Elizabeth Gilbert talks about her decades of rejection before becoming a writer, telling herself she was "going home" each time she returned to writing. Evan Carmichael shares how helping entrepreneurs is his home, but warns that passion without balance can damage your health and relationships.
Good morning, Believe Nation. Today's message is "Find Your Home." Over to you, Elizabeth Gilbert.
The only thing I have ever wanted to be for my whole life was a writer. I wrote all through childhood, all through adolescence. By the time I was a teenager, I was sending my very bad stories to The New Yorker hoping to be discovered. After college, I got a job as a I was a diner waitress, kept working, kept writing, kept trying really hard to get published and failing at it. I failed at getting published for almost 6 years. So for almost 6 years, every single day, I had nothing but rejection letters waiting for me in my mailbox. And it was devastating every single time, and every single time I had to ask myself if I should just quit while I was behind and give up and spare myself this pain. But then I would find my resolve, and always in the same way. By saying, "I'm not going to quit. I'm going home." You have to understand that for me, going home did not mean returning to my family's farm. For me, going home meant returning to the work of writing, because writing was my home, because I loved writing more than I hated failing at writing, which is to say that I loved writing more than I loved my own ego, which is ultimately to say that I loved writing more than I loved myself. And that's how I pushed through it.
My home is helping entrepreneurs. I'm so grateful that I found that and that I have so many years left to be able to continue to expand that. But I love helping entrepreneurs. I have to remind myself sometimes not to help entrepreneurs because it can be detrimental to the other things in my life. You know, when I'm on vacation, I want to help entrepreneurs and send an email to my newsletter list to say, hey, let's meet up. Or I want to walk into a shop and talk to the entrepreneur and find out how they got started and how I can help, which can be detrimental to my personal relationship because I'm on a family vacation. When I went to New York recently, I wanted to go and meet with the entrepreneurs there. I'm not getting paid to do it, right? Like, I filled up my schedule, I brought my bag of clothes with me to go and meet people so I didn't have to go back to the hotel because that would take up time where I could be meeting with somebody. And it's understanding that when I meet with entrepreneurs, it helps me just as much as it helps them. I am fueled by impact. I want to leave an impact on people's lives, and the way that I can do that best is through entrepreneurship because that's what I know and that's what I love. And so I could meet with entrepreneurs all day long. I would forget to go to the bathroom and forget to eat, and it would be detrimental to my body, and I need to force myself to pull away from it because I love it so much. That's my home. That's what makes me come alive. That's what I— want to do as much as possible every day. And you need to find that for yourself. You need to find the thing that you can't wait to do, that gives you energy, that you look forward to being able to do. And that doesn't mean that every day is a fantastic, beautiful, amazing, smell the roses day. You're gonna have crappy days. But you still come back to enjoying the work, enjoying the process. I'm not just chasing some end goal, but I like what I'm doing every day. And some people know it, some people have found it, some people have found their home, they know what it's all about, and they're chasing it. If that's you, then you can't quit. You gotta come back to it every single day, work on your craft, get better, and eventually it will work out for you. And others, they don't know what it is yet, you know, they don't know what their home is, they don't know what they're passionate about. And so for those people, you need to explore, and you want to do a lot of little quits. Try something and quit, and try something and quit, and try something and quit until you find the thing that makes you come alive. Because what most people do is they get stuck on one thing that they don't love, and then they love it less and less and less with each passing year, but they stay in that because they're too afraid to jump off, and then they're just living for the evenings and weekends, and they've thrown their entire life away. And I don't want that to be you. So you've gotta find the thing that makes you come alive. You've gotta find your home, the thing that you enjoy the process of doing, and try to spend as much time there as possible. You do that, you'll have a great impact on the world, you'll have a life that is fulfilling and meaningful and valuable, and you'll be happy. So the question of the day today is: where is your home? Not where you grew up physically, but what is home for you? Do you know it? Leave it in the comments below, and if you don't, what steps you're going to take to try to find it? Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an amazing day. Continue to believe, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.
