#770: Elizabeth Gilbert — How to Set Strong Boundaries, Overcome Purpose Anxiety, and Find Your Deep Inner Voice

The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig

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4.6 • 17.4K Ratings

🗓️ 25 September 2024

⏱️ 118 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love. Her latest novel, City of Girls, was named an instant New York Times bestseller. Go to ElizabethGilbert.Substack.com to subscribe to “Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert,” her newsletter, which has more than 120,000 subscribers.

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Timestamps:

[00:00] Start

[00:07:14] No cherished outcomes.

[00:12:27] Self-compassionate ownership of responsibility.

[00:17:24] The daily practice of writing letters from love.

[00:23:54] Two-way prayer vs. one-way prayer.

[00:32:29] The male approach to this practice.

[00:35:59] How do you feel toward yourself vs. about yourself?

[00:38:25] Understanding self-hatred to foster self-friendliness.

[00:44:52] Setting boundaries and dealing with those who refuse to honor them.

[00:51:47] Why (and how) Elizabeth avoids big family holiday gatherings.

[00:53:47] Comfort in solitude.

[00:55:10] Much abuzz about Elizabeth's new 'do.

[00:59:24] Boundaries, priorities, and mysticism: a relaxed woman as a radical concept.

[01:05:34] What mysticism brings to Elizabeth's reality.

[01:08:58] A better question to ask than "What do I want?"

[01:11:04] Elizabeth's hard-ass approach to project commitment.

[01:18:12] Creativity guidance from Elizabeth's higher power.

[01:22:40] How The Morning Pages influenced Eat, Pray, Love.

[01:25:59] More productive questions to ask than "Why?"

[01:27:48] The pointlessness of purpose anxiety.

[01:32:31] Balancing presence with other aspects of a well-lived life.

[01:37:49] Comfort with mortality.

[01:41:53] What motivates Elizabeth's Letters from Love newsletter?

[01:43:01] What can potential readers expect from this newsletter?

[01:48:05] "Is the universe friendly?" — Frederic W. H. Myers

[01:51:01] Parting thoughts.

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Past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show include Jerry Seinfeld, Hugh Jackman, Dr. Jane Goodall, LeBron James, Kevin Hart, Doris Kearns Goodwin, Jamie Foxx, Matthew McConaughey, Esther Perel, Elizabeth Gilbert, Terry Crews, Sia, Yuval Noah Harari, Malcolm Gladwell, Madeleine Albright, Cheryl Strayed, Jim Collins, Mary Karr, Maria Popova, Sam Harris, Michael Phelps, Bob Iger, Edward Norton, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Neil Strauss, Ken Burns, Maria Sharapova, Marc Andreessen, Neil Gaiman, Neil de Grasse Tyson, Jocko Willink, Daniel Ek, Kelly Slater, Dr. Peter Attia, Seth Godin, Howard Marks, Dr. Brené Brown, Eric Schmidt, Michael Lewis, Joe Gebbia, Michael Pollan, Dr. Jordan Peterson, Vince Vaughn, Brian Koppelman, Ramit Sethi, Dax Shepard, Tony Robbins, Jim Dethmer, Dan Harris, Ray Dalio, Naval Ravikant, Vitalik Buterin, Elizabeth Lesser, Amanda Palmer, Katie Haun, Sir Richard Branson, Chuck Palahniuk, Arianna Huffington, Reid Hoffman, Bill Burr, Whitney Cummings, Rick Rubin, Dr. Vivek Murthy, Darren Aronofsky, Margaret Atwood, Mark Zuckerberg, Peter Thiel, Dr. Gabor Maté, Anne Lamott, Sarah Silverman, Dr. Andrew Huberman, and many more.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello boys and girls this is Tim Ferris welcome to another episode of the Tim Ferris 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
0:14.1	favorites. Elizabeth Gilbert, she is the number one New York Times best-selling
0:17.8	author of Big Magic and Eat Pray Love as well as several other
0:21.1	international bestsellers.
0:22.8	She has been a finalist for the National Book Award,
0:25.1	the National Book Critics Circle Award,
0:27.6	and the Penn Hemingway Award.
0:29.2	Her latest novel, City of Girls,
0:31.2	was named an instant New York Times bestseller, a
0:33.9	rollicking sexy tale of the New York City Theater world during the 1940s.
0:38.1	You can go to Elizabeth Gilbert. Substack.com to subscribe to
0:42.1	letters from love with Elizabeth Gilbert, her newsletter which has more
0:45.2	than 120,000 subscribers.
0:47.6	You can find her on Instagram at Elizabeth Gilbert, underscore writer.
0:53.0	But first, a few quick words from our lovely podcast sponsors who make products and services
0:59.3	that I use every day or every week.
1:02.0	I personally vet everything and that means that probably less
1:06.7	than 20% of the podcast sponsors who wish to sponsor the show end up sponsoring
1:12.3	but I'm fine with that and here are the few that made the cut.
1:15.6	If you ever use public Wi-Fi saying at a hotel or a coffee shop, which is where I often work, I'm doing it right now, and as many of you, my listeners do, you're likely sending data over an open network,
1:28.0	meaning there's no encryption at all. A great way to ensure that all of your data are encrypted and can't be easily read by hackers or captured by websites is to use this episode's sponsor, Express VPN. It is so simple. It is one click. It is the easiest thing in the world. I use it overseas. I use it in airports. I use it everywhere
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	...

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