What are you making room for?

If you’ve ever heard of Elizabeth Gilbert, it’s most likely for her memoir, Eat, Pray, Love. I enjoyed that book, but I like her book, Big Magic, best. 

The title is a little mysterious. Magic? What’s she talking about? 

For Liz (this is what her friends call her!), “big magic” means something very specific.

She’s been a writer for decades and has had some serious life challenges. Yet, she is a genuine person with a sense of energy and wonder that puts her up among a select few humans I truly admire. 

For Liz, “big magic” means a mysterious and enchanting spark of ideas, the surge of inspiration, and the inexplicable moments of creative insight that artists, writers, musicians, and individuals in all creative fields experience.

And she also believes it’s something that flows within all of us. It’s the idea that creativity is not solely generated from within one individual’s mind. Instead, it originates from a larger source of inspiration. 

She believes that humans are vessels through which creative ideas and inspiration flow. And she posits that it’s important to be receptive to these moments of inspiration and actively pursue them.

While this may seem far-fetched, most of us have had that experience of an idea “popping” into our minds while in the shower. 

Why the shower? 

That’s for another article. The point is that you have a problem one minute, and the next minute, seemingly from nowhere, a potential solution slides into your mind. Where did the idea come from? 

What if we all have that capacity for ideas, for creating? Liz believes we do. 

What if creating was not about thinking hard but having space for ideas to land and be received within us?

In Liz’s words, THAT is big magic.