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Elizabeth Gilbert on Perfectionism: "It's Just Fear in Really Good Shoes"

Season 5 Episode 527
Aired on 10/05/2014 | CC tv-14
Elizabeth Gilbert's best-selling memoir Eat, Pray, Love has inspired a generation of women around the world. The author says women often ask her how to stay on their own personal journeys of self-discovery. The answer, she says, boils down to something she once heard Tibetan Buddhist nun Pema Chödrön say about the root of every problem being fear.

Elizabeth says fear is often at the root of the questions she gets asked. "It's either, 'I'm stuck and I'm scared to make a move, to make a change,' or it's what I call the haute couture, high-end version of fear, which is perfectionism," she says in the video above. "It's just fear in really good shoes."

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