If you’re anything like me, you love Debbie Millman, not just for her voice- that feels like an audio hug, but the insights she’s able to draw out from her guests. More so, when the guest is open, and transparent, like Elizabeth Gilbert. She’s no stranger to Fear, blocks, creativity or how to distill deep into the soul to find what is missing.

In her initial days, Gilbert’s mentor once asked her a pertinent question:

What are you willing to give up to have the life you keep pretending you want?

The answer or not to answer…

The question by itself is fear inducing. I’ve found it incredible hard in the last six months to rise about a couple things:

• A constant fear or nagging worry of outcomes (in life or at work)
• The need to spend too much energy consuming ideal states (a.k.a. on Instagram) rather than creating them (in life)
• Procrastination or a consistent lack of prioritization on things that I enjoy creatively

In part, it is because it’s easy. But mostly because fear is hard to beat. Sometimes, it’s just easier to give in to a lull of perfection and not generate enough Empathy for the self. Sometimes it’s not easy to move ahead, and ignore a blog or not return messages and calls for six months, because, you can.

All this comes back in a gusto when you spend hot 90 degree afternoons curled up in a foreign bed reminding one of lost summer vacations in sleepy towns. You’ve naturally grown up to realize the value of the mundane existence. It feels ungrateful to not appreciate the day to day normal, but you need twelve years of movement to get to that place.

Oh, and the life I am pretending to get this moment, is very inspired by this and modern Frey-ed sunny openness.

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