Elizabeth Gilbert — How to Set Strong Boundaries, Overcome Purpose Anxiety, & Find Your Inner Voice

Part of the thing I've noticed that people tend to get stuck on sometimes is that they get this inspiration, right? So, inspiration comes first, and inspiration is the breathing in of God, right? So, like something— even the most empirical scientific atheist people in the world—when they talk about where an idea came from, they say an idea came to me. They say that; they don't even know they're saying that, but they're reporting accurately what the feeling is. Because that's what everyone—I've ever met who's had an idea—it's the Eureka moment. So, this may sound familiar to

people who, like, maybe you've had this experience: you start working on this thing that was this inspiration, and a couple weeks, a couple months into it, a couple days, another idea comes, and that idea seems more interesting than the one that you've already invested some time into, uh, and then you're like, but I want to do this thing. This thing is, like, fresh and exciting; this is the really, really cool thing, right? And then you go and do that one, and then another idea comes, and then it's like you're dealing with this melee. So, oftentimes

people will say to me, "I'm working on a book and I'm halfway through it, but I've got this other idea that I think is way better, and this book feels really stale and it doesn't have any life in it." And I always say, like, "Okay, well, I give you permission to quit working on that first project, but only if you have a proven track record of ever being able to finish a thing." That is so smart. [Music] Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferriss Show, where it

is my job to interview people from all different disciplines, all different walks of life, to tease out the habits, routines, thoughts, lessons learned, and so on that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today, one of my favorites, Elizabeth Gilbert. She is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love, as well as several other international bestsellers. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National Book Critics Circle Award, and the PEN/Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, City of Girls, was named an instant New York

Times bestseller—a rollicking, sexy tale of the New York City theater world during the 1940s. You can go to elizabethgilbert.substack.com to subscribe to Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert, her newsletter, which has more than 120,000 subscribers. You can find her on Instagram at Elizabeth Gilbert Writer. And Liz, it's so nice to see you. It's so nice to see you! It's so nice to be back talking to you. I love it. We both did something quite similar: you went back and listened to our last conversation, which I just had a blast recording with you, and I went

back and I read all of the summary notes that I had from that last conversation. Before we started recording, you mentioned a few things. One, that the very last thing that you mentioned in that conversation will dovetail nicely into some of what we'll talk about today, and that'll be just a bit of foreshadowing for folks; so we won't go into that first. But secondly, I asked if you had any particular hopes for this recording and asked what would make it a home run or time well spent. One of the things that you said—and this, so

I suppose broadly what you said too—is you had no cherished outcome. And I like that phrasing, and I was hoping to hear you expand on that a bit because I think it might be good medicine for a lot of what ails me. Oh God, yeah! I mean, it's already a home run just getting to sit here and talk to you, and I know it hasn't been easy for our schedules to figure out when we can do this, so I'm just happy and relaxed to be here. And I'm also not concerned that you and I will

ever have any trouble finding things to talk about. I don't think so. So, that was part of it, but the no cherished outcome is actually a line from a translation of a Celtic poem, and it's called the Celtic Poem of Approach. As well as I understand it, these are lines that were spoken when you’re meeting new people and when you're moving out of one area into another tribe's area or you know you’re going to be interacting with people in a new way. This beautiful poem of approach that I really love—and I'm probably not going to

get the whole thing right—but it says something like, "I will honor your gods. I will drink from your well. I bring an undefended heart to our meeting place. I will not negotiate by withholding. I am not subject to disappointment. I have no cherished outcome." And how do you apply that then to your own life? What led you to hold on to that particular piece? It's my highest aspiration that that poem and that spirit is the foundational agreement of all my friendships, and I say those words, "I have no cherished outcome," a lot to my friends,

and I hope that I mean it, you know? And when I start feeling hurt or resentful or excluded or misunderstood, I'm like—sometimes the only way you can find out that you had a cherished outcome is when you didn't get it. Like, you didn't like it. Sometimes I discover that, where I'm like, I think I'm just easy-breezy and I'm just hanging out—and then I'm like, oh, I—I had a secret hidden cherished outcome because something didn't... Happen that I wanted, and now I'm all like bent about it. So now I get to examine my resentment and ask

myself whether I really want to honor. I have no cherished outcome, or whether I want to sulk. I seem to be better at no cherished outcome in friendships than I am in romantic relationships. Almost the minute a relationship becomes a romantic relationship, I have a list as long as my arm of cherished outcomes, and all of a sudden I can be disappointed. All of a sudden I don't bring an undefended heart to our meeting place. But with friendships, which I have over time discovered to be actually the true loves of my life, I seem to

be a little bit better at taking responsibility for myself and trying not to put outcomes on people. Why do you think that is? That there is such a difference for you between the number of cherished outcomes you might hold in romantic relationships versus friendships? Is it because, at least culturally speaking here in the US, there aren't as many stories or scripts related to friendships versus romantic partners, or would you explain it a different way? I think that my thing has always, always been—and this is why it's been so interesting for me being single and celibate

by choice over the last five years—there’s nobody to blame, which is so great. I think that the minute somebody is attached to me as my partner, I do this weird outer body thing where I hold them responsible for whatever mood I’m in. So if I’m feeling great, it's because they are the greatest, and if I’m feeling terrible, it’s because they are the worst. It’s so unfair. One of the really beautiful and educational things about spending a lot of time alone is like, “Oh, these mood cycles and these depressions and this euphoria are happening! This is

like a weather system that’s happening that isn’t related to anybody.” And it turns out all those years when I was analyzing those poor people in my relationships and holding them to account for the fact that I felt kind of not right, you know? It was like, “Oh, I haven’t been with anybody in five years, and I felt not right when I woke up this morning, and there’s no one to pin it on.” It’s so great! I love it. It’s like I love not having anyone to pin it on. I hate pinning things on people, but

I don’t seem to know how to not do it once we’re in a romantic relationship. She should come with a warning. Yeah, a lot in life should come with a warning. So I have quite a few follow-ups, but I'm going to try to put them in some semblance of a coherent order. So my first question related to that is: how do you think about responsibility or ownership for yourself? In the sense that, or I should say rather, what prompts that question is I was having a conversation with an executive coach recently, Jerry Cola, actually, who’s

I think very good at what he does—a former very top-tier investor who has a lot of questions I return to. One of which is: how are we complicit in creating the conditions we say we don’t want? But such a good question! It’s a really good one, but the one I wanted to apply here was more a comment he made to me because I was talking about taking radical ownership of things and seeing my role in just about everything. He said, “Well, taking responsibility for everything can be as bad as taking responsibility for nothing.” And so

I’m wondering when you wake up and the weather system is dark and stormy, how do you work on yourself without picking on yourself, if that makes any sense? Oh, such a good question! God, I love that question. How are you complicit in what? Can you say it again? Yeah, how are you complicit in creating the conditions you say you don’t want? Wow! Another word for that is: who are you blaming your life on today? Well, I think the only honest and humble answer that I can give to that question is: I don’t know, MH, and

I don’t know where that line is. But it’s easier for me when I’m not in a relationship. It’s simpler for me to say, “Okay, I can take some accountability for my own weather system.” But as you say, I don’t want to beat myself up about having weather. I have to constantly remind myself that—I mean, I think the most compassionate thing that I say to myself, or I hear said to myself all the time from a more loving presence, is: it is a very difficult thing to have a human incarnation. This is not an easy ride!

Even a good life is a hard life, and it’s so weird. It’s so profoundly weird to be a consciousness dropped into a particular body, dropped into a particular family, arriving at a particular moment in history. Like, it’s so strange! I’m sure you—well, I don’t want to project this on you, but maybe you had this experience as a kid. I haven’t remembered as a kid looking at myself in the mirror and being like, “I’m in here!” Like, it’s so weird. Yeah, what am I doing in here? All of that is out there, and I’m in here—something’s

inside of this experience, and it’s really hard. So I think you have to start with that. Like, you know, who told you you were supposed to get it right straight out of the gate? Like, who told you? You were supposed to get it right seven out of seven days or that you're constantly supposed to be improving like a Fortune 500 company, constantly, you know, going in this upward angle direction— a certain percentage every quarter. There are billions of systems operating within your body alone: hormonal systems, chemical systems, and viruses and bacteria. Like, we’re such a

complex mechanism; it's so hard to figure out how to operate one of these things. And then, just when I do really well in solitude, like I can get this thing humming—like I can get this machine, this mind, and this heart to where it is like we are at a beautiful hum— but the instant you throw another complex human mechanism into my field, you know, then I've got to adapt to their chemistry. It's hard; I don't know, it's a lot of variables. I think "it's hard" is a really good way to start with self-compassion. So, it's

hard. You did a retake a few moments ago where you said, "One of the things that I say to myself," and then you added and said, "One of the things that I hear." Why did you change that? Because I believe that I am loved beyond measure by a magnificent, complex, amused God who has given me power over practically nothing, and really like very little that I have control over. But what tiny amount I have control over is extremely important. It reminds me of something a friend of mine, who was a physicist, said one time: very

little of the universe is matter—very little. But what there is is very important. It's like that, I think, with control and power. Like, I have very little control; I have very little power, even over my own mechanism and my own being. But what little agency I have, I think it's important to use it well. But anyway, I talk to that presence all the time, and I am in a nearly constant dialogue with it, and I hear it talking to me. And so that's why I say I hear a loving presence saying, "It's really hard, it's

really hard." Like, I'm not telling you this should be easy. How long has that been the case? Is that development in the last handful of years, a decade? Has it been true since you were a kid? It's deepened. I think one of the things—I'm so lucky about my friend Rob once said to me, "You're so lucky you didn't grow up with an enforced religion," and I'm so fortunate about that. I went to church, like a nice little mellow New England church, most Sundays as a kid, but I don't recall anybody talking about God that much.

Like, it was more of a social gathering. I think New Englanders are a little bit reticent in terms of being too heavy on the message, you know? Like we sang songs and made crafts, and I don't remember it having very much to do with God. But I had a God awareness that was very powerful in me, and I remember going to the National Cathedral on a school trip when I was 10 in Washington, D.C. And yeah, I grew up on a farm, so I grew up with very rustic architecture. To go from—I mean that cathedral

did what cathedrals are meant to do to medieval peasants, to me, you know? Like, it put me into an altered state, and I remember coming home and wanting to replicate that state and trying to figure out if I could build a cathedral in my bedroom with, like, stuff from my dad's woodshed and my mom's sewing kit. Like, I really did try to—I'm like, how do you do that? How do you make something that feels like that? I think writing for me, and my pursuit of writing and the arts, was always driven by this sense of

awe, wonder, and mystery—that something was moving through me. That was probably my first direct communication with it. But for the last 20 years, I've had a practice nearly every single day of writing myself a letter every morning from unconditional love, which is kind of a God presence. It's a bit more specific, the unconditional love thing, because I think God is more than that. But that's where I also hear direction and guidance and humor. Like, yeah, I need a very funny God. I'm not going to do well with a God that's too serious. I need a

God who thinks I'm funny, like who thinks I'm adorable and funny. Like, I need that. I can't be too, you know, too beaten up by a higher power. How did you start that practice? When did it start, or even begin germinating? It started in desperation when I was going through my first divorce. I was 30, and the well-laid-out planned life that I had created very obediently—like I had done just what my culture had told me to do, like I got married at 24, worked hard, bought a house, and made a plan to have a family.

And then, instead of having a family, I had a nervous breakdown—like, quite literally. Everybody was moving in this one direction and my entire intellectual, spiritual, and physical system collapsed, which I now know—I now see that as an act of God. I now see that there was a force that was trying to communicate to me: this is not your path. To "I will kill you before I let you do this. I will kill you before I let you be a suburban housewife. I'm not allowing it. Like, I will make you put you in so much physical

pain that you're going to have to notice that this is not the life for you. But I was also in much shame of failure and letting people down. And, like, we just bought this house; I just felt like the biggest [expletive] in the world. I don't know why I can't just get in line and do this thing that everybody's saying to do. And anyway, that marriage ended, and then I threw myself into another relationship, and that ended. And I was like, 'I'm a mess!' Like, I don't know how to orchestrate my life at all. And

nothing—here I am, 30 years old, and nothing is what I had planned it to be five years ago. I was in the deepest depression of my life, and I didn't have much of a spiritual life at that point. But I remember waking up one night in just shame and getting an instruction—I mean, that's the only way I can explain it. I'm comfortable with that language because I often have that happen in my creative life, where I'm told what to do: 'This is what you're going to focus on. Here's what you need to do now.' And

I was given this instruction, and it came in as clearly as I'm talking to you. And it said, 'Get up, get a notebook, and write to yourself the words that you most wish somebody would say to you,' because there was a great loneliness that I was feeling, too, as well as the shame. And what that letter said was, 'I've got you. I'm with you. I'm not going anywhere. I love you exactly the way you are. You can't fail at this; you can't do this wrong. I don't need anything from you. This is a huge thing

to hear: I don't need anything from you. Talk about no cherished outcome; I don't need anything from you. You don't have to improve. You don't have to do life better. You don't have to win. You don't have to get out of this depression. You don't have to ever uplift your spirits. You could end up living in a box under a bridge, in a garbage bag, spitting at people, and I would love you just as much as I do now. Like, you can't—the love that I have for you cannot be lost because it's innate. It's yours,

and I have no requirements for it. And if you need to stay up all night crying, I'll be here with you. And if tomorrow you have a garbage day again because you've been up all night crying, I'll be there for that too. I'll be here for every minute of it. Just ask me to come, and I'll be here with you.' And the astonishing thing was that, like, even talking about it now, I can feel the impact that it has on my nervous system to hear those words, even in my own voice. And it was the

first experience I'd ever had with unconditional love. I'd never heard anybody say, 'I don't need you to be anything. You don't have to do better. This is fine. This is great. You—like, on the bathroom floor in a pile of tears—it's not just fine; it's great. We love you just like that.' And that's so nourishing because it's so the opposite of every message that I've ever heard. So I started doing that practice, and it's taken me through—I've had difficult times in the last 20 years, but I've never gone as low again as I went at that

time, because this is the net that catches me routinely before I can get that low. And that voice doesn't change. Alright, this is getting into the juicy bits that I love to wade around in. So, to follow up: you've helped a lot of people now draft or attempt to write similar letters, and I'm wondering a few things you can answer in any order you want, or you can take it in a different direction. One is if there are ingredients that seem to work better than others, because everything seems to take practice; maybe these letters are

no exception. The second is: do you find that people with some religious orientation or spiritual orientation towards a greater power have an easier time writing this? In other words, if the letter is from this power to yourself, almost versus being from another version of yourself to yourself, does it differ in impact? Those are very good questions. So, I found out that what I was doing—there's a name for it. And it's actually a long spiritual tradition for people to do things like this, but it's a practice that's very common in 12-step recovery, and it's called two-way

prayer. So, it's essentially two-way prayer. So, I call it love, but sometimes I call it God. For a lot of people, that word 'God' is a weapon. I mean, it is a dangerous word, especially for people who grow up in what are called high-demand religions or who grew up in really oppressive religious cultures or abusive religious cultures, or for whom they simply cannot stomach that word. Like, obviously, don't use that word. But two-way prayer—so, one-way prayer is what most people are taught as prayer, which is a supplication, right? Like, you get down on your knees

and...” That, in my life, I beg for help, but sometimes you spend so much time begging for help that you're not actually listening. Yeah, I'm too busy saying "Marco" to hear the "Polo." Yeah, I like "mar, mar, mar, mar, mar, mar." You know, it's like, can I just—can I get—can I just? There's something I want to say. So, I would suggest if people are interested in this, you can look up two-way prayer because there are a lot of people teaching it, and they have made a sort of—what were you saying? Is there like a practice

or instructions? They have found that certain things work really well. So, I'm sort of quoting from kind of two-way prayer theory on this. The first one is that you can open up the channel by reading something. So go to a quiet place, although at this point I've done it so long that I can do it in an Uber, you know? But like, go to a quiet place and read something that feels holy to you. It doesn't have to be any official religious text; poetry works for me better than scripture. So, the poems of Hafiz, or

Rumi, or Mary Oliver, or Walt Whitman's *Song of Myself*—essentially just a big letter from love—you can just open that up to any page, read some of it, and I feel like those writers had direct access to the divine, and they left the door open when they died. Right? So, you can just draft in on the sense that they create, right? So, you read something that opens your heart in some way, and then you ask one question and one question only. It's not a deposition, and it's not a dialogue because the ego always wants a dialogue.

Like, the ego always wants—if I could reduce my ego down to two words, it would be "Yeah, but..." It's always got a follow-up question. It's like, "Well, yeah, but you say that you love me, but yeah, but you know..." And it's part of the reason that two-way prayer is so beautiful is that you ask the question and then you stop talking. You get your opening statement right. Your opening statement is, "Dear love, what would you have me know today?" And then, the other thing that I've seen suggested in two-way prayer practice—and this kind of came

intuitively to me, but I see that it's taught this way when people teach it—is that the first line back to you from the divine should be an endearment, an affectionate nickname: "My love," "My child," "My sweetheart," "My little one." I hear "little one" a lot: "My little one," "My angel," "Honey head." I've seen some of my friends have like tiny turtle penguin cheeks, you know? Like, some sort of endearment—imagine what penguin cheeks look like, restation, you know? And that's very hard for some people because the idea of turning toward yourself as though you are worthy

of endearment can be really hard, especially for perfectionists and the most driven among us. Like, you didn't earn—how did you earn "sweet love"? You didn't earn that, you know? But this is a kind of love that doesn't have to be earned. So, you start with that. And then, the way I did it the first night I did it was I literally just wrote what I wish somebody would say to me, you know? Like, and that's pretty straightforward as an instruction because you know what you wish somebody would say to you. You know how you want

to be loved; you know how you want to be loved. It's right there—you know what you're dying for. We all know what we're dying for, whether it's mother love or the missing father or the partner, or like somebody who's just like, "I've got you. I see you. I see you. I love you. You're amazing to me." I see that you're suffering; I'm with you in your suffering. And then you just write that. But over time, what I think people will find—one of the biggest questions people have is, "Well, it just feels like it's just me

writing to me. Like, it feels super artificial. I don't feel like I'm hearing God's voice. I don't feel like I'm believing that there's this eternal source in the universe that's completely loving and unconditionally adores me. I just feel like I'm doing this exercise of just writing words to myself, and that doesn't feel spiritual, and it doesn't feel rich, and it doesn't feel real." And the question I have heard is, "Well, what's so bad about that? What if it is just you? What if all it is is just you writing to yourself from a kinder voice

within you? Wouldn't that be worthy enough to be slightly life-changing—besides the terrorist who lives inside your head constantly telling you how you failed?" Like, why not change the channel in your own head? And if that's all it is, what if God is just the most loving voice inside your own head? This makes me actually flash back to our last conversation because we have some proof for this in a different form, which is morning pages from *The Artist's Way* by Julia Cameron—just getting your monkey mind on paper, even if it's actually the terrorist, can be incredibly

powerful. And one of my friends, I remember he tried it for the first time for a week, and he said, he's very high functioning, works with a lot of household names. I won't mention who, but he said this is the closest thing to a magic trick—a real-world magic trick—that I've ever come across. So that question, "What if it is just the kindest voice in your head?" I think helps to diffuse maybe the pressure that people would apply to themselves when trying this for the first time. Yeah, right. As you were talking about the very first

example you gave, I was thinking, and I think this might have been Chip Conley—could have been someone else who said this to me—but that happiness is reality minus expectations. I was like, there are a lot of ways to play with that collection of variables, one of which is saying, "Hey, you've already passed the grade! You could be under an overpass, and that's acceptable. That's okay, right? You don't have to be that Fortune 500 company compounding at x% per quarter. Thank God." Yeah, yeah, because you know those people, and I know those people, and I don't

know that it's such a gentle, loving life that they're leading. Yeah, I think I know one of them intimately. At least, somebody who kind of assumes that's the baseline minimal acceptable outcome, right? Life just doesn't seem to work that way. It's not linear, even if you are improving over time, but applying that pressure sometimes handicaps the improvement in the first place. So, question for you—this occurred to me, and it may be a dead end—but I'm wondering, have you seen any difference in how men approach this or have challenges with it versus women? Or no difference?

Is it a kind of ubiquitous set of challenges when you look at the number of friends, listeners, readers, etc., who have attempted this? That's such a good question. It's hard to know because women tend to follow me more than men do. Yeah, but I've invited a number of men to join me. So, every week on my Substack, I share a letter from love that I've written, and then I invite a special guest to do it. I've invited a number of men. I'm thinking right now about my friend A.R. Cooper, who's such an extraordinary guy. He

grew up on the South Side of Chicago in an absolutely bullet- and drug-ridden ghetto—black, underprivileged, underserved. He's the subject and the producer of a gorgeous documentary called "A Beautiful Thing," and he wrote a book by the same title. When he was in high school, with like no future, some guy showed up in his high school hallway with a rowing machine and was like, "Hey! I want to start the first black rowing team or the first black crew. Do any of you guys want to do it?" He was like, "Yes! I absolutely want to do it!"

And now, he has become this ambassador, teaching rowing all over the world, in South Africa. His letter from love that he shared is one of my favorite ones that I've ever seen, because his letter was addressed to that little boy who he was—who saw more violence before he was 8 years old than most people on tours of duty in Afghanistan had seen—and how tenderly that child needed to be treated. Watching him—this athlete, this motivational speaker, this great leader—turn toward himself or have love turned toward him in such a tender and intimate way was so moving.

But he was open to it; he allowed that vulnerability to come through. There's something that I've learned in IFS (Internal Family Systems) therapy. I was just going to bring it up! Yeah, I mean, the mind works; it all works with IFS, too. But there's one of the things they say in IFS a lot: it's a prepositional change—how do you feel toward yourself versus how do you feel about yourself? May I just give a little bit of context for folks? So, IFS, for people who don't know, is somewhat strangely named. Internal Family Systems can be thought

of as—please fact-check me; I did an episode with Dick Schwartz for people who are interested—Parts work in the context of different parts of yourself. You might have protectors; you may have exiles—these aspects of yourself that you have pushed away or compartmentalized in some way. You facilitate dialogue between and among these different parts for the purposes of therapy, and it can be very, very powerful. So I just wanted to give people a little bit of context—beautifully described! Yeah, I've heard it described as "group therapy for one," and Dick Schwartz, who founded it, started off as a

group therapist. When he started doing individual therapy, he was like, "Oh, this is just like group therapy. We've got voices yelling at each other inside this person who don't know how to communicate with each other," right? So yeah, that's a really beautiful summation of what it is. But the difference between even— I mean, try, Tim, actually: can you feel the difference physically between if I ask you how you feel about yourself and how you feel toward yourself? They're totally different! Because "toward yourself," I'm taking a friendly observer perspective; there's a built-in empathy. Right? "How do

you feel about yourself?" also is so familiar linguistically that it overlaps with a lot of the negative tracks that I already have in my head. Whereas "How do I feel toward myself?"—that's not a construction I use, so it benevolently hijacks the whole thought process instantly. You know, you ask me how I feel about myself, I'll show you a list. Of everything that needs improvement, yeah, you know, and I'm wired to constantly be self-improving, and I'm sure you are too. How do I feel toward myself? I'm like, "Oh man, you're tired; you've got this chest cold

you've had for seven weeks. You're finishing this huge project; you've got a lot on you." Like, honey, yeah, it's hard. You're having a hard time; it gets hard suddenly. It's like I'm a very different person toward myself. Let's actually hop from that. I'll mention one thing, then I want to hop to something related, which is self-friendliness and how you think about it—how others might think about it. I just want to say in connection with IFS and also a number of other workshops and seminars that I've done, I have not written a letter from love in

the way that you describe it exactly, but I did write a version of it that sounds actually very similar to the last example you gave. This is done in a fair amount of parts work: "What would you say to X?" which could be, I'm making this up, but some fear of inadequacy at what age. Right? How old are you? Five-year-old Tim. Okay, what would you say to five-year-old Tim? So, I have written letters to a younger version of myself and found it to be incredibly powerful. I mean, this was years ago that I did it,

and it still sticks in my mind, and I remember a lot of the language that I used. But the question of self-friendliness sort of broadens and includes a lot of what we've been talking about already. Could you speak to self-friendliness in whatever way makes sense to you? Yeah, I mean, we always talk about self-love, but that's kind of lofty. I think you could just start by being a little friendlier. You know what I mean? Like, just how about the common courtesy you would show to a stranger on the subway? Let's start with that—just common human

decency. So, there's a story that I'm so moved and disturbed by. So, Sharon Salzberg—do you know Sharon Salzberg, the meditation teacher? She met the Dalai Lama, and she's written about this. She met the Dalai Lama on his first visit to the West, and she was in a group of people who were the first Americans—North Americans—to meet him. It was at a time when nobody really knew who he was; he wasn't like the rock star he became. He was this obscure Tibetan monk, and of course, it took place somewhere in California. There were some academics in

the room and some spiritual writers and teachers and meditators—this sort of elect group of people who were coming to meet him. He was speaking through a translator because he didn't speak much English at the time, and somebody in the room asked him what Tibetan Buddhism and his teachings have to say about self-hatred and how to combat self-hatred. Don’t you know that man had to talk to his translator for like fifteen minutes and kept asking for the question to be repeated? He didn't understand the question. He kept thinking that he was mishearing the question because he

kept saying, "Wait, who is the enemy? Who's the person that you're having trouble with?" Of course, being like Calvinistic Westerners in the room, raised on scarcity and, you know, "you're never enough" and "original sin," everybody in the room was like, "No, I'm the one I hate.” He was like, "This doesn't even make sense. What you're saying doesn't even make sense." When he finally grasped not only that he understood that person's question and what they were talking about, but that everyone in the room shared this problem, he was so devastated. He said, "I used to think

that I had a really good understanding of the work of the human mind, but this is new to me. This is very disturbing; this is not okay." And essentially after that, he said, "This is where we're going to start." You know? And then that basically became his mission in the Western world. It's interesting; I was talking about it with Sharon Salzberg the other day, and she was saying in Buddhism they say, you know, that one of the things, if you want to evolve, is that you have to be less precious to yourself. You have to

think of yourself as being less precious. But she said in the West we have to—we haven't even gotten to the point where we think we're precious yet to let go of it. Like, first, she's like, "I think we first have to find our preciousness, and then we can let go of it, and then we can evolve.” But if we don't even know that any of us—anything about us is precious, that's already a problem. When the Dalai Lama started teaching people how to love themselves, he would say, "Talk to yourself the way your mother would talk

to you." And then he found out about some of our moms, and he was like, "Okay, grandmother." Like, he was just scratching that. He was like, "Has anybody ever said a kind word to you?" You know? And it really spotlights this sort of terrible dysfunction that we all kind of collectively have grown up in. Have you found other ways to counteract that outside of the letter writing? Are there any other practices or recommendations for people who are experiencing this, many of whom are experiencing it secularly, right? They may experience it in the absence of a

religious upbringing? The case for me, any other recommendations or thoughts? You just made me realize I didn't answer your second question about whether people who have some sort of religious or spiritual basis find this easier. Not necessarily, because some people still are praying to what James Joyce called the "hangman God," and you're not going to get a letter of unconditional love from the hangman God. You know you're going to get a list of complaints about things that you need to do better, so sometimes those people have a really hard time doing it. There's one man

I asked to do this—to write a letter from love—and he's a very well-known figure in the world of... I'm trying to think how to not identify... I'm not even going to say more than that, but he's somebody who's very admired and is very good. And he had the most surprising response. Most people who have said no say no because they're either afraid that if they ask love to show up, it’s not going to show up, and that would be more painful than not asking, or they feel like it's too vulnerable to expose themselves like this.

He said no because he said, “I have a feeling I know what unconditional love is going to say to me. It's going to say, 'You’re trying too hard, and you’re doing too much, and you don’t have to try this hard and do too much.' But I don't want to be let off the hook, because I want to keep aspiring to go further and higher, and I don’t want to hear a voice that tells me that I’m okay just the way I am. I'm afraid that will make me stop." And I was like, "Oh honey, who

hurt you?" You know, oh dear, you can still do things, but might it not be nice to also hear that something loves you, even as you're aspiring? You know, anyway, that was interesting. Sorry, but you had a second question, yeah? The question was, I suppose, related, and that is, outside of writing this letter you've described, what other approaches or habits, anything at all, have you found helpful or seen helpful for others in counteracting sort of self-antagonism? Right, so fostering self-friendliness, in other words? Boundaries is what comes to mind, and some really hardcore ones. It makes

me think of our mutual friend Martha Beck, whom you've known a lot longer than I have. Tell me, what made you think of her for that? Well, the Integrity Cleanse and just checking in. I know we discussed it last time, but setting a timer to check in every 30 minutes to see if you're lying and if you even want to be in this conversation. Right? If your sister's like, "Yeah, you're coming over for the baby shower," and you're like, "I'd love to," beep beep beep, like, "No, actually, I really have zero interest." Yeah, I have

gotten there. There are people who I am not skilled... this is how I word it, because I want to keep it on me. I'm not skilled enough to be able to hold my serenity when I'm around them. Mhm. And I lose the hard-earned peace that I try to generate every day through meditation and through two-way prayer and through the way that I live. Like I'm constantly trying to bring myself to a level of kind of humming nicely along. And there are certain people who, man, I just can't do it. I think my younger self was

spiritually ambitious enough that I was like, "If you were a better human being, then you would be able to Jiu-Jitsu your way through this, or you would compassion your way through this, or you would accept your way through this." And I'm at an age now, at 55, where I'm like, "No, I just can't do it." I can't! Like, I come home sick when I'm around those people. I lose my attainments when I'm around those people, and it's not friendly for me to be around people who are cruel. When I'm around people who are cruel, I

become unwell, and I also then have to use something to... like, I get so disregulated. You mean, like a substance? Yeah, or like I get like... there are certain people I'm around and it's like I want to have a drink. I want to have... I want to have a drink, call a phone number I shouldn’t dial, like start smoking and driving fast. You know, like this is kind to myself, to put myself in those situations again and again. So how do you, or how have you created boundaries, or put those relationships on probation, or otherwise

separated yourself? You know, I’m trying to think how to describe it that doesn't get too revealing. Too much personal stuff. I'm not here to say it's easy, yeah, but I do feel a sense of stewardship toward myself. And, you know, I mean, it's hard. I'll tell you this: I did an event with Rachel Cargle, the great writer and civil rights activist, a couple of years ago. And somebody in the audience asked us, “You guys both seem so calm and chilled. Do you have difficult people in your life?” And I started laughing so hard I literally

rolled off my chair, and I was like, "Yeah, yeah!" And she said, "No, I don’t," and I was like, "Wait, what?" And I was leaning in, I’m like, "Wait a minute, break that down!" And she said, "No, I don't have anybody in my life currently who's difficult, because I won’t do that to myself anymore." And here's the zinger: This is somebody with a tremendous sense... Of self-value and self-friendliness, the follow-up question in the audience was, "Somebody said, 'What about people who you have to deal with and you have to have them in your life? CU,

like they're in your family.'" And she said, "I'm thinking as hard as I can, and I cannot come up with a single name of anybody who is entitled to be in my life, no matter what their biological relationship is to me." And that's a radical position to take. Rachel Cargo lives a radical life, and that's somebody who is really prioritizing her own well-being. She was like, "I've blocked my mother for several years at a time because she was too destructive." She's like, "I've got siblings I haven't spoken to in years because they're too disruptive, and

they're not entitled to have me in their life just because we were born into the same family." That's intense boundaries. So, I will say only that I've done stuff like that. I've decided that not everybody's entitled to have me in their life. Just a practical, tactical question, since that's where my brain sometimes goes: Do you slow fade that person? Do you just start, like, first you respond after 24 hours, then it's a week, then it's two months, then it's never? Or do you have a conversation? Do you text them and you're like, "Hey, love you,

but...?" Or is there some approach that you take? I'm going through a list in my head; I'm like, "How did I do that one? How did I do that one?" Some have been done, I would say Holidays that I spent alone—I enjoy it. Have you always been comfortable with solitude or extended periods of being alone? Has that always been the case? To mix, but I love, yeah, I love my own company. Except for when I'm in some sort of super disrupted mental state, and then it's very painful to be with myself. But lately, like in

the last 10 years, it's been my favorite person to hang out with, and I live alone, and I love living alone. I love waking up and being like, "Here's our day! What do we want to do? How do we want to spend this?" I'm a writer; I chose to be a writer. It's very solitary; it is solitary time, and I love that. My most joyful moments of my life have been alone with my work. I remember hearing Michael Chabon one time say, and I'm super social too—like I have a lot of friends and a lot

of people whom I love and care about—but I'm always happy to go back to being alone. Anyway, I heard him say one time, and he's got four kids, I think, but he said, "You can love your books, but they can't love you back." And I thought, "Oh, my books love me back! My work loves me." It is a love story in two directions; it is a beautiful love story writing those books. I feel that there's something very alive and connected in that that isn't just me. So for people who can't see, and even for people

who can see video, your hairstyle has changed since we last spoke. How did that come to be? Is there a significance there? Yeah, so I buzzed off my hair, gosh, about six months ago. I have been wanting to do this for 20 years, dreaming about doing this for 20 years. I can't tell you how many times I've sat in my hairdresser's chair and been like, "Just take those clippers and buzz it off! Just buzz it off! Take it off! Take it off! Just take it off! I just want to be free!" I never had the

courage to do it. I had a lot of reasons for why I couldn't do that as a woman—like, what if my head has a weird shape? I mean, I'm a public figure; what if I'm out there with a bald head? I don't know. I always thought, "When I get older, I'll do it. When I get older, I'll do it." Then I had this amazing awakening. It was last year; I went to an event in New York, and there were a bunch of people there who were in their 40s, 50s, and 60s. This is New York

City, so it's like one of the most progressive places in the world. I looked around the room, and all the men—all of the men—had clipped, shaved, or buzzed hair, and they all looked great! Like yours! They all looked fantastic. It was a bunch of silver foxes; they all had lines in their faces; they looked fantastic. All the women had long or longish versions of some sort of complicated hair that, you know, I know hair, so I know what it costs to have that hair. I know the keratin treatment you had to have for that hair

to look silky. I know the dye job you had to pay for. I know how much those highlights cost. I know that only 2% of women in the world are blonde, and that 45% of the women in that room were blonde, including me. I was thinking about Dolly Parton's line where somebody said to her one time, "Did you ever get offended at dumb blonde jokes?" and she said, "No, because I know I ain't dumb, and I know I ain't blonde." It's like, I ain't blonde, and I ain't dumb, but I'm spending a lot of money.

I just had this really reckoning moment where I thought, "Why are we doing this? Why do I have to do this?" So many of the most amazing reckoning and liberation moments of my life have been these moments where I said, "Oh, I don't have to buy into this anymore. Just because I've been trained and taught and conditioned my entire life that I have to buy into this, I'm opting out. I'm out! I'm taking my toys and I'm leaving." I thought I could just get mad about the patriarchy and say that there's an unfair beauty standard

for men and women, or I can just claim the entitlement that these men have and just get some buzzers at CVS and clip my own hair. I thought, "Never think about my hair again," and that's what I did. So you did it yourself? I did it myself, yeah, and I do it myself every week. This is the last money I'm ever spending on my hair—just these clippers! Now we can trade tips! I know! It's so great! I was like, "Oh my God, the freedom!" I wake up every morning like, "My hair's perfect!" I jump in

a river, jump in a lake, jump in an ocean, get off a plane—it's never not perfect! It's amazing, and I can't imagine any... Here's the text with perfect punctuation: "Reason to ever have hair again? I don't know. I just think it's part of this amazing thing about becoming a free woman and middle-aged. I mean, I am cultures' nightmare. I'm a middle-aged, childless, husbandless woman. Like, I'm basically a bog witch, just living, rattling around in a house by myself, talking to myself, watering my plants, shaving my head, and it's so cool. Like, it's so exciting because

I never saw a woman like this when I was growing up, and I never heard of a woman like this. I only heard cautionary tales about how tragic and sad unmarried, divorced, or widowed women were, and I'm all of those—I'm unmarried, divorced, and widowed. So I'm like the trifecta, and these have been the most creative, spiritual, and wild years of my life. We were exchanging various ideas and potential topics before this conversation in shorthand because, of course, I want to talk about things fresh without knowing the answers. I'm going to get relaxed. A woman—a relaxed

woman—as a radical concept. What is this? How many have you ever met? Oh boy, in the hot seat! No, it's not… I mean, I haven't met that many relaxed men either, but like, you know, I think it would be a truly revolutionary thing. What are the characteristics of a relaxed woman? What does that look like? Well, first of all, I want to say that this is why I think it would be revolutionary. So let me start with why. When I think of the words that are commonly used to describe the women who we all admire—like

badass, fierce, tough, resilient, brave, strong—or in the Brene Brown realm, vulnerable, open-hearted—those are all I aspire to be. I admire all those women who are all those things, but none of that feels revolutionary to me because women have always been all those things. You have to be all those things as a woman in the world. You have to be resilient. You have to be strong. You have to be badass. You have to be fierce to survive as a woman. My ancestors were all that; your ancestors were that or we wouldn't exist. So it's not a

revolution. It's not a revolution. What would be a revolution would be a relaxed woman because I never saw one growing up. I saw angry, tired women, and I saw some relaxed men, but I was on the pathway to becoming an angry, tired woman. That's when my body revolted and was like, 'No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, we're not doing this. We're going in a completely different direction.' So how do you not be an angry, tired woman? That's a really big question. And I think when I talk about this with groups of women, I

always say, you know, we have to be careful because there's some part of us that thinks it would be irresponsible not to be angry, and it would be irresponsible not to be tired. You know, because I mean, just look at the world and how much it needs us, both on a personal level and on the political level, and how much there is to be angry about, and how many of us were violated in our bodies at various times. I mean, there's a million reasons to not be relaxed, and yet the question I have is: if

you were to step in—and this is a question I always ask to women—if you were to think of the biggest tornado going on in your life right now, whatever it is, the hardest thing you're doing, whether it's your activism, your family, your work, a medical issue, a bankruptcy, or an addiction issue, like whatever it is—or a problematic family member—and if you were to go into that same exact tornado tomorrow, and not one external thing changed, but you were relaxed, would you be more or less effective at handling it? Like, martial artists know that the most

relaxed person in the room wins the fight. Actors know this. Artists know this; this is where the flow happens. Athletes know this, and so I think for me I've narrowed it down to three things that I need for my system to be relaxed: boundaries, priorities, and mysticism. If I don't have those three things, I'm super stressed. I would say that the mysticism is the most important, but the boundaries protect that. So, boundaries, what was number two? Priorities. Yeah, priorities. And then, mysticism. Women are not taught that they're allowed to have priorities; men are taught that

they're allowed to have priorities. But women are supposed to prioritize everybody and everything, and you feel really guilty if you're not prioritizing everybody and everything. And I always suggest that you should maybe have like four priorities, like four or five. And there's nothing like tragedy to kind of make it clear what your priorities are too. Like, when my partner Rea was diagnosed with terminal cancer, it became very clear to me very quickly who I cared about and what I wanted to be doing with my time. I remember opening my inbox the day I found out

that she had six months to live and seeing like this huge list of emails, and I just deleted them all without responding to them because I was like, 'The reason that these emails have been sitting in my inbox for months is not because I'm too busy; it's because I don't care. I don't care.'" "Are the three words that women are never allowed to say? Like, a woman is never allowed to say, 'I don't care.' Yeah, you're not too busy; you just don't care. 'I don't care.' It's like, look, if I care, I'll get back to

you immediately. Like, this is what I've learned about my inbox, like, same with my text messages. You will hear from me immediately if I care. If I don't, it's because I don't care, and it's okay. You can't care about everything and everybody, or you just don't care enough in the hierarchy of your priorities, right? Priorities, priorities, right? So, like, who are your priorities? What are your priorities? What do you actually care about? Do you have the courage to say, like, 'I don't, I'm not'? No. So, boundaries, priorities, and then mysticism is the only thing that

will actually relax my nervous system. And that is getting really quiet and connecting through two-way prayer, through a letter from love, and through deep meditation. Because I can't just live on this plane, or I will lose my— the plane of the apparent and the real and the material and the Newtonian physics—it's like too stressful. And I need to have access to a deeper perspective to be able to be relaxed enough to actually say and mean, 'I have no cherished outcome.' Like, right to the point of saying, like, whether I live or die, I have no

cherished outcome. Like, can I be that relaxed? Can I be relaxed enough not to know what's going to happen? Can I believe that some other thing is orchestrating this and my involvement might not be necessary in every single moment? This is a hard thing for women to believe. Is that the key ingredient of the mysticism for you? Because there are different forms for sure that mysticism can take. I mean, you mentioned HZ, you mentioned Rumi. I mean, you have different—let's just call it subsections of various religions that are associated with mysticism, like the Sufis, in

that particular case. Is that potential of a larger power orchestrating things so that you don't need to be involved in all the details the key component of this third leg of the stool, the mysticism? Or are there other aspects to that? Well, there's love. So, we have to then go back to, you don't have to win this, right? You're not going to be graded. A thing I often hear in those prayers and meditations is, 'We've got all the time in the world.' And that's the exact opposite of the stress that I was raised under—the vice

grip that I was raised under: short amount of time, extremely important to win, no errors can be allowed. You know, so we've got all the time in the world. We've got all the time in the universe. What's time? Plenty of time. It'll happen or it won't, like whatever the thing is. And that actually also happens to be true, that it will happen or it won't. Like, even we know that our best laid plans sometimes—it's like, "Oh, guess this is—I guess this wasn't the thing that was supposed to happen." But then there's also where I find

my deepest—where my body goes into a deep hum that I used to only be able to get from substances or, you know, love of another person settling me. That deep, deep like, okay, everything is okay here. The thing that always works for me is a voice saying to me, 'You don't even know what you're looking at. Like, you don't even know what you're looking at.' And it just pierces my certainty, because my certainty is one of the things that makes me so anxious. And this is a very convincing virtual reality that we live in. You

know, it's very, very, very convincing. But the mystics and the physicists seem to agree that it might really not be what we see and what we're perceiving. I went to an event in Brooklyn a couple years ago and heard two Nobel Prize-winning physicists talk about the nature of reality, and it was so wonderful to hear this Nobel Prize-winning scientist say, 'The more I look at reality, the less I understand it.' And all I can say, after all these years of studying the nature of reality, is that nothing is what it appears. And that what we

used to think was natural law is, at best, some very local ordinances. And, like, we really—we're like five Einsteins away from even having the right questions to ask to even know what we're looking at here. And just because billions and billions and billions of people have the same senses and look at the world and come to the same conclusion about what they're seeing and agree, doesn't make it true. And that settles me. It's like, okay, you don't—and it shouldn't. It's kind of like the rugs and the floor and the ground are being pulled out from

under you completely, and that shouldn't be relaxing. But I find it deeply relaxing because then the stakes suddenly become a lot lower. Or it's like, all right, well, since I don't even know what this game is that I'm in, let me do what I can and let the rest of it go. And it doesn't mean quit the game; you're still in the virtual reality game. Play it nicely, but play it knowing that you don't even know what you're looking at. Yeah, I'm still thinking of your correlation that you drew between certainty and anxiety, which seems

very astute, and that most people would steer away from. They would rather be unhappy than uncertain because uncertainty equals, in a lot of minds..." true for me at time too, hidden risks right, but it also depending on how you kind of play the game and which poetry you read and so on. It also opens the door to the possibility of unexpected surprises—good surprises, good things. Makes sense to me; I've had a similar settling experience. I mean, it's sometimes enhanced, so I can't recommend that to a broad audience. No, no, no, no, I get it, you

know? And that's why people get enhanced, because there's that sense of, like, "Oh, wait a minute, this is bigger and more complicated, and I'm part of this." But I wow, you know? Like Steve Jobs's last words: "Wow, wow, wow." Like, whatever he saw in those last moments: wow, wow, wow. And I'm thinking of a relative of mine who I said one time, "Would you rather be happy or right?" and they said, "How in the world could I be happy if I wasn't right?" And I think that it's actually quite the opposite for me—like, probably wrong,

you know? Human history book title. I mean, just look at my life. I have a long history of making decisions that are very bad for getting what I wanted and then finding out. This is another thing that I find is really wonderful about middle age: like, I've gotten what I wanted a lot in life, and it almost killed me. So I'm not so interested anymore in what I want. You know, I'm good at manifesting what I want, and I'm good at almost dying from getting what I want. You know? So maybe there's a better question

to be asking than, "What do I want?" Have you any thoughts on candidates for that better question? What would you have me know? Love, what would you have me know? I mean, that's a really good one. This makes me wonder how you choose, and I've wanted to ask you this for a while. I don't think we got into it in our prior conversation, which is, how do you choose projects? How to spend your time, right? Where to allocate your limited life force? Because there's "What do you want?" which is where a lot of people would

start. Yeah, although that's a pretty—it can be nebulous in a handicapping way, because that could take you in all sorts of different directions. But how do you choose your projects? I'm kind of a hard ass about it. Yeah, great. So, part of the thing I've noticed that people tend to get stuck on sometimes is that they get this inspiration, right? So inspiration comes first, and inspiration is the breathing in of God. Right? So, like, something—even the most empirical, scientific, atheist people in the world—when they talk about where an idea came from, they say, "An idea

came to me." Like, they say that like they don't even know they're saying that, but they're reporting accurately what the feeling is. Because that's what everyone I've ever met who's had an idea—that's the Eureka moment. It's like, “Oh, I just heard, saw, felt an inspiration." And I know the difference between something that comes from me and something that comes to me—talking about prepositions again. And I think most creative people do as well—like, "Oh, this came to me," right? And then it can feel like an assignment or it can feel like a challenge, and it's like,

now I want to make this thing. But a place where I think people get sidetracked and distracted is very, very, very similar to meditation. Like, meditation, spirituality, and art have so much in common. So this may sound familiar to people who—like, maybe you've had this experience. You start working on this thing that was this inspiration, and a couple weeks, a couple months into it, a couple days—another idea comes, and that idea seems more interesting than the one that you've already invested some time into. And then you're like, "But I want to do this thing. This

thing is like fresh and exciting. This is the really, really cool thing," right? And then you go and do that one, and then another idea comes, and then it's like, you know, you're dealing with this melee. So often times, people say to me, "I'm working on a book and I'm halfway through it, but I've got this other idea that I think is way better, and this book feels really stale, and it doesn't have any life in it." And I always say, "Like, okay, well, I give you permission to quit working on that first project, but

only if you have a proven track record of ever being able to finish a thing." That is so smart, right? Yes, because then it's legit. It's like, "No, I've got this better idea." But if you do—do you have 30 unfinished things? Yeah, because if you have 30 unfinished things, now we have a problem. And what I've—the same things happen to me. Like, I'm a quarter of a way, a fifth of a way in a project, and then something so much more interesting comes along, and I'm like—but I know enough to know. I'm like—it comes dancing;

it's like a dancing girl. Like, it just comes across the stage. I was just going to say the hottest girl to dance showed up. Just showed up, and you're like—and you've been married for two months, you know? And you're like, "Oh, I've been married for two months," and the hottest girl— to dance. What I know is that if I abandon my—let's call it wife, this project that I've been working on for a few months, to go off with the… Hot girl! In a few months, she's going to be just as boring as stale MH, and

then a new hot girl is going to come on, and I'm never going to complete anything. So, you know, stick with the one you came to the dance with. If I've got multiple ideas and I'm not sure which one I'm beginning, I actually have a sort of team meeting and make the ideas make proposals to me about what they want. What do you actually want me to do? This is like project-based ifs. Totally. It's like I'm the angel investor, and these ideas are like, "We want your time and money for this." And I'm like, "Well,

what are you, what are you what do you have for me? Why should I invest my money and time in you?" A lot of ideas, when I challenge them like that, disappear into the ether, because they're like, "I don't know, something about birds." You know, like, they haven't thought it out. And then some other idea is like, "No, I want to write about this very specific thing, and it's going to take..." You know, I'm like, "Okay, so this one's got their act together." So when the bird idea is more formed, come back! Like, come back

when you're ready. Come back when you're ready to be real and not just to be tantalizing me with, like, "So..." I'm a real hard ass about it. I don't mess around; I don't let these ideas push me around. I love it. Are there other ways that you— to quote the late Lord Rabbi Jonathan Sachs—he had this amazing line that has stuck with me, which is something along the lines of, "The key mission is to separate an opportunity to be seized from a temptation to be resisted." Something around those lines. And I'm wondering, how else do

you navigate that? Right, with the multiple ideas because maybe there are cases— because you have a track record of finishing things—maybe there are some where you get months into it and you're like, "You know what? This is not what I hoped it could be," and there's this other thing, and I want to switch plans midair. How do you think about distinguishing between those two? I've never done that. You've never done it? I've never switched planes midair. Oh, you haven't? Okay, so when you start a project, you basically have done the hard ass due diligence upfront?

You're like, "Nope, this is high conviction." Weird, I never the path, yeah. I mean, it's— so this is like the mystery of the human brain or a human system because like in my personal life I'm so flaky, and in my professional life, I'm so clear. It's amazing. I think the universe gives us certain things that are sort of easier for us than other things. But, yeah, by the time— because it takes me so long to do a project—because my projects, whether they're fiction or non-fiction, are so heavily research-driven. You know, it can take three or

four years to create one of these books. Like the last novel that I wrote, City of Girls, I was thinking about that book for ten years before I started it. Like, it was at those meetings for ten years, you know? And the next novel that I’m planning to write, I've been thinking about for probably fifteen years, but it's coming more into view. So there are some that are kind of on the horizon that are coming in, but like I'm thinking of air traffic control. They come in in order; something is feeding them to me in

order, and I don't know what that something is, but one at a time. I can't do two. I can't do two at a time. What do you think contributes to that certainty in the professional realm? As I'm listening to and thinking about everything you've said in this conversation, and also the review of the last conversation, it strikes me that feeling like you have more than enough time—a voice has told you there's more than enough time—relieves you of the perceived obligation to choose the best thing because you're running out of time. That's just pure speculation on

my part. Second is feeling like there's a source you are hearing from versus having to independently make an ideal decision may also give weight to the things as they come in, as you put it, right, through this air traffic controller. I'm just wondering what else might contribute to the clarity there. Maybe there’s some interpersonal simplicity compared to dealing with other messy humans; I don't know. Is there anything else that you think contributes to the clarity in not switching planes midair? I think part of it is that I enjoy it. I enjoy the work, and I

never identified as a tormented artist. I've identified as a tormented person, but I've never identified as a tormented artist. Art has been—creativity has been the place where torment drops away. So, the question, of course, is why? And I think, once again, I would probably have to say I don’t know, but I think I'm getting a big smile on my face as I'm thinking about this. But I'm thinking, like, why shouldn't we do the thing that is so pleasurable? Why shouldn't that be a clue as to the thing that you're supposed to be doing—that you're on

the right track? Because, you know, long before I became a meditator, I had so much trouble meditating for years. But I would start to write, and hours would drop away. Away and I would not be aware of time, so writing gave me the thing that meditation promised but I could never have happen in meditation until very recently, where, like, time stops or changes and I'm here but not here. So, that's just so pleasurable. But the other thing is, sometimes I feel that it's a mandate, and I can't talk about the book that I've just finished—it's

coming out next year—but I can say that it's the hardest thing I've ever written emotionally. When I was doing my two-way prayers every day in the morning during this, especially the really hard part of writing it, I have a really loving higher power. I have a higher power who's constantly letting me off the hook for lots of stuff that I do not have to do. You know, it's like you do not have to be involved in this; like you do not have to—you don't have to be part of that cha thing that's going on; like

you don't have to be part of this family gathering; you don't have to rescue this person. You don't have to—like, I get a lot of "you don't have to's." You don't have to—you do have to this, you don't have to do that. Throughout this entire process of this book, because I was struggling, every morning when I wrote it out on the page, that voice would say, "I can see how hard this is for you, and I can see what this has cost—the toll that this is taking on you to tell this story. And I can

see that you want to stop; too bad! I've given you 47 hall passes, and this isn't one of them. You know, and sucks to suck, get back to work. I'll see you on the page. You know I know you're tired, I know you want to take a day off; you're not having a day off." And I think the trust of that has built up between me and that higher power over the decades, largely because of the things that I am let off the hook for, has made me think—it goes back to the original part of

the conversation where I said, like, I'm loved beyond measure by a God who has given me control over practically nothing. The wisdom to know the difference is one that I cannot find, but I get instructions of, like, "This isn't yours; we don't need you in this story; we don't need you involved in this situation; we don't need you speaking up about this thing; we don't need you doing this. We need you doing this." However, yeah. So, and the reason I don't want you up in all this other stuff that's going on is because I very

much need you in this. And so I want you to bring your full attention to this, and if that changes, you'll be notified. You'll be notified! That's something that happens a lot on the pages of two-way prayer for me. I mean, I've gone through periods of time where I didn't have any creative ideas at all, and like early pandemic, I was like, "Wow! This would be a great time to write," but I actually don't have anything that's ready to go. And I remember writing in two-way prayers, saying, "Should I be working on something right now?"

Instantly came the answer, "When we’ve got something for you to do, you’ll be notified." And I was like, "Well, what do I do until then?" And they're like, "Hang out! Like, hang out, be present to the world; it's amazing! Walk around, look at stuff—you don't have to be on duty at every moment. But when you have to be on duty, you really have to be on duty. Yeah, it's your turn." And I think part of the aspiration that I have to both be a relaxed woman and teach and model that to other women is this

is the opposite of what women have been taught. Like, wait! What if I'm not on duty all the time? Like, what if I'm only on duty sometimes? And I have to follow a deep inner voice that tells me when that is and what that is, and everything else y'all can take care of yourselves. And that's something that we, as women, are not taught—that we can ever say, "Like, I'll do it, I'll do [laughter] it!" So, I want to actually ask a question that is following up on something in our last conversation, and I would say

I definitely put it in the category of me time, in a sense, which is related to The Artist's Way by Julia Cameron. So, if I remember correctly, I am looking at notes, so hopefully I'm getting it right, that eay love would not exist without The Artist's Way. If that's a true statement, I'm wondering which pieces of it—because I don't think we got into the specifics—but what pieces of it really made that the case? And I, for instance, one homework assignment that I've never done from The Artist's Way—I'm so embarrassed to say this, but it's true—is

the artist's date. I've never done that! And so, as an example, I'm wondering; was that a part of it? You know, is that a part of it for you? The artist's date is hard. Yeah, it's hard. It's hard! I still have trouble figuring that one out sometimes. So here, I can tell you exactly one; I can tell you exactly. Yeah, please. So, one of the things that she does so cleverly... In that course, she keeps asking you the same question like 90 different ways, so there are all these questions each week that you have to

answer. And then there's the morning pages, and so there are twists and turns, like: if you could have three talents, what would they be? If there were three places in the world that you could visit, what would they be? If there was something you wish you had studied, what would it be? You know, she's coming at it from 20 different directions. Then there’s this point that comes late in the process where she instructs you to go back and read everything that you've written and start looking at what keeps showing up. I think one of the

mysterious and magical things, and weird things, about our brains is the secrets we can keep from ourselves—the compartmentalization—where it’s like, “I didn’t even know that about me.” So when I went back and read, Italian was on every page, and I was like, “Apparently, I really want to learn to speak Italian.” I would not have said that was like a massive priority of my life, but apparently my soul knew that it was an instruction because it was like, “Italian!” I kept seeing “Italian,” and I was like, “Why Italian?” You know, like it’s not useful unless you

are in Italy. It’s not like Spanish, which is spoken across the globe. Like, why? Why? Why? And “why” is not a spiritual question and never brings a spiritual answer, so it’s kind of useless. But I just went with it, and I was like, “Okay.” One of my artist dates was to sign up for Italian classes without knowing why—just because it kept showing up on the page. So I did six months of Italian classes, like night school for divorcees at the Y, and I loved it so much. I started watching movies in Italian, and I had

no plan for anything I was going to do with it. Then I was like, “Well, wait! I want to use this Italian. I want to go to Italy and speak this language.” But I’d also been studying meditation a lot lately, and I wanted to go to India. I also wanted to go back, and then like out of that was "Eat, Pray, Love." So it took me by surprise as much as anything. Maybe you’ve had that experience in your morning pages where it’s like, “I didn’t even know that! Like, I can hide things so far from

myself that I can’t even find them.” It’s true for my phone too. You mentioned that “why” is not a spiritual question and doesn’t give you spiritual answers, something along those lines. Could you elaborate on that? Anytime I howl into the void, any question that begins with “why,” I do not get an answer. I will not be answered. I can do two-way prayer from now till God leaves Chicago, from now till time gets better, and I can ask "why, why, why, why, why?" And I will not be given an answer that’s much more satisfying than what

an adult would tell a toddler: at some point, it’s just because, because I said so. I wrote a poem once called “The Shortest Conversation I Ever Had with God,” and it’s God calling, “Why?” Oh, sorry, me, “But why?”—which is again the ego, mhm—and God, “Because.” But there are other questions that I can ask, and I do get answers. So if I ask questions that begin with "how" instead of "why," like “How do you want me to move through this?” I will be given direct instructions. “Who do you want me to serve in this situation? Who

do you want me to be in this moment?” The answer is very clear. You know, “What do you want me to do next?” That’s a really good one; that’s a big one in AA—“What’s the next intuitive action? What’s the next right action? What would you like me to do right now?”—which is often like “Get a glass of water,” you know? “Take a nap. Turn the phone off.” But "why?" I think that goes back to, “You don’t even know what you’re looking at.” I think that goes back to where we’re five Einsteins away from even having

the right questions to get the right answers. But "why" turns into a black hole that you just fall into, and it’s this great echoing silence. Yeah, I can be stepping into the quicksand of blame and finger-pointing, even if that’s fingers pointing back at yourself, which it often is. That makes sense. That makes sense. I was asking you about choosing projects; I want to ask you about anxiety, specifically purpose anxiety. Oh yay! What is purpose anxiety? You’re smiling, so I see you already know. No, I don’t! I mean, kind of. Right in the title, based on

the words, I can imagine you working it out in context. Yeah, I think I can work it out. Well, I mean, the story that most of us were taught was some variation of: each of you was born with one unique offering, a special spark that is only yours, and only you can deliver on that thing. It is your job to find out what that thing is that only you can do. Meanwhile, there are almost 8 billion people on the planet, so already here’s some pressure because it’s got to be something that nobody else can do—which

is going to be unlikely because there are a lot of us. Know you should find out what that is very young, and then you should become the master of that thing. You should devote the 10,000 hours; you know, way before you're out of adolescence, you should already be, you know, pouring yourself into this purpose that you are here to serve. You should become the very best at that thing, and then it's not enough to become the best at that thing; you have to monetize it. It's not enough to monetize it; you also have to create

opportunities for others and make sure that they're also being served by this purpose. And if all of this sounds exhausting, you are not off the hook even when you die because you must leave a legacy, and you must change the world. So no pressure, but that's it. That's it: you must change the world. And it's like, I think it's very male, I think it's very capitalistic, it's very self-centered—it's very like, yeah, you only must do this thing that only you can do, and the world must be altered. They must know you were here, you know?

You must leave your mark on the world. And I think the world at this point is like, I wish maybe that you stopped leaving marks on me. Maybe we could use a little less of that. And I hardly know anyone who doesn't suffer from purpose anxiety. I know people who are living lives that look, from the outside, like they have achieved tremendous purpose, and it's a scarcity anxiety. They’re up at night wondering if they've done enough, if they’ve done the right thing, if they’ve left enough of a legacy. Is this where their energy should have

gone? It’s a theology that is going to leave you unsatisfied because there's no way to know that you have achieved it. You and I both know people who are so admired, and they're so stressed, and they're so unsure about themselves. They feel like they've done it all wrong, and they don't know whether they've done enough. There's a never-enoughness to it that feels a lot like capitalism; like, there’s just—how much? I'm thinking of J.P. Morgan testifying before Congress and them saying, "How much money is enough, sir?" and him saying, "A little more." You know, it's the

same with purpose. It’s like, when will you know that you’ve made a big enough impact? A little more! Yeah, and what would be the opposite of a purpose-driven life? I think it would be a life of presence. It's also focused entirely in the future constantly, and I don't think there's any way that you can live a relaxed or really truly rich or meaningful life if you're constantly thinking about your legacy. I’m sorry, but that’s it. You know, you're like, how much did I make? How much did I leave? How much did I impact? Meanwhile, like,

the world is happening, and you're in it, and you're missing it. Yeah, I’m reflecting; I can’t recall the exact—you might actually know the attribution here—and I don't know if it's a fictional quote or not, but there's something. I want to say it’s this huge statue in the desert that is deteriorated over time and is half buried, and the inscription reads something like, "I am Ozymandias, king of kings; look upon my works and despair." Yeah, it’s like, yep. Yeah, that’s where it’s all headed. Yeah, on the side of it, along similar lines, I often think to

myself, I’m like, all right, all these guys are talking about legacy—got gals too—but a lot of the guys that I am surrounded by—it's a lot of guys. Yeah, and it's, look, they're reading books, and so am I, about, you know, whether it's like Alexander the Great or Genghis Khan or John D. Rockefeller—whatever it might be—hoping to glean things from these lives. And I mean, Alexander the Great—tell me his last name; like, what was his full name? Nobody can tell me his middle name. Yeah, yeah, exactly! Or, at the very least, thinking about legacy differently. But

one thing I am curious about is how do you blend in your life? Do you try to blend presence with other ingredients for what you deem a life well-lived? And I’ll tell you a story. So the story takes place at Omega Institute, and I love Omega Institute. I've spent time there in Upstate New York, and they have amazing classes. The one place that they have consistent Wi-Fi is in the cafeteria/coffee shop area where people eat their meals, or some of them. I can picture it well. Okay, so I would sometimes go because I was spending

time in Upstate New York—beautiful campus, amazing groundhogs everywhere. So I would go sit in the café and I would write, and I remember this conversation happening next to me, so I wasn't getting any work done, but I was eavesdropping on this conversation. It was this man and this woman, and the guy asked the woman, “You know, I know you've been looking for a job for a while. Do you find a new gig?” And she's like, “No, I've been really busy being non-” Oh my God! That’s like a New Yorker cartoon! That's so good! It was

so good, and I was like, okay, so there is maybe a shadow side of presence which could be a lot of navel-gazing, and maybe that's totally fine. In the grand scheme of things, it doesn't make a difference, but for yourself personally, recognizing... That presence seems to be very additive to one's life. Are there other ingredients that you weigh? Can I first tell you a story? Yes, please. Okay, so I want to tell you a counter story about a Purpose Driven Life. Okay, but I like your question a lot, and I think this will lead into

it nicely. We'll see if this works. So, I was in Los Angeles several years ago for a speaking event, and I had a free afternoon. I was wandering around Venice Beach when I looked across the street and saw that there was a guy standing on the top of a ladder painting the awning of his storefront. I instantly was able to see that the ladder was not steady, and I have a very severe ladder sensitivity because I grew up on a farm. My mom was constantly telling me, "Go hold your father's ladder!" You see, my dad

was always doing jackass things on the ladder on the farm. So, I had nothing else to do and nowhere else to be, and I was the perfect person for the job. I crossed the street and just held the guy's ladder. I probably held his ladder for 45 minutes that day, and he never saw me because he was doing his thing, but I felt better. I was like, "I'm just going to make sure this guy doesn't fall today, and I'm here, and it's a nice afternoon." It was lovely. Then, when he started to come down and

I felt like he was at a safe level, I just peeled off. He never saw me, and I never saw his face; we never had any interaction. But we had this beautiful little change, and as I was walking away, I was thinking about purpose anxiety. I was thinking, "What if that was the entire purpose of my life? Just that moment. Just that moment." Not things like trying to be kind to people, but that particular moment. It felt like, however this thing works, it was essential that that guy not fall off his ladder. So, we needed

someone in sector 7, you know, block D, on this date. We needed somebody to really be alert and notice that, and we had to send them in. They needed the proper farm training, put her on a farm, have her grow up with a father who does jackass things; how are we going to get her to L.A.? Make her a writer, give her a career, have her read like every single thing. I mean, every single other thing I was doing in my life was just killing time until the moment when I was needed. Maybe I'm not

needed again after that. I would challenge anybody to prove to me that that isn't true, because nobody can, because nobody knows what's going on, and nobody even knows what they're looking at, right? So, yes, you could go a little too far into that, and you could just smoke weed all day and be like, "Are we just a paperweight on God's desk?" You know, or ask questions like that. But I think presence is the greatest gift that you can give to yourself and to the world. I think that that line that I so often hear in

meditation and on the page when I do two-way prayer, "You'll be notified," is the very opposite of a purpose-driven life. A purpose-driven life implies some sense that I'm going to forge, you know, I'm going to hack through this forest and make this trail, and it's going to be named after me, and I'm going to be remembered for this. It's so self-centered, right? And "you'll be notified" is a much humbler position to take, but it requires a great deal of listening. Lately, I've been doing these one day a week without my phone because I want more

moments like that, where I notice somebody on the ladder. I'm not on my phone, and I'm super addicted to my phone. It's like, no, I'm not throwing shade against anyone who's addicted to their phone; we all are. I'm not going to front that I don't stare at my phone 90 million hours a day—I do. But that's why I take Thursdays off from it: because I don't want to miss what's actually happening, and I want to be present to the notification when it comes. How did you choose Thursday? Is it because you might be social on

Friday and the weekend? Okay, you know Monday's like too much going on. Thursday just felt like a day that the world could maybe operate without me or that I could operate without it. So, I'm going to play Devil's Advocate and defend folks who may be in the purpose-driven lane for the moment. I agree that, at face value, it seems very self-absorbed, self-centered. However, do you think it's possible—and this is a leading question, so I may go nowhere—that you're more comfortable with death and mortality than a lot of people? That that insecurity, uncertainty, fear of death—maybe

that others have to a greater extent—leads them to think about these things more than you? Wow, that's such a... I did not think that was going to be the second half of the question. I also want to say, here's the thing about purpose: if you actually are one of those people who has known exactly what... You're supposed to be doing, and you did become the master of it, and you have monetized it, and you are leaving a legacy. And like you have what I like to call "not a problem," right? So just keep doing what

you're doing. Like, if you're, you know... but if Yo-Yo Ma continues on, yeah, keep going; you're doing great. But if Yo-Yo Ma is great, so the cello thing seems to be working for you. But if you're berating yourself because you feel like there was something you were supposed to be doing, maybe they just need you to hang out until you get notified of something that could be as small as holding the ladder. I just want to say that maybe the future of the universe depended on that ladder being held that day. We don't know, but

your question about death... I don't want to get cocky about, like, I don't care about death, but it’s not a fear that lives in me. I know it's a fear that lives in a lot of people. I'm much, much, much more afraid of people not liking me than I am of dying. And that's what I have to suffer with more—is to try to figure out how to disappoint people, say no to people, and set boundaries with people so that they can survive it, and I can survive. This is like my work in this lifetime. But

death, to me, it doesn't keep me up at night. I'm not in an argument against it. I went with my partner, Rehea, all the way to her death, and I wasn't afraid of the death. There were things around it that were scary, but has that always been the case? Or when did that fear drop away? I'm afraid of pain, don’t get me wrong. I'm not interested at all in being in suffering. Maybe that's why I'm not afraid of death; I'm like, "Well, that seems better than suffering, so what's so bad about that?" I don't know.

I mean, I come from really pragmatic people. My mom's a nurse, my dad's a farmer; I saw a lot of death growing up. My mom worked with the dying a lot. By the time it came, it seemed like it was such a relief for everybody. There was grief, but also people were, like, shredded by end-of-life stuff. She sat in a lot of dying people's houses for, you know, weeks and months on end. And you know, dying and struggling... and then there was this like exhale of death, you know? Like, "Okay, now that person has safely

been delivered into death." That's the feeling I felt when Rehea died. Those of us who were taking care of her—she had a pretty raucous death—but those of us who were taking care of her were like, "We safely got her there. We safely got her dead." I know that's a strange thing to say, but it was hard. She was really willful; it was a difficult death. But then the moment of the death, the instant after the death, there's such an incredible thing. Like, something happens that isn't what it was. Like, something leaves. And then this look

that was on her face after she died of like absolute delight—like absolute delight! We were all gassed at it: "What? Why is she so happy?" Like she looked so happy, so peaceful. So now, it feels like going home to me. This place feels a lot weirder to me than death. This planet's bananas, you know? Like having a body—I mean, that's why I used to love to do psychedelics so much before I stopped doing all that stuff. It’s like, who wants a body? Who wants to be incarnated? Like, oh God, it's so awkward. So, death—like life

feels scarier to me than death. How did you choose to create your newsletter? How did that make the cut for you? How did that come about? Two things: One, I'm trying to get off of the nicotine, crack pipe, booze bottle that is social media. And it's not easy to get off it because I feel like social media is like a party drug that like started off as really fun, and now... I heard somebody say so beautifully about social media—I wish I could remember who said it—uh, everyone's now... everyone's abusing it and no one's getting high

anymore. Like the fun... like, it’s like everyone's addicted to it and the high is gone. And I'm looking for ways—I love connection. I loved that feeling at the beginning of social media that we could all connect with one another before everyone started peeing in the pool. Oh my God, you know? Before everyone started propping up Putin. And it's like, wait, what pool party is this? Like, what just happened to democracy? Like, we just discovered that this thing is very, very, very dangerous and venomous. And so, I've been looking for another place to go to be

able to have dialogue with people, and Substack so far has been a really good spot for that because it’s like a reverse technology. So, could you explain, for people who don't even know what it is, how that works? Because I think a lot of people thinking of a newsletter are like, "Well, hold on a second! How does interaction work in that type of format?" You can comment. So, I send out a newsletter once a week. It's essentially like a '90s technology; it's basically a blog. It's like... A high-end blog so people subscribe, and then a

newsletter, you know, goes out to them, and there's video attachments and things. Then you can comment, and people can comment on each other's comments, so it's very similar; it looks very similar to what social media looks like, but because it's a subscription, it keeps the haters out. Yeah, because it's self-selecting. I've been on this thing for a year and have had not one problem with anybody—that's incredible! I know, it's incredible. I mean, it's also like a self-selecting thing because this is a group of really lovely people who are doing this beautiful project together. So, that's

how I decided to go over there. What could people expect if they went to elizabethgilbert.substack.com to subscribe to your newsletter? Well, every week I will talk to you and discuss this process of learning how to write and speak to yourself—toward yourself—from a place of friendliness and love in order to combat this just awful virus of self-hatred that we all seem to be so infected with. That comes also with perfectionism and lack, you know, and just bringing a different voice into the cacophony of voices in your head. I'll read one of the letters that I've written

to myself from love, and then there'll be a special guest. The special guests are really the best part because it's everybody from, like, Toni Collette did one, and Glennon Doyle did one, and musicians, poets, artists, and writers, but then also like random people whom I meet. I meet them in my travels, and I'm like, "You are radiating so much light that I want to ask you, how? Why are you so lit? Like, why are you so bright and shiny, and what would love have to say to you if it could speak to you?" People whom

I find inspiring. There was a young woman whom I met in Denmark this year; I was on tour and she had read my book, *Big Magic*, and because of that book—she was Japanese and she was an engineer who worked on a construction site in Japan—but she'd always wanted to be an artist. She started making art again after she read *Big Magic*, and then she took the leap; she quit her construction job in Japan, saved her money, moved to Denmark, and is going to graphic design school. Wow! And her art is gorgeous! I was like, "Hey,

will you do a letter from love?" Because obviously, there's something moving through you that's really special, and I would love to hear what love has to say to you through you. So, every week, you'll get a special guest. I've had children do it—my friend's 11-year-old son, who was going through a really hard time being bullied at school, wrote one, and it was beautiful. Love said to him, "Not everybody has to like you; you don't have to be everybody's cup of tea." That was literally in this 11-year-old kid's letter: "You don't have to be everybody's cup

of tea." You know, we love you! It’s really interesting; a lot of people, when they write the letters, the voice that comes to them operates as a "we." It's some sort of consortium of like ancestors and spirits and guides, and it's like your team. There's this feeling that people are getting, where they're like, "Do I have a team?" I seem to have some sort of a team that wants to love me. I've had developmentally disabled people do it and access love. There's this amazing artist named BJ who, in my town in New Jersey, is part

of an arts collective for developmentally disabled people, and he did a song about himself called "I Love BJ"—three different ways—that's like one of the greatest songs I've ever heard. It's basically just him talking about how lovable he is. So, that’s what you can expect. And then, if you're a subscriber, you can post your own letters from love each week. What's happening in that community is that people are creating collectives and friendships with each other; they're having meetups in cities around the world, and they're starting to become, like, it’s the kindest corner of the internet, I

truly think. Slowly, I feel like it's dissolving and breaking down the walls of self-hatred. It's what we're doing over there. I love it! People can go to elizabethgilbert.substack.com. But who cares anymore? That's where my heart is. My heart is in the Substack newsletter, and after years of doing this privately in my own space and then starting to gradually teach it in workshops, I finally feel like I'm ready to, like, really bring this to anybody who wants to try it. I love it! I know I said that, but I'll say it again. It’s a solid cause,

solid mission. It's my purpose; this is your purpose—the purpose that follows the presence. Is there anything else, Liz, that you'd like to say? Any requests you’d like to make? My audience: comments, public complaints about my podcasting style, anything at all that you'd like to say before we land the plane? Yes! Thank you for giving me the chance to make the public complaints about your podcasting style. I've been crawling out of my skin with a bunch of... I’ll send you a bunch of notes! No, I just want to say, can you imagine that something might love

you? There’s a quote that's often misattributed to Einstein. It wasn't Einstein; it was this 19th-century philosopher named Frederick... Myers and his friend asked him if there was one thing that he wanted to know more than anything. If he could ask the Sphinx one question, what would it be? Meers said it would be: "Is the universe friendly?" It's often misattributed to Einstein, who supposedly said that the most important question you could ask about your life was, "Is the universe friendly or not?" He didn't, in fact, say that, but he did answer the question in his own

way, as he was examining that as well. He said, "Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not." And, um, I hate to gender God, but anyway, I think it is a really interesting question to live with for your entire life. It’s a really interesting question that I ask myself when I'm in moments of great trial here on Earth School, which, as you know, I've already expressed my belief is a very difficult curriculum. It's like: Is this a friendly universe, or is this a malicious universe? If it's malicious, then life is pointless suffering. If it's

friendly, the suffering might have a point. If it's friendly, what might the point be? Where can I find that? How do you want me to move through this? Now, assuming that it’s friendly, how do you want me to navigate this terrible-looking thing? So the question I think that I'm constantly bringing to people, especially when they say, "I try it, and it just feels really weird and uncomfortable to say kind things to myself," is that, yeah, because you've got decades of training in saying garbage things to yourself. Anytime you try to do something new, it’s going

to be hard; it’s going to feel awkward. It definitely doesn’t feel normal because "normal" is your history's greatest garbage can. You are just a pile of worthlessness. You know, like, you have never done enough; you'll never be enough. You should be ashamed of yourself. Who do you think you are? I mean, that's the normal dialogue that Annie Lamott calls Radio K, which is playing in most of our heads at all times. What about our negative bias? Thinking is always trained toward the worst possible outcome. But could it just as likely be that you are loved

and lovable, as opposed to despicable and someone who should be ashamed of themselves? Why not? And why not try it on? Try it on like a pair of boots, take it for a walk, and then do it again tomorrow and see what it does to your mind. Thank you, Liz. I love spending time with you. I love spending time with you too, Tim. You are such a delight! I never know where we're going to go, and I'm always so happy about where we went. It's a fun adventure, always talking to you, so thank you! I

really appreciate it. I really, really appreciate the time, the thoughts, the wisdom, and the reflections. To everybody listening, as always, we will have the show notes and links to everything, including Liz's Substack at elizabethgilbert.substack.com. Until next time, be just a little bit kinder than necessary—not just to others, but to yourself. And, as always, thanks for tuning in!