"I don't want your magic" and other lessons Elizabeth Gilbert taught me against my will

My takeaways from a 3 day workshop that completely thwarted my expectations and taught me a whole new way to take notes at conferences

A couple months ago, I went to what I thought was going to be a small, intimate creativity workshop with Elizabeth Gilbert. I pictured about 20 of us (35 tops) doing writing exercises and sharing them to applause and encouragement.

I imagined wowing her with my literary talent and brilliant insight. I imagined that maybe we’d become friends and even exchange text numbers. And then, years later, when I became famous, she’d tell the story of how she had recognized my raw talent and how she felt so privileged to count me as a friend.

I know.

In reality, the “workshop” was more of a “talk” with 450 participants in attendance. EG spent all three days up on a stage, far from the unwashed masses, or in a private backstage area before being spirited off to her private cabin.

Needless to say, there have been no late night texting sessions that have led Elizabeth to insist her agent take me on. (Yet).

So while the experience was about as far from what I was expecting as the American medical system is from the true meaning of “healthcare”, I’m glad I went.

For two reasons.

I finally put my finger on what it is about EG that makes me adore the her way I do, especially given my background with the self help industrial complex.

She is the kind of leader I want to grow up to be:

She’s brilliant and an epic practitioner of her craft, but her core commitment seems to be to impress us with our own brilliance instead of hers.

What I mean by this is that instead of being prescriptive and telling us what to do, or speaking to us from up on some pedestal, she instead told us stories. Many (if not most) of these stories were about foolish things she had done or thought and how she came to a more enlightened perspective.

And she shared what the journey was like - both the external journey (who she met or what book she read or who she hired) as well as the internal journey (the fear, the doubt, the self loathing or the sheer mindfuckery of deep personal shifts).

At one point she shared how she had been on a panel with another famous female writer (whose name I neglected to write down, sorry!) and how the MC had asked them both how they dealt with the difficult people in their lives that they couldn’t get rid of.

Elizabeth was pondering how to answer the question when the other writer piped up and said, “There are no difficult people in my life that are impossible to get rid of. No one has a free pass to be in my life.”

EG delighted us my mirroring our own consternation with such a simple-and-powerful-but-seemingly-impossible maxim then shared with us how that evolved into a mantra that she now uses:

“I don’t want your magic.”

This allows her to acknowledge that we each have magic inside us but that there is no obligation for a recognition of said magic to turn into any sort of contract. And that no one- not your mother, not your daughter, not your spouse- gets carte blanche to stay in your life if they aren’t respectful of your needs.

Of course, Elizabeth doesn’t have a 7 year old who will display more creativity than JK Rowling when it comes to stretching bedtime, so liberally adjust grains of salt to taste, but the core premise had many of the predominantly female participants tearing up. We acknowledged that one of the ways we’re often dicks to ourselves is by letting others do the dirty to us.

I liked the mantra aspect of this. And the palm-out hand gesture that went with it. But the most exciting takeaway from the conference was how Elizabeth Gilbert takes notes.

Image from a hand-drawn workbook that I started to create as a companion to Elizabeth Gilbert’s Big Magic. I gave it to her. Maybe one day she’ll want to make it real…

At one point, after her co-presenter finished speaking, she read us a poem that she had whipped up in the previous 15 minutes while he was talking!!

My mouth was actually hanging open and I might have drooled by the end.
And poetry and I often don’t get along.

Just as I was about to contract and retreat to the cave of unworthiness in my heart, EG asked, “Want me to show you how I did it? It’s super easy!”

Here are the steps as I remember them:

• Go over your notes with a highlighter (or underline in a different coloured pen). Just highlight all the notes that still have resonance hours or days later.

• Now pick 15 of the highlighted snippets and write them out.

• Now further distill them by discarding all but 10.

• Now all but 5.

• Use one of the discarded snippets as your title.

  Voila! You have a profound poem that sums up your core takeaways of just about any conference.

Here’s my poem…

Note: Parts of it may have zero resonance for you because you may not understand the story or concept the line represents. But it makes sense to me. And that’s the point of the exercise.

I’ve gone longer than the prescribed length but this fully captures my core takeaways from the materials.

Shroedinger’s Lion

I am powerless over the softness of kittens;

Powerless against delight, joy, smooches.

God is in the bathroom whispering as the world shouts

Break your banks, drop the charge, mind your language

How else would I know?

You don’t need an answer:

A better question, a different perspective, an awareness

I don’t know but I am willing to walk with you through this.

Well done earlier me, proceed from peace.

All you need is a next step

Take a sacred pause

What is in that bush? Shroedinger’s lion or

250 million birch seeds?

Magic is the thing that

wants to happen next.

This eye-catching map, drawn by Harold Fisk — a geologist and cartographer working for the US Army Corps of Engineers — traces the ever-shifting banks of the Mississippi River from southern Illinois to southern Louisiana. It’s the inspiration for the line “break your banks” in the poem above. Image borrowed from the Public Domain Review.

It’s fascinating because, as I mentioned, the workshop was nothing like I expected it to be. I think if I had known in advance that it was going to be as big as it was, I probably wouldn’t have gone.

So I’m really glad I didn’t know.

Because sometimes you have to go to find out. And what you discover when you’re there might be exactly what you need even if you never thought to want it.

This article is publicly available and I encourage you to share it with friends who might find delight in knowing how to take notes EG-style. Your support of my writing is deeply appreciated and never taken for granted. 🥰