Your Elusive Creative Genius - Elizabeth Gilbert

Elizabeth M. Gilbert is an American author, essayist, short story writer, biographer, novelist, and memoirist. She is best known for her 2006 memoir, "Eat, Pray, Love" which had spent over 200 weeks on the New York Times Best Seller's List, and which was also made into a film by the same name in 2010 starring Julia Roberts.

Gilbert discussed the odds in keeping up with the creative pursuits and shared how she learned to cope with these pressures. Unlike other professions, creative professionals (either in writing, painting, artists and others)had this reputation of a battle with depression and mental instability. She cited the pressures she experienced after her success with Eat, Pray, Love and how she learned from the creative process of notable writers and recognizing that there is a higher being apart from herself that is responsible for her creative genius. 

Gilbert's best advice for people in the creative field:

"And what I have to sort of keep telling myself when I get really psyched out about that is don't be afraid. Don't be daunted. Just do your job. Continue to show up for your piece of it, whatever that might be. If your job is to dance, do your dance. If the divine, cockeyed genius assigned to your case decides to let some sort of wonderment be glimpsed, for just one moment through your efforts, then "Olé!" And if not, do your dance anyhow. And "Olé!" to you, nonetheless. I believe this and I feel that we must teach it. "Olé!" to you, nonetheless, just for having the sheer human love and stubbornness to keep showing up." - Elizabeth Gilbert

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Here's the complete transcript from TEDTAlks:

I am a writer. Writing books is my profession but it's more than that, of course. It is also my great lifelong love and fascination. And I don't expect that that's ever going to change. But, that said, something kind of peculiar has happened recently in my life and in my career, which has caused me to have to recalibrate my whole relationship with this work. And the peculiar thing is that I recently wrote this book, this memoir called "Eat, Pray, Love" which, decidedly unlike any of my previous books, went out in the world for some reason, and became this big, mega-sensation, international bestseller thing. The result of which is that everywhere I go now, people treat me like I'm doomed. Seriously -- doomed, doomed! Like, they come up to me now, all worried, and they say, "Aren't you afraid you're never going to be able to top that? Aren't you afraid you're going to keep writing for your whole life and you're never again going to create a book that anybody in the world cares about at all, ever again?"

J.K. Rowling Commencement Address at Harvard University June 2008

Joanne "Jo" Rowling, popularly known in her pen name "J.K. Rowling", is a British novelist who has written the famous Harry Potter. fantasy series, which sold more than 400 million copies and won multiple awards. But Rowling is also an inspiration to many because of her rags to riches story, in this commencement address she shared the benefits of failure and what it has taught her that led to her success in life, the true value of imagination and friends.

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"The Fringe Benefits of Failure, and the Importance of Imagination"

Commencement Address of J.K. Rowling (author of the best selling Harry Potter Book Series) during the Annual Meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association, June 2008

The first thing I would like to say is ‘thank you.’ Not only has Harvard given me an extraordinary honour, but the weeks of fear and nausea I have endured at the thought of giving this commencement address have made me lose weight. A win-win situation! Now all I have to do is take deep breaths, squint at the red banners and convince myself that I am at the world’s largest Gryffindor reunion.

Delivering a commencement address is a great responsibility; or so I thought until I cast my mind back to my own graduation. The commencement speaker that day was the distinguished British philosopher Baroness Mary Warnock. Reflecting on her speech has helped me enormously in writing this one, because it turns out that I can’t remember a single word she said. This liberating discovery enables me to proceed without any fear that I might inadvertently influence you to abandon promising careers in business, the law or politics for the giddy delights of becoming a gay wizard.

Steve Jobs' 2005 Stanford Commencement Address (Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish)

Steve Jobs is definitely one of the great contributors in revolutionizing the computer and creative industry in our generation thru Apple (Mac) Computers and later the Pixar Animation Studios. In his commencement address for Stanford University graduates, Jobs shared how our setbacks/failures can also be our stepping stones to success. He also pointed out the importance of knowing that our time is limited and therefore, we have to live to its fullest everyday.

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I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I've ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That's it. No big deal. 

Just three stories.

The first story is about connecting the dots.

I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?

It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: "We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?" They said: "Of course." My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would go to college. This was the start in my life.