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#522: Anne Lamott on Taming Your Inner Critic, Finding Grace, and Prayer

The Tim Ferriss Show

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CHAPTER

The Abyss, the Dark Night of the Soul

In the christian theology of saint john, the divineits, the dark night of the soul, is where transformation most often happens. And that if you can just bear being somewhere that you've never been before, where you don't really have any kind of owner's manual or a clue of how to proceed,. Then you're really teachable, you know. And from that place, something magical might just grow.

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Anne Lamott on Taming Your Inner Critic, Finding Grace, and Prayer | Brought to you by LinkedIn Jobs recruitment platform with 750M users, Eight Sleep’s Pod Pro Cover sleeping solution for dynamic cooling and heating, and LMNT electrolyte supplement. More on all three below.

Anne Lamott (@AnneLamott) uses honesty, empathy, and humor to write about our world. In her beloved and bestselling books, like Operating Instructions (an account of her son’s first year), Bird by Bird (her classic book on writing), and Help, Thanks, Wow (a celebration of prayer), Lamott delves into what makes us human. She explores the wide experience of life that unites us: birth and death, parenthood and family, faith and doubt, love and loss, forgiveness and hope.

In each of her 19 books, which have sold millions of copies worldwide, Lamott brings her distinctive mix of bracing candor, clarifying insight, and refreshing humor to convert serious subjects like addiction, motherhood, loss, and faith into human truths we can all share. She is the author of several essay collections on faith, including Traveling Mercies, Grace (Eventually), and Plan B, as well as several novels, including Imperfect Birds, Blue Shoe, and Rosie.

Lamott has been honored with a Guggenheim Fellowship and has taught at UC Davis and writing conferences across the country. She is an inductee of the California Hall of Fame and the subject of Academy Award-winning filmmaker Freida Mock’s documentary Bird by Bird with Annie (1999).

Her most recent book is Dusk, Night, Dawn: On Revival and Courage.

Please enjoy!

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