Each and every one of us is born with a unique set of gifts that we're here to express during

our time on Earth. Look, God doesn't make any extra peeps and when we hold back our gifts,

we truly are stealing from those who need us most.

Hey, it's Marie Forleo and welcome to Love Letters to our creatives a very special series

that we're doing here on the Marie Forleo podcast for the next five weeks. I want to kick off by

talking about the thing that compels us to create in the first place. Inspiration, am I right?

I mean, you know how it goes. Maybe you see a music video and you get an idea for like a painting

or a book or you notice tons of people struggling with the same problem and think to yourself,

hey, maybe I can create a business that fixes that. However, inspiration comes to you. I mean,

it can feel so fun and electric in the moment, but then what do you do with that inspiration?

Do you write it down and then forget all about it? Do you go all in and risk everything to bring

it to life? And what if your inspiration leads you down a path to failure? Well, I can't think of

anyone better than my friend, Elizabeth Gilbert, to help answer those kinds of questions.

This is a snippet from our conversation about her book, Big Magic, which will help you rethink

your relationship to inspiration and that big F-word failure. I hope you enjoy.

You know, the world's full of a bunch of really, really good, not done stuff.

And if you can just finish something, you're already like 10 miles ahead of everybody else,

because most people won't. And what will make you finish it is not discipline, but self-forgiveness,

because we all start our project on day one with the same level of excitement. And on day two,

we all look at what we wrote on day one and we all hate ourselves, because what we wrote on day one,

or did on day one, whatever our creativity is, yeah, it's horrible. And the people who go on day

three and pick it up again and start over are not the most disciplined. It's not rigor that's

...