Elizabeth Gilbert's Gratitude Insights (ep. 949)

[SPEAKER_00]: Hey gratit you seeker, thank you so much for taking the time to listen to this interview. [SPEAKER_00]: I really appreciate it. [SPEAKER_00]: And if you could think of one person that would also benefit from it, share it with them. [SPEAKER_00]: It might actually be the inspiration that they need to make their day or maybe even their life much better. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much once again.

[SPEAKER_00]: This has been Georgian Banta, don't forget to keep seeking and spreading gratitude. [SPEAKER_00]: I'd regret it is secure and welcome to a new episode based on the words of people you know that are big believers in the power of gratitude. [SPEAKER_00]: You can hear words of wisdom from Tony Robbins, Bob Router, Bernay Brown, Deepak Chopra, Jack Canfield, Jay Lopez, Maya Jalou, Niza Washington, Eckartoli, Luis Hay, and now Elizabeth Gilbert.

[SPEAKER_00]: The purpose of this kind of episode is to learn from the past, from those people that we admire and that inspire us to explore their perspective on gratitude and see how we can implement it in our life as well. [SPEAKER_00]: Please hit the follow button right now to make sure that you're going to get all of these amazing nuggets of wisdom as soon as they come out. [SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth Gilbert, born on July, eighteen, nineteen, sixty-nine, is an American journalist and author.

[SPEAKER_00]: She's best known for her, two thousand six memoir, It Prayed Love, which has sold over twelve million copies and has been translated into over thirty languages. [SPEAKER_00]: The book was also made into a film of the same name in a thousand ten. [SPEAKER_00]: If you haven't seen it, I definitely recommend it. [SPEAKER_00]: She was born in Waterbury, Connecticut. [SPEAKER_00]: Her father being a chemical engineer and her mother, Carole, was a nurse.

[SPEAKER_00]: When she was four, her parents bought a Christmas tree farm in Lichfield, Connecticut. [SPEAKER_00]: They lived in the countryside, so they had no neighbors, they didn't own a TV or record player, so most of the time, they spent reading. [SPEAKER_00]: Elizabeth and her older sister Catherine entertained themselves by writing books and plays. [SPEAKER_00]: In two thousand six, she published It Pray Love, one woman searched for everything across Italy, India and Indonesia.

[SPEAKER_00]: A chronicle of her year of spiritual and personal exploration spent traveling abroad.

[SPEAKER_00]: She financed her world travel for the book with a hundred thousand dollar publisher's advance after pitching the concept in a book proposal. [SPEAKER_00]: The best seller has been critiqued by some writers as pre-blit, a literature of privilege, and a calculated business decision. [SPEAKER_00]: The memoir appeared on New York Times by seller list of non-fiction in the spring of XXVI and was still number two on the list, eighty-eight weeks later in October, XXIII.

[SPEAKER_00]: It was option for a film by Columbia Pictures which released its pre-loves starring Julia Roberts as Gilbert on August XIII, in September.

[SPEAKER_00]: She was invited on Oprah in XII, and she is part of the Oprah Super Soul, a hundred list of visionaries and influential leaders, as well as one of the one hundred most influential people in the world, my time magazine.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end, in the end. [SPEAKER_00]: It's a really good book.

[SPEAKER_00]: It's really helpful for people who are creative, but also have a problem, especially with perfectionism. [SPEAKER_00]: And for me, it was really interesting to find out her creative process, the way she thinks, the way she sees creativity. [SPEAKER_00]: and it's really liberating greed. [SPEAKER_00]: She's also of course a big believer in gratitude. [SPEAKER_00]: I couldn't find any audio bits of her talking about gratitude, but she has some really powerful quotes about gratitude.

[SPEAKER_00]: But the first idea that I want to share with you is about something that she created that's related to gratitude. [SPEAKER_00]: You might have heard about it, [SPEAKER_00]: What you might have not. [SPEAKER_00]: I think it's a great idea and I want to share it with you. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm gonna quote her Instagram post because I think she explains this concept in the best way possible.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here it goes. [SPEAKER_00]: I set off a gratitude bomb in my journal yesterday. [SPEAKER_00]: Science says that gratitude is good for you, like really good for you. [SPEAKER_00]: As in, simply writing down three things a day that you are grateful for reduces inflammation, lower stress, reverse expression increases optimism.

[SPEAKER_00]: So, if merely writing down three things that you're grateful for will do not for you, imagine what would happen to your life if you set off a gratitude bomb. [SPEAKER_00]: Would you like to know how to create a gratitude bomb? [SPEAKER_00]: Well, I shall teach you, because I made it up.

[SPEAKER_00]: Draw a warm golden sun in the middle of the page. [SPEAKER_00]: Or if you're trying to be artsy, like me, draw the sun off center, because edgy. [SPEAKER_00]: This is now the core of your new Galaxy of gratitude. [SPEAKER_00]: Draw six lines radiating out from the sun, who use fancy wash-a-tap, like I did, because maybe you haven't been drinking lately, and maybe you are alone, and maybe you have a lot of free time on your hands these days to buy art supplies.

[SPEAKER_00]: Label the six segments, spirit, community, family, body, work, and home. [SPEAKER_00]: And then, fill in each segment with words about what you're grateful for, in each category. [SPEAKER_00]: Let the words spill right off the page with the understanding that this galaxy is expanding.

[SPEAKER_00]: Imagine that you've granted you the shooting right out to into space. [SPEAKER_00]: Some segments will be easier to find than others. [SPEAKER_00]: Dig deep, get creative. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're having trouble with your family of origin, for instance, show gratitude for the other kinds of family that you have in your life. [SPEAKER_00]: pets, plants and books, count as family by the way. [SPEAKER_00]: Clouds are also your family.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you hate your job, find gratitude for having one at all, or think deeper about what your real work in the world is. [SPEAKER_00]: Maybe your real work is to forgive yourself, or maybe your real work is to pick up scraps of trash of the street, so nobody else has to do it. [SPEAKER_00]: If you're having health problems, fine gratitude for what's still working in your body, or humbly thank it for the years of health and service it gave you.

[SPEAKER_00]: Keep going, feel the page, feel the galaxy, trust that you are blessed, even when you forget that you are blessed. [SPEAKER_00]: It's time to remember. [SPEAKER_00]: Hashtag gratitude mom.

[SPEAKER_00]: Onward, with love, Liz Gilbert. [SPEAKER_00]: Quite an amazing idea, right? [SPEAKER_00]: I mentioned many times on the podcast that we can get quite creative with our gratitude practice. [SPEAKER_00]: Especially if we like to draw or we are artsy in different ways. [SPEAKER_00]: We can use that to express our gratitude and to make it a different kind of experience one that encompasses other talents that we have. [SPEAKER_00]: You might want to do this exercise on the wall.

[SPEAKER_00]: or with your family. [SPEAKER_00]: Another thing that I love about this gratitude bomb idea is the fact that it's expanding. [SPEAKER_00]: It's radiating quite similar to gratitude.

[SPEAKER_00]: And even though she gives us a structure, I think it's important to notice that [SPEAKER_00]: Inside that structure, we still have creative freedom in the sense that, for instance, for family, we can choose so many other things than the things that we usually think about when it comes to family. [SPEAKER_00]: And this might make it so much easier for people to be able to write things down even though it might normally be harder for them to do so.

[SPEAKER_00]: So what I'm taking from this is that whenever we write in our gratitude journal or if we create this gratitude bomb in our journal, we can be creative and we can't think outside the box. [SPEAKER_00]: And think about things that we might not usually think about when it comes to different areas of our life. [SPEAKER_00]: After this really long post, the next quote from Elizabeth Gilbert about gratitude is really really short one, but I think it's also quite powerful.

[SPEAKER_00]: Gratitude always [SPEAKER_00]: always gratitude.

[SPEAKER_00]: In my opinion, this is stating that gratitude is an important value for her and that gratitude should always be with us whether things are good or rather things are challenging. [SPEAKER_00]: When things are going great in our life, I have gratitude always. [SPEAKER_00]: And when they are not that great, don't forget always gratitude. [SPEAKER_00]: That gratitude is the answer. [SPEAKER_00]: It's the way out.

[SPEAKER_00]: If you have another interpretation for this, I'd be really curious for you to let me know what's your take on this, how you understand this quote. [SPEAKER_00]: And the next idea I believe is related to feeling guilty about receiving many things and feeling the need to somehow reciprocate. [SPEAKER_00]: In the end though, maybe we must all give up trying to pay back the people in this world who sustain our lives.

[SPEAKER_00]: In the end, maybe it's wiser to surrender before the miraculous scope of human generosity and to just keep saying thank you forever and sincerely, for as long as we have voices.

[SPEAKER_00]: And I totally agree with this one. [SPEAKER_00]: In many situations, instead of feeling grateful, we feel guilty or we feel that we must reciprocate one way or another. [SPEAKER_00]: But as we talked in the past as well, gratitude is a great cure for when we feel that we have too much or that we have it so much better than other people instead of feeling bad about it instead of feeling guilty for the blessings that we are enjoying.

[SPEAKER_00]: We can feel grateful and we can say thank you. [SPEAKER_00]: And in this way, we unlock our own generosity and the capability of us enjoying what we already have much more.

[SPEAKER_00]: And she expands on this idea in another quote. [SPEAKER_00]: Most of my prayers are expressions of sheer gratitude for the fullness of my contentment. [SPEAKER_00]: It's clear for me that she practices gratitude that it's part of her life because she starts with gratitude and from a place of gratitude and she expands that gratitude through her prayer. [SPEAKER_00]: She also shares some interesting ideas that are not directly related to gratitude in her book Big Magic.

[SPEAKER_00]: Here are the ones that I love most from the book. [SPEAKER_00]: The universe varies strange jewels deep within a soul and then stands back to see if we can find them. [SPEAKER_00]: My opinion this is related to our talents, to the things that we can offer the world, but we can only do so if we are aware of them, if we can find them, if we can dust them off and let them shine.

[SPEAKER_00]: Another idea that I love is, you can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failures.

[SPEAKER_00]: And this is somehow related to gratitude because gratitude is all about [SPEAKER_00]: The journey, not the destination. [SPEAKER_00]: And that whatever you're doing, it's important to persevere, to keep going, to dedicate yourself to the path that you've chosen. [SPEAKER_00]: And that the progress is much more important than actually succeeding in the way that society usually makes a thing that success looks like.

[SPEAKER_00]: So anyhow, I really recommend her book Big Magic and the movie. [SPEAKER_00]: It's pretty love if you haven't seen it. [SPEAKER_00]: It's really fun and entertaining and also quite deep.

[SPEAKER_00]: I feel like somehow I'm following in her footsteps because I've been to Bali. [SPEAKER_00]: I'm going to Rome. [SPEAKER_00]: I just need to go to India and I'm all set. [SPEAKER_00]: Thank you so much for listening. [SPEAKER_00]: I hope you found at least one idea that's practical. [SPEAKER_00]: That's easy for you to implement. [SPEAKER_00]: And that will make your life at least a little bit better.

[SPEAKER_00]: This has been Georgian Banta, don't forget to keep seeking and spreading gratitude.