Big Magic Book Review
Ep. 92
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    I’m so excited to jump into March’s book club pick, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. If you haven’t taken the time to read it, do yourself a favor and pick it up.
    I think this book is all the more important during this uncertain time of a global pandemic. Many people are rightfully re-evaluating their life and work.
    The entire premise of the book is that we need creativity in order to live the rich, fulfilled lives we so desperately crave. And Liz Gilbert gives us the perfect blueprint to get started.
    In this episode, we’ll discuss:
    – Why every human is a creative being
    – Why we all need creativity for a fulfilled life
    – How to ditch the tortured artist stereotype
    – How to pursue creativity even if you’re afraid
    – How to fold it into your life
    – And so much more.

Find Big Magic here


Show Transcript
Hi friends. Welcome back to another episode. I am so excited to have you here. I hope you're doing well. I know it's a really strange time in the world and from all accounts, it does seem that it is not going to change anytime soon. It may get a little worse before it gets better and I know we're all trying to figure out a lot of things in this time, how we work at home, how our businesses are going to do, how our jobs are going to do, how we're going to face this illness if we get it or people in our family get it. There's a lot of uncertainty as there always is in life. I think this is on a grander scale where we're all facing something at the same time and so it can be very disorienting. I've had a lot of conversations in the last couple of weeks where a lot of people are actually seeing the beauty in it and the silver linings, you know, it doesn't take away from the fact that it is very serious and can be very scary and anxiety-inducing, but it can also be beautiful and it can also create a change in us, a new perspective, maybe a reevaluation of what we've always done and why we've done it.

Why don't we spend more time with our children at home? Why don't we have dinner more often together? Why don't we go on walks more often? Whatever the case may be for you. I know a lot of us are both anxiety-ridden at times and very much enjoying this slowing down and this introspection. So I hope you are feeling a little bit of both and more kind of feeling the good stuff. I think that one of the reasons I want to do this episode is because the book that we're going to review today, a main tenant of it really in my mind is the fact that you have a choice of how you approach anything and it's a good reminder - especially in times like these that we always have a choice about what we think and how we approach things. Always, no matter how bad the situation is, the things you do control are your thoughts and the way that you show up and that is why I am still doing the book review for this week.

I had thought about maybe changing it up with all of this stuff going on, but as many of you know, we chose the book Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert and it's actually perfect for right now and I'll tell you why. I think that when you're doing a lot of this introspection when you're reevaluating maybe some priorities in your life, I hope that you take some of the wisdom that she has and maybe incorporate it into your life. So let's jump in and if I can do anything to help you, please let me know. I'm here to help. During this time, we are still doing our monthly coaching calls. I think I'm going to make them more often since so many of us are cooped up in the house. It would be nice to just connect. So even if you don't really have a question about your career, if you just want to meet and say, Hey, and talk about life, I'm going to probably do it a weekly while we're all stuck in the house.
I'll send it out in the newsletter. If you're not on my newsletter, you should sign up, or you can go to quitterclub.com/coaching and I'll send out a weekly time and link and maybe we can join and say hi to each other. So that's that. But let's jump into this book. Okay, you guys, I'm going to gush throughout this episode, but I cannot speak highly enough of this book. It is a very easy read. So if you haven't read it, I really do recommend you pick it up. You can obviously still listen. It's not a spoiler, but I do think that it is worth reading. Now the book is called Bega magic creative living beyond fear. And I love it for a lot of reasons, but I think that basically the advice or her perspective in this book falls under two overarching themes that come up over and over again.
And they are themes that we deal with a lot on the podcast. And I think that there are things that we can all really learn from. So I'm just going to go through both of those. And I'll be jumping around. It's funny, I underlined pretty much all of this books we forced with this book and when I was taking notes for this episode, I copied like a million quotes and I kept thinking that I can't have a podcast episode where I'm basically just reading the book, but I'm tempted because it's just that good, so take my advice and just read it. I will read some quotes that I think are just explanatory of what I'm trying to say better than I could say it, so okay. What I love about it is that the premise is why you should live a creative life.
Why having a creative life is so important for all of us and she defines a creative life as the hunt to uncover those jewels that are hidden within you. She says, do you have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you, the courage to go on the hunt in the first place. That's what separates a mundane existence from a more enchanted one. I'm talking about a life living a life that is driven more strongly by curiosity. Then by fear, a creative life is an amplified life. It's a bigger life, a happier life, an expanded life and a hell of a lot more interesting. And I wanted to talk about this cause I think sometimes when you look up at the cover of the book or when I talk about creative living, it's easy to think about creativity in the way that society typically defines it, kind of like the standard arts painting, you know, trying singing, writing.
But that's not how I interpret creative living. And I don't think that is what she is talking about. In fact, I know it's not through the examples that she gives. And I think that's one of the biggest things to really think about. And I say this as a person who said for most of my life would utter the sentence and that I don't have a creative bone in my body. And now I realize how ridiculous of a statement that is because it's impossible. And we'll talk about it how every human being is a creative being. And what was happening is I was just not giving myself any space to try anything and I was limiting myself by this fictitious box that I've placed myself in. And maybe that was to protect myself and to not even try. Right. But the way that I look at it now is, having a creative life is being driven more by your curiosity and letting yourself explore.
It doesn't have to be art in the sense of what we think it can be like you enjoy baking, you like to design your house in a certain way. You like to arrange flowers for your tea table settings. Maybe it's the way that you dress yourself or your kids or the way that you decorate for holidays, whatever it is. There are ways that we can be creative that we don't typically think of as being creative. And when I love about the premise of the book is really allowing yourself to have this amplified life, to have this interesting full, big life where you are allowed to try things and experiment and follow your curiosity and be happy. And I really think that is the crux of it. It's funny because that is sort of the point of this whole podcast. I know it's a little bit of a spoiler alert, but I don't actually care if you quit your job, don't tell anybody.
I want you to quit if you hate it, but I really want you to become more conscious of the way that you're living. I want you to not be on autopilot mode. I want you to think about the things that you are doing and if you want more adventure and you want a more fulfilled and you want joy, I want you to seek it and figure out what that is and how you're going to get that and incorporate that into your life. And going back to this idea about not being a creative person, I love that she gives this example that the earliest evidence of human art is about 40,000 old and agriculture was invented 10,000 years ago. So she's saying that we had more of an urge to create pretty things before we had an urge to figure out how we were going to feed ourselves.
And obviously it's being funny, but it is a natural human impulse. It's in your DNA. When you look at children, there is no child that is not creative. And it's not as though you just lose that. We tell ourselves in our modern-day society, which is only a couple, I dunno, centuries-old, it's not that old. We've told ourselves that these are things for children and we don't have the time. We have the responsibility, we have so much to do. And so we're just going to deny this part of us that really brings a sense of joy and happiness to us. And so I want you to, if you don't consider yourself a creative person, I want you to change that thought. I want you to work on proving to yourself and looking for evidence of all the things that you do every day that are creative and the things that bring you happiness.
And understand that that is allowed and it is necessary to have this incredible life. But what I love about what she says in her book, is that she originally talks about a creative life as an amplified life. And then she talks about fear and she brings up the fact that everybody has it. We all understand it. We all have the same fears and she starts listing out all the ways that you're going to be afraid to live a creative life. So she frames it like: You're afraid. You have no talent. You're afraid you'll be rejected or criticized. You're afraid. There's no market for your creativity. You're afraid somebody else has already done it better. You're afraid you won't be taken seriously. You're afraid your work isn't important enough or that your dreams are embarrassing. You're afraid you're too old to start. You're afraid that you're too young to start.
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 don't have the right kind of discipline. You're afraid you don't have the right kind of training. And then she goes on to say, listen, I don't have all day. I can keep listing fears because it's a bottomless list. And that's the thing that I want everyone to understand is that we tend to think that our fears are unique or no one understands our situation. But everybody has those fears and I love that she goes on to talk about the fact that fear is boring. It's the same thing every day. It never changes. It just always tells you to stop. It always wants to just keep you safe. So it's going to always pick the predictable, boring decision of doing nothing. And if you don't want that to be your life, then you have to find a way to live with that fear and do it anyway to understand that the fear doesn't go away.
She talks about making space for creativity and fear and she gives the analogy that they go on a road trip together and she allows fear to come in the car as well. But she tells fear that you will never drive. And she has this quote that I love. It says, “It isn't always comfortable and easy carrying your fear around with you on your great and ambitious road trip. But it's always worth it because if you can't learn to travel comfortably alongside your fear, then you'll never be able to go anywhere interesting or do anything interesting. And that would be a pity because your life is short and rare and amazing and miraculous and you want to do really interesting things and make really interesting things while you're still here.” It's the crux of the book and everything. And I think about that now in times, especially in times like this when you're reevaluating and you really, you know, a lot of us may lose some loved ones in this pandemic or who knows, you know what, we might die.
And so when you sit and think: In terms of this, what have I done with my life? Have I lived an interesting, fulfilled, full life that allowed me the freedom to play and try things? If not, then I have to take a serious look at myself and I wonder why I've stopped myself. Is it really because I didn't have any time? Is it really because I needed that security so much or am I holding onto that fear and not letting any room for creativity? And she also goes on to talk about the fact that you don't have to build a profession out of it. She gives examples of her parents and how they just folded in their dreams into their everyday life. Her father was a chemical engineer, but he decided he wanted to be a Christmas tree farmer one year and so they bought land and he planted Christmas trees. Then he wanted to raise goats and then she talks about how her mother did similar things. And she says you don't need anybody's permission to live a creative life.
Whether we make a profession out of it or not, we all need an activity that is beyond the mundane and that takes us out of our established and limiting roles in society. I think this is so important for people to understand. So many of us feel like there is a sense of lacking and then you know, we don't even need to talk about the fact that we feel guilt on top of that and think like I should be happy. Why am I not satisfied? And the reality is that we have these innate needs to create, to be curious, to grow. When you see children they are never satisfied. Like Oh, I learned how to crawl, I'm just going to stop here. That's good for me. I'm good. Right? No, they're constantly pushing and then we get to adulthood and it's like you should just be happy with the thing that you have.
Right? And I get that there's a difference of a never-ending need for more. And I think that sometimes we start chasing the wrong thing because we're told that if you have money then you'll be happy. And so we just keep at never-ending chase of that. I don't think that's what it is. I think it's a matter of realizing deep down that there are things that make us lose track of time. There are things that bring to a state that is not our everyday routine state. There are things that light us up and make us forget about the chores and the responsibilities and the bills and everything else. And if we are not finding ways to incorporate that in our lives, then it slowly kills you, right? It's slowly that sadness or that longing grows and grows and a lot of times it turns into really destructive things and she talks about it as giving your mind a job because otherwise, it's going to find it's going to invent a job.
And I think that's really profound and really true in the sense that when we don't have things to keep us busy in the way that we truly desire, it can lead to a lot of negative spiraling. It can lead to a lot of depression and anxiety. It can lead to inventing problems and sitting and figuring out cause all we're doing are things that don't actually bring us joy. The thing is that we're supposed to do instead of, you know, spending the time, getting lost in passions that we have. And so I think it's important to realize that it's never as if you don't have to make it a profession. And in fact, we've talked a lot about this on the podcast, one of the other things she talks about is in this book is that you don't need to look for your passion.
Forget your passion and look for your curiosity. And we're talking about how it's really about starting with the smallest thing. Think about what interests you. And on the podcast, we talk a lot about this, about the fact that the thing that you find doesn't have to be the thing you're going to make into a job. It doesn't have to be your next thing. And so often, or waiting to start because we just want to know, like, is this the thing? Should I be doing this? And obviously you're never going to know until you do it. And so we just never begin. But when you start doing anything, just anything you get out of that frantic, panicked thinking about you get out of your head and you open yourself up to inspiration and to possibility. Janelle Copeland was on the show last week and she said the only way to get those creative juices flowing is to just do something. For example, if you like gardening, start gardening and if you like baking, start baking. That doesn't have to be your profession.
And we've had this come up a number of times where people will say they started doing something that brought them so much joy and then that made them realize that they actually wanted to do this completely different thing. But it was just being in this state, and I know I talk about it all the time because we talk about clarity and it doesn't necessarily, it's not the answer that you may want. I know people come to me and ask for tactics to define the thing and I always tell them to start experimenting and see what it takes. Just have fun. And I know people are a little disappointed because they feel like I don't have time for that. I don't have time to explore. I need to figure it out.
Well, if you don't have time to explore, then you don't have a life. What's the point of it all right? Because there is no other way and there are tons of even scientific studies that are done or where our brain basically looks for evidence of the things that we give it and it filters the world by what we're focusing on. And when you're in frantic, stressed-out space, you tend to not even see all of the opportunities that are out there. I know I was in that space when I was quitting. I wanted to find the next thing so badly and I was so frantic about being quote-unquote successful so that other people couldn't judge me. When I wanted to leave LA and I kept thinking, I have no other interests. I have zero other passions. What would I ever do? And I thought I wasn't creative and I thought there was nothing else out there for me.
I've studied law, I can't go to another career. And it's so funny to me now thinking about it. That was five years ago and now I have a journal that I have to write down every business idea I have and every idea of things I want to do because I don't have the time to do it now. And I want to store it for later because I allowed myself space and the possibility. I told myself it's okay to take in these ideas and as it turns out it wasn't that I didn't have any other interests. I have tons of other interests. I just never gave myself the ability before. And so I want you all listening to give yourself that space. Not with the pressure of making it into a profession, not with the pressure of figuring out your whole life, but from the understanding that you have the rest of your life to do things that are going to bring you joy.
So start doing those things, even if it doesn't become a job, even if it doesn't become a business, figure out how you can bring that happiness into your life every single day. So that is one of the main themes is just the importance of having this creative life of what it can do for you. And I really think that that is the biggest thing that we can do in our lives. But the second theme that she talks about throughout, I think it's even more important because I think that's the only way we get to be able to live a creative life. And that is the right mindset to adopt around this type of life. And I love the examples that she gave us, but I also love the example that she sets. So she talks about the tortured artist stereotype.
And we see stereotypes like this all the time where art has to be hard and it drives you to madness and you basically measure your worth by your successes or failures. And if you're criticized, then you take it super personally. And that's one way. And clearly artists throughout history have done that. There are tons of artists that have committed suicide because of that approach, but it doesn't have to be that way. And what she talks about is that she just made a decision that that's not how she was going to approach her writing. It doesn't define her. Her success doesn't, her dedication to the path and the dedication to the writing and she was gonna write whether she made money or not because she loved writing. And I love the fact that she rejected this, but really the example that that sets that everything is just a choice.
You don't have to do something the way that everybody does it because that's the way it's been done. Right? This idea that being an artist has to be hard. It's just made up. There are tons of artists that do it in a very easy way, right? I'm not saying that it doesn't take dedication or hard work, but it doesn't have to be the drama that everyone makes it. And now, and a lot of us may not uphold the tormented artist stereotype, but I actually think we do. I think we have the tortured workers stereotype, right? Where work has to be hard and it's not easy. And you know, everyone doesn't get to love what they do and some BS that we've just accepted. And so we just push on being miserable because other people told us that that is the way it has to be and it doesn't.
I also think that we still hold onto this tortured, you know, creative stereotype artist or even the tortured entrepreneurs stereotype, which keeps so many people from trying these dreams because we have built up this fear that if we take this jump, if we leave this quote-unquote safe path, then it's going to be so hard. It's going to test you like you've never been tested and you might lose everything and you're gonna end up living under a bridge. But it doesn't have to be like that. Why can't it just be that you're a human being who wants to experiment with stuff and try something and you try it? And even if it doesn't work, that doesn't define your worth. It doesn't define who you are. It doesn't define how smart you are or whether you can make it or not.
That chance that you took didn't work out. Okay, so try again. She goes on to talk about geniuses and the problem with labeling people geniuses and she talks about, you know, in terms of writers, she gives the example of Harper Lee who basically stopped writing after to kill a Mockingbird because there was so much pressure to live up to that and she felt like she couldn't and so just stopped and how sad that is for her and for the rest of the world that we didn't get her brilliance and well, Liz Gilbert talks about how like I wish she would have just written anything. Go write children's books or a romance novel or blah, blah blah on a paper until you find your groove and start writing again. And I love it that Liz Gilbert is an example of that. She wrote Eat, Pray, Love, which became one of the most successful books and it made her extremely wealthy and famous. She talks about how people kept asking her, how are you going to top it?
And she said, I'm not, that's not my purpose. My purpose in life is not to just recreate this. I did that. That's great. I'm going to keep writing and I'm going to write lots of terrible things and MRI at some good things. I'm like, what a gift to be able to give yourself that space to be able to take off the pressure that other people are putting on you because it's fake. It's all made up. Who cares if you never live up to it at the end of the day, you're going to stop doing the thing that you love because other people may not like it. Well great. Now you don't have anything to show for it, right? You've already proved them. Right. And it reminded me actually of a quote that we talked about a couple of episodes ago, Sara bliss was on the podcasts and she had a quote from Barbara Corcoran, you know the shark in her book.
And Barbara talked about how she sees tons of really intelligent, talented young people graduating from like Stanford and Harvard business school and they have incredible ideas and incredible talent, but they're so afraid of failing that they don't ever try to build their own businesses. They go and work in corporate America, go get a job doing something they don't actually want to be doing. And I think about that a lot because it's so sad to me. You didn't even give yourself the chance. You weren't even in the arena. You didn't give yourself the possibility to prove to yourself how amazing it could be or to blow your own mind or to see your own potential or to just have an experience and have that interesting life. That's the shame of it all. Not if you tried and you failed. Right, okay, you failed.
And then you go and get a job. You're already in that worst-case scenario, you got a job. But we don't even take that step. And I think for so many of us, part of it is that we have been raised to be perfectionists. Our society, our schools, our businesses are built to reward perfectionism, right? They give you a task and whoever can do it the best is going to get rewarded. And we internalize that. And the thing we've talked about before is that perfectionism is just the feeling of failure disguised. That's all it is. And she talks about it, about the fact that perfectionism is not just the enemy of good, but it's the enemy of all that is possible. And all that is fun because it stops you from even starting. And so it's tragic because you're so afraid of being a failure that you fail by default because you haven't even done anything.
So you have to learn to become, as she calls it, a deeply disciplined half-ass and just put things out and just give yourself space. Now. Again, the reason that we don't do that is that we attach so much meaning to what happens to the result of that, right? If it's quote-unquote as success or failure, we're so wrapped up and worried about what that means about us because we think if let's say we fail, I'm not good enough. I'm not smart enough to have a business. I wasn’t talented enough to put out art. People don't like me. Whatever the BS meaning you've attached and it doesn't have to be that and I, she goes into the last part and she talks about how she has just decided to commit herself to the process and not the outcome. It's so wise and it really is the secret to all of this, right?
She talks about how she realized very early on that handling frustration is not an interruption of the process, right? Frustration isn’t there by accident. It is the process for all of us and whether you're starting a business or you're doing something for fun or you're trying a creative outlet, nobody in the history of the world has tried something and been like, oh, I never had an issue with it. It's always been wonderfully successful. Right? Frustration and disappointment and failure are always part of the process and if you can learn to handle that, then you can take on anything. And so I love the way that she talks about how she handles it because she said that she before she started making any money when she was working as a bartender and writing on the side, she decided that she was going to commit to a life of writing.
And so she would send out her pieces and with every rejection letter she would say to herself, you think that's going to scare me off?! I'm going to do this for another 80 years. There are people that have been born that are going to reject me. Right. And it's funny, but that is the choice you can make. You can make it till like… you can choose to look at it that way you can choose to see that it means nothing about you. Every person that you admire has been rejected a million times. It doesn't mean that they're not good at their trade, right or they didn't get better. And then I love, I absolutely love, love, love this part where she talks about how she has realized that she has these ups and downs, whenever she's going through it, she tells herself, Oh, this is the part of the process where I wish I'd never started this.
This is the part of the process where I tell myself I'll never write another good sentence again. This is the part of the process where I beat myself up for being a lazy loser. I love this because it takes us out ourselves and it lets us just observe what's happening, right? Again, we all understand like even now, let's say we all understand that the economy, it goes in cycles, right? There are recessions. We all knew what recession was going to come. We didn't know how bad. Let's say we all know even these types of tragedies in the world, whether it's a pandemic, whether it's war, whatever it is, it's a part of life. I'm not saying it's a natural part of life, but as long as we have these civilizations, it is going to happen. We expect it. But then when it comes, it's we take it so hard and if we could just take a step back and say, Oh, this is the part where I learned X, this is the part where I had to really reevaluate all of my life and figure out what I actually want.
This is the part where my priorities became straight, whatever that is. Right. And I know we can all look back on our whole lives and see like, Oh, that was the part, you know, when I was in high school and I had that heartbreak, that was the part that really showed me how to stand up for myself or whatever the case may be. But it's hard to do it when you're in it. And when, if you use this little technique, it helps you get out of that moment where you think it's the end of the world and that you'll never get over this. And it's the biggest deal. And you'll realize it's just a part of the process. It's just that part and you're going to get to another part that's going to be great. And so she goes on to say that, you know, obviously she feels disappointment through rejection like everybody else.
And when she gets disappointed, she becomes disgusted with herself and angry with everybody else. But she realized that that is just the ego. And while the ego is a great servant, it is a terrible master. And if it's run unchecked, that disappointment will rot you from the inside out. But I know that I'm not just an ego, I am a soul and my soul doesn't care at all about rewards or failures. So every time that voice of dissatisfaction comes up, I say, Oh my ego, there you are, old friend. If we could just understand that all of this external stuff that we seek is just our ego. It's planted by somebody else. This recognition that we need this status, the money, the title, whatever that is. We all know that once we get there, we're not happy with it. Right? Because that is not a part of you that is fulfilled.
That is what you've been taught to want. And that is the thing that you're trying so desperately to protect. You don't want it to be hurt, right? I think when we feel shame or embarrassment or you know, disappointment or humiliation, we feel so vulnerable and we don't want to feel that. So we protect our ego at all costs. I won't try anything if I can, if I will feel embarrassed or humiliated, right? But when you start looking at it from your soul perspective, right? The fact that you have, this isn't here to try to please what everybody else wants, right? Isn't here to please everyone else that isn't here too look good or make the best or whatever. It's just here to experience and to have peace and to have joy and to do the things that lights light it up and to do things that make it lose track of time.
It really puts things into perspective. You start realizing like, why am I not doing those things? Why am I letting my ego run unchecked? I say this truly from personal experience through this process. I talk a lot about how much I love this podcast and I really do, and the community and the business that I'm building from it. I'm having so much fun, but this isn't why I'm so happy in my life or why this podcast means so much to me is not just because I get to talk to really cool people and do something that I find interesting. It's because I have finally given myself the freedom to try things. I have levity in my life. I have, I don't take myself so seriously. I don't take my identity so seriously. I don't think that I have to prove myself anymore to people.
And while, yes, I don't want to be judged, I don't want people to dislike me. I don't want people to talk about me behind my back. That stuff would absolutely hurt me. Still, it doesn't run my life. Right. And that is what makes me so excited about the future is that there is so much opportunity, there's so much possibility, there are so many things I could try. I don't feel that I'm boxed in by a podcast or this community, right? If I wanted to try something else in a year, in five years, in 10 years, I have no idea where I'm going to be. And that's the most exciting thing in my life. And that's what I really want for everybody. And that's why I want you guys to read this book because I think it is so important to just figure out how to adopt this type of mentality so that you can start just experimenting and creating the life that you want.
Throughout this podcast and my group coaching and on Instagram and my email. I talked to so many people now and I see so many people that want to try something, just something else and it's really funny slash sad standing on this side of the problem, right? Having gone through it now, it's such a simple thing. They want to try stuff that's not that crazy. It's not out of the left field. They're not trying to go to Mars, they're not trying to build an Elon Musk type business. They want to start their own clothing store on Etsy and I'm like, okay, well then put it up, start it and they squash it before it's even a possibility because we have barricaded ourselves into these corners and we have attached so much meaning to what other people and what quote-unquote successes and what we have to look like towards the outside world that we've cut ourselves off from any exploration, from any curiosity, from any creativity.
And so many of us are slowly dying inside because of that, right? We are allowing this natural urge in us, this part of us that so deeply just craves, you know, not accolades, not money, not accomplishments, but just fulfillment. And the only way to that is to let yourself experiment and to let yourself try. So I want you to ask yourself if there are things that you think like I could never do that you know right now like as an example, this is a random example, by the way, I apologize but stick with me. I recently got on TikTok, so if you want to follow me on TikTok, go to @lessonsfromaquitter. Now I felt silly getting on it there. It's all younger people. I clearly don't feel like I belong, but it's a super fun app. It's very addicting. Let me warn you and I actually have a lot of fun on it now and I have been talking to other friends about getting on it.
I keep trying to now encourage people to get on and they look at me like I have two heads because obviously the majority of my audience and my friends are not yet on. Take talk and I have friends who are hilarious and to talk, if you don't know, it's a lot of dancing, a lot of lip-syncing and a lot of comedy sketches. Now I'm on there doing what I do here, right? So it doesn't have to be like that. It's turning into more of an Instagram. But that's neither here nor there. What I'm trying to say is there's a lot of comedy sketches, right? And I have some friends that are hilarious, absolutely hilarious. And so I tried to talk to them about putting up a skit on TikTok and they're like, no, no, no, I can never do that.
And I'm like, why? Why never? What's that thing? And the idea of putting something out there is so terrifying, even though nobody they know is on TikTok. Right? I keep telling that nobody, you know, we'll see this. And if people don't like it, who cares? That doesn't mean that you're not funny or that doesn't mean you know, it means the algorithm didn't show it to people. And I'm sure that a lot of you are listening to this are thinking, yeah, I would never go on TikTok. That's insane. I'm never going to put out a lip sync video of me. If that is what you're thinking. Ask yourself why. Ask yourself why it became this life or death situation to do something that's just fun. That's just quirky. Why is the potential of being embarrassed the end all, be all you know?
Where did you create a rule in your mind that you could never do anything that other people would judge or that other people wouldn't understand or that might make you embarrassed or that might not turn out to be a success? At some point, you created that rule and is that a way you want to live? Because at the end of the day, you know at the end of your life you're going to look back and if you're going to look back and look at it now, are you living a fulfilled life? Are you giving yourself the freedom to try and be and do and experiment and fail and really experience this life that you have? Or are you just going through the motions and trying to keep safe and trying to keep a low profile so nobody ever makes a judgment? You have to make that decision for yourself. I truly hope that, as Liz Gilbert says, you choose to have the courage to bring forth the treasures that are hidden within you. And I am here to help. I want you to experience big magic and I want you to live a life full of courage and creativity and fun and fulfillment. If I can help you in any way, please let me know.
I love you all. I hope you stay safe and take care of yourself during this time. Again, feel free to reach out with any questions and I will see you guys next week. Thank you so much for listening. I can't tell you how much it means to me. If you liked the podcast, please rate and review us on iTunes. It'll help other people find the show. If you want to connect or reach out, follow along on Instagram and Facebook at lessons from a quitter and on Twitter at quitter podcast. I would love to hear from you guys and I'll see you on the next episode.