Mediocre or Magic? Your choice. 3 easy steps.
I’m making my way through Big Magic – Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert’s latest wisdom filled book.
As the title suggests, this book is about living beyond fear so as to access your god given right to create.
And by create we’re not talking about something tangible or work specific. Although it might be this. Rather, we’re talking about creative living, where you do what you want to do in YOUR. OWN. WAY.
It’s about being ready for this. It’s about staying open and clear to give birth to your creation. It’s about detachment and not taking things so freakin’ seriously. And lots more.
And while there many points she makes which are worthy of exploration here are 3 for today’s post.
Entitlement
“….you will never be able to create anything interesting out of your life if you don’t believe you are entitled to at least try”.
I’ve been accused over the years of being selfish. Of moving through life with a certain sense of entitlement. This used to bother me, being called selfish. Being seen this way. Until I realised that my sense of entitlement didn’t come from a selfish place, it came from a place of knowing.
It came and comes from a place of worth (something I work on consciously and continuously).
Entitlement is about taking your space, your place in the world. It’s about declaring ‘I belong’. As Elizabeth says “You’re not saying ‘I am the greatest!’ but merely saying ‘I am here!”.
There is so much power in owning your place in the world. It’s not arrogant and it doesn’t have to be all in your face and extroverted. It’s an internal thing.
Declare you belong. Declare it. And watch people flock to your work and to who you are. You are worthy enough to be this way. You are worthy.
Don’t help me.
“… please don’t try to help me because we will feel the weight of your heavy intention and the strain upon our souls”.
The work I’m most connected to, the work which receives the most thank yous are always the posts, workshops, ideas that are helping me to make sense of my own life, my own shit. I learnt a while back to create for myself, not for anyone else. When I was attempting to ‘help’ others the process was arduous, and the outcome – kinda blah.
This doesn’t mean we can’t share the wisdom and knowledge of our experiences, of what we’ve learnt, studied. Not at all. But there’s a reason it’s said “we teach what we need to learn the most”. What is it you want to understand further about yourself? Experience more of? Become an expert of? Create this. Paint, photograph, write, cook, be of service – but do it for you. Do it because you love it and need it.
The irony is, by stepping into the energy of wanting to help ourself, we inadvertently end up helping others. When we go in with the intention to ‘help’ others, it almost loses its power. Like Elizabeth says, it places a weight of heavy intention.
Allow yourself to be selfish about this and watch the process and experience change. Cause at the end of the day, living creatively is about the process, not just the end result.
It’s all temporary.
Speaking of end results – nothing is permanent anyway.
Ever since getting all silent at Vipassana and listening to 10 days of impermanence lectures, I’ve started to really understand the power and importance of living life as such.
In this life of ours, nothing is permanent. Everything passes. It really does.
This goes too for our ideas, our endeavours, for who we are in any moment.
From my own experience and from what client’s constantly tell me, it’s the attachment to perfection that holds us back from releasing ourselves and our craft into the world.
To which I now say ‘Fuck it. FUCK IT!’ It doesn’t need to be perfect, it just needs to be out there. It’s from this place of being our there that it can change form and become ‘perfect’ (whatever our illusion of perfect is.)
Elizabeth says, “I also want to live the most vividly decorated temporary life that I can. I don’t just mean physically; I mean emotionally, spiritually, intellectually. I don’t want to be afraid of bright colours, or new sounds or big love or risky decisions, or strange experiences, or weird endeavours or sudden changes or even failure”.
When we step into the impermanence of life, the temporariness of it, we loosen our grip on life. We live creatively purely for the sake of it, without attachment to the anticipated outcome.
***
As I’ve mentioned a few times, creative living isn’t just about creating a workshop or writing a book or painting something. Instead though, think of creative living as owning whatever it is you’re meant to be in the world. This might be expressed through something tangible you create, it might just be how you play out your presence in the world.
If you want to get clearer on this. If you want help believing what I’ve just written above is true – kinesiology, do it, come in, let’s chat.
And read her book. It’s good. Really good.
Remember, you’re a gift, an asset, a divinely created being. Do not deny the world of this.
