Why Eat, Pray, Love author Elizabeth Gilbert is in demand from business women
Author Elizabeth Gilbert shared her life’s journey and pursuit of meaning with millions in her book Eat, Pray, Love. Now business leaders are tapping her on the shoulder to help them get ahead. Here’s how.
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Of all the wisdom Elizabeth Gilbert has learnt, business acumen would not be one that immediately springs to mind.
Ask the cult US author of Eat, Pray, Love anything about awakening, sincerity or compassion and you will embark on one of the most insightful conversations of your life, but business would seem a stretch. Or maybe that’s just the type of judgment and stereotype she’s been challenging for the past 20 years.
Doing what people expect doesn’t interest Gilbert. She has survived well enough to live according to her own truth and life path that she’s not about to suddenly write a book or start talking in a way that everyone expects.
Besides, what she’s learnt from a curiosity that has seen her travel and explore extensively, going to places of discovery most people either fear or avoid, can just as easily be ascribed to her personal relationships as it can to more broad social or business relationships.
But even Gilbert is surprised that she is increasingly being invited to address business seminars, including the upcoming Business Chicks talking event in Australia.
“I’d never describe myself as a business woman — I have no staff though I’m an entity I guess,” Gilbert says.
“But that isn’t why they’re bringing me to Australia. There’s an interesting development in business that’s unexpected to me but they’re inviting me more and more, not so much in the guise of how to increase sales, improve human resources or marketing. I’ve never even had a proper job other than bar tending, waitressing and journalism.
“But I do have a lot to say about creativity. That has become something a lot of businesses are interested in — to share with people what I have learnt about how to get on the other side of fear so you can be driven by creativity and curiosity. That’s what I’ll be talking about.”
It
It’s the subject of her 2015 book Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear but is really touched upon in all of her books where the essence is to embrace everything that crosses a life path, rather than fight it, even fear. She is not of the belief that fear must be overcome, as if it’s something to conquer. Rather, she argues, we are best to shake its hand and invite it in for tea.
“I don’t think it’s so much about letting go of fear,” she says. “In a weird way, it’s about embracing it. There’s a certain kind of letting go that we all want but, unless you’re an enlightened master, which I’m not and have only met one or two in my life, letting go of fear is something that a pretty normal, functioning mind won’t be able to do. The greatest battle is the shame that comes around the fear so I have a different approach. The relationship I have with my fear is intimate, loving and allowing. I speak to it in a beautiful, nurturing, soothing voice, and I say ‘You are part of this family, I know you’re not going anywhere but I’m still going ahead to do this difficult thing anyway’.
“I much prefer that approach to the more common language in western culture that is brutal, like you have to kick the butt of fear, rather than being more creative.
“Besides, everything I’ve ever fought, fights me back. There’s an energy in fighting that creates a combative, hostile environment and if you want to get in a street fight with fear, you’re going to lose so I create a more congenial environment for it.”
While one of the main lessons of her life is to adjust her perfectionist streak, it would seem that Gilbert has managed to learn how to walk side-by-side with her open creativity rather than a need, that may have been instilled over many years, to control life’s outcomes. She knows that’s not possible now or, at least she knows what she can control and what is completely out of her control.
“I think the most interesting thing I’ve learnt in my life is that it takes a really long time for a human being to learn how to take care of themselves,” she says.
“Each of us dropped onto this planet into a body, a family, a culture without really knowing what any of it is about.
“Now that I’m 50, I’m finally able to truly say that I can take stewardship over myself and I take full responsibility for looking after me and you’re in good hands. You’re going to be OK. I couldn’t do that when I was 22.”
SURVIVING sorrow has been needed at many stages of her life though she would say that it’s a sense of shame that has pushed her towards finding alternative ways to react when something hasn’t complied with her perfect plans or expectations. The expectations of the world have been an extra pressure to overcome.
“We have a cruel mythology that says you’re supposed to come out of the gate knowing how to do everything and that’s why we have such shame cycles,” she says.
“When we fail, we’re supposed to know how to manage everything about our life and our spirituality but, really, none of it is clear. There’s a blind grasping where it takes a long time to settle. Older women get better at it which is completely different to what we’re taught by a culture this is terrified of ageing but I don’t know any woman who would say she isn’t infinitely happier at 50 or 60. You couldn’t pay her to be 20 again. I look at 20-year-old women and say I’m sure you have to go with that journey because each one of us has to take that journey but I don’t want to do it again.
“I do think you get better at it – knowing the difference between what is yours to control and what is not. A lot of people, as they get older, get surrender faster and don’t try to force an outcome.”
Life has softened her, rather than toughening her and for many women of her 50 years, that is quite an accomplishment. It’s not sorrow itself that has marked her life and she has certainly had her fair share of heartbreak, but it’s the way she has reacted to it that makes her inspiring to many, always seeing the reason, not just the loss.
Of the hard times, there has been the traumatic break-up of her first marriage which was the impetus for her 2006 memoir Eat, Pray, Love which sold 13 million-plus copies around the world, translated into more than 30 languages and was made into a hit movie starring Julia Roberts in 2010.
The love she found and revealed in that book led to another marriage which ended the minute she heard that her best friend, Rayya Elias, was diagnosed with terminal cancer. Gilbert rushed to be with her and they lived together, in love, for 18 months until Elias died in January 2018.
Recently she had a relationship with a former friend of Elias’ but the relationship is now over. Gilbert says that while it was short-lived, it was definitely worth doing but she feels no desire to embark on another relationship with a man or a woman.
“I’m still licking my wounds and it’s important to take breaks between catastrophes — I mean this wasn’t a catastrophe but it hurts,” she says.
“Relationships don’t hold the place of importance they did when I was younger, where they feel like properties. It’s a nice feeling to not have that desperate need now.
“I have learnt that it’s not about perfecting but learning how to not deliberately set yourself up to suffer.”
Self-awareness is a process for her. Famed for her spiritual explorations, she continues to feed her curiosity and will go wherever it leads.
Just days after we speak, she entered an ashram in India to dedicate some time to reflection, which is still a crucial part of her life. It may be tempting to hold her up as a type of ideal of how to integrate a dedicated spiritual practice into contemporary life but she soon quashes any such misconceptions or at least challenges how they may look. She’s not trying to be a yogi or a master or a guru. She’s just trying to trust, surrender and keep going, like most of her readers and followers.
“I have a 20-year failed meditation practice and I hope that, when I die, I’ll have a 70-year failed meditation practice,” she says.
“I’d never say I’m a master at any of it but I do all of it. For me, meditation is mostly that I’m sitting there thinking, not being in transcendental bliss. It’s a revolt against contemporary culture to just do nothing, even if you’re not doing it right.
“It’s a ferocious claim that says `I am not my chore’. At least I’m not here to just be a consumer, get my list done every day and die. Just to be present is very important to me.
“I have a very strong prayer practice and it’s a relationship I have with myself. I start every day committing to love others and myself with compassion and asking myself questions about why I should love myself or show compassion towards myself.
“That is the foundation of my spiritual practice. It’s a well I go to every morning to drink from. Without it, I don’t do very well. It’s compassionate stewardship, not discipline.”
Not for any moment does she set herself up as a source of wisdom or authority to direct people to live in a certain way.
Her own spiritual practice is based on compassion towards herself and others and that’s a principle she lives by carefully. She has met many spiritual leaders on her travels and has learnt to recognise quite quickly those who are part of her path. The one quality she needs in the people, including the teachers, she chooses to have in her life is that they have a lot of light in them.
There may be a tendency towards spiritual evangelism where there is a type of ‘dos and don’ts’ system of control but that’s not her interest. She may not pretend to know everything, thankfully, but she has learnt some truths in life and the main truth is to just trust.
“Unless you want to become a tyrant and start telling people what to do, you can only turn people’s lives over to them and suggest they try to follow their own intuition,” she says.
“I’ve spent a lot of time with spiritual people and my rule is that, if you’re different backstage then you are on stage, you have nothing to teach me. If you’re different in the way you’re talking to your personal assistant than what you say on stage, you have nothing to tell me. You know, you can smell it from a distance. You can feel sincerity, or not.
“I’ve met a lot of famous spiritual teachers who are so angry. It’s like `You want me to buy your seminar’ and I want to say `Dude, this s--- isn’t even working for you. You just had a temper tantrum because your coffee isn’t right!’
“Even if I don’t agree with their methods, if I see their sincerity, I’m OK. And I’m not talking about Oprah Winfrey here by the way. She’s extraordinary. I’ve never seen her allow her greatness to get in the way of her goodness and that should always be the case. There are plenty of great people but I’m not interested in people who aren’t good.”
A MORNING WITH ELIZABETH GILBERT AND BUSINESS CHICKS, FEBRUARY 26, CROWN PALLADIUM. BUSINESSCHICKS.COM