Good Life Project — Elizabeth Gilbert | The Weekly Practice That Changed Her Life

Podcast: Good Life Project
Host: Jonathan Fields
Guest: Elizabeth Gilbert
Episode Title: The Weekly Practice That Changed Her Life
Date: November 21, 2025

Episode Overview

In this heartfelt episode, host Jonathan Fields sits down with renowned author Elizabeth Gilbert to explore a life-changing writing practice she developed: writing "Letters from Love" to herself. Elizabeth shares the origins, mechanics, and transformative power of this ritual, which began during her own darkest hours and has now become a communal experience for tens of thousands. The conversation is an invitation—for all of us—to access unconditional self-love through a simple, daily act, and unpacks the deep personal and collective resonance the practice has triggered.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Birth of "Letters from Love"

• Elizabeth’s “dark night of the soul”
  • Elizabeth describes the painful period in her early 30s—marked by divorce, heartbreak, depression, loneliness, and lack of tools to cope—which became the crucible for this practice.
  • Quote [08:22]:
    “I was 30 years old, I’m 55 almost now, and I was going through a divorce...everything that I had been planning for my life and then my other plans...had fallen apart...I was so full of shame and so full of despair and longing for love...I didn’t have any, my toolkit was empty.”
• The initial letter
  • In a moment of desperation, she felt led to write a letter with the words she always longed to hear—messages of pure, unconditional love and presence.
  • Quote [09:36]:
    “First of all, I love you. I don’t need you to be any different than you are...You were born with this. I’ll be with you through all of this...There’s nowhere else in the universe I would rather be than sitting here with you right now...I’m just going to sit here with you.”

2. Unconditional Love vs. External Validation

• Letting go of external hope

  • Both Jonathan and Elizabeth discuss the liberating and counterintuitive notion from Buddhism and the Tao Te Ching that letting go of hope for external circumstances allows for deeper agency and self-acceptance.
  • Jonathan [13:40]:
    “This notion of abandoning hope can also really seed agency in so many ways...”
  • Elizabeth [14:50]:
    “Hope is a weird varietal of fear...To be told to have hope is almost cruel. But to be told that the way you’re feeling is okay and understandable and nobody’s gonna make you advance beyond where you are...now I have a little space.”

• Liberation versus transformation

  • Elizabeth embraces the idea that true liberation comes from stripping away what obscures your real self, not becoming something new.
  • Elizabeth [17:37]:
    “Liberation is what we have been promised. But, boy, do you have to let go of a lot of stuff before you can have it...You sort of trade everything for it.”

3. Mechanics and Mysticism of the Practice

• Where does love come from? Internal or external?

  • Elizabeth sees the “voice of love” as both within and beyond herself, akin to channeling universal benevolence.
  • Elizabeth [20:14]:
    “Writing a letter from love is turning toward yourself. Depression and anxiety is thinking about yourself. And writing these words of kindness is a turning toward...I refuse to believe that it’s not coming from an external source.”

• “Wanted Ad” for God

  • Elizabeth shares her recovery journey, and an exercise to write a "want ad" for the God/higher power she needed—loving, flexible, non-judgmental—reflecting the flexibility and gentleness in the practice.
  • Elizabeth [26:50]:
    “…One of the features of a God that I could love would be allowing itself to move into the shape of whatever I needed it to be…My list started with unconditionally loving…because I needed that.”

4. Detailed Instructions for the Practice

• Facing resistance, especially as a writer

  • Jonathan admits his first reaction is fear and perfectionism; Elizabeth highlights that public creatives are often the most self-conscious, but that overthinking is antithetical to the ritual.
  • Elizabeth’s core instructions [37:01; 37:14]:
    • Set a timer for 5 minutes.
    • Write by hand, not on a computer.
    • Read something that opens your heart beforehand (a poem, a spiritual text).
    • Use the prompt: “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?”
    • Start the reply with an endearment (e.g., “Sweetheart, darling, my little tendril of ivy…”).
    • Don’t overthink, don't edit, don’t dialogue—just let it flow.
    • Practice daily, not as a one-off “assignment.”
  • Quote [39:50]:
    “If I were having trouble accessing love, I would read one of their poems...they left the door open to love...You're gonna draft in after them.”
  • On the simplicity of the messages [44:30]:
    “Even if it feels very facile and sort of embarrassing and weird and self conscious, even if it's just saying, ‘I love you, you're doing a good job. I'm not going anywhere,’...We don’t need you to be smart... What we don’t have is love.”

• The role of imagination and intuition

  • Start as an imaginative exercise, but with repetition, it becomes intuitive—a “flow” experience as love’s messages come through.
  • Elizabeth [43:40]:
    “At first it’s going to start as an act of imagination before it becomes an act of faith...but very soon...it will start being an act of intuition…”

5. Addressing Fears & Common Challenges

• What if love doesn't respond?

  • The greatest obstacle is the fear that love will not show up if you try this practice.
  • Elizabeth [50:36]: “It’s never happened to me that I’ve asked for it and it’s not there...that voice has been there saying, ‘I see your rage and I see your disgust and your exhaustion, and I don’t have any answers for you, but I love you and I don’t know how you’re going to get out of this’...that’s really all love is...it's just here to be present.”
  • On courage to try [52:37]: “People take risks every single day. Yet this one, asking somebody to be courageous enough to open up a blank notebook and write, ‘Dear Love, what would you have me know?’...feels like, oh, that’s a bridge too far. I’m not doing that. And I call people out.”

• Unconditional love’s universality

  • Even if one hasn’t experienced it from others, the ability to access and give it to oneself is inherent.
  • Elizabeth [54:54]:
    “People who never had it shown to them have it in them. It’s not a prerequisite that you were tenderly and gently loved as a child for you to find this...your longing for it is, in fact, the doorway to it.”

Community & Collective Practice

1. Taking “Letters from Love” Public

• From solitary ritual to a global community

  • Elizabeth’s practice, born in isolation, now includes a Substack newsletter and community where 90,000+ people share, write, and find connection through the practice.
  • Elizabeth [62:07]:
    “Now we have 90,000 people across the world practicing this together...if I were to flash back to my 30 year old self...something incredible is going to come out of this...just keep going.”

• Designing a ‘walled garden’

  • The intentional, gentle structuring of the community, with a tiny paywall and moderated comments, creates an oasis of safety—sometimes in radical contrast to social media’s toxicity.

• Common threads in the letters

  • Elizabeth is astonished to see the same messages, humor, and themes echoing again and again, suggesting a universality of what love wants us to know: “I don’t care about your morality. I just love you and I am here with you.”
  • Elizabeth [66:01]:
    “What I hear resonating again and again...is that love often says to people, ‘I don’t care about your morality. I don’t care about your ethics. I’m not here to gauge that...You’re fine. I know all the stuff you’ve done. It’s okay. It doesn’t matter.'”
    “Out beyond ideas of wrongdoing and rightdoing, there is a field. I’ll meet you there.”

2. Impact on Individuals and Families

• Transformation at scale
  • Community members report sharing with friends and children, using the practice to navigate grief, illness, and everyday hardships.
  • Elizabeth [63:50]: “They’re teaching their kids how to do this. Some of them are teachers and they’re teaching their students...using it to get themselves through deaths of loved ones...their own cancer diagnoses, and their fear of the world.”

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• The essence of the practice:
  • “Write to yourself the exact words that you have always wanted to hear somebody else say to you.” — Elizabeth, [08:22]
  • “Depression and anxiety is thinking about yourself. And writing these words of kindness is a turning toward.” — Elizabeth, [20:14]
• On universal belonging:
  • “You are allowed to be loved. It’s too hard without it.” — Elizabeth, [55:20]
• On being careful with yourself:
  • “To live a good life...is to be careful with yourself...to know your own preciousness and to know your own just exquisite, tender sweetness and to treat yourself accordingly as a very rare, miraculous being.” — Elizabeth, [70:07]
• On the fear of self-loathing:
  • Describing an encounter with the Dalai Lama, who was stunned to learn about the Western concept of self-hatred, and said:
    “You are the one who you're going to be traveling with through this entire journey of life...This is who you're supposed to be the most tender to and the most kind to.” — Paraphrased, [70:37]

Important Timestamps

• [08:22] — Elizabeth recounts the low point that catalyzed the practice
• [09:36] — The content of the first letter from love
• [14:50] — The limits of hope and acceptance of what is
• [17:37] — Liberation vs. transformation
• [37:01] — The difficulties of starting the practice as a writer
• [37:14] — Step-by-step mechanics for writing a “Letter from Love”
• [43:40] — The transition from imagination to intuition
• [50:36] — Addressing the fear that love won’t show up
• [62:07] — Taking the practice public and its global community impact
• [66:01] — The recurring message: love is not about morality
• [70:07] — Elizabeth on what it means to “live a good life”

Episode Tone

The tone is deeply compassionate, openly spiritual, gently humorous, and at times profoundly vulnerable. Elizabeth’s candor about pain and her journey is matched by Jonathan’s curiosity and warmth. Both hosts and guests invite listeners to suspend disbelief and experiment with radical self-love—even if it feels awkward or foreign.

Conclusion

Elizabeth Gilbert’s “Letters from Love” practice is both simple and radical: a five-minute daily act of loving-kindness toward oneself, guided by the question, “Dear Love, what would you have me know today?” Rooted in Elizabeth’s own experience of despair, this ritual has mushroomed into a worldwide movement, affirming that unconditional love is accessible within us all, even if we’ve never received it before. The conversation radiates warmth, wisdom, and hope, gently prompting each of us to risk discovering that the love we need is already here.

For Further Engagement

• Read or listen to Letters from Love and Jonathan’s own letter at Elizabeth’s Substack
• Try the practice: five minutes, handwritten, daily, with kindness.
• Connect with others who are doing the same for collective inspiration and support.