417 - 4 Books to Read Over the Holidays That Will Unlock Your Creative Genius

0:00Whether you're looking for something nourishing to read over the holidays or something uber inspiring, these top picks never fail to get me ready for the new year. Enjoy. So we're going to talk about our love of books today, and specifically books that have helped my team and I overcome some creative challenges like perfectionism, imposter syndrome, or just that general feeling of not being good enough. So think about this one like a little bit of a virtual book club between you, myself, Team Forleo, and our entire community. So I want you to put on your cozy pants if you got them, or you can just take off your pants.

0:34Who cares? No one's going to see you. Grab a cup of coffee or tea, a glass of red or sparkling water, whatever floats your beverage boat, and settle in for a very special episode that we're calling hashtag I love this book, creativity edition. One of my earliest memories was when I was about four years old. So I was sitting in the grammar school library in Isla, New Jersey on the floor, surrounded by piles of books. My mom was volunteering for my older brother's class and the kindergarten teacher, her name was Mrs. Cruzen, was keeping an eye on me. And I remember feeling intoxicated by that special smell of books that libraries always have and just feeling mesmerized by it all.

1:16I felt like every book was this window into an entirely different universe. And I would trace the words and the pictures with my fingers, working so hard to figure out what it all meant. One of the first books that I got obsessed with was Harold and the Purple Crayon. Do you remember that one? I love the colors of the book, but I think the thing that really got me was the fact that the entire story was about a child who had the power to create his own world using his imagination. He wanted to go for a walk in the moonlight, but there wasn't a moon, so he drew one in. And then after walking along this straight path for a bit, he realized he wasn't getting anywhere.

1:56So he took that crayon of his and he drew a new different path, which led to a lot more adventures. Books have always been, and I predict they always will be a huge part of my life. Every single thing that I've done or overcome or learned usually ties back to something I figured out or got inspired by in a book. People still ask me all the time. They say, Marie, what books do you recommend? In fact, somebody just asked me on YouTube. They said, Hey Marie, can you do a video on the top 20 books that made the biggest impact on your life, your must reads? So if you've listened to this show for any amount of time, you know, I often interview authors about their books, but given everything that's happening right now, I thought it would be fun to curate a little reading list just for you specifically about creativity.

2:46And you can find the full list of all the books on the blog. If you Google Marie Forleo books to read on creativity. Now, if you're wondering, well, why are you guys picking creativity as the theme for this one? Here's the reason right now, most of us have to be even more creative than we've ever been before. And we have to do it fast. We all have to change the way that we're living and working and doing business and even moving about our lives, which requires tremendous creativity and imagination and a bit of determination. So I want to share with you a little passage right now from one of my all-time favorite books about creativity.

3:24It's called The War of Art, and it's written by my dear friend, Steven Pressfield. The title of this section is called Resistance and Fear. Stephen writes, are you paralyzed with fear? That's a good sign. Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do. Remember our rule of thumb. The more scared we are of a worker calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it. Resistance is experienced as fear. The degree of fear equates to the strength of resistance. Therefore, the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul.

4:11That's why we feel so much resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there'd be no resistance. Have you ever watched Inside the Actor's Studio? The host, James Lipton, invariably asks his guests, What factors make you decide to take a particular role? The actor always answers, because I'm afraid of it. The professional tackles the project that will make him stretch. He takes on the assignment that will bear him into unchartered waters, compel him to explore unconscious parts of himself. Is he scared? Hell yes, he's petrified. Conversely, the professional turns down roles that he's done before. He's not afraid of them anymore.

4:53Why waste his time? So if you're paralyzed with fear, it's a good sign. It shows you what you have to do. So that's the end of the passage from The War of Art. Now, why do I love this one so much? Because every major breakthrough in my own creative life before I do it, and even as I'm doing it, I got to be honest, I'm terrified. I remember feeling so afraid when I gave my very first personal development workshop when I was about 24 years old. I was also terrified when I decided that I wanted to do a different kind of book launch for Everything is Figureoutable. It was an idea that I had that had literally never been done before.

5:33I thought to myself, what if a Beyonce concert and a TED Talk had a baby and then threw a block party? And if you've been following me for a while, you know this, we did it. It was amazing. And it was scary the entire way through. And now I'm actually starting to work on my next book and there's aspects of this one that have me totally twisted up. But as I've learned, and as Steven shares, you have to trust the guidance of creative fear. And as I like to say, fear is a GPS for where my soul most wants to go. And I bet the same thing might be true for you too. Now, some of team Forleo are here to share their favorite books about creativity too.

6:14Have a listen. I'm Marian, and I'm a copywriter. So I chose Bird by Bird by the incredible Anne Lamott. And this book, she wrote it years ago, and it's about creativity and writing, but from a personal angle, which I think is one of the reasons that this book resonated with me so much. It's not a how-to about writing. It's like musings on writing life, but not douchey, because I realize that sounds really douchey. But basically, Anne just talks about her journey as a writer and the struggles and the advice and the things that have kind of gotten her through the writing life. And I think about this book all the time because I write all day for my job and I do a lot of personal writing.

6:58And the single idea that changed my life was in this book. And the idea is Lamont's take on the shitty first draft. So basically just sitting down and getting something out because I have always found on the days when I just don't want to write and things feel terrible or when I'm working on my novel and I don't know where it's going or I'm trying to write an email and it's just coming out wrong, that if I just get the shittiest version out on paper, it is infinitely easier to edit and it feels so much freer once there's something on the paper. And I think Anne, who is this incredibly talented writer, talking about the garbage that comes out the first time she writes something makes me feel better because I think she just has this really funny way of talking about how basically even the best writers that you know have no idea what they're doing until they've done it.

7:51And nobody just sits down at their desk with their beret and their cigarette and churns out this beautiful sentence that it takes a ton of work and a ton of work shopping and a ton of editing. And knowing that has made me feel so much better about the writing process. So I talk about this book and I talk about this concept all the time. So this is my favorite part of Bird by Bird, and it makes me laugh every time. So here we go. The first draft is the child's draft, where you let it all pour out and then let it romp all over the place, knowing that no one is going to see it and that you can shape it later.

8:28You just let this childlike part of you channel whatever voices and visions come through and onto the page. If one of the characters wants to say, well, so what, Mr. Poopypants, you let her. No one is going to see it. If the kid wants to get into really sentimental, weepy, emotional territory, you let him. Just get it all down on paper because there may be something great in those six crazy pages that you would have never gotten to by more rational grown-up means. There may be something in the very last line of the very last paragraph on page six that you just love, that is so beautiful or wild that you now know what you're supposed to be writing about, more or less, or in what direction you might go.

9:08But there was no way to get to this without first getting through the first five and a half pages. Real quick, are you on the Dream Club VIP list yet? If not, what the hell are you waiting for? If you want to make 2025 your best year ever with me as your mentor, go to marieforleo.com slash dreamclub now and get on that VIP list.

9:33My name is Louise and I am Head of Storytelling. I chose From the Mixed Up Files and Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler by E.L. Konningsberg. This was one of my very favorite books as a kid, perhaps my favorite and it still is now. It really impacted my life. I related a lot. I read it probably way earlier than I should have. And I related a lot to Claudia Kincaid, the main character in her desire for adventure and to kind of shake up her life. I never thought about running away, but I admired her desire to do so and to choose the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City as the place to go. I think it definitely intensified my determination to live in New York City, which I do.

10:20And I actually read it out loud when I was pregnant with my son Griffin a few years ago, I just decided to read it. And it probably took me about a month to get through it. But it was one of the things I read out loud. I just picked it up. I don't know why, probably because I have such a love for it. So I'm going to pull up the section of the book that has always sat with me. Claudia and Jamie have met Mrs. Frank Weiler, and they're talking to her about learning something new every day. And she said, I think you should learn, of course, and some days you must learn a great deal, but you should also have days when you allow what is already in you to swell up inside of you until it touches everything and you can feel it inside you.

11:07If you never take time out to let that happen, then you just accumulate facts and they begin to rattle around inside of you. You can make noise with them, but never really feel anything with them. It's hollow. It is a beautiful book with mystery and intrigue and the map of the museum and everything I've ever read about the book. And when I guess they did a 50th anniversary thing at the Met for it, everything about it is talked about like the adventure and the intrigue and the idea of living in a museum for a week and all of these cool things that would happen from that. And where would you sleep and what would you do when no one else was there?

11:45But I think the biggest thing is about the idea of learning and knowledge and absorbing and that you have to take the space for that stuff to fill you and change you because otherwise it just washes over you it rattles around inside of you as she says and it never really like sinks in and becomes part of your you know the matter of you that then brings whatever you're supposed to do to the world I'm Jai Shree I'm on the customer happiness team and we really support our customers through B School the copy cure life and everything that MarieTV brings forth in people's hearts so I chose letters to a young poet by Rainer Maria Rilke I chose that book because I remembered reading it at a time.

12:42I was a teenager when I first read that book and I had lost my father, you know, needless to say, it was a really difficult time. And this book is just so comforting. It's a collection of 10 letters from the poet Rilke to another young poet, really giving life advice and so many nuggets of wisdom about the creative path and the journey. and it's so much about going inward and trusting the process and trusting our path. So it was so comforting for me and I thought it really connected to the topic of creativity in a unique way. I would say that one of the things that has challenged me the most personally, creatively, is having so many different interests and really wanting to explore different creative outlets.

13:40And I've been so hard on myself about that and thinking that, no, it just has to be one thing. If you want to do something well, it can only be one art form. But everyone has a different journey. And if your heart's being pulled in these different creative mediums or towards these different creative mediums to just allow it, just let it be, there is something unique for you in each of those explorations. And again, it comes back to that comparing with others. If we compare to others, we might think that it has to be or should be a certain way. But just trusting that, you know, your voice can come through so many different forms and you don't know where it's leading or how they connect and it's okay.

14:38For anyone feeling the impacts of uncertainty during this time, this passage from Letters to a Young Poet by Rainer Maria Rilke is one of my favorites. Why do you want to shut out of your life any uneasiness, any misery, any depression? Since after all, you don't know what work these conditions are doing inside you. Why do you want to persecute yourself with the question of where all this is coming from and where it is going? Since you know, after all, that you are in the midst of transitions and you wished for nothing so much as to change.

15:21Kind of fun, right? Remember, you can check out the full list of curated books about creativity over at marieforleo.com slash blog. One last thing. If you've got big goals for 2025 and want to practically guarantee you're going to reach them, don't miss out on Dream Club. Membership opens up on December 30th. Go to marieforleo.com slash dreamclub now to get on the VIP list.