5 Quotes from Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear To Inspire You To Create More

First off, thank you Elizabeth Gilbert for this masterful book.

In Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, Elizabeth Gilbert explores the habits, approaches, and attitudes that can influence our lives to be more creative.

Here are 5 quotes sure to bring forth the creative in you:

“The universe buries strange jewels deep within us all, and then stands back to see if we can find them.”

Creativity spurns from that which is true to us; that which is authentic.

If we can look at our innermost thoughts, feelings, and desires — we begin the journey of creating something that can stand the test of time because it’s based on truth.

“You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.”

We live is a world suffocated by distractions. It’s rare you meet a person who has given themselves wholly to their craft.

Elizabeth is daring us as the reader to take a step forward in our path. To give up the addiction to outcomes and walk the path merely because it’s yours to walk.

“It seems to me that the less I fight my fear, the less it fights back. If I can relax, fear relaxes, too.”

That which we resist persists.

This begs the stance that if you stop fighting the resistance, the fear, and you give in to it — the fear eventually subsides.

Accept that the fear is there. Accept that things are hard because they’re scary. Do them anyway. Do them until the muscle of creativity becomes a habit. Do them until your creative muscle is so calm, so relaxed, that your true self shines through.

“She said: “We all spend our twenties and thirties trying so hard to be perfect, because we’re so worried about what people will think of us. Then we get into our forties and fifties, and we finally start to be free, because we decide that we don’t give a damn what anyone thinks of us. But you won’t be completely free until you reach your sixties and seventies, when you finally realize this liberating truth — nobody was ever thinking about you, anyhow.”

Perfectionism is a catastrophe created by the ego.

I’ve seen so many authors publish their first books in their 50s and forward. Perhaps that’s when the calling to write grows so big, not even the ego can stand in the way.

“Ideas are driven by a single impulse: to be made manifest.”

When the inching to write arises, write. When the idea to create a product creeps in, create it. When an image sits in your gut feeling, paint it.

These are all aspects of the self screaming to be seen.

Allow yourself to be seen! That’s the courage our world needs more of nowadays.