This was published 5 years ago
Eat, pray, love and keep calm: Elizabeth Gilbert on the revolutionary quality society ignores
By Emma Koehn
Author Elizabeth Gilbert has argued the secret to creative and entrepreneurial thinking is a state of relaxation, although when sharing that idea on stage she expects the crowd to push back.
"The women in the room are like, 'you gotta be f---ing kidding me'. And the men too. Everyone is just like, 'what would that [relaxation] even be like?'" she told the HubSpot Inbound conference in Boston on Wednesday morning.
"The person in every room who is the most relaxed is the one who holds all the power," says author Elizabeth Gilbert.Credit: John Davis
The best-selling author amassed a cult following after the publication of her post-divorce memoir Eat Pray Love, and her role as a speaker and thinker on the topic of creativity.
She echoed recent calls from leadership experts such as Brené Brown on the importance of facing emotions head-on in order to be more productive, though argued that championing a state of calm was a more revolutionary idea.
"People are tremendously anxious and the younger you are, the more anxious you are," she said.
"The person in every room who is the most relaxed is the one who holds all the power. We never think about this, of associating an ability to be relaxed with an ability to be powerful… but when you are relaxed you have a 360-degree range of vision, where you can see things that all the stressed out people in the room can’t see.
"You see opportunities that other people can’t notice because their eyes have become pinpoints of terror."
Businesses and workplaces have been dealing with the impacts of burnout in recent years, and the World Health Organisation declared earlier this year that the phenomenon has a genuine effect on performance.
Medical experts have warned that high performance individuals, such as entrepreneurs and creatives, may display a higher tolerance for worry and stress which could impact their health and performance.
Determining one's priorities and setting boundaries were the keys to strong, relaxed leadership, Gilbert said.
When you are relaxed you have a 360-degree range of vision, where you can see things that all the stressed out people in the room can’t.
Elizabeth Gilbert
She told the crowd that when she found out her friend and partner Rayya Elias was dying of pancreatic cancer, she experienced an instantly clear moment where her professional anxieties and commitments were no longer important.
The first thing Gilbert did upon hearing that news was open her inbox to delete unread emails. She then cancelled professional projects so she could focus on Elias instead.
"I cancelled nearly everything — because it was clear to me in that moment that I did not care. There are very few words more powerful in terms of learning who you are than 'I don't care'... you've go to know what you love and you've got to honour what you love."
The writer travelled to Boston for the HubSpot Inbound conference as a guest of HubSpot.