Elizabeth Gilbert | The Simple Practice That Changed Her Life (and might change yours)

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Episode Transcript:

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:00:00] People take risks every single day. Yet this one asking somebody to be courageous enough to open up a blank notebook and write, dear love, what would you have me know? And then imagine what unconditional love would say to them. Feels like, well, that’s a bridge too far. I’m not doing that. And I call people out on that because I’m like, I’ve seen this. I’ve seen the risks you’ve taken in your life. You know, I dare you to take this risk and to see. And I think that largely the reason that we’re so frightened to do it is because we’ve never experienced it, like nobody ever loved us unconditionally. So I would ask that you try it, and then I would ask that you try it again, and then I would ask that you try it again because this is your inheritance. You are allowed to be loved. It’s too hard without it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:00:59] So when you think of the author, Elizabeth Gilbert, what immediately comes to mind? For so many, it’s the journey that she took that led to the blockbuster book eat, pray, love. Or maybe it’s her viral Ted talk on creativity, or maybe the many additional books that have come over the years. But there’s another reason Liz has stayed in my heart and mind for so many years. After I first sat down with her on the podcast, I think nearly about a decade ago. It was her heart, her kindness, her wisdom, and her sense of lightness and laughter, even through profound struggle and loss. Her willingness to be utterly Liz and love herself wholly. That famed line from when Harry met Sally scrolled through my consciousness, I’ll have what she’s having. And over the years, building on that early conversation with Liz, I came to learn how far from that place she’d spent so much of her life, how consumingly negative so much of her inner talk had been until a single revelation turned. Practice changed everything for her, one that’s available to all of us. So with the launch of Liz’s Letters From love newsletter and community on Substack last year, she revealed this simple yet transformative writing practice that brought her back to how loved she is and has always been, even when it felt so far away. Every week in her letters from Love Community, Liz shares a letter that she’s written to herself from a place of love, one that begins with the same prompt every time.

Jonathan Fields: [00:02:23] Dear love, what would you have me know today? And alongside hers, she shares a letter from a special guest, coupled with a video of them reading it aloud. So this week we decided to do a bit of a fun collaboration. Liz asked me if I would be her guest letter writer, sharing my own personal letter from love, written from love to me and through me. I have to admit, this kind of scared me. It is a profoundly vulnerable act for me to not only write, but also to share and then read aloud. But I said yes because she asked. And I trust her implicitly, and also because something in me knew that I needed it. And you can read her letter and my letter over at letters from Love. Now, we’ve published both simultaneously, this episode and that letter. We’ve included a link in the show notes. But that’s not all. I was also just really curious about the genesis of this practice. Where did it come from? What did it look like over the years? How do you actually do the practice? Especially as I was about to write mine. What are the, quote best practices if they even exist? The do’s and don’ts, the desires and fears that come up? And how can we all embrace the juicy wisdom and feeling of being deeply held that accompanies this practice? So Liz and I decided to record this conversation, one that dives into all of this and more. As you listen in to Liz’s wisdom, her stories and simple approach to crafting your own letters from love emerge.

Jonathan Fields: [00:03:53] And you’ll also hear about how I was going about writing my own letter with a little too much head and not enough trust and heart, and how she invited me to take a different tact that was so helpful when I finally sat down to do it. So listen in as Liz walks us through the practice of writing letters from love, and then be sure to head over to her Letters From Love Substack, where she shares her letter this week, and then to read and hear me speak my own letter from love today. Again, that link is in the show notes. And finally, if your game, take a deep breath and grab a journal and write your own first letter from love. So excited to share this conversation with you! I’m Jonathan Fields and this is Good Life Project.. I think an interesting starting point for us is you have been writing these letters from love to yourself for many, many, many years now. Before we dive into what these are and how they work and all the details, I’d love to take a little bit of a step back in time. And my curiosity is, what was happening with you? What was happening in your life when the idea first came to you to say, you know what, I need to sit down and literally write this thing to myself. What was going on?

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:05:17] Oh man. It was my dark night of the soul, you know? I mean, we have many of them, I think, over the course and journeys of our lives. But this was the lowest. This was the worst of the worst. And partially it’s because I didn’t have any tools yet. I was so unformed as a spiritual being, and my living as a human being, based on everything I had ever been taught to the best of my ability, was totally failing me. But I didn’t have a back. I didn’t have, like a backup ideology. You know, I think probably everybody must know this. I was 30 years old. I’m 55 almost now, and I was going through a divorce. I had ill advisedly, but very innocently thrown myself into a passionate love story right on the heels of the breakup of that marriage. That was a disaster, that, you know, everything that I had been planning for my life, and then my other plans besides those had fallen apart like I couldn’t make anything work. And I was so full of shame and so full of despair and longing for love. On the heels of two in a row of just like shattering heart failures and lonely, depressed and anxious. And I didn’t. I just didn’t have any of my toolkit was empty because I had not been taught any of the things I needed to survive something like that.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:06:51] And I’ve since found out that this is very common in people who have are going through a really bad depressive or anxiety episode. I was always waking up at like 430 in the morning, wide awake and in terrible despair. And that’s like the literal dark night of the soul, you know? It’s like because it’s you can’t do anything at 430 in the morning, like you can’t just you’re too exhausted to just get up and start the day. There’s nothing to be done. But you can’t go back to sleep. You can’t take a sleeping pill at 430 in the morning. You can’t call anybody at 430 in the morning like it’s it’s the real reckoning hour. And, um, and a wrecking ball of an hour if you’re in a bad state. And I was in one of those fits of despair, and I to this day, don’t know where it came from. I mean, it was a gift from the beyond. But the message came, open up a notebook and write to yourself. And this is the exact direction. Write to yourself the exact words that you have always wanted to hear somebody else say to you. And that’s a really easy direction for most people.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:08:01] I mean, it’s difficult sometimes when I tell people to write themselves a letter from unconditional love, they don’t know what that means. But if I say write the thing that you wish somebody would say to you, suddenly they know the answer to that, right? It’s like the thing we’ve been longing for or dreaming of or fantasizing about. And so for me, the letter was, um, not much different than the ones I get now. 25 years later or 30 years later. It was like, first of all, I love you. I don’t need you to be any different than you are in order to love you. You don’t have to earn my love. You can’t lose my love. You were born with this. I’ll be with you through all of this. I’m not going anywhere. You’re not alone. And for me, I think the most transformative language in that letter was there’s nowhere else in the universe I would rather be than sitting here with you right now. And I have nowhere else that’s more important to be. That’s what I had been missing my whole life was, you know, even in childhood, I mean, especially in childhood was somebody’s undivided attention, you know, somebody’s undivided attention, saying, I know you’re having a hard time. I’m going to sit with you.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:09:26] And I don’t have 27,000 other things I need to be doing. I’m just going to sit here with you. I’m just going to be with you. And the letter went on to say, I was debating whether or not to go back on antidepressants at that time. And it said, if you need to do that, I will love you. If you decide not to do that, I will love. View. If you’re depressed for the rest of your life, I’ll love you. You know these major points of like, you don’t need to be different than you are. You don’t need to improve. Because when you’re in that state, that’s so low, improvement just seems so impossible. And to have some entity say to you, that’s all right, it’s not required that you get better. It’s not required that you ever become happy. It’s not required that you become successful. I just love you and I’m not going anywhere. And that was the beginning of of this practice that I’ve now done for almost three decades since then. And that has gotten me through. I’ve never I’ve had really hard times since then, but I’ve never gotten as low as that because this is the ultimate safety net. This is this practice is the thing that will catch me before I get that low.

Jonathan Fields: [00:10:35] Yeah. I mean, it’s so powerful, right? There are a couple things that really strike me about that. Part of it is this surrender to the notion of the fact that, you know what? I may or may not ever hear these words from somebody outside of me in my life. God willing, I’m fortunate, you know, like, I have blessings and I do. But what would happen if I almost assumed that I won’t? You know, this is sort of like brings up the the Buddhist notion of abandoning hope. When I first heard that notion, I was that’s a terrible idea. Like, who made that up? You know, I want to be filled with hope. But like when I really understood what it meant, which is that there may be some things that you can control in your life. There may be plenty of other things that you can’t. But to the extent that sort of like this is me now, if I assume I’m not going to rely on that external thing to come and fix something for me, if I abandon hope of that, then what? Like, what do I actually start to do? And it’s so odd that and this is partly what you’re describing, that this notion of abandoning hope can also really seed agency in so many ways, which is a little bit counterintuitive, I think.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:11:44] Yeah. You know, that line in the Tao Te Ching, um, hope is as hollow as fear. And I also as a good red blooded American, did not like that when I read, you know, I was like, well, no, that’s not okay. And hope and fear are not the same thing. And you have to have, you know, but but in fact, hope is a weird varietal of fear. It’s like I’m fearing that I won’t be able to endure if this continues. And so I have to have hope that it’s going to end. Usually that’s founded. Most things end, you know, like most things, there are cyclic like, most things change eventually, but when you’re in the crucible of pain and you can’t find that and you can’t reach that, to be told to have hope is almost cruel. But to be told that the way that you’re feeling is, is okay and understandable, and nobody’s going to make you advance beyond where you are. Um, one of the things that unconditional love often says to me is, I’m never going to make you do anything before you’re ready. And that’s something that no human has ever said to me either. Because because, you know, we’re humans and I’ve never said anybody else because I’ve got my own agendas of like, what I want and when I want it. And, you know, and it’s like this idea that there could be a force in the universe that is perfectly comfortable with you, exactly where you are and what state you are at, whatever level of evolution doesn’t need you to hasten that knows that you can’t, in a strange way, brings this serenity in which then transformation might actually be possible once I’m off the hook. You know, once, once I’ve been promised that I’m worthy and and loved and valued, whether or not I’m happy or contented or productive or efficient or admired. Um. Now I have a little space, you know, I have a little space, and I might actually be able to move to the next step.

Jonathan Fields: [00:13:55] I’m curious how you what your take is on this. Um, I love the word transformation. Um, years back, when I was sort of, like, deeply immersed in the world of yoga, I was introduced to the concept of not transformation, but liberation. Like the Sanskrit phrase jivanmukti or jivanmukti literally translates to liberated being. And the notion, it struck me as being different from transformation because the notion was I’m not becoming something else. I’m stripping away all that obscures my ability to see who I’ve always been. And that’s enough. I’m curious, do you make a similar distinction there?

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:14:32] I mean, I don’t think I’ve put it as eloquently because I haven’t been living in the thought of it, as you obviously have, but I’m grateful for that. I like that it resonates within my body. Um, moksha is the other word that I love of of liberation. And moksha is what we’ve been promised. I really do feel that that, like liberation is what we have been promised. But boy, do you have to let go of a lot of stuff before you can have it. I mean, you sort of trade everything for it. That’s what I think. And as somebody who’s recently meaning in the last five years come into 12 step recovery and that voice of love has been the higher power that’s been guiding me through addiction recovery. You know, I hear again and again in these dialogues that I’m having with unconditional love. Sweetheart, I want you to put that down. Now, you know, I want you to put that down now. We don’t need that now. You needed it so you’re not in trouble, that you needed it. You needed it very much, but you don’t need it anymore.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:15:36] And the phrase I always hear in my head or read in these letters is put it on the divine fire and walk away and whatever it is, I mean, anybody who’s listening to this knows what they’re what they’re it is whether it’s a substance or a person or a or a or an outcome or even grief, you know, or rage or resentment, all of it. The promise of liberation and the promise of moksha is you can have it, but you got a lot. You got a lot to put on the divine fire. And that’s your role in it, right? Like and also don’t reach back in and take it back out once you put it on the fire. Don’t be putting your like asbestos gloves on and like raking a few things back out. You know, it’s like no, put it take put it down. You know, put it down, walk away and walk toward. It’s not even a walking away. It’s a walking toward, you know, walk toward love and liberation.

Jonathan Fields: [00:16:34] You know, the other thing that jumps out at me, also, the way you describe, especially that first experience of it, was this notion that you ask the question, you know, like what what what would I love somebody else to say to me in this moment? And then it’s almost like you’re not anthropomorphizing love because love just is right. Like, I don’t think it’s like, oh, this other person saying it to me. But like, you’re very intentional about saying this is coming from outside somewhere, and it’s almost like pouring into it’s pouring through me, and yet it’s coming from you at the same time.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:17:09] Both. Both. Yeah. Um, I mean, it’s I have a friend who’s an IFS practitioner, and she was telling me about. That’s Internal Family Systems therapy for those who don’t know. But it’s it’s essentially family therapy within your own mind. It’s group therapy with all the different voices in your head, learning how to help them all speak to each other from a place of understanding and respect. And, um, one of the things that that, that she was telling me about is that there’s neurological research, which I’m so into all the crazy, wild neurological research that we have at our fingertips now to back up this stuff. But if I say to you, Jonathan, how do you feel about yourself? And then I say to you, how do you feel towards yourself? It’s going to feel differently. It actually takes you into a different part of your brain. So how do you feel about yourself is judgment, and how do you feel toward yourself? Creates a sense of empathy where you can see this being who is maybe suffering and maybe struggling, you can have some sympathy for the predicament, the karmic predicament that they’re in, like, wow, it’s tough to be a person. It’s tough to be Jonathan.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:18:21] Like some days it’s wow, I see that I feel a lot of sympathy toward this person. I feel a lot of care toward this person. They’re really doing their best. And that’s a very different mindset than asking someone how they feel about themselves, because then you’re going to bring up the grocery list of all your faults and all your things that need to be transformed and everything that’s wrong with you. And we have enough of that, you know, like we have enough of that. Most of us got enough of that in our families and in our cultures, and we carry that in. So writing a letter from love is is turning toward yourself. Depression and anxiety is thinking about yourself. And writing these words of kindness is is a turning toward. You know, I refuse to believe that it’s not coming from an external source. I don’t have any reason not to believe it, because I don’t even know where that idea came from. That initial inspiration. I never know what it’s going to say. I never know what love is going to say. It changes by the day. I mean, the basics are always the same. Like, I love you.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:19:22] There’s nothing you can do to lose that. You’re my beloved. There’s nowhere else I’d rather be than here with you. I’ve got you. I’ll be with you. Everyone else can come and go. We’re. You know we’re here. That’s the same. But then there’s often very specific direction. And sometimes love tells me what it wants me to do. And sometimes love tells me what it wants me to. Stop doing. Sometimes love tells me who to call and how to show up and service to the world and the work that it wants me to be doing. And then sometimes it tells me to retreat and to let the world take care of itself, and to find my center again and to turn off my phone. And it’s different by the day because my needs are different by the day. You know, this is not a one-and-done practice. It’s not like I got that letter downloaded once and I never needed love again. I needed every day. And I need its direction and its reassurance. And I also need to know that even if I am not able to carry out what it asked me to do, that it will still be there tomorrow.

Jonathan Fields: [00:20:26] I love how you describe it existing outside of you, and it’s also really consistent with sort of your broader thoughts on things like ideas, creativity, the muse, God. However people like you do or don’t understand or describe that experience. But, um, it seems like there’s also there’s there’s this openness to accept the fact that there is something out there, you know, just call it what you may. There is some Akashic field connectedness. There’s some energy. Maybe it’s maybe there are different energies, maybe it’s all just the same cosmic soup, you know, that we’re floating around in without any sense of, you know, like awareness. But I wonder if that notion that there’s something else out there that that is always there, that has a benevolence to it, and that part of our work is actually to open to it. It takes a bit of the pressure off of us. Do you have that sense?

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:21:25] 100%. And one of the things that I put on the divine fire and walked away from and gave up on was living a life of non-duality, because I chased that for a really long time, because, you know, I read a lot of books and it sounded awesome, and I wanted to be that, and it seemed like that’s what enlightenment was. And I need there so far. I mean, this might change and I might have some sort of massive spontaneous awakening experience, but I don’t need that. I the way that my mind is constructed and the way that my heart is constructed, if anything, I’m more of a bhakti yoga. I’m like, I’m here for the path of devotion and for devotion. You have to have to. There’s no you can’t really bhakti Yogi your way into one like oneness, because then there’s no one to be devoted to and there’s no one to love me. And my love language is love, you know? So. So I need there to be something an intelligence, a consciousness, a presence, a creation, an ongoing creation in the universe that I am separate from, like made from part of, but stand apart from and look at, you know, I gaze, I gaze at it with wonder, and it gazes back at me.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:22:43] That really works for me. And so for that, I needed God. And I get to have one because I need one. I get to have one. That’s the great thing. I had this wonderful moment when I was working the 12 steps in recovery and my my sponsor, when we got to step three, which is, um, made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of the God, of understanding, of our understanding. You know, I thought I had that sort of down because I’ve always been a spiritual person. But she gave me this extraordinary assignment for that step that was like, like really blew my mind open. She said, I want you to write a list of what you’re looking for in a god. Um, like a want ad. Like what? You’re like a what are the traits that you would need to have in a higher power for you to turn your life over to that higher power? Because no one’s.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:35] Seeking.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:23:36] Yeah, yeah, exactly, exactly. Must be good. Must be good with animals, you know.

Jonathan Fields: [00:23:42] Long, long walks on the beach.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:23:43] Exactly, precisely. Right. And I was like, I think of myself as an open thinker, but I was like, well, you can’t do that. You know, like you can’t do that. I mean, you get the God that you get, you know, like you get the God that’s been assigned to you. But why? One of the features of a God that I could love would be allowing itself to move into the shape of whatever I needed it to be, because I needed that, and it would provide that and be like, okay, you need a God in this form here. I’ll be that, right. I’ll be that because I want to connect with you and this is what’s going to work. So this is this is how we’re going to do it. And my list started with unconditionally loving. It has to. It just has to be. There can’t be a small-minded, judgmental God. It can’t be. I won’t survive that. I can barely survive my own small-minded, judgmental mind. Um, so I need a God who’s more expansive and loving than I am. And then when I have that, and I have the love of that being, then I can start to put things on the divine fire and walk away. You know, I can let go of certain outcomes and be like, okay, that’s actually really might be all I need. You know? And the less I need, the more I can serve, because the more my needs are met and my needs are met, then I’m not manipulating people and I’m not trying to hustle anybody, and I’m not subtly trying to make sure that I get my needs met through other human beings. So it’s working for me. It’s a beautiful exercise. You’re allowed to do it. You’re allowed to design your it’s like a Build-A-Bear. You can you can design your own deity.

Jonathan Fields: [00:25:19] I love that just that notion of like a, like a wanted ad, you know, like, what would that look like? Um, and the way you’re describing it also, you know, it’s so cool because how many people have stayed in relationships way longer than they know they should have been in them? Because we’re afraid that, you know, well, it’s not healthy, it’s not nourishing, it’s not giving me what I want and need and yearn for. But it’s there and it’s got to be better than, you know, like nothing. And what if nothing ever comes along again? And what this tees up is this notion that, well, that would still be okay, actually, because you’re still held like by something bigger that exists outside of yourself. It may still suck, it may be brutal going through like whatever that transition moment is. But there’s always going to be this thing and it creates a bit of like a soft landing or a softer landing, maybe for experiences that we grasp desperately to may not really be for us. So I love this notion. I want to dive into some of the mechanics with you here. Also, in no small part because you’ve asked me to write one of these.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:26:25] Of course I have. You didn’t think you were going to get away with it.

Jonathan Fields: [00:26:29] So, you know, I’ve been noodling on it a bunch, and we had this exchange where I was saying, you know, like, I’ve had this. I’ve had this really interesting moment over, like, you know, a couple of conversations over, you know, a period of a number of months talking to different people, sometimes people who are like, just overtly really struggling in a season of their lives. Some people, you look at them from the outside looking in and they’re like, they seem to have everything, like they’ve accomplished everything, like, how can I? And and this theme kept coming up over and over and over, which is this feeling of having fallen behind in your own life. So we had a quick back and forth and you were like, I want you to write a letter of love, like and like speak to this in that. And my first impulse was, oh, hell no. But it’s you. Um, I love you. And I was like. And I, you know, I’ve been following along with the letters that you’ve been sharing, and I’m like, yeah, this feels like it’s actually, um, it would be really good. So I’ve been thinking a little bit more and just thinking about it while I think about it, you know, questions come up like, how do I actually do this? And is there sort of like a hit list of do’s and don’ts, or is it completely contrary to what the entire thing is even about in the first place? So when I’m thinking about this, when I’m sort of saying, okay, so I want to sit down and actually do this thing and you kind of teed up like the basic things, I think, early in our conversation.

Jonathan Fields: [00:27:57] But one of the things that comes up sort of like right away is and you and I have been writing in various forms for, quote, the public for a long, long, long time or creating for the public in a long, long time. And granted, hopefully we’re creating for ourselves at the same time. It just happens to resonate with people beyond ourselves. But at the same time, it’s really hard to get that voice out of your head that says, I’m not just writing for me. This has got to be something. Let me extol on this or let me think about the language. Let me, you know, oh, this is phrased in a way I need to work this sentence. Right. And I started I caught myself, like, even in the very beginning, parts of just noodling on this, I caught myself just drifting into all these different places and wondering, I’m like, is that okay? Or is that just completely not what it’s about?

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:28:42] Oh, gosh. Well, thinking is of course not what we’re doing here.

Jonathan Fields: [00:28:49] So right away I looked lost the game.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:28:55] And you know, it’s interesting the people who seem to sometimes have the biggest obstacles doing this practice are people like you and me are used to writing and creating content for the public, and so we’re very self-conscious writers. This is an intuitive and mystical experience, not an intellectual or, in a weird way, even emotional experience. There’s a surrender in it. There’s a leap of faith. And what I would, would invite you to do is to, instead of noodling on one letter, to write one every day and set the timer for five minutes. And when you’re done, step away from it. Because my experience is anything much more than five minutes. And then out now I’m now I’m involved, right? I’m going to be editing. I’m going to be improving sentences. You know, the letters that you’ve been seeing me read on the Substack, on the newsletter. I write those in five minutes, and I don’t edit them because it’s better if I’m not the one writing it. So the way that that I teach it, there’s also, if anyone is interested in this, I found out 20 years after I started doing this that there’s this this is an official practice called Two Way prayer. I didn’t know there was a name for it. Interestingly, it came out of the early Alcoholics Anonymous groups. Bill W did it, doctor Bob did it. Any of you who know these like early AA All Stars, they had this practice, the Oxford Group, the people who started the first Alcoholics Anonymous fellowships.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:30:41] For some reason, it didn’t end up in the Big Book of AA, but it’s in their history that Bill W apparently believed that there was no more important practice than a recovering addict of any kind could have than this as a daily practice, that it was more important to write these, what he called two-way prayers, and the way that they taught it, that it was more important to do these two-way prayers than it was to go to meetings, than it was to have a sponsor, because you’re getting direct, divine revelation specifically tailored for you. If you’re reading spiritual books, you’re reading somebody else’s direct, divine spiritual revelation that was specifically tailored to them. But interestingly, the way he suggested that you begin the practice is you sit quietly for a minute, and then you read a spiritual text of some sort that opens your heart, that moves you profoundly. So for me, it’s reading any page of Song of Myself by Walt Whitman, which is like a Psalm to me. Anything by Mary Oliver. David Whyte’s poetry. It’s a poets who do it for me. Right. So if I were having trouble accessing love, I would. I would read one of their poems. And the way I’ve heard it described is, you know, those people had Hafiz, Rumi, other.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:32:04] Fantastic. Right? They were hearing love’s voice and they were writing down what they heard. So when you read their work, they were kind enough to leave the door open. That’s how I see it. It’s like, so you’re going to draft in right after them, right? Like, so you’re going to they left the door open to love. Your heart opens. You get that residual heart, you know, the contact high of being around Hafiz or Rumi or Mary Oliver or Walt Whitman or the Psalms or any of the great spiritual writing. You’re open. And then in the next moment you open up a notebook and you write. We only want to hear from you once. It’s not a deposition, it’s not an interview. Because once you’re dialoguing, you’re bringing your intellect back in. And that’s what we’re trying to do a workaround around. Right. So the question that opens the door, you say, dear love, what would you have me know today? And better not to ask about a specific thing better, because I don’t even know what I don’t know, you know, and if I bring love, a problem that I’m working on, I’m going to bring the problem into the page, right? Lots of times I open up the page and I write, dear love, what would you have me know? And I’m expecting that they’re going to solve some interpersonal problem I have, but I always call them they.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:33:19] The answer is something entirely different. You know, it’s like, sweetheart, first of all, we need you to drink a big glass of water. You know, like, oftentimes it’s like the most basic care. It’s like, why are you wearing a bra? It’s 4:00 in the afternoon. Take that off. Drink a big glass of water, take your shoes off, turn your phone off and sit with us for a moment, because we have things to tell you and you’re tense and we want you to hear. Right. Sometimes that’s what comes through. So what I would invite you to do is to not noodle on it and to not think about it, and to not plan it, and to not bring a problem to love’s feet, but to just bring yourself empty handed after having read something that opens your heart. And that one question, dear love, what would you have me know today? And then the other thing that’s advised is that the first line that you write back to yourself should be an endearment, because that softens your heart toward yourself. A nickname sweetheart Honeybunch love, love head. My little tiny turtle, my precious little striver, my tendril of ivy, my little pinecone. My little bunny ass. Like I see you and I love you like something that’s very dear. One of the first exercises that I had people do when we did this was just to write lists of endearments, because they make you laugh and they’re silly, and we all call our pets by a thousand different endearments we all call children by a thousand different endearments and my dad used to say, the much loved child has many nicknames.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:34:59] You know you are a much loved child of God. Honey head is the thing that I’m always called in love. Like honey head, honey head. Calm down. Right, so the next line should be an endearment. My sweetheart, my my darling, my precious. I’m right here. And then see what it has to say. And at first, it’s going to be the act of faith. At first is that it’s going to start as an act of imagination before it becomes an act of faith. So the imagination that you step into is imagining what would unconditional love say? If it could speak to me, what would it want me to know? What would it say? That’s the act of imagination. But very soon, I promise. If you do this for five minutes a day and you don’t think about it too much, very soon it will stop being an act of imagination, and it will start being an act of intuition. And something’s just going to start flowing out of that pen. I also recommend that you write by hand and not on a laptop, because there’s something more connected about paper and pen than there is about, like, I’ve got an assignment and now I’m going to type it on, you know, um, and yeah, it’s, there’s something tactile about that.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:36:10] And, and you set the timer for five minutes and you just see what, what unconditional love has to say to you. And, and then you just look back at it. And if it sounds like the voice of love, then it is. You know, like, you don’t have to wonder, like, was this God? Is this an angel? Am I connected to source? Is there anything that you wrote that doesn’t sound loving? Probably there won’t be. So even if it feels very facile and sort of embarrassing and weird and self-conscious, even if it’s just saying, I love you. You’re doing a good job. I’m not going anywhere. I’m proud of you. I’m with you. That is the voice of love. It doesn’t have to be more complex than that. Um, we don’t need you to be smart. You’re plenty smart. Like I’m super fucking smart. And I’ve nearly killed myself a few times because of lack of love, you know? So it’s not about being poetic. It’s not about being a good writer. It’s not about being having something to offer the world that’s original. You know, we have enough originality. What we don’t have is love. So I don’t know if that’s if that’s helpful, but that would be my guidance.

Jonathan Fields: [00:37:18] Super, super helpful. And the notion of because I was also kind of looking at it as like, I got to write this one letter and like a, I just used the word phrase gotta in there, which like already is like, nope, let’s just rephrase it like, like I get to do this, you know, like this is a beautiful thing. And then and then the notion of thinking of is like, well, what if you phrased it as not just like, I’m going to sit down and do this one time? What if I just say yes to this as a practice for a while and see how it feels? And the stream of consciousness part of it is also so much lighter as you’re describing it. One of the questions that came up to my mind also is so as we have this conversation, I’m out in California and you’re in New York, but I’m very fortunate to have Colorado as my my home these days. And I’m in the mountains all the time. I hike all the time. That’s my the place I touchstone is when I’m in the woods and also by the ocean. But, um, I just completely lose myself. And I find as I do that my mind clears. I feel connected to whatever it is, that thing that you might describe as source or God or universe, whatever it may be, that that’s my place. And and at the same time, often things just feelings flood me, but also language flood me. Ideas, concepts. And I’ll often find myself I generally I try not to actually listen to anything when I’m out there. I just want to be immersed in the sounds and the sights and. But sometimes something will just come to me a revelation, an awakening, some, whatever it may be. And I’ll pull out my, like, telephone and I’ll just want to record it by voice as quickly as I can, because it’s just, I feel like it’s kind of pouring through me at that moment. And I wonder if you see that as a potentially viable way to say yes to this. Also, you already are.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:39:02] It’s happening already. Yeah.

Jonathan Fields: [00:39:05] So dude, don’t you see it?

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:39:07] Yeah, you’re in it. You’re soaking in it. It’s already there, you know, as close as that. I also was thinking as you were sharing about that, um, Saint Augustine, how to a phrase Salvator Ambulando, that means it is solved by walking. We know this if you’re able-bodied and and lucky and privileged enough to be able to walk that going for a walk, I’ve always thought is like sort of resetting a grandfather clock. It’s like, you know, it does something. We’re meant to move at that speed. We’re meant to be in trees, we’re meant to be outdoors. So it definitely opens it up. And I would say while you’re out there, since that channel is already open to you and you trust it and it wants to commune with you, obviously, because it’s pouring words into you and wants to talk to you, ask it directly, what do you want me to know right now? What do you want me to know is such a good question, because it’s not. What do you want me to do? Who do you want me to become? What do you want me to change? What’s your mission for me? You know, we’re so mission-driven in the West. I think love just wants to be known. And it wants you to know that it knows you and that it cares. And that it sees you and sees you seeing it.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:40:22] You know, I think this is so revelatory for me because I was taught to pray in a way that’s really just me talking or reading prayers that other people wrote. I was taught that that’s what prayer is, that you’re you’re just pouring out of yourself into the emptiness or into the void or into the oneness or into the God. Are you there, God? Is there anybody listening? Prayer was really a lot of my voice and two-way prayer. There’s very little of me. There’s just me asking a question. It’s very humbling practice. And I always when I teach it to people, I, I warn them against getting into a dialogue. It’s tempting as it is because that’s my ego wanting to be involved. That’s my ego wanting to be like, who are you? What are you doing? What is your you know, like, my, my ego is like a three-year-old who has a million questions, but I really only need the one, um, which. Which is. What would you have me know right now? What would you have me know today? And sometimes, if there’s a difficult situation, what would you have me know about this situation? But what would you have me know right now? Really works. And then you’re not talking. You’re listening. And isn’t that better.

Jonathan Fields: [00:41:33] As you’re describing that? I’m nodding along and then question sort of popped into my head, which is, and this hasn’t happened to me yet. There’s always opportunities, but I would imagine that there’s somebody listening to this right now, like, this sounds really cool, and maybe they even tried it. And either they’ve had this experience or there’s a fear built around it, which is what if I say yes to this and I sit down and I flip open like my notebook and have a pencil on my favorite pencil in the hand, and I say, dear love, what would you have me know now? And nothing comes? Would that reinforce a sense of abandonment that you were stepping into this experience with? Has that ever happened to you, or have you had that happen to other people where you had a conversation around it?

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:42:16] It’s never happened to me that I’ve asked for it and it’s not there. And there have even been times when I’ve been enraged at it, where things were happening in my life that were so unfair and awful. And I’ve just been enraged. And that voice has been there saying, I see your rage and I see your disgust and your exhaustion, and I don’t have any answers for you, but I love you, and I don’t know how you’re going to get out of this. I remember when my partner was dying of cancer and had relapsed into drug addiction, and it was an absolute nightmare. I remember demanding answers of love. I mean, this is going back to the dialogue, right? Which is my ego inserting itself and saying like, how is this going to end? And love said to me, I don’t know. The future isn’t my department. And I said, well, then what good are you like, if you can’t tell me what’s going to happen and you can’t tell me what to do, then what use are you? What good are you? And love said, I am company for you in your darkest hour. And that’s really all love is, right? It’s like it’s not here to solve. It’s not here to fix. It’s just here to be present. Like to keep you company when you’re going through something. As for the fear that you’re going to ask love what it has to say and it’s not going to answer, this is, I think, the main reason people won’t do this exercise, that that risk seems so terrible and so frightening.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:43:59] And if you’ve been following along with the Substack and the newsletters, it’s been six months now that I’ve been doing this, and every week I have a special guest, and almost every week it’s the first time somebody is doing this and they’re terrified. They’re so terrified that they’re going to knock on the door is not going to open. Glennon Doyle spoke about this. Abby Wambach spoke about this. You know, they all spoke to this Clover Stroud, this great British writer who’s this week’s guest spoke about this. I don’t believe that anything is going to be there. I dare us to be courageous enough to take that risk. I dare us to. I see the things that people do that are so risky. You know, I see I live in New York. I see the way people cross the street with her headphones in and a hood up over themselves, jaywalking against traffic. I see how people drive and text at the same time and take that risk that they might die. I see the way people abandon themselves into substances and take the risk of cigarettes and take the risk of alcohol, and take the risk of a lover who’s abusive and take the risk to gamble.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:45:09] You know, even what we call recreation and fun. You know, like most of what I see people doing this called recreation fund just seems like, wow, I’m really kind of throwing my life away into this thing, like I could die. People take risks every single day. Yet this one asking somebody to be courageous enough to open up a blank notebook and write, dear love, what would you have me know? And then imagine what unconditional love would say to them. Feels like, oh well, that’s a bridge too far. I’m not doing that. And I call people out on that because I’m like, I’ve seen this. I’ve seen the risks you’ve taken in your life. You know, I dare you to take this risk and to see. And I think that largely the reason that we’re so frightened to do it is because we’ve never experienced it. Like nobody ever loved us unconditionally. Because I don’t think humans can. I mean, we’re supposed to allegedly get that from from our parents. But if you’re like me, you had beleaguered parents who were exhausted and traumatized and just trying to get through the day and overwhelmed and were not available to that. And through no fault of their own, their parents weren’t either. So if we’ve never experienced it, and all we can associate it with is human love, which is by nature limited and conditional.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:46:38] Even the most vast human love has its limits. Somebody can love you unconditionally and they can die, you know, like they will have to die. They might not be there tomorrow, you know, like we can’t count on that. And I don’t say that in a way of like, you can’t count on people. You know, we count on people as much as we can, but we’re fallible and we’re fragile. And, you know, I know somebody whose father was her closest source of unconditional love. And then he got Alzheimer’s, and he didn’t even know who she was anymore. So these things can be taken from us. But there is a source that cannot be taken. And I would submit that you have had experience with comforting another living being in your life, even if you haven’t been comforted. I would suspect that everybody who is listening to this. Has at some point in their life held someone in their arms and said, I’m right here, I’ve got you. Held a trembling animal. Held a crying child. You know how to do it. So I’m not buying that. You don’t know how to do it. You know how to hold something and how to reassure it with your presence. You’ve done it. You’ve done it. You just haven’t done it toward yourself.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:48:02] And maybe you haven’t gotten enough of it toward yourself that you believe that it’s out there, but you’ve done it. And so if nothing’s coming on the page, imagine that you are speaking to somebody who’s suffering. Imagine that you’re speaking to somebody who’s afraid that love isn’t real. Imagine that you’re speaking. I mean, it shouldn’t be hard to imagine that we’ve all we’ve all been afraid of it, you know, like, imagine that you’re consoling somebody who’s going through whatever you’re going through right now, or a pet or an animal or a child. It’s in you. It’s in you. And this is what I find astonishing as I’m reading the letters that people share on this newsletter that people are writing. People who never had it shown to them have it in them. It’s not a prerequisite that you were tenderly and gently loved as a child. For you to be able to find this within your longing, for it is in fact, it the doorway to it. You know, walking through that doorway of longing into love itself is how you’ll find it. So. So I would ask that you try it, and then I would ask that you try it again, and then I would ask that you try it again because this is your inheritance. You are allowed to be loved. It’s too hard. Without it. We can’t survive without it.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:49:26] And we all know that. But we all think it means that we have to go seek it out and drag it out of another person, or manipulate it, or bully it, or force it out of another human being, or who’s going to see me, love me, care for me. And one thing that love says to me often in the pages is, why would we set the system up to make it so hard for you? Why would we set the system up so that the only place you could get this was if you could coerce another human being into giving it to you, that would turn you into a beggar like that would turn you into a desperate beggar for your entire life. And I’m like, well, that’s what I’ve been, that’s what I’ve been. And love’s like, well, you don’t have to beg. You have a fountain. It’s it’s it’s Tolstoy’s beggar sitting on the pot of gold, begging for spare change, not knowing that. That he’s sitting on a pot of gold. This is all in you already, I believe that. I believe it because I’ve found it. After years of looking. It’s the last place I looked. It’s the car. Keys are always the last place you look. It’s like the last place I looked for love was. Was from from within. But there it was.

Jonathan Fields: [00:50:35] Now that resonates really deeply. You referenced a couple of times in conversation that about six months ago you decided, you know, this practice is is not just for me. This practice is something that I want to really share more publicly and so invite a global community into. And you launched um, this newsletter and, um, letters from love. And we’ll link to this. And um, every week you share, you know, one letter from love that you’ve written to yourself. And you also invite others to share a letter on a weekly basis. Um, I will be sharing mine with that community as well. And then the community around it often shares so deeply and so beautifully and so openly like what what their voice is saying to them. I’m wondering, six months into this experience now, how has it been for you? What’s surprised you?

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:51:33] Oh my gosh, it’s so magical. I mean, this is something that was born of my darkest moment of pain and isolation, and now we have 90,000 people across the world practicing this together. Like what? You know, if I were to flash back to my 30-year-old self and say, like in those awful nights of the worst and be like, oh, sweetheart, something so incredible is going to come out of this. Oh, gosh, just keep going. You’ve almost reached the door, right? Like you’ve almost reached the door. Like something extraordinary is going to come out of this. This is so worth it. Every lifetime from now till the end of time for this outcome, for sure. So there’s that sense of astonishment. I’m amazed at how quickly people take to it, how it’s, you know, again, the less thinking, the better, you know, dive in and how vulnerably and openly people are willing to share. Part of that is because of the way we’ve structured it. I also love that I’m creating this project with my best friend Margaret from college, who’s been my friend for 35 years, and she’s doing all the administrative stuff, and I’m doing the writing and the and the videos and, you know, responding to people’s letters. But, you know, we Substack is this relatively new format that people are just learning their way through and that a lot of people there are refugees from social media and the social media having become such a toxic and addictive and destructive element.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:53:11] Really, all Substack is, is just a blogging service. It’s really going backwards. And it’s like back to the original. Get people’s email addresses and send them an email every week. And that’s that’s all it is. It’s a 1990s technology. Um, but it’s much less addictive for, for that and more specific. And people are subscribing and then once they subscribe, I put out everything that I do for free. But I have a the lowest paywall that we could get through Substack, which is $50 a month and or $50 a year rather. So it’s $0.94 a month, sorry, $0.94 a week, $0.94 a week for this is the lowest we could get the price down to have a little bit of a paywall. And behind the paywall people can comment. And that tiny paywall prevents trolls. It’s an absolutely safe space. That’s the thing that I find so incredible. And I was promised that, I mean, I have a lot of trauma about social media and things that get said in social media, but I was promised by people who are on Substack, like, you’re not going to see any of that. There’s no attacking. There’s no, you know, this is genuinely a safe space.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:54:20] And I also put the letters that my special guests write behind the paywall because it’s vulnerable. I mean, people are showing the heart of their heart and the pain of their pain and the longing of their longing at the deepest level. And so there’s a little wall around it. And that I think of it as like a walled garden, like a Persian walled garden. Inside of that wall is safety, is abundance is fellowship. And now the people who have been writing letters and sharing them are making friends with each other, and they’re having meetups. They’re teaching their kids how to do this. They’re teaching. Some of them are our teachers, and they’re teaching their students how to do this practice, and then they’re adapting it to themselves. One woman said that every morning when she wakes up now, it’s before she even opens her eyes. The first question she asks is, dear love, what would you have me know right now? And? And she can hear it. She can hear an answer. So she’s starting her day with it, and people are using it to get themselves through deaths of loved ones. And, you know, the horrible tragedies of life and, um, their own cancer diagnoses and their fear of the world. And what I find also astonishing, after having read tens of thousands of these letters in the last six months or so, is that how similar the letters are? It’s like we are all tuning into.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:55:38] To the same radio station here, like something is speaking to each one of us with the same tenderness, the same humor, even. You know, there’s a lot of like, sort of rueful humor that comes through in these letters where, where love will be like, oh, don’t you love your little plans? We love watching you make your little plans. Keep making them. They’re adorable. They’re probably not all going to come true. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. You’re not supposed to. The other thing that I hear resonating again and again and again and again in these letters, which I think is amazing, is, um, that love often says to people, I don’t care about good and bad and right and wrong. It’s a very interesting thing for me. And I’ve heard this in my letters, too, because I can get into such guilt spirals if I think that I’ve done anything wrong. And I’m so desperate to be morally perfect, and I’m so desperate to be ethical and to have integrity and and I’m always so afraid that I’m doing it wrong. And I’m hearing not just in my letters, but in the letters that unconditional love is writing to people. Like, I don’t care about your morality.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:56:49] I don’t care about your ethics. I’m not here to gauge that. I’m not here to judge that you’re killing yourself with these morals. You’re killing yourself with these standards. You’re fine. Like you’re fine just the way you are. I know all the stuff you’ve done. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. And this idea that, like, good, bad and right and wrong don’t matter. It’s. It’s like that line of out there beyond right doing and wrongdoing. There is a field. I’ll meet you there. We seem to be meeting on that field. And that’s a really scary thing to talk about. Things to put on the fire and walk away from. That’s a scary thing to walk away from because I’m like, well, if there’s no morality and there’s no right or wrong, how’s anybody going to be safe? And what are the rules? And how do I know if I’m good or bad? And, and loves like, I don’t care, you know I don’t care. I just love you and care about you. And I’m here with you. And it’s all right. I’m not judging you. You’re not getting graded on any of this. And what an incredible relief that is. So to see that show up in so many, in the letters of so many strangers and to be like, wow, okay, that’s what unconditional love is. That’s amazing.

Jonathan Fields: [00:58:00] It really is powerful. And to see so many people showing up and being willing to be seen is really powerful. Also because it I think it inspires you. You’re like, wait a minute, they’re doing this and oftentimes they’re doing it week after week and at scale. And it’s okay. It’s better than okay. You know, like there’s something really magical about it. And it’s just deeply compelling from the outside looking in. Having seen what you’ve created, it’s deeply compelling for me. And I was imagining from the inside looking out, it had to have been for you as well. And you sort of. You’ve confirmed that we are going to air this episode on the same day that you will be sharing my letter from Love Your Community. So for all of our fabulous listeners, if you’ve enjoyed this conversation, you’re inspired and you’re curious. After, um, Liz very explicitly told me, stop noodling and just do it. What actually comes out? You will be able to find it. We’ll include a link in the show notes, but by all means head over there and explore this. Practice yourself. There’s something truly powerful about it. And then even being in community when you’re doing it, I think is really there’s something really cool about it. So, Liz, as we always do, and I’ve asked you this a couple of times over the years now, but you know, years pass and we change in this container of Good Life Project, if I offer up the phrase to live a good life, what comes up?

Elizabeth Gilbert: [00:59:33] Well, I’ll just say what just came to mind, which is, um, to be careful with yourself. I’ve never said those words before or thought them, but that’s what came to mind, and it just actually made me get a little teary. I understand that to mean. To know your own preciousness and to know your own just exquisite, tender sweetness, and to treat yourself accordingly as a very rare, miraculous being. And to know that that you’re worthy of all gentleness and and kindness. One of the things that inspired me to want to take this practice public was the, I mean, famous within these circles. I don’t know if it’s famous out in the wider world, but Sharon Salzberg, the great meditation teacher, was one of the first people and one of the first Americans to meet the Dalai Lama. And she was in the room with him when he came to California. I think it was California or somewhere in the Pacific Northwest, maybe, but, um, long ago and no, like kind of no one knew who he was. And so this group of intellectuals and theologians and spiritual people had gathered to hear him speak, and they had questions. And somebody in the room asked him if he could give any guidance about how to handle self-hatred. And he had to speak to a translator for like ten minutes to even understand the question, because he kept thinking that he was misunderstood.

Elizabeth Gilbert: [01:01:03] He was like, who do you hate? Who is the enemy? And when? And people were like, when it’s yourself. When it’s yourself, who’s the enemy? And he he had never heard of this. Now this is the most common headset of the Western mind to us. It’s just a normal Tuesday, you know. But to him he was like, this is not okay. And he was saying, you know, you are the one who you’re going to be traveling with through this entire journey of life, like you are your own companion. How could you turn on that person and hate them? You’re left with nothing. If you hate that person, what do you have? You’ve got nothing like. This is who you’re supposed to be the most tender to and the most kind to. Later, he would write that he had to start telling people like, treat yourself the way your mother would treat you. And then he found out what mothers in the West are like. And he was like, okay, never mind. Grandmother. Like, how far back do we have to go to find somebody who was kind? But that’s what I hear is a good life is a life where you really are careful and tender with your with your own preciousness.

Jonathan Fields: [01:02:22] Hmm. Thank you.

Jonathan Fields: [01:02:26] Hey, before you leave, if you love this episode, Safe bet, you’ll also love the earlier conversation we had with Elizabeth Gilbert about navigating love and loss and finding lightness again. You’ll find a link to that episode in the show notes. This episode of Good Life Project was produced by executive producers Lindsey Fox and me, Jonathan Fields. Editing help By Alejandro Ramirez. Kristoffer Carter crafted our theme music and special thanks to Shelley Adelle for her research on this episode. And of course, if you haven’t already done so, please go ahead and follow Good Life Project. in your favorite listening app. And if you found this conversation interesting or inspiring or valuable, and chances are you did. Since you’re still listening here, would you do me a personal favor, a seven-second favor, and share it? Maybe on social or by text or by email? Even just with one person? Just copy the link from the app you’re using and tell those you know, those you love, those you want to help navigate this thing called life a little better so we can all do it better together with more ease and more joy. Tell them to listen, then even invite them to talk about what you’ve both discovered. Because when podcasts become conversations and conversations become action, that’s how we all come alive together. Until next time, I’m Jonathan Fields signing off for Good Life project.