A different way to think about creative genius

Another great TED lecture on creativity, this one by Elizabeth Gilbert who wrote EAT, PRAY, LOVE. She talks about success and the impossible expectations we impose on artists. It's inspiring and really funny and smart and spiritual, just like Elizabeth herself.

Sometimes what follows a brilliant performance in dance, say, or an author's first novel hitting the bestsellers list, is anguish. There is a belief secretly harboured by the artist that maybe once executed this thing can't ever again be duplicated, that expectations can never again be met. Elizabeth says that maybe one doesn't have to be quite so full of despair. That perhaps there is a glimpse of the divine (or at least, a "divine cockeyed genius") in all great creative work, and we just have to view it in a different light.

"If you never happen to believe in the first place, that the most extraordinary aspects of your being came from you, but maybe if you just believed they were on loan to you, you know, from some unimaginable source, for some exquisite portion of your life to be passed along, when you're finished with somebody else."

Dance. Write. You might be touched by the divine, or not.

But just do it. And don't ever stop.