The first lesson that struck me in the book is: my creations are not me, they are simply a part of me. At first, this sounds a little counter-intuitive to me—we all want to be known or associated with our best works that we put in hours to produce. However, our identities are made up of so much more than just one video, one performance, one artwork or one social media post. If we treat these creations as sacred possessions, we would never be able to let go of them. Our ego would be bruised if anyone criticises our precious babies. What we should instead hold dear, are the effort we invested and the things we learnt in the process. The following quote from the book sums up this first lesson:
“What you produce is not necessarily always sacred, I realised, just because you think it’s sacred. What is sacred is the time that you spend working on the project, and what that time does to expand your imagination, and what that expanded imagination does to transform your life.” – Elizabeth Gilbert