QUESTION OF THE DAY: "WHAT ARE YOU WILLING TO GIVE UP, IN ORDER TO HAVE WHAT YOU REALLY WANT?"

I have asked this question before on this page, and god knows I will probably ask it again, because I think it's the DEEPEST TRUTHFUL QUERY. The question is on my mind because I raised it again last night, when I was giving a talk in Fairfield, speaking to two (terrific!) women in the audience who wanted advice for how to get their own books written.

Their obstacles were many, and sincere — busy jobs, busy lives, busy minds.

There are always obstacles. Sometimes it seems there are nothing BUT obstacles.

But in the end, the question will always remain the same: "What are you willing to give up, in order to have what you really want?"

A great teacher I knew once asked me that, and it felt like the world stopped for a minute, and all the birds ceased their singing, and every car on the highway paused and the universe just looked at me and said, "Well, lady? Your answer?"

I don't know what your answer would be, to that trenchant question, but I know what mine was. And thus I started shedding, shedding, shedding…

So tell me, dear ones — what do you need to shed? Or what have you already let go of, to take you where you always
needed to be? Share your inspiring stories here, please! Reminders of how it can be done are always GREAT.

(And for those of you who have not yet gotten enough of YELLOW DRESS this year, I offer yet another photo of it in action! This image is from The London Sunday Times, shot in my garden earlier this autumn. Dear, dear YELLOW DRESS. Who would I be without you? One thing I will never give up to have what I really want is YELLOW DRESS.)

How about you?

What are you finally ready to be?

ONWARD,
LG

via Elizabeth Gilbert’s Facebook Wall