beliefs, much like I’ve talked about already with scarcity and success and things like that. And you can even leave little notes or reminders for yourself a few times a day to remind yourself to focus on the present moment while you are still getting the hang of it.

For me, I’ve tried to develop the habit of doing this when I notice my kids playing and doing something funny, I catch myself and notice what future thing I’m thinking about and just try to really soak in things like their laugh, their facial expression, and other parts like the sunlight, and that just makes my experience of my life so much richer.

Elizabeth Gilbert’s Perspective on Calm and Curiosity

Another main theme that Elizabeth talked about was calm. She linked calm presence with curiosity, by saying that we can use curiosity with our uncomfortable feelings or with a stressful situation to help us get to a calm state.

She talked about Byron Katie’s 4 questions, which is something I had come across a few years ago, and if you don’t know about this you should look it up because it’s a really thoughtful and gentle way to probe emotions and to learn more about what’s going on and how we can get to a more helpful experience with your thoughts and feelings. So we use Byron Katie’s 4 questions to help us to get curious about our emotions, and this is how we get to calm. And calm is such an important state, because it’s only then that we can make good decisions and move forward in healthy ways.

Elizabeth said that the most relaxed person in the room holds all the power – and we know this, I was actually reminded of my neuropsychology training days, and we had a number of teachers, and the one that commanded the most respect and was the most sought after, was the calmest one. And it’s funny because Elizabeth was talking about women specifically, but this teacher that I thought of was a male, and so I really do think that this applies no matter who you are.

Going back to what I mentioned earlier about mothers having their needs go last can often put us in this state of stress, and so Liz focused on this because women are often more respected when they are seen to aspire to be more strong or brave or powerful, but what if we were more relaxed and calm? And what if men were more calm? What decisions and actions would be different if people with any gender got curious about their feelings, stayed in the present moment and calmed their nervous system? Elizabeth gave an analogy about being the calmest mare in the herd. Apparently there’s this idea that when the alpha mare is calm, the other horses mimic that behaviour and calm themselves as well. And so when you can stay calm and make good decisions, then you then start to positively influence those around you.

While Liz didn’t talk about parenting, I immediately thought of my role as a mother in our large household, and how I’m very aware of my own words and emotions and facial expressions when something stressful happens, so that the kids can maintain a sense of security and calm as well, and I think that this can build resilience. I also know of other mothers in my life who become very outwardly stressed and even frenzied when things go wrong, and their children mimic that. Then we start to get into this idea that a big part of parenting is actually learning emotional intelligence and managing our own emotions so that our children can have those important skills too.

And, going back to curiosity, Liz made the point that some situations are still going to be really terrible, and we’re not discounting that by being curious and getting calm, in her usual playful way she said that there can still be a part of us that says “oh this is interesting” even when the proverbial stuff hits the fan, right? And you know that this is right because you can ask yourself: If you got calm, would you be more or less capable of solving this problem? That really was a powerful point for me. So I really liked these ideas that Liz talked about.

Too Quick an Ending

I have to say, that I was so enthralled by Liz speaking that she just stopped and said she was taking questions, and I thought oh that must be like halfway, because it felt like only about half an hour, but it had been an hour and 15 minutes, and it was time for the last 15 minutes which was Q&A. I felt this wave of disappointment that it was ending, but the questions were quite interesting, and there’s one I want to mention.

A woman asked about rage, particularly rage in mothers. Elizabeth spent a lot of the evening talking about calm, and yet mothers experience rage and we can be made to feel sometimes like that’s not ok. And Elizabeth spoke really well about this. She pointed out that even the calmest yogi or monk has rage, and that the guru she studied under in India had moments of rage when it was called for. She said maybe rage is the appropriate response at times.

And I think we all know that when we start to ignore parts of our feelings, that’s when problems begin. When men start to deny that they are sad, and when woman start to deny that they are angry, that’s when problems can arise. And so accepting that rage is part of our emotional repertoire is a step in the journey of emotional intelligence.

However, Liz expressed that those who are angry have the weakest boundaries. Anger arises when a line is crossed. If someone crosses it, it’s disrespectful. I have learnt that emotions are signals, there to tell us something. And so with anger, anger becomes a tool to tell you that something needs to stop, and then it’s up to you to take that action, which might be becoming more assertive in expressing your needs and your boundaries.

Evan’s Wise Take

When the evening finished, Evan and I had a drink at a local bar, and we were talking about the night. I’m someone who likes to mull over ideas before coming to a conclusion, and I was thinking out loud about this juxtaposition between calm and rage. And I wondered how it would be reconciled. And Evan said “there is nothing to reconcile.” Hmm. He’s a good egg that one. Of course there is nothing to reconcile! Rage arises as a signal when it’s necessary, just like any other emotion, and it’s your job to bring it back to centre, back to calm, before moving forward with considered action. Rage isn’t something to be ashamed of, nor is any emotion.

I enjoyed the evening immensely, and Evan enjoyed it too. He was one of about 10 men in the entire place, because Elizabeth Gilbert tends to attract a female audience, yet I actually believe that these messages that she shared are gender neutral. These self-help messages of presence and calm and purpose are gender neutral, and I listen to and read plenty of men who say the same things, who speak on meditation and emotions and self-awareness and personality and doing the work, and it’s so important that all people take the time to work on themselves, not because there’s something wrong with us, but because we can live a more present and more enjoyable life, it’s just a matter of finding the leaders who you resonate with.

Elizabeth told some poignant stories that will stay with me, and she told them in that beautiful carefree and joyous way that she speaks and she writes, and so I’m so glad I went. It was really important to me to go, and so I’m glad I didn’t let very minor hurdles steer me off course.

I think Elizabeth did a beautiful job of teaching us just some of the ways that we can answer the question that the poet Mary Oliver asked, which is “tell me, what is it you plan to do with your one wild and precious life?” See you next time!

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This was such an inspiring evening! Such an important part of personal development is really harnessing your time and using it in a way that is meaningful to you. I teach this in my online time management course TIMEWISE – it might be right up your alley!