The Grass isn't always Greener on the Other Side!

The grass isn’t always greener on the other side!

If the grass looks greener on the other side then start tending to your own grass until it is vibrant and filled with radiance!  Why are you looking at other people's grass anyway when your attention could be focused on making yours amazing!

This week has been quite a week for me. Two children’s books released and snapped up by audio producers, a return to work after being signed off with Deep Vein Thrombosis and being able to see the world with a new perspective. It is funny how when you are immersed in routine that you live on automatic pilot. How often do you stop to take in your surroundings? How often do you stop and say actually I am living the perfect life for me? I would guess that it isn’t that often. Don’t you find it amazing that all your choices and decisions in life have resulted in where you are now? Those decisions must have been made because you felt your situation would improve… Am I correct? So why do people look at other people’s lives and wish they were them? Or wish they had their life? Why do we assume that life is greener on the other side?

A good example of the grass being greener was when I was at a rowing championship. I was staying in a cottage with a group of mothers (who were there for their children). They said to me they wished they could live my life: a life of freedom, creativity and working in business. I had never considered that people would look at my lifestyle from the outside and consider my grass was greener. I pointed out that in my opinion they had it pretty good. They all had wonderful husbands who provided for them and they had a family, lovely homes and all they needed. They had not had to work up a corporate ladder or find ways to enable numerous incomes. Instead they had had the opportunity to focus on nurture, bringing life into the world and they had the opportunity to do that in comfort rather than struggle. I had struggled, seriously struggled and there were times where I would have gladly been saved by an opportune prince. Unfortunately there was no prince making that showy arrival, so instead I realised my life was my responsibility and rather than waste time admiring people’s grass and wishing it was mine, I thought well how do I make my grass the greenest it can be? Since each person’s life is their responsibility and their grass state is representational of their life, then tending to one’s own grass is the best thing a person can do.

At this point I would like you to ask how you make your grass as green as it can be?  The thing is it isn’t just about having more or earning more money, it can quite simply be a shift of mental perspective. Just think that there are people out there who aspire to have the life you have. I know… It is a strange thought. The way I see it is if you have access to the internet and have the opportunity to read this blog then you are rich. You have the capacity to purchase the technology to be able to access the world. You have the funds to buy the tools. You are not sitting in a hovel digging through shit.

Through doing this evaluation, I realised that my life was good and worked perfectly for me. As much as those images of people living in huge luxurious mansions bombard us, I realised that actually I would feel very lonely residing in such a huge space. I would be like a pea rattling around a warehouse. My little apartment is perfect for me. It is peaceful, cosy and filled with an air of femininity. In truth it is beautiful, has turrets and is minimalist. So you might wave a mansion at me and I would smile and know that in terms of where I live my grass is very green.

 

It was a few years ago now that I saw through the big illusion. That illusion is fascinating – we are fed images of ideals in films and adverts. They are not real. We are shown images of the ideal bodies, yet we are all different. So why not love the body you have and treat it well? Don’t starve it, treat it to great nutrition and it is worth shifting perspective to consider food as medicine and building blocks for the body.  Find an exercise you love so that your body radiates with health. Blood moving around the body stops it stagnating. Finally money – we all chase money to be rich because everyone else wants to be rich. Yes money is a decorated piece of paper to accumulate but what if all that effort to accumulate results in devaluation? It happened to Cyprus and Iceland. So with that in mind, you can realise that actually what you want is the feeling of being rich and that comes from appreciating what you have. It is so simple.

The moment I realised I was rich was quite out of the blue. I stood on my paddleboard on a beautiful expanse of water. It was close to sunset and the clouds were decorated with pink and the reflection made heaven and earth one. I stood there in that moment and thought I couldn’t pay for this. This endless chase for money is ridiculous because it is continuous. When will you ever have enough? You know the answer to that... For me - beauty and true wealth comes from being immersed in the experience.

That moment on the paddleboard was when I realised I had stopped to smell the roses and seen the beauty in life. That beauty had not cost a thing – it was nature working its daily miracles. What was it that made me rich? It was the recognition and the feeling of a great connection with the planet. A feeling of great wealth rose up inside me. I series of pictures connected, as if there was a thread throughout my life. I saw the sequence of great moments of inspiration. It was then that I realised that my grass was as green as I wished to make it. I just needed to focus on the feeling of being wealthy with what I have because I have access to that whenever I wish. I also realised that the grass is not necessarily greener on the other side. Instead it is far better to focus on my own grass, tend to my own grass and then take it with me in the form of radiant turf!

I hope this inspires

Ruby Allure BOOKS ON AMAZON.COM - https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=dp_byline_sr_ebooks_1?ie=UTF8&text=Ruby+Allure&search-alias=digital-text&field-author=Ruby+Allure&sort=relevancerank

Ruby Allure BOOKS ON AUDIBLE.COM
http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_mn_mt_ano_tseft__galileo?advsearchKeywords=Ruby+Allure&x=0&y=0 

NEW RELEASE: TINGLE DINGLE AND THE LITTLE MISCHIEFS

 https://www.amazon.com/Tingle-Dingle-Little-Mischiefs-Allure-ebook/dp/B01G9C0XC2?ie=UTF8&keywords=Ruby%20Allure&qid=1465049617&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

NEW RELEASE: THE HAIRY-LEGGED MYSTERY

https://www.amazon.com/Hairy-Legged-Mystery-Ruby-Allure-ebook/dp/B01G2C0Y9Q?ie=UTF8&qid=1465049724&ref_=sr_1_2&s=digital-text&sr=1-2

The Lost and The Found

The Lost and The Found

Have you ever worked really hard on something only to have it disappear never to be seen again?
Have you ever had that gut-wrenching feeling that something you loved creating would never see the light of day? This is what happened to me about ten years ago. I changed from using a mac to a pc (I know). My old mac died and the plug converter broke. Since it was such an old school mac I could not find another converter. When that mac died it took with it around six years of writing. Imagine  if you had spent two years writing a book and three of those were lost which added up to six years worth of work. What made it worse was five scripts also disappeared into dead digital ether. Yes I did do back up files; however, this was at a time when windows could not convert to the coding effectively and I ended up with pages of what appeared to be Greek letters. What made it worse was that I had put my heart and soul into those three books.

Well after my holiday in Thailand, I had a real craving for one of the books. To the point that I considered writing the whole thing again from scratch. It is odd really because a book is part of you until you release it to the world. It is only by experiencing completion, that you feel free to move on. I don't know whether this happens for other authors. These three books have been niggling me over the last year. They have been lurking in my unconscious desiring completion. What could I do?

Well the last couple of weeks I have been off work with Deep Vein Thrombosis. The advice was to keep moving rather than sit around. So in my time off,  which I don't have that much of, I decided on simplicity. On holiday I had read about Simplicity and it resonated to the point where it felt like the way forwards. So what did I do? I cleared and cleaned and then cleared some more. There was such a sense of release and I feel I have developed anti-stuffism. Think about it - what does an author really need? So while I was clearing out I found my old back up C.D's and gazed upon them sadly. I considered just binning them; however, I thought I would put them on my old laptop and transfer the files to my hard drives. I then looked at the files and thought - I should give conversion one last try. My old files were CWK files which I wanted as DOCS. Well I typed this into Google and a fabulous chap had miraculously provided a step by step guide and guess what? They all converted almost perfectly. Honestly the joy I felt about resurrecting those books and knowing they could be completed and released was beyond comprehension. I felt as though I had had a huge lottery win. I know.... I literally jumped around with joy because I had loved writing those books. There was one in particular that was such a fun book. So now I simply have to do a final edit and three more of my fun fictions can enter the digital publishing world. That in itself is completion and I often wonder whether these books purposely chose to be dormant. The reason I say this was that one of the books talks about survival (it's a children's book) and over the last five years my brother has become obsessed with survival skills. He talks endlessly about it. So much so I could probably survive on a remote island through his repetitious conditioning. I even purchased a fire stick just in case... Yep - I really did that and it still resides amongst my minimalist possessions. So all that he has talked about can be written into the book before release. With all that is mind I am celebrating... the discovery of my lost novels and the release of THE HAIRY-LEGGED MYSTERY, which comes out tomorrow.
In celebration of all of the above - I have put my Kindle books on COUNTDOWN DEALS from the 25th May 2016 Yipee!

LINK TO AMAZON KINDLE: http://www.amazon.co.uk/Ruby-Allure/e/B00M9Y4GAA/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1464019564&sr=8-1

Oh and the cover for The Hairy-Legged Mystery:

FUN!!!!

What Happens When You Reach Your Goals?

What do you do when you reach your goal? Do you dance? Do you celebrate? Or do you do what most people do - and set another goal? What is the point of setting yourself a challenge unless you get some satisfaction from it? It is funny that I write this now because I was recently having a discussion about this subject. Many of my friends who are athletes feel lost without a goal or a challenge. They say that when they have a goal / event they will push themselves beyond their comfort zone and go on a journey to better themselves. In some cases they are able to reach their true limits and see what they are truly capable of.

With regards to the goals you need to have a reason or a motivation - it becomes your why. When I have competed at rowing my why used to be the medal and the unity of a team. That amazing feeling of crossing the line and winning. Now, and this may be maturity, my rowing has taken on a completely new form. The love for rowing and my new 'why' in rowing is precision in stroke and mastering unity within a team. I don't actually care about the win because we have won and had the small moments of elation. That elation was short lived and resulted in the next goal or race; whereas now the rowing enables concentrated focus with sustained feelings of elation. What is even more satisfying is  rowing at your best ability for a continued time period. Maybe this is another goal or a form of goal, yet what do you do when you have reached all your goals? Is life a continual chase of goal acquisition or could you be without a goal? Does being goal-less become the goal in itself?

Success is a strange phenomenon. We are fed so many messages to go out there and achieve. To set huge goals of money, experience, career or beauty. Yet maybe it is more about the journey and who we become through our challenges. Maybe that is where we need to focus rather than goal after goal after goal. After all, doesn't life happen between goals?  Why are people so scared of not chasing something to be better?

So my question still remains: What happens when you reach your goals? What do you do when you have achieved all that you have ever wanted to achieve? Is this the time where you find satisfaction in existence and just be? Is that why goals have been so important? Is it the fear of essentially just being and existing?

You can find my books at the following link: Ruby Allure books on Audible:

http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_hp_tseft?advsearchKeywords=Ruby+allure&filterby=field-keywords&x=0&y=0

AUDIBLE BOOK AVAILABLE HERE:

 

LINK TO BUY ON AUDIBLE:

http://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/A-Short-Course-In-Creative-Writing-Audiobook/B012OVUKE8/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1443260320&sr=1-1

 

LINK TO PAPERBACK ON AMAZON.COM

A Short Course in Creative Writing
by Ms Ruby Allure
Link: http://amzn.com/1517234832

THE LINK TO THE OCEAN CALLINGS: http://www.audible.com/pd/Sci-Fi-Fantasy/The-Ocean-Callings-Audiobook/B01C4OOOEW/

Satisfaction...

Finding Satisfaction

The quickest way to lead yourself into dissatisfaction is to make comparison. If you think about it, all of us are unique and not one of us is the same so what is the point of making comparison?

One of my friends is working on her ‘grudges’ against people who have more than her. It has been an interesting insight into how she sees things. It seems that what makes her angry is those people who have miraculously large amounts of money arrive in their bank accounts as if by magic. Or people that get free luxury holidays. Obviously from the outside it is relatively amusing watching someone go red in the face over the fact that a friend has been given a free luxury holiday in Australia or Dubai; however, it did get me thinking. Why can’t people be happy for other people’s good? What is the point of jealousy? All of it is a waste of time and energy. When you are throwing yourself into aggravation over someone else’s good then you are not working on your own. I shared this with my friend and asked whether she could compare a bamboo to an oak or a tulip to a rose. She seemed bemused at first and then she realised what I was saying. There is no comparison; what’s more, there will always be someone richer, prettier, fitter, stronger, cleverer – so why are you comparing to them? You are unique and you have your own things that people are comparing to.

 

 

 

For me dissatisfaction is a sad experience, one that I have been working on for a while. It is learning what is it that makes a person feel dissatisfied and why? I realised I was causing my own dissatisfaction by comparing myself to some of the literary greats or the world’s most successful people (quite clearly I may have aspirations of grandeur) and through doing this I was ensuring that I felt bad. The thing is have you noticed that one is more likely to compare to people who have more than you rather than those who have less? Those who have less would be more than grateful for what you have? So how I combatted the comparison / dissatisfaction issue was to really focus on my stuff and when I caught that little voice in my head making comparison, I watched what it was saying and asked myself where the voice had originated. It is fascinating what the inner commentary tells you and what it drives you to do. It is almost manipulative ‘you will only be good enough when…’ 'If you do so and so... have so and so... then life will be so much better.' Then the next chase begins... 

 

 

So why compare? comparison was necessary in primal times to establish your hierarchy within a tribe. Maybe that is why we still do it. The thing is I do not intend to spend my life in a state of dissatisfaction that I have created for myself through comparison. The root cause of the dissatisfaction is comparison so therefore by not comparing and focusing on what you have and what you have achieved then you will experience satisfaction. Give it a try and see what happens.

 

 

 

 

You can find my books at the following link: Ruby Allure books on Audible:

http://www.audible.com/search/ref=a_hp_tseft?advsearchKeywords=Ruby+allure&filterby=field-keywords&x=0&y=0

 

 

 

AUDIBLE BOOK AVAILABLE HERE:

 

LINK TO BUY ON AUDIBLE:

http://www.audible.com/pd/Self-Development/A-Short-Course-In-Creative-Writing-Audiobook/B012OVUKE8/ref=a_search_c4_1_1_srTtl?qid=1443260320&sr=1-1

 

LINK TO PAPERBACK ON AMAZON.COM

A Short Course in Creative Writing
by Ms Ruby Allure
Link: http://amzn.com/1517234832