#820: Elizabeth Gilbert — How to Find Your Inner Voice, Set Strong Boundaries, and Live a Life of Radical Ease (Repost)

The Tim Ferriss Show

Tim Ferriss: Bestselling Author, Human Guinea Pig

Lifestyle Design, Business, The 4-hour Workweek, Productivity, Timothy Ferriss Show, Startups, Tim Ferris, Entrepreneurship, Longform Interviews, Tools Of Titans, Timothy Ferriss, The Tim Ferriss Show, Tim Ferriss

4.6 • 17.4K Ratings

🗓️ 30 July 2025

⏱️ 116 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Elizabeth Gilbert is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love as well as several other international bestsellers. Her latest novel, City of Girls, was named an instant New York Times bestseller. Go to ElizabethGilbert.Substack.com to subscribe to “Letters From Love with Elizabeth Gilbert,” her newsletter, which has more than 120,000 subscribers.

This episode was originally published in September 2024. Show notes and links: https://tim.blog/2024/09/26/elizabeth-gilbert-2/

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Timestamps:

[00:00:00] Who is Elizabeth Gilbert?

[00:05:42] No cherished outcomes.

[00:10:55] Self-compassionate ownership of responsibility.

[00:15:52] The daily practice of writing letters from love.

[00:22:22] Two-way prayer vs. one-way prayer.

[00:30:57] The male approach to this practice.

[00:34:27] How do you feel toward yourself vs. about yourself?

[00:36:53] Understanding self-hatred to foster self-friendliness.

[00:43:20] Setting boundaries and dealing with those who refuse to honor them.

[00:50:15] Why (and how) Elizabeth avoids big family holiday gatherings.

[00:52:15] Comfort in solitude.

[00:53:38] Much abuzz about Elizabeth’s new ‘do.

[00:57:52] Boundaries, priorities, and mysticism: a relaxed woman as a radical concept.

[01:04:02] What mysticism brings to Elizabeth’s reality.

[01:07:26] A better question to ask than “What do I want?”

[01:09:32] Elizabeth’s hard-ass approach to project commitment.

[01:16:40] Creativity guidance from Elizabeth’s higher power.

[01:21:08] How *The Morning Pages* influenced *Eat, Pray, Love*.

[01:24:27] More productive questions to ask than “Why?”

[01:26:16] The pointlessness of purpose anxiety.

[01:30:59] Balancing presence with other aspects of a well-lived life.

[01:36:17] Comfort with mortality.

[01:40:21] What motivates Elizabeth’s *Letters from Love* newsletter?

[01:41:29] What can potential readers expect from this newsletter?

[01:46:33] “Is the universe friendly?” — Frederic W. H. Myers

[01:49:29] Parting thoughts.

Show notes for this episode: https://tim.blog/2024/09/26/elizabeth-gilbert-2/

For show notes and past guests on The Tim Ferriss Show, please visit tim.blog/podcast.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hello, boys and girls. This is Tim Ferriss. Welcome to another episode of The Tim Ferriss Show, where it is my job to interview people from all different disciplines, all different walks of life to tease out the habits, routines, thoughts, lessons learned, and so on that you can apply to your own lives. My guest today, one of my favorites. Elizabeth Gilbert, she is the number one New York Times bestselling author of Big Magic and Eat, Pray, Love, as well as several other
0:21.2	international bestsellers. She has been a finalist for the National Book Award, the National
0:25.7	Book Critic Circle Award, and the Penn Hemingway Award. Her latest novel, City of Girls,
0:31.1	was named an instant New York Times bestseller, a rollicking, sexy tale of the New York City
0:36.3	theater world during the 1940s.
0:38.3	You can go to Elizabeth Gilbert.substack.com to subscribe to Letters from Love with Elizabeth
0:43.6	Gilbert, her newsletter, which has more than 120,000 subscribers. You can find her on Instagram
0:49.2	at Elizabeth underscore Gilbert underscore writer. But first, a few quick words from our lovely podcast
0:56.9	sponsors who make products and services that I use every day or every week. I personally vet
1:03.5	everything. And that means that probably less than 20% of the podcast sponsors who wish to sponsor
1:10.5	the show end up sponsoring.
1:12.5	But I'm fine with that, and here are the few that made the cut.
1:16.7	In the last handful of years, I've become very interested in environmental toxins,
1:21.4	avoiding microplastics and many other commonly found compounds all over the place.
1:30.0	One place I looked is in the kitchen.
1:36.0	Many people don't realize just how toxic their cookware is or can be. A lot of nonstick pans,
1:42.3	practically all of them, can release harmful forever chemicals. PFS, in other words, spelled PFAS,
1:45.9	into your food, your home, and then ultimately that ends up in your body. Teflon is a prime example of this. It is still the forever chemical that most companies
1:50.7	are using. So our place reached out to me as a potential sponsor, and the first thing I did
1:57.3	was look at the reviews of their products and said, send me one. And that is the
2:02.8	titanium always pan pro. And the claim is that it's the first nonstick pan with zero coating.
2:09.3	So that means zero forever chemicals and durability that'll last forever. I was very skeptical.
	...

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