Big Magic

This book is pure genius. I have listened to it at least once a year since it came out. Not only is it brilliant, inspiring and oozing in grounded positivity, but it is also the best manifesto I have read on creativity.

Chock-full of fantastic stories that delight the senses, it is funny, devastating, and irresistibly magical. Listening to it in Liz’s own voice is totally the way to go. She is so inviting and warm and makes me feel loved and held.

The best part is that she makes a sound case for my creativity, the fact that it… show more.

I tend to listen to audiobooks before bed, but I had to switch over to listening while walking my dog with Big Magic—just as I did with Burkeman’s Four Thousand Weeks—because both were so full of wise reflections on how to channel one’s life purpose.

Gilbert includes lots of interesting anecdotes to get the message across that if we try a little less, letting go of our ego and relaxing into flow, our creativity will help us dance, sing, or write whatever the universe wants us to share. 

I recommend this book to everyone from CEOs to artists to students because Liz Gilbert’s reflections on “creative living” are relevant for anyone who struggles with self-doubt, feeling adrift, or finding meaning in their day-to-day lives (and let’s face it, that’s pretty much everyone at some point in their lives), and she offers relatable tough-love advice that is full of humor and humanity.

Big Magic has helped me process the mental and emotional rollercoaster of being a leader, an author, a parent, and a human, and every time I read or listen to the book it somehow delivers exactly what… show more.

Elizabeth Gilbert is a generous soul. Instead of basking in her deserved success as author of Eat, Pray, Love, she is sharing her battle stories, her crises of confidence, and her inspiration. She has thought of almost every way that authors defeat ourselves and has sourced ancient philosophers and contemporary artists and writers to cheer us up and get us back to the page. 

I recommend this book, Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear, especially on audio because it is read by the author and it feels like going to tea with your very best friend mixed with your spiritual ferry Godmother. This book is my anthem. I have listened to it well over fifty times. It drives me to go forward not just in my own writing career, but in my whole life. It asks me to question who I am and what I want for my life. It asks me to examine what fears might be holding me back and then move… show more.

While I loved this author’s book Eat, Pray, Love, I have to choose her title Big Magic as my favorite of all time. It’s sort of a self-help book exploring the mysterious world of inspiration, but it reads like a memoir. She has a beautiful writing style that I admire. This is a blueprint to finding your own path to the vibrant, fulfilling life you’ve dreamed of. I like the title too!

Big Magic is a book about living life as a creative. It’s a book about having the courage to create what you were made to create, to be all of the glorious you that God whispered into being when the world around you is trying to shape you into some other mold.

Magic often comes from an author’s ability to touch me with their voice, to challenge me with their words, and to inspire me to think about my own perspective. Gilbert’s prose contains passages achingly brutal in their honest perspective; passages that tear my heart out, stomp on it, and then put it back so that it beats in a new way. 

Do I agree with everything she writes? Not completely—the areas where I disagree have allowed me to define for myself the value of creativity in people’s lives. Like Gilbert, I believe everyone is creative. I also believe that we… show more.

I’ve never read Eat, Pray, Love, but Big Magic showed me what the hype surrounding Eilzabeth Gilbert is all about. This book helped dispel some of the deep-seeded “artists die broke and alone” socially imparted beliefs that I didn’t even realize were hidden deep down there. It also gave me a language for talking about the ideas I have that aren’t right for me (or aren’t right for me right now), which is incredibly freeing. It strips the guilt, shame, and most of the frustration away from “writer’s block,” and that gave me a fresh perspective on creative… show more.

What I love about Elizabeth Gilbert is the way she celebrates the good things in life, even from within the deepest grief. Gilbert’s Big Magic is a heartfelt hymn to the creative and spiritual soul in all of us, and an exploration of where our instincts can lead us if we only learn to trust them. With characteristic honesty, wit, and curiosity, Gilbert evokes the numinous in a way that never feels forced or sentimental, and reminds us to “create whatever causes a revolution in your heart” and – gloriously - to be “the weirdo who dares to enjoy.”