{"id":20350,"date":"2024-01-08T07:20:43","date_gmt":"2024-01-08T07:20:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/?p=20350"},"modified":"2024-01-08T07:21:47","modified_gmt":"2024-01-08T07:21:47","slug":"elizabeth-gilbert","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/elizabeth-gilbert\/","title":{"rendered":"Eat, Pray, Leap: Finding Your Creative Genius with Elizabeth Gilbert"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Elizabeth Gilbert is arguably the epitome of a \u201cfreelance\u201d writer: She\u2019s trotted the globe, won multiple awards for her journalism and fiction, and turned her work into movies. Best known for her memoir <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Eat, Pray, Love<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">, Gilbert has had a career filled with creativity and inspiration, both inside and out.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gilbert, however, views her success from a different perspective, not as something she earned but as a collaboration with something she has little control over. In a TED talk, she argues that creative work is a collaboration with external forces and that viewing creativity this way is better for our mental health and our work. In the process, she shows how to harness these forces to encourage and inspire your audience.<\/span><\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><iframe title=\"YouTube video player\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/86x-u-tz0MA?si=_4wEBIQ_Z0g9y0op\" width=\"560\" height=\"315\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen=\"allowfullscreen\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Be Vulnerable<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gilbert starts by discussing the anxiety that\u2019s supposedly unique to artists, couching it in a joke:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c&#8230;they come up to me now, all worried, and they say, \u2018Aren\u2019t you afraid you\u2019re never going to be able to top [Eat, Pray, Love]? Aren\u2019t you afraid you\u2019re going to keep writing for your whole life, and you\u2019re never again going to create a book that anybody in the world cares about ever again?\u2019<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So that\u2019s reassuring, you know.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Here, she understands her audience: creatives, or want-to-be creatives, who are looking for someone who \u201cmade it\u201d and has the blueprint for success. But Gilbert quickly dispels the myth, revealing she\u2019s just as anxious as everyone else.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Importantly, in creating that level of identification, she also breaks down walls for her audience. She\u2019s communicating that there is no magical space that only a few can reach, but rather that creativity is a job like any other:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c&#8230;my dad, for example, was a chemical engineer, and I don\u2019t recall once in his 40 years of chemical engineering anybody asking him if he was afraid to be a chemical engineer, you know? \u2018That chemical-engineering block, John, how\u2019s it going?\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gilbert\u2019s honesty is something communicators can emulate: She puts herself out there, even when it\u2019s tough. Not many authors will admit they\u2019re worried about being a flash in the pan, but Gilbert is willing to talk about it, as it serves her more significant point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">While Gilbert is serious about her thesis, she\u2019s lightening the tone with humor. This lets her be vulnerable and deal with these topics frankly while not letting that frankness drive the tone of her speech. Especially as she\u2019s pushing against the idea of the writer as a tortured figure, she\u2019s \u201cwalking the walk\u201d and showing that she isn\u2019t defined solely by her fears.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Sharing Personal Anecdotes<\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gilbert then interrogates where the idea of the tortured creative came from. She points out that until the Enlightenment, creativity was viewed as an external force:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cPeople believed that creativity was this divine attendant spirit that came to human beings from some distant and unknowable source, for distant and unknowable reasons. The Greeks famously called these divine attendant spirits of creativity \u2018daemons.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To Gilbert, this had some upsides:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cIf your work was brilliant, you couldn\u2019t take all the credit for it. Everybody knew that you had this disembodied genius who had helped you. If your work bombed, not entirely your fault, you know? Everyone knew your genius was kind of lame.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, this doesn\u2019t reflect how people experience the process of creating. Gilbert relates a story acclaimed poet Ruth Stone told her. Stone told Gilbert in an interview that she could \u201cfeel\u201d a poem coming, and she had to race to get it:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c&#8230;when she felt it coming because it would shake the earth under her feet, she knew that she had only one thing to do at that point, and that was to, in her words, \u201crun like hell\u201d&#8230;she had to get to a piece of paper and a pencil fast enough so that when it thundered through her, she could collect it and grab it on the page. And other times, she wouldn\u2019t be fast enough, so she\u2019d be running and running, and she wouldn\u2019t get to the house, and the poem would barrel through her.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gilbert has chosen her anecdote here, a good model for making your case as a communicator. Gilbert is relating to the anxiety and frustration that creatives might experience as part of their process because Stone felt it, and Gilbert has, too.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gilbert then notes that while her day-to-day experience of creativity is different, referring to herself as a \u201cmule\u201d instead of a \u201cpipeline,\u201d she\u2019s had the same experience of ideas coming out of the blue. For Gilbert, the question is how to manage what\u2019s a mercurial collaborator.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>Sharing Stories of Others<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter wp-image-20352\" src=\"http:\/\/mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Eat-pray-love-by-Elizabeth-Gilbert.jpg\" alt=\"Eat, pray, love by Elizabeth Gilbert\" width=\"780\" height=\"520\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Eat-pray-love-by-Elizabeth-Gilbert.jpg 2048w, https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Eat-pray-love-by-Elizabeth-Gilbert-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Eat-pray-love-by-Elizabeth-Gilbert-1024x683.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Eat-pray-love-by-Elizabeth-Gilbert-768x512.jpg 768w, https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/Eat-pray-love-by-Elizabeth-Gilbert-1536x1024.jpg 1536w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 780px) 100vw, 780px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Gilbert then shares another anecdote about creativity, this time from musician Tom Waits and how his approach to creativity shifted:<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201c&#8230;one day, he was driving down the freeway in Los Angeles, and this is when it all changed for him. And he\u2019s speeding along, and all of a sudden, he hears this little fragment of melody that comes into his head as inspiration often comes, elusive and tantalizing, and he wants it. It\u2019s gorgeous, and he longs for it, but he has no way to get it\u2026.And instead of panicking, he just stopped. He just stopped that whole mental process and did something completely novel. He looked up at the sky and said, \u201cExcuse me, can you not see that I\u2019m driving?\u201d \u201cDo I look like I can write down a song right now? If you want to exist, return at a more opportune moment when I can care for you. Otherwise, bother somebody else today. Go bother Leonard Cohen.\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Again, this distills Gilbert\u2019s approach to its essence. The story is funny but caters to her points and a shared experience with the audience. She encourages them to realize the creative process isn\u2019t entirely in their control, and to set aside the anxiety of creating.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">More importantly, there is a message that we can take from this as marketers: in a creative field that is dominated by deadlines, criticism, and fast delivery, it can be easy to lose that sense of creativity. But Gilbert situates creativity as something we do every day. It&#8217;s an active and collaborative practice.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3>Stay Accessible<\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">With humor and identification, Gilbert teaches us that creativity isn\u2019t just something we pull from the air, or the product of rare genius, but an everyday practice available to all of us. With humor and stories, she makes it accessible.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What we can learn as communicators:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Don\u2019t be afraid of humor, especially when dealing with a personal topic. Use it to engage your audience and provide perspective.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Include personal reflections or anecdotes from others throughout the piece to connect with the reader on a deeper level.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Meet your audience where they are; instead of just flatly challenging their beliefs, acknowledge some truths while presenting alternatives.<\/span><\/li>\n<li style=\"font-weight: 400;\" aria-level=\"1\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Use vivid language and storytelling to make abstract concepts (like creativity) more relatable.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<blockquote><p><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Does your business or brand need help communicating more clearly? <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/platform.html\">Try the Media Shower platform<\/a>.<\/span><\/i><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cEat, Pray, Love\u201d author Elizabeth Gilbert introduces a new approach to creativity, as a collaboration with larger forces instead of entirely from yourself.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":113,"featured_media":20351,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[459],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/113"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20350"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20353,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20350\/revisions\/20353"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20351"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.mediashower.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}