Compassion and Creativity | Salesforce

So next we're going to have another really special person. Many of you are familiar with her work, of course. Eat, Pray Love is a book that many of us know and love. It's been translated, I believe, in 30 different languages. And she's an author who also has written some other really amazing books. The latest one is just amazing. It's Big Magic, Creative Living Beyond Fear. And then there's all the other books as well. As a thinker, speaker, writer, she really just kind of brings an incredible energy and vibrancy to what it means to be alive. So I'm really, really happy to invite Elizabeth Gilbert to the stage. Please join me in giving her a warm welcome. Welcome.

Thank you, Rick.

So what should we talk about?

How we eradicated smallpox.

Amazing, right?

It's really daunting to come up and speak after people like that. Yeah, we were talking about this in the green room when we were watching, you know, Larry talk and we overheard him saying something like when we were, you know, we met in Delhi when we were eradicating smallpox, you and I just looked at each other like I was going to do that once, but there was all that traffic, you know, there was all this other stuff. But it's an honor to be up here with amazing people and now we get to talk about creativity.

Absolutely. And you know, the other thing we were talking about was that compassion, in some ways there is a link between compassion and creativity.

Well, absolutely. I mean, there's certainly. I'm going to go back to a little bit of the idea of self compassion.

Yes.

Because it's a fundament of my particular belief about creativity that it is impossible to put any creative output into the world if you do not practice self compassion. And if you don't mind, I can break it down a little bit.

Please go for it.

Okay. Essentially everybody here has had ideas. Ideas come to you. You get excited about them. Every single person ever who started on any sort of creative or innovative project starts at exactly the same place, which is the place of wild excitement. This idea came to you. You have a vision for it. This is going to be the thing that lights up the world. You're finally going to get it right. Here's how you're going to make your impact. You're going to whatever your great idea is.

Sounds awesome.

Yeah, it's fantastic. That day, which I call day one, is one of my favorite feelings in the world. It's one of everybody's favorite feelings in the world. Everybody on day two ends up in exactly the same place, which is they look at what they did on day one. And they're so full of shame and self disgust because you catapult like you just drop. You start at this huge level excitement. You have this vision that's far away from what you want to do. You immediately start trying to do it and you immediately disappoint yourself. Everybody does. Because the reality of what you're capable of doing is so far away from the dream of what you're envisioning. And the crisis then is this incredible sense of despair. And many people never make it to day three. And what's gonna get you to day three is not discipline or rigor. All the discipline in the world is not gonna get you to day three out of that hole of shame about how garbage the work was that you made on day two. What's gonna get you to day three is forgiveness for yourself. About the fact that your vision is so far out of reach of your abilities and then you're going to be like a friendlier version of yourself who's going to be able to say, okay, I'm new at this. I haven't done this before, I haven't tried. Okay, it's not what I wanted, but let's go back in. You go back in with gentleness and that's the only way you're ever going to get your work done.

Yeah. And one of the other things we were talking about was how challenging that can sometimes be because there's this little passenger on the journey. I think in your book you have a great analogy around fear. Well, I mean, the title, Fear is in the title of the book, right? Living Beyond Creative Living Beyond Fear. But, you know, fear kind of creeps in. And what do you do with that? I love this story that you tell about the van, you know, coming as a passenger on the van. Maybe if you haven't read this book, it's a hysterical story about fear as a companion on this journey.

Yeah, well, it's funny because the subtitle of the book is Creative Living Beyond Fear. And I think it's so funny how many times I've been introduced in the last year for this book and people have gotten the title wrong and said, Creative Living Without Fear. And I always have to stop them and be like, words matter.

Did I just say that?

No, you got it right. No, you got it right. And I think because the dream that we have somehow is that we're going to create some sort of life without fear. And that's just nonsense. Who is that? Anybody? I have no interest whatsoever in Fearlessness as an aspiration. I have truly found my case to be in life that anytime I've ever met somebody who sort of purports to be her, behaves in the world as if they are fearless. Generally speaking, they're a sociopath. There's something missing. You look in their eyes and there's this kind of dark vacancy. There's some big, really important part of humanity that's missing from them. So what I'm interested in more are the people who live side by side with their fear. And so the story that I like to tell in the book about the creative journey is not that you're going on some journey where you're going to leave fear behind, but. But you're going on a journey where fear is invited. And so the conversation that I literally have before I start any creative endeavor is that I sit a chair. I literally do this. I sit a chair down, and I put my fear in the chair, and I look at it and I say, all right, listen, your sister, Creativity and I are about to go on a road trip together. And I understand you'll be joining us because you always do. And I just want to let you know that you're very welcome. We've got this minivan. We're going on this trip together. We've got a seat for you in the backseat, right? But you get to come because you're part of the human family. You're part of the experience of what it is to do creativity. I'm just establishing for you right now the guidelines, which is, you're very welcome. You're very invited. Everyone on this journey is going to do the thing that they do. So Creativity and I are going to work together to do the most innovative, interesting stuff that we can do. Our job is to be excited and to do our work. Your job, apparently, from what I've learned from history of working with you, is to sit in the backseat screaming at every corner about how we're all going to die. We're all going to die. We're all going to die. So you do your job, which, may I say, you're fabulous at, and we'll do our job, and we're just going to continue down this highway together. You get to do that. You get to sit in the back and scream. Apparently, it's what you're for. But here's some things you don't get to do. You don't get to drive.

You don't get to drive.

You don't get to hold the roadmaps and make decisions about the directions that we go into. You don't get to choose the snacks. You don't get to touch the radio. You don't get to have any influence over where we're going in the car, but you get to be in the car. And somehow when you do that and you let fear take that car seat in the back and you just go. And you know that it's going to be there. That's the only way that I've ever been able to advance on any creative journey.

That's amazing. That's. Love that. That's a great. I'm glad it's helpful. That's just. That is perfect. Why is it so hard? Why does. What. What helps. What helps with having that kind of dialogue with fear?

I think it. The reason it's so hard is because we live in a culture that has this disastrously illogical idea that fear shouldn't be in the car. And all of the language that, especially in the world of ambition, all of the language is about eradicating fear as though it's smallpox, right? Like, we're gonna kick fear in the ass. We're gonna show who's boss. It's all this kind of hyper language of this very macho, kind of defeating of what is just a normal human impulse and absolutely belongs in the story. Look, fear is the way that, you know, you have skin in the game. I said this to you backstage. I said, are you nervous to go on stage? And you said, yes. And I said, I am too. I always am. And it shows that we have skin in the game. It shows that it matters. It shows. It shows that we're doing something we've never done before. So that's the essence of what I think of as creative compassion, is recognizing that, of course it's scary. And also recognizing that one of the big moments for me as an early days novelist, 25 years old, trying to write my first novel. And it was bad. And you know why it was bad? I didn't know how to do it yet. I had never done it before. And I was sitting there day after day after day trying to write a novel. Trying to write a novel. And it was so, of course it was bad. And I just had this moment where I sort of looked up at the universe and I said, this isn't my fault, that this isn't good. I don't know how to do this thing yet, you know, and if you had wanted me to be better at it, you should have given me more talent. It's not my fault. I'M showing up, I'm doing what I can. And I'm just going to allow myself to have some grace and to recognize that I would rather write a bad book than none. That the world was filled with people who have 50 pages of a novel sitting in their desk. No offense to anybody who has 50. I currently have 50 pages of a novel sitting in my desk. I usually do. And that I would rather have the experience of walking through that creative journey knowing that at the end of it, whether it's good or bad, I will have learned something about myself that I can't learn any other possible way. That I am not just here to pay bills and die, that I'm also here to play with ideas and to explore things. And that that journey itself is worth doing, regardless of the.

The outcome. Wonderful. Wonderful. Which almost then comes to the other portion of that, which is the curiosity, the aliveness. There's a beautiful poem by, I think, a faculty member who taught in the office you taught at, who had the same last name as you, Jack Gilbert. Right. Where he says, delight is just a critical quality. It was a beautiful. I can't remember the exact passage.

We must risk delight. And he says, we must have the stubbornness to accept our gladness in the ruthless furnace of the world. And I have the word stubborn gladness tattooed on my arm to remind me of that poem. We must have the stubbornness to risk gladness in the awful furnace of the world. He doesn't deny that the world is a furnace, but there is something about stubborn gladness that says, and yet we are here, and yet it is remarkable. And yet it's worth showing up for and being awake and alive for.

Yeah, absolutely. That's so beautiful. The miracle. Yeah, it's kind of a miracle, actually.

It's sort of the magic trick. Right. My friend Rob Bell talks about something that he calls the light on the other side of the darkness, on the other side of the light. And the way that he describes it is, he said, there's two kinds of light. There's a kind of light of innocence, which is defined by every pop song that says, we're gonna put our hands in the air like we don't care. And just, you know, it's like this kind of innocence that just says, yeah, we're here to have fun. Life is great. Life is easy. And then there's the darkness at the end of innocence, when the reality of the suffering in the world has been brought to your attention to the point that it destroys you and breaks you. And then there's this light on the other side of that darkness that people like the Dalai Lama and Desmond Tutu have, where it encompasses this awareness that there's terrible suffering and darkness in the world, and yet there's that stubborn gladness that comes from recognizing that still we can have an impact, still we can matter, still we can create our lives, and we can engage and we can be humane. And when you're around that kind of light, it transforms you.

So here's the big question then. Do you have to meditate five hours a day to get there?

Yeah.

Oh, God damn.

I'm just kidding. I am the worst. Yeah, I hope you are. All meditating five hours a day. I have a very tormented relationship with meditation. I try it. I say that I'm an expert on meditation the way that somebody who's been trying to quit smoking for 20 years is an expert on quitting smoking. Okay, fair enough. I know a lot about it because I keep trying to do it. No, I don't think you do. I mean, I think what you have to be willing to do is to feel everything. Rilke has a poem about this, about allowing yourself to feel everything. The human beings I know, who I most love and admire, are the ones who are able to sit in the furnace of their own discomfort for the longest. They're able to sit in a conflict with somebody for a really long time, feeling this sort of anger, like having your hand on the eye of the stove. Sitting there when someone's angry at you, sitting there when somebody's upset, sitting there when you want to run, like when you want to do anything to push what my friend Glennon Doyle Melton calls the red escape button. We all have these ways in life, like in the Staples ad, where there's the red escape button, where you just push it and you bounce out. Like, we all have these ways of doing that. And sometimes it's addiction, and sometimes it's denial, and sometimes it's apathy, and sometimes it's turning on the television. Just bounce me out of this horrible feeling as fast as you can. And the people I know, who I most admire and revere are the ones who see that button sitting there and they're like, you know what? Not yet. I'm just going to wait for another five minutes. I'm going to sit in this conversation for another 10 minutes. I'm going to sit in front of this novel I'm trying to write for another half an hour. Rather than hitting the red escape button and bouncing out, I'm going to sit with this person who I'm in dispute with for another hour, rather than hitting the red escape button, I'm going to be willing to feel the extraordinary uncomfortability of this moment for another five minutes, for another seven minutes. And it's not about martyrdom. It's about recognizing that it's very difficult to be a person and that it's just as difficult for that one as it is for that one as it is for me. And I'm going to sit here in this difficulty and see if we can find our way back to our hearts.

Yeah, yeah. Which, you know, I know that one of the earliest roots of compassion is to suffer with. So in many ways, we're talking about suffering with.

Yeah. And also kind of a sort of humor.

Humor.

I know that that's a word that maybe doesn't come up enough in compassion, but don't you find that the people who, you know, who are the most compassionate also have this kind of warm humor?

Totally.

And the humor that they have is sort of like, oh, my God, it's so ridiculous being a human being. Like, it is such a hard assignment, you know, it is such a hard assignment. And. And I get that it's hard for you, too, and it's insane and it's ludicrous, and let's go back in and try it again.

Right.

You know, and I feel like the biggest creative endeavor of your life. You know, I speak a lot about creativity, and I've lived my life in engagement with creativity. And my definition of creativity is always choosing the path of curiosity over the path of fear. Right. There will always be this sort of split in the road where you have curiosity on one side and fear on the other. And if you can keep going this way, rather than leading down the fear path, your life itself will become a work of art. The way that you are in the world will become a work of art. It will not be so much about what you are actually making, but about a way that you are being. And that, to me, is the most interesting possible journey, but requires forgiveness and empathy and humor and patience and an ability to go back into the discomfort comfort and to choose that path.

Yeah. Yeah. And you know, something that really struck me is that in reading your latest book especially, there's a line in there about not seeking to help. You were talking about not helping people. Not helping people, not seeking.

Well, writing it's a little embarrassing on this stage to say, well, actually, it's really interesting.

It's an interesting idea. Right.

Well, look, I say it in regard to the arts, particularly. And in regard to what I think of as pure creativity, which is. Is a kind of play, it's a kind of playfulness, which I think is one of the. One of the nourishing luxuries of being a human being. It's hard here. This is a hard planet. It's rough. It's difficult. Your life is full of struggle. And yet, for some reason, we're given this kind of playfulness and curiosity around wanting to make something for no particular reason, right? We all come from tens of thousands of years of people who, the minute they had shelter and the minute they had safety and the minute they had food, they started making stuff for no particular reason, and they started making it more beautiful than it needs to be. That's my definition of pure creativity, is making something more beautiful than it needs to be.

Wow.

My grandfather made furniture. Look, a chair is a very simple thing to make. I could almost make a chair, right? You give me, like, some planks and a hammer and some nails, I can make you something that you could basically sit on, right? He made it more beautiful than it needed to be. That's the definition of pure creativity. Why did he do that? He did that because it made him feel like his life meant more than just surviving. And so when people come to me and they want to make something and they feel like, I don't know if I should because I don't know if it'll serve humanity or I don't know if it'll do any good, my thing is actually, like, it's okay to make something that's just beautiful and pleasurable. It's all right. And when people say to me. When I say to. People say to me, I want to write a book. And I say, why do you want to write it? And the first thing they say is, I want to help people, the first thing I do is, oh, dear God, please do not make me read that book, right? Like, please do not make me read that book that you wrote. And the only motive that you wrote for it was that you wanted to help people. I want the book I want to read. That I want you to write. Is the book about the thing that you are the most excited about? I want to read the book that's about the thing that makes you want to get up in the morning. What the Japanese called your akigai, your reason for getting up in the morning, your reason for bothering to be here. I want to read the book that makes that you had to do because you couldn't not do it. Like, I want to see the creative project that you did because something in you was so restless and relentless that it just wouldn't leave you alone. And it was whimsical and it didn't make any sense, and it didn't have any profit behind it, and it didn't have any value. And you said, still can't help doing it, and you want it to be more beautiful than it needs to be, then you're going to help me. Then you're going to help me with your project. But if it's purely this kind of. It can't just be this sort of martyrdom that says, you know, it has to be to serve my experience. I don't know about yours. Anybody who has ever tried to help me, and the only reason they tried to help me was because they felt they should. Didn't help me. Anybody who ever tried to help me, and the reason they tried to help me was because it brought them joy. It worked. You know, people will feel your. I don't know, I just feel like your joy and what you're doing is a really wonderful way to serve me.

Thank you. Yeah. And helping people also brings joy at times. Right. Like, so there's a joy also in that.

Direct as long. I mean, look at Larry. I mean, this is a guy who. He's so lit, you know, he's so lit because he loves doing it.

Yeah.

Because it's his. His passion. Because it's his joy. That's what I look like after a day of writing. Right. I love doing it. I have people who come up to me after they read Eat, Pray, Love, and they said, your book changed my life, you know, and it saved my life. And I think that is so wonderful. But with all due respect, I didn't do it for you. Right. I did it because I was so excited about this idea of traveling around the world and meeting all these kinds of people and learning about prayer and learning how to forgive myself and learning how to change and not being afraid of. To trying transformation and eating pizza in Italy. I did it because I wanted to have these experiences and then I wanted to share them with you. So if it helped you, that's wonderful, because I guarantee you had I sat down to write Eat, Pray, Love, and my goal was I'm going to help people by writing a book. You would not have wanted to read that book. You would not have wanted to read that book. So I'm saying that I want to dare you to try to think of what brings you to life, what illuminates you.

You.

What makes you not have to be on antidepressants? What makes you be delighted to be with the people around you? The universe communicates to us through our longings and our desire and our excitement and our joy. That's the first channel it takes to try to get your attention. And if you ignore it, it will send you suffering to try to get your attention that way. But it would prefer to do it through your joy. It really would. And if you could just believe in that and trust in that, you'll see that you'll end up helping people to an extra extraordinary degree. I mean, this. Try it, Try it. And this isn't selfishness. This is joy. Joy is very different from. There's no joy in narcissism. Look at Trump, man. Does that guy look like he's having fun? Does he look like he's sleeping? Well? I mean, he's getting up in those ambient nights and he's tweeting in a rage like, that's not somebody who's having joy. That's narcissism and despair. You know joy when you feel it.

You know joy when you feel it.

We just don't trust it. You know, we come from a culture that has a deep distrust of joy and a deep distrust of pleasure. And one of the reasons that I wrote Big Magic was because I constantly see people who have this mistaken idea about creativity, which is that it is supposed to come from suffering. You know, we watch these biopics about these great artists who die for their art, and we think that's what it looks like to be devoted to creativity. I have friends who stopped writing because teachers told them, if you're not suffering when you're doing it, then you're not reaching a dark enough place and you're not doing it right. And I wanted to write a very different story about trusting and embracing what actually brings you joyful pleasure. And maybe that's actually your path, and maybe that will be the way that you end up helping the most number of people.

Joyful pleasure as a path sounds pretty good to me. I don't know anyone else, so. Yeah. Well, thank you.

You're welcome.

Yeah, it's really, really great to. To have you and to hear this and to hear this in the context of, you know, especially as I was saying earlier, especially a setting like this one, right. In business, in technology, but in the world in general, just this message, you.

Know, can I throw one more little last thing in there? I just want to let you guys leave you with this, is to try to recognize the difference between ego and soul. Between ego and soul. And a lot of the reasons that people won't take creative risks and won't try to do interesting things is because they're afraid that they're going to fail at it. And the poet David White has this wonderful line where he says, your soul is incapable. It doesn't have the mechanism to recognize the difference between failure and success. It actually doesn't even have that gauge. All it knows is, is whether you are doing something that delights it and ignites it. So at the end of a project, your ego would be like, that didn't work. I bombed. Or, that was great. I rule. And your soul will only ask one question. Is this my purpose? Is this my joy? Did this bring me to light? Then it worked. Then it worked. And if you can start every creative project from that place, then you can't fail.

Yes. Wonderful. Thank you so much.

Thank you.

Thank you.