BOOK OF THE DAY: Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert

Creativity as an Intelligence More Evolved Than Fear

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David Rainoshek

10 min readNov 19, 2015

“So this, I believe, is the central question upon which all creative living hinges: Do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you?”

Elizabeth Gilbert is not just a great writer, she is contemplative and refreshingly prescient. Her latest offering, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear is pitch-perfect for a growing wave of postmodern culture that has firmly reached Maslow’s “self-actualization” stage… and is wondering what the hell to do about it.

You can see that the highest level in this classic and globally-recognized chart of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Self-Needs is Self-Actualization: the “need to live up to one’s fullest and unique potential.”

And while most of us still work to take care of our prior needs (Physiological, Safety, Love/Belonging, and Esteem) an increasing number of us are not content with work that just satisfies those needs, we want to build on them and Self-Actualize in service to others, to the world, both on the problem/solution side of the equation and the freedom/opportunity side.

And no better sector of the populace may be expressing its need for this form of worldcentric self-actualization than Millenials. Yes, Millenials — who have gotten an excessively bad rap (not entirely undeserved, mind you) for technology-induced narcissism.

Take a look at this article from Fast Company:

Working with purpose. Alignment with values. Paycuts to have work that matches those values. Solving social and environmental challenges. Using their skills for good. What a bunch of narcissists, indeed.

Self-Actualization (a term originated by Kurt Goldstein) is the instinctual need of humans to make the most of their unique abilities and to strive to be the best they can be. Maslow describes self-actualization as follows:

“Self-Actualization is the intrinsic growth of what is already in the organism, or more accurately, of what the organism is.” (Psychological Review, 1949)
“It refers to the person’s desire for self-fulfillment, namely, to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially.
The specific form that these needs will take will of course vary greatly from person to person. In one individual it may take the form of the desire to be an ideal mother, in another it may be expressed athletically, and in still another it may be expressed in painting pictures or in inventions.”

Maslow writes the following of self-actualizing people:

+ They embrace the facts and realities of the world (including themselves) rather than denying or avoiding them.

+ They are spontaneous in their ideas and actions.

+ They are creative.

+ They are interested in solving problems; this often includes the problems of others. Solving these problems is often a key focus in their lives.

+ They feel a closeness to other people, and generally appreciate life.

+ They have a system of morality that is fully internalized and independent of external authority.

+ They judge others without prejudice, in a way that can be termed objective.

This high developmental stage of Self-Actualization fulfills the need to reach one’s fullest potential, and Elizabeth Gilbert’s book, Big Magic is directly in service to realizing your self-actualization needs.

But it is scary as hell. And if the high stage of Self-Actualization has a dark side, it is creativity-stifling Fear.

Gilbert outlines our ways in which we might be afraid to live a more creative life in a beautiful section called, “Scary, Scary, Scary” reposted below.

Reasons You Might Be Afraid to Live a More Creative Life

Elizabeth Gilbert: “Let’s talk about courage now. If you already have the courage to bring forth the jewels that are hidden within you, terrific. You’re probably already doing really interesting things with your life, and you don’t need this book. Rock on.

But if you don’t have the courage, let’s try to get you some. Because creative living is a path for the brave. We all know this. And we all know that when courage dies, creativity dies with it. We all know that fear is a desolate boneyard where our dreams go to desiccate in the hot sun. This is common knowledge; sometime we just don’t know what to do about it.

Let me list for you some of the many ways in which you might be afraid to live a more creative life:

You’re afraid you have no talent.
You’re afraid you’ll be rejected or criticized or ridiculed or misunderstood or — worst of all — ignored.
You’re afraid there’s no market for your creativity; and therefore no point in pursuing it.
You’re afraid somebody else already did it better.

You’re afraid everybody else did it better.

You’re afraid somebody will steal your ideas, so it’s safer to keep them hidden forever in the dark.
You’re afraid you won’t be taken seriously.
You’re afraid your work isn’t politically, emotionally, or artistically important enough to change anyone’s life.

You’re afraid your dreams are embarrassing.

You’re afraid that someday you’ll look back on your creative endeavors as having been a giant waste of time, effort, and money.
You’re afraid you don’t have the right discipline.

You’re afraid you don’t have the right kind of work space, or financial freedom, or empty hours in which to focus on invention or exploration.

You’re afraid you don’t have the right training or degree.

You’re afraid you’re too fat. (I don’t know what this has to do with creativity, exactly, but experience has taught me that most of us are afraid we’re too fat, so let’s just put that on the anxiety list, for good measure.)

You’re afraid of being exposed as a hack, or a fool, or a dilettante, or a narcissist.
You’re afraid of upsetting your family with what you may reveal.

You’re afraid of what your peers and coworkers will say if you express your personal truth aloud.
You’re afraid of unleashing your innermost demons, and you really don’t want to encounter your innermost demons.

You’re afraid your best work is behind you.

You’re afraid you never had any best work to begin with.
You’re afraid you neglected your creativity for so long that now you can never get it back.
You’re afraid you’re too old to start.
You’re afraid you’re too young to start.

You’re afraid because something went well in your life once, so obviously nothing can ever go well again.

You’re afraid because nothing has ever gone well in your life, so why bother trying?
You’re afraid of being a one-hit wonder.
You’re afraid of being a no-hit wonder…

Listen, I don’t have all day here, so I’m not going to keep listing fears. It’s a bottomless list, anyhow, and a depressing one. I’ll just wrap up my summary this way: SCARY, SCARY, SCARY.

Everything is so goddamn scary.”

Fear is Boring

“Mind you, my fear had always been boring to everybody else, but it wasn’t until mid-adolescence that it became, at last, boring even to me. My fear became boring to me, I believe, for the same reason that fame became boring to Jack Gilbert:

…because it was the same thing every day.” — Elizabeth G.

What Gilbert makes abundantly clear is that Fear is a base-level survival instinct. At that level, it has a certain creativity, but when we get to the higher levels of being and knowing, such as love, compassion, joy, poetry, bravery, ideas, invention, creativity — when we get to the level of needs met with Self-Actualization, Fear shuts everything down. The vital, creative lifeforce in us is snuffed out.

It makes for desperately boring YouTube videos, books, political movements, relationships, sports, businesses… you name it. Joseph Campbell writes of this “Refusal of the Call to Adventure” in his career-defining (Star Wars Series inspiring) book The Hero With a Thousand Faces:

“Often in actual life, and not infrequently in the myths and popular tales, we encounter the dull case of the call unanswered; for it is always possible to turn the ear to other interests. Refusal of the summons converts the adventure into its negative. Walled in boredom, hard work, or “culture,” the subject loses the power of significant affirmative action and becomes a victim to be saved.
His flowering world becomes a wasteland of dry stones and his life feels meaningless — even though, like King Minos, he may through titanic effort succeed in building an empire of renown.
Whatever house he builds, it will be a house of death: a labyrinth of cyclopean walls to hide from him his Minotaur. All he can do is create new problems for himself and await the gradual approach of his disintegration.”

Ooof. Shit. It’s a grim reality for the Hero, and for those of us who succumb to the Boredom of Fear and the crumbling, disintegrating and disinterested life-estate it engenders.

Gilbert asks herself a valuable series of questions:

“Is Fear the thing I want to build my entire identity around? The most boring instinct I possess? The panic reflex of my dumbest ‘inner tadpole’?

No.”

The Road Trip: Fear’s Space and Place

“Here’s how I’ve learned to deal with my fear: I made a decision a long time ago that if I want creativity in my life — and I do — then I will have to make space for fear, too. Plenty of space.” — Elizabeth Gilbert

Mythologist Joseph Campbell, mentioned above, remarked that “Devils are just Gods, unacknowledged.” We are complicated, vast, and contain what psychologists Hal and Sidra Stone call “voices.” These are not the voices of a schizophrenic, but aspects of your healthy self that speak to you and inform your life moment-to-moment. Voices such as:

*The Protector
*Fear
*Desire
*The Skeptic
*The Controller
*Curiosity or The Seeker
*Anger
*Joy
*The Comedian

The list is extensive, but Hal and Sidra Stone have identified hundreds of these voices that operate for most of us most of the time, and crafted a very beautiful practice of exercising and speaking through these aspects of yourself with Voice Dialogue in their book, Embracing Ourselves: The Voice Dialogue Manual.

My favorite adaptation of Voice Dialogue was crafted by an American Zen Master, Genpo Roshi, that he calls Big Mind / Big Heart Practice. And what luck — in the age of information, you can do Big Mind Practice with Genpo Roshi right here, when you have a couple of hours to dive in:

The point is that unacknowledged voices — such as Fear — only become Devils* that sabotage our creativity, evolutionary impulse (in short, our lives) when they become Joseph Campbell’s unacknowledged Gods.* Fear is a “God” in you — a voice in you which has purpose when kept in context — in its proper place.

Elizabeth Gilbert does a jujitsu-style Voice Dialogue move on her Fear in Big Magic that you will just have to read for yourself (it starts on pg 24–25). She acknowledges it, gives it plenty of room, talks to it, and puts it in its place thusly:

“Dearest Fear: Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. I understand you’ll be joining us, because you always do. I acknowledge that you believe you have an important job to do in my life, and that you take your job seriously. Apparently your job is to induce complete panic whenever I’m about to do something interesting — and may I say, you are superb at your job. So by all means keep doing your job if you feel you must. But I will also be doing my job on this road trip, which is to work hard and stay focused. And Creativity [see the Voice of Creativity there…] will be doing its job, which is to remain stimulating and inspiring.
There’s plenty of room in this vehicle for all of us, so make yourself at home, but understand this: Creativity and I are the only ones who will be making any decisions along the way.”

F#@%ing hell, yes. THAT, my friends, is an integrated, high-level, ass-kicking full embrace of a larger life — a life of switched on creative drive and fortitude. A life that is Antifragile.

But Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb is a book for another day… Get out there or get online and fire up your interior furnaces with Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear. Don’t let fear stop the more evolved aspects of your dynamic being from integrating the wisdom therein.

I will conclude today with this inspiring scene acted by the inimitable Robin Williams in the 1989 masterpiece, Dead Poets Society:

If you are moved, let me know what you think of this Book of the Day and the inspiration of your own Creativity beyond Fear in the comments below.

All the best— David Rainoshek, MA